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Examining the role of beliefs and attitudes in online advertising: A comparison between the USA and Romania
|
[
"Advertising",
"Advertising media",
"Internet",
"Consumer behaviour",
"United States of America",
"Romania"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Recent years have witnessed growing interest in examining the mechanism and influence of online advertising. Along the line of research, an intensely debated topic is about the roles of consumers' beliefs and attitudes toward online advertising (ATOA). A host of studies (Ducoffe, 1996; Russell et al., 1994) have suggested that individuals' ATOA is an important measure of advertising effectiveness. Past research on online advertising has provided insight into global marketing and commerce. However, the foci of most studies have been on the USA or developed countries. Little is known about online advertising in developing countries, particularly Eastern European countries such as Romania.The goal of current study is to investigate online advertising across different cultures such as Romania and the USA. Scholars and practitioners alike have explored the relationship between culture and advertising extensively in the traditional media environment, but rarely do so in the online context. Nonetheless, as Roberts and Ko (2001) stressed, cultural differences and adaptations are as relevant to online advertising as to traditional advertising. Moreover, the internet affords companies of different sizes nearly equal opportunities to market themselves globally, and hence examining the role of culture in online advertising may provide useful implications about expanding business across nations.There are two major objectives of this study: first, the study attempts to model the relationships among three groups of factors including beliefs about online advertising, ATOA, and consumer behavioral responses toward online advertising. Second, the study seeks to explore the influence of culture on the aforementioned three factors. In the past, the booming Asian markets such as China and India have garnered enormous attention from the academia and marketers. In contrast, research on Eastern European countries such as Romania is sparse. As a country bordering between the east and the west, Romania has much in common with its Central and Eastern European neighbours such as Russia and Poland. The economic transition and internet development in Romania are also representative of this region. The USA, on the other hand, is a highly developed market and represents a typical Western culture. A comparison between Romania and the USA can enhance the understanding of online advertising audiences around the globe, and thus help businesses and organizations employ online advertising more effectively and efficiently in their global marketing endeavors.This study contributes to the international marketing literature in several ways. First, examining beliefs and ATOA in Romania and the USA extends current research on online advertising to a cross-cultural context. Second, modeling the relationships among beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors deepens the understanding of advertising hierarchy effects in an international setting. Specifically, the forming process from beliefs, through attitudes, to behaviors, has rarely been inspected in the aforementioned context. Third, with the internet functioning as an integrated marketing tool, the present study provides insight into the uniqueness and effectiveness of the new advertising medium as opposed to traditional media.This paper is organized in the following manner: first, the authors review relevant literature on consumers' beliefs, attitudes, and behavior toward online advertising, as well as a brief introduction to Romanian and American cultures, particularly in regard to Hofstede's cultural dimensions; second, based on the literature review, hypotheses are proposed to address the relationships among culture, individuals' beliefs, attitudes and consumer behavioral responses; third, sampling, measurement, and data analysis are presented; finally, the authors discuss implications of significant findings, research limitations, and future directions.\nLiterature review: Beliefs about online advertising\nMethod: Procedure and sampling\nResults: Two structural models were fitted to the pooled data of American and Romanian participants. For Model I, the indicator of consumer response was ad clicking, whereas frequency of online buying was the indicator of consumer response for Model II. Hence, in both models, consumer behavioral response was treated as a single-indicator construct. The sample size was 577. Results in Table VI show that both structural models fitted the pooled data well. Structural Models I and II are shown in Figures 3 and 4 graphically.H1-H3\nDiscussion: Links among belief factors, ATOA, and behaviors\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to investigate online advertising across different cultures such as Romania and the USA. In the meantime, this paper attempts to examine the relationships among beliefs about online advertising, attitudes toward online advertising (ATOA), and consumer responses to online advertising.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Surveys are conducted among 577 internet users from both Romania and the USA structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships among variables.\nFindings: - Belief factors (i.e. information seeking, entertainment, economy, credibility, and value corruption) are statistically significant predictors of ATOA; ATOA is a significant predictor of consumer responses to online advertising; as compared to Americans, Romanians tended to hold a more positive ATOA and are more likely to click advertisements, whereas Americans are more likely to buy online than do Romanians.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Convenient sampling technique and the operationalization of culture are main limitations associated with the paper.\nPractical implications: - Findings may help businesses and organizations employ online advertising more effectively and efficiently in their global marketing endeavors.\nOriginality/value: - Currently little is known about online advertising in developing countries, particularly eastern European countries such as Romania. The current paper extends research on ATOA to a cross-cultural context.\n",
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The role of involvement and identification on event quality perceptions and satisfaction: A case of US Taekwondo Open
|
[
"Customer satisfaction",
"Customer services quality",
"Sporting events"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As a variety of martial arts forms crossed national borders, awareness of and involvement in martial arts around the world has increased. Today, the martial arts industry is rapidly evolving into a mature and highly competitive marketplace (Ko, 2003). For example, in recent years, the number of commercial martial arts schools has increased substantially all across America. In the USA, there are approximately 13,950 martial arts schools (Info-USA, 2007). The number of martial arts participants has increased from 3.8 million in 1993 to 4.6 million in 2004 (Sport Business Research Network, 2008). The increased number of martial arts organizations, events, products, and practitioners indicate that martial arts have become ingrained in the consumer culture of the global community (Ko and Yang, 2008).While this growth trend provided martial arts organizations with new business opportunities, it also created many challenges. Two of the many challenges include the competitive business environment and changing customer needs. For example, thousands of martial arts events are being held every year, from grassroots events such as youth tournaments to mega-sport events such as the Olympics. Managers cannot always generate sufficient revenues due to the short history of a particular event, ineffective event operations, failure of marketing promotions, and lack of event management professionals (Crompton and McKay, 1997). More significantly, as event ticket sales are the primary revenue stream, customer retention becomes an important task for event managers. This is true particularly in today's competitive business environment where the total number of private and public martial arts organizations is continuously increasing. The success of martial arts organizations are dependent on how well they adapt to continuously changing and highly competitive market environments (Ko and Yang, 2008).One approach for thriving in a challenging business environment is to develop a better understanding of this niche market and to satisfy customers by offering quality products (Kim et al., 2009; Ko, 2003; Ko and Valacich, 2004). Events are service-driven with customer satisfaction as the key to success. Event managers should understand the meaning and importance of quality as applied to their specific type of event and its goals (Getz, 2005).Due to an increasing dominance of services within martial arts events, martial arts organizations need to be innovative in managing services and pay close attention to the issues of service quality perceptions and customer satisfaction. Revealing customer perceptions of service experiences has always been important for the success of organizations (Cronin et al., 2000; Kelly and Turley, 2001; Rust and Oliver, 1994). From a management standpoint, managers should systematically examine their current services from customers' perspectives and (re)design them, as warranted to provide spectators with high-quality services which should then eventually lead to increases in event attendance.Although a substantial amount of research on service quality perceptions and satisfaction can be found in the marketing literature (Getz, 2005; Kelly and Turley, 2001), current literature has neglected martial arts participants and limited scholarly efforts have been attempted to better understand this market segment. As a result, there is very little known about martial arts participants and factors that influence their decision making processes. This topic has historically been of little interest to this industry and so its application is relatively new (Ko, 2003).In response to calls for more research on martial arts participants and their decision making processes, in this study, the researchers investigate service quality perceptions and satisfaction of martial arts event participants with a focus on the two salient consumer variables of involvement and identification. Specific research questions include:RQ1. Are there any differences in martial arts event quality perceptions between customers with high and low involvement/identification levels?RQ2. Are there any differences in customer satisfaction between customers with high and low involvement/identification levels?As of yet, there has not been substantial research on these issues. It is anticipated that the results of this study may enhance our understanding of a particular market in the USA and provide guidance for developing effective marketing strategies and maintaining current event successes. We believe that more research is warranted primarily to further develop Taekwondo (TKD) as a global cultural product. Therefore, the scholarly effort aimed at understanding these issues will make both scientific and practical contributions.\nLiterature review: Diffusion of TKD as a global cultural product\nMethods: Characteristics of the participants\nResults: CFA for the measurement model of sport ID, involvement, satisfaction, and intention yielded a satisfactory model fit (CFI = 0.99, SRMR = 0.04). In addition to the overall measures of model fit, there were no standardized residuals above +3 or below -3, indicating that no individual element of the analyzed matrix was considerably misrepresented in the models (Raykov and Marcoulides, 2000). Table II presents factor loadings, Cronbach's alpha coefficients, and AVE values for the CFA. AVE values ranged from 0.70 to 0.81 and the alpha coefficients ranged from 0.86 to 0.92 showing good construct reliability and internal consistency.The results of multivariate tests are presented in Table III. With the use of Wilk's criterion, combined DVs were significantly influenced by sport ID [F (28, 388) = 2.77, p < 0.05; e2 = 0.17; CI = 0.05, 0.33], involvement [F (28, 388) = 2.90, p < 0.05; e2 = 0.17; CI = 0.06, 0.33], and their interaction [F (42, 576) = 1.87, p < 0.05; e2 = 0.12; CI = 0.02, 0.19]. Confidence limits for effect size was computed by entering exact F, hypothesis df, error df, and the desired confidence coefficient into Smithson's (2003) NoncF.sav and running it through NoncF3.sps.To examine the influence of sport ID, involvement, and their interaction on the individual DVs, a Roy-Bargmann step-down analysis was performed on prioritized DVs. In step-down analysis, each DV was analyzed, in turn, with higher-priority DVs treated as covariates and with the highest-priority DV tested in a univariate ANOVA. Skill, satisfaction, intention, social interaction, ambience, valence, and concession significantly differed by identification (see Table IV). Skill, interaction with other fans, and ambience significantly differed by involvement (see Table V). In addition, intention, social interaction, ambience, and operating time were significantly affected by the IDs' interaction (see Table VI).\nDiscussion: As the martial arts industry becomes a mature market, competition in the market is intense. At the same time, customers are developing higher expectations than ever, which create a significant challenge for managers. Thus, market research becomes key not only for a better understanding of the needs and wants of customers and their perceptions of services offered, but also for staying competitive in the market. In particular, examination of service quality perceptions and member satisfaction is beneficial for managers in martial arts events for developing effective marketing strategies. In response to the call for more research on martial arts participants and their decision making processes, we investigated the effects of sport involvement and identification on service quality perceptions and satisfaction of martial arts event participants.We found that highly identified fans perceived service quality more positively. Our result was consistent with idea of Cast and Burke (2002) that people tend to behave in ways that can either increase or at least maintain positive evaluation of self. In addition, the result showed that identification influenced satisfaction and intention. This finding was consistent with a previous study, which suggested that salience and importance of identity directly and indirectly influenced spectator satisfaction and conative loyalty. Highly identified participants perceived service quality more positively when compared to the lower identification group.Based on previous research suggesting that involvement with products is expected to lead one to search for more information and spend more time searching for the right selection (Celci and Olson, 1988), we hypothesized that perceived quality would be influenced by involvement. This hypothesis was supported when three service quality variables (i.e. skill, interaction with other fans, and ambience) differed by involvement. This result was also consistent with the Lascu et al. (1995) finding that involvement influenced golf participants' perceptions on various golf event aspects. To our understanding, this is the first study to examine factors (identification and involvement) that influence service quality rather than factors (e.g. loyalty) that are influenced by service quality.From a practical standpoint, this study contributes to the field of sport and martial arts event management by developing a better understanding of event consumers, in this case mainly TKD participants. In addition, the result of this study provides marketers with empirical evidence about why developing high levels of identification and involvement among their target market is important for the success of event operations. There are significant positive relationships among key consumer variables such as service quality, identification, involvement, and satisfaction in TKD events. In this study, the results suggest that the event managers of US Open Taekwondo Championship offered high-quality services to their participants and spectators. As a result, their customers showed high levels of satisfaction and maintained strong intentions to attend this event in the future. However, as the respondents in this study are highly committed to the sport of TKD and this particular event, it is presumed that their preexisting identification level significantly influenced their quality perceptions of the events. In general, the mainstream public shows a low level of interest in the sport of TKD competition as spectator sport. Thus, we strongly recommend that event professionals develop a better understanding of their customers and continue to make efforts to develop effective promotional and marketing strategies to increase attendance among these general markets. Ultimately, this may help improve the quality of martial arts events and develop effective marketing strategies for future success of martial arts events.These findings provide useful insights into the effects of service quality factors on customer satisfaction and revisit intentions. However, as in other studies, several limitations of this study should be addressed. First, subjects were sampled at a single event. It would be desirable for future research to seek a broader representative sample of TKD spectators. Moreover, further research identifying potential determinants of future purchasing decisions seems necessary to provide helpful information in developing effective market segmentation strategies. Nonetheless, all in all, we conclude that the findings of this study provide useful information to managers of martial arts events.Opens in a new window.Table I\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - Since the introduction of martial arts in the global community through a variety of international sport events, the sport of Taekwondo (TKD) has grown rapidly. Although the magnitude of the TKD market has increased, few systematic studies have been conducted to understand TKD participants, particularly consumer variables associated with TKD events. The rapid growth of TKD as a global cultural product warrants a better understanding of event consumers and their decision-making processes. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers' quality perceptions and satisfaction by focusing on their sport involvement and identification.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Research respondents (n = 215) were spectators of the 2007 US Open TKD Championship, an annual event held by USA Taekwondo Inc.\nFindings: - Results suggest that identification and involvement positively influence event quality perceptions and satisfaction. Specifically, highly identified fans/competitors are highly satisfied and perceive service quality more positively. This study proceeds to a discussion of theoretical implications and future opportunities for event managers.\nOriginality/value: - Until now, there has not been substantial research on these issues. It is anticipated that the results of this study may enhance the understanding of a particular TKD market in the USA and provide guidance for developing effective marketing strategies and maintaining current event successes. Therefore, the scholarly effort aimed at understanding these issues will make both scientific and practical contributions.\n",
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] |
Linking knowledge corridors to customer value through knowledge processes
|
[
"Customer value",
"Knowledge corridors",
"Potential absorptive capacity",
"Realized absorptive capacity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Although there is now an extensive literature that promotes knowledge management (KM), there is still a worrying lack of empirical studies demonstrating an actual connection between KM activities and organisational outcomes (Andreeva and Kianto, 2012). Over the past few decades and in the current climate, a firm\n2. Theoretical background: According to Ragab and Arisha (2013), knowledge is the currency of the current economy, a vital organisational asset and a key to creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Knowledge is an intangible resource, and the alignment and integration of intangible resources in a firm, although complex, is a crucial issue in value creation (Kaplan and Norton, 2004). In recent years, intangible resources have replaced tangible ones as key elements of firm value creation (Swamy, 2004). Given the importance of firms\n3. Research model and hypotheses: Practitioners have long recognised that the essential elements of a firm\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Results: A bootstrap test (5,000 resamples) was used to generate standard errors and t-statistics (Hair et al., 2011; Hair et al., 2014; Henseler et al., 2009). This enabled us to assess the statistical significance of the path coefficients. Table IV sets out the model statistics, the path coefficients and the t-values observed with the level of significance obtained from the bootstrap test.\n6. Discussion: The first contribution of this research is to extend the body of understanding within the knowledge-based view (KBV) theory. KBV theory views a knowledge corridor as a path consisting of a series of steps during which a message, the \"external knowledge\", is conveyed from a source or sender to a receiver, \"a firm which absorbs external knowledge\". In the context of this research, a firm\n7. Conclusions: The Spanish banking industry is facing its worst crisis of the past 50 years and thousands of jobs have been lost. Within this framework, Spanish banks that took rescue packages are trying to find innovative ways of improving customer value. In doing so, the KBV provides insight into why firms exist (and will continue to exist), and thus why organising knowledge is a critical part of what firms do (Brown and Duguid, 1998). In this regard, this study has shed more light on the situation within this field of the Spanish banking industry.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Spanish banks which took rescue packages are trying to find innovative ways to improve customer value. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which banks combine external knowledge with internal knowledge to build customer value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A firm\nFindings: The results are calculated using structural equation modelling. This leads to the main conclusion that a \"realized absorptive capacity\" is unlikely without being fostered by the transference and storage of new knowledge and it therefore requires empowerment by its facilitating factors.\nPractical implications: The key managerial implication of this paper is that the survival and success of banks requires that administrators and the organizations they manage meet the challenge of combining external knowledge with internal knowledge.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides empirical support for the argument that the impacts of external knowledge move up from the individuals to groups and then the entire organization. This interaction represents a single-loop learning process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Engagement valence duality and spillover effects in online brand communities
|
[
"Consumer engagement",
"Online brand communities",
"Engagement objects",
"Negative engagement valence",
"Positive engagement valence",
"Spillover contagion effects"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: More than one billion consumers are registered on social media sites and through these platforms, engage with over 15 million brands that have a social media presence (Stieglitz et al., 2014). The rise of social media and online brand communities (OBCs) has generated a shift in the ways consumers engage with brands (Casalo et al., 2008). Consumer engagement represents individuals' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral investments made in brand-related interactions (Hollebeek et al., 2016), including in online environments. In today's networked environment, consumers increasingly make (pro)active contributions to brand-related dialogue in OBCs, and contribute to brand-related content (Dolan et al., 2016; Maslowska et al., 2016). Thus while OBCs serve as engagement platforms offering an opportunity to enhance consumer engagement with brands (Muniz and Schau, 2005; Breidbach et al., 2014), little is known about consumer engagement with multiple objects, including the OBC and the brand, simultaneously.\nLiterature review: Consumer engagement\nMethodology: Research context\nFindings: We report on OBC members' observed positively and negatively valenced engagement with the brand and the OBC and the duality of this in terms of consumers expressing both valences. We also discuss our identified accumulation and detraction spillover effects, which emanated from consumers' engagement with the OBC to the brand, and discuss its ensuing implications.\nDiscussion and implications: This study makes two main contributions to the literature on consumer engagement. First, we find the existence of dual valenced engagement in OBCs (cf. our first stated contribution in the Introduction). Second, we find that these valences may vary with respect to the focal engagement object (e.g. OBC or brand), whereas to date, consumer engagement valences have been explored largely with a single object (i.e. rather than multiple objects simultaneously; Dessart et al., 2016; Conduit et al., 2016). Our findings suggest that OBCs can be used to foster consumer engagement with brands, but that engagement with each focal object must first be clearly understood, as this may fuel only positive accumulation effects, but also negative detraction effects.\nConclusion and limitations: The findings of this study should be interpreted in light of its limitations. First, the research was conducted within the confines of a member-initiated OBC characterized by self-selected membership (e.g. based on a passion for the luxury brand; Porter, 2004); thus giving rise to a level of socialization between community members. As a result, the observed engagement accumulation and detraction effects with the OBC and the brand could be readily observed, although this may not be the case for all types of OBCs and brands. Management intervention may alter the observed engagement accumulation and detraction effects with the brand and the OBC; thus providing another opportunity for future investigation. Second, as a qualitative approach was taken to this research, the sample of this research is relatively small, and the data were collected from a single OBC. This particular OBC was isolated to the luxury accessory category. We suggest that future research should be collected from several OBCs, representing different brands. This could be done by the use of netnographic analysis across a range of OBCs to support the findings of this research. Third, while we explored consumer engagement with the brand and the OBC, we did not specifically explore the notion of spillover effects with respect to the consumers' cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement with the brand and the OBC. Thus, we recommend this as an important issue for future research. For example, between which particular engagement dimensions are engagement accumulation or detraction effects most likely to occur?\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: Online brand communities (OBCs) are an effective avenue for brands to engage consumers. While engaging with the brand, consumers simultaneously interact with other OBC members; thus engaging with multiple, interrelated engagement objects concurrently. The purpose of this paper is to explore both positively and negatively valenced consumer engagement with multiple engagement objects, the interplay between these, and the spillover effect from consumers' engagement with the OBC to their engagement with the brand.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing on 16 in-depth interviews with OBC members of a luxury accessory brand, a constant comparative method was adopted using axial and selective coding procedures. The objective was to understand the nature of participants' engagement with the brand, the OBC, and the interplay between individuals' engagement with these objects. The coding framework and resultant interpretive frameworks address engagement valence, outcomes, and direction.\nFindings: This study illustrates consumer expressions of consumers' positively and negatively valenced engagement with a focal brand, and with the OBC. Further, it demonstrates the interplay (spillover effect) that occurs between consumers' engagement with the OBC, to their engagement with the brand. While the existence of positively valenced engagement with the OBC was found to further enhance consumer brand engagement (i.e. reflecting an engagement accumulation effect), negatively valenced engagement with the OBC was found to reduce consumer brand engagement (i.e. reflecting an engagement detraction effect).\nOriginality/value: While consumer engagement has been recognized to have both positive and negative manifestations, this study demonstrates that consumers' engagement valence may differ across interrelated engagement objects (i.e. the brand and the OBC). Further, we demonstrate the existence of engagement spillover effects from the OBC to the brand for both positively and negatively valenced engagement.\n",
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Importance of corporate image for domestic brands moderated by consumer ethnocentrism
|
[
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Product quality",
"Consumer ethnocentrism",
"Corporate image",
"Corporate branding",
"Corporate ability",
"Brand origin",
"Domestic brand"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the era of globalization, the retail market has become increasingly competitive, as many local brands from different countries are turning into global brands to compete in the global market. As such, brand origin becomes an important determinant of consumer purchase intention (PI). According to a global consumer survey by Nielsen (2016), a leading market research company, nearly three-quarters of the respondents said that their purchase decisions are affected by brand origin, which is as important or more important than other product characteristics, including price, function and quality.\n2. Conceptual framework: This study aims to investigate the effects of corporate image on the PIs for domestic brands. Therefore, the definition of domestic brand is first discussed and then the theory of corporate image is presented. Subsequently, hypotheses pertaining to the effects of corporate image on shaping consumers' PIs towards domestic brands are developed.\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Instrument development and sample\n4. Results: 4.1 Hypotheses testing\n5. Discussion: As shown in Table III, this study finds that Taiwanese college students' PI towards domestic smartphone brands is not strong. The mean of the PI construct is 2.67, which is the lowest among all the construct means. The results reveal that 48.7 per cent of respondents' answers below the average for PI (score = 3) to buy Taiwanese smartphone brands and the PI was much lower for the lower ethnocentrism group.\n6. Theoretical and managerial implications: The first theoretical implication of this study is that it preliminarily develops a new corporate image factor - the local-customer-first - which is found to positively affect consumers' PI. This finding is based on the evidence that local consumers in export-oriented countries such as Taiwan expect the domestic brands to prioritize their interests and not to adopt a price discrimination policy against the home market. This study also finds that ethnocentric consumers will be more affected by the local-customer-first image. These findings echo Dutta et al.'s (2017) suggestion that domestic brands must be cautious when they raise prices, even if the local market is largely composed of ethnocentric consumers. However, the local-customer-first image needs further research for a detailed discussion on its definition, along with the development and validation of a reliable scale for its measurement.\n7. Conclusions, limitations and future research: As the number of consumers preferring local products seems to increase in developing countries because of ethnocentrism (Bi et al., 2012; Yuan, 2008), this study aims to supplement the related studies. Namely, analysis is conducted on whether corporate image can explain consumers' PI for domestic brands and whether this influence will be moderated by CE.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although consumers' tendency to support domestic companies by buying local products is growing, few studies discuss the corporate branding for domestic brands. This study aims to help domestic brands develop corporate branding strategies by examining the effects of corporate image of domestic brands on customers' purchase intentions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study investigates various aspects of corporate image, including product quality, corporate ability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and local-customer-first (a measure that is identified in this study). It conducts a survey (N = 283) and tests eight hypotheses with bivariate regression analyses with SPSS, Hayes' PROCESS macro and structural equation modelling with AMOS to identify significant relationships.\nFindings: The results show that all aspects of corporate image have significant positive effects on customers' purchase intentions towards domestic brands. However, the effect of CSR image on purchase intention is fully mediated by the corporate ability and product quality images, whereas consumer ethnocentrism moderates the corporate ability and local-customer-first images.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature by examining the effect of corporate image on customers' domestic brand purchase intentions in emerging economies when the product quality image in the country is low. This study also identifies a new factor, local-customer-first, and its positive effect on purchase intention. It is recommended that domestic brands strengthen their CSR, corporate ability and local-customer-first images to gain local customers' support. Furthermore, it is found that corporate ability and local-customer-first are more highly valued by ethnocentric consumers. These findings can help domestic brands develop corporate branding strategies.\n",
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Money transfer between banks: Evidence regarding the factors affecting speed of portfolio transfer when advisors migrate
|
[
"Decision making",
"Bank competition",
"Financial advisors",
"Portfolio migration"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Italian financial advisory sector is very dynamic, with a high degree of concentration. Both traditional and tied-agent banks compete fairly to gain and maintain market shares in a profitable industry, while stimulating an active job market for financial advisors. Lucrative engagements offered by banks and investment firms underlie two distinct phenomena: tied agents leaving one principal for another, and bank employees resigning from one bank to become tied agents for another principal. In this paper, we refer to those in either category as \"migrant advisors.\"\nConceptual framework, previous research and hypotheses: Empirical research proves that individuals make wide use of advice, although its economic value is sometimes ambiguous (Bergstresser et al., 2009; Del Guercio et al., 2010; Chalmers and Reuter, 2012; Hackethal et al., 2012). Financial advisors play a fundamental role in that they may help to reduce information costs between investors and portfolio managers, favor price discrimination (Stoughton et al., 2011), and educate investors about financial risk and their investments. West (2012) found that investor age, education, employment, income and net worth are significantly related to his/her propensity to engage advisors. Thus, consumer characteristics, perceptions and actions are factors that have been investigated by scholars (e.g. Luther et al., 2018; Tauni et al., 2018). However, studies on the use of financial advice have generally not considered the influence of an advisor's personal characteristics on investor decisions, chiefly because of data limitations. Consequently, the literature on the impact of financial advisor characteristics on investors' decisions is scarce. Martenson's (2008) study is one of the very few but important works dealing with this topic. The author takes up the literature that demonstrates how the characteristics of the contact person are important determinants of the perception of the quality of the relationship (Dunn and Schweitzer, 2005; Isen, 2001; Palmatier et al., 2006; Soderberg, 2013). In particular, a meaningful interpersonal relationship grows when they have similar characteristics, tastes, backgrounds, etc. (Byrne, 1961; Churchill et al., 1975; Lichtenthal and Tellefsen, 2001; Swan et al., 1999). Dwyer et al. (1987) and Lichtenthal and Tellefsen (2001) make a distinction between observable similarity (physical or behavioral) and internal similarity (a person's perceptions, beliefs and values). In general, perceived similarity and the expertise of the contact person have an influence on trust and customer satisfaction (Anderson and Weitz, 1989; Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Moorman et al., 1992; Tauni et al., 2018). Expertise also has an important influence on customers' interest in maintaining the relationship over time (Crosby et al., 1990).\nMethodology: As already mentioned, in Italy the financial advice market is occupied by two macro operators: banks which operate through employees (henceforth \"traditional banks\") and banks which work through tied agents (henceforth \"tied-agent banks\"). Throughout 2017, we were in touch with one of the three leading Italian tied-agent banks, which provided us with an exclusive data set containing information regarding the financial advisors who had become tied agents, transferring their existing portfolios from their previous banks (traditional or tied-agent banks). More specifically, with reference to the years 2014-2016, this tied-agent bank provided us with the names of the advisors, their age, gender, level of education and experience, the bank of origin (which we classified as either a traditional or a tied-agent bank,) and value of the portfolio that the migrant advisor declared he/she held ready to transfer to the new financial institution. Moreover, for each migrant advisor we obtained the monthly ratio of transferred portfolios over a period of 12 months.\nResults and discussion: To investigate empirically which factors determine financial advisors' success in the rapid transfer of their clients' portfolios to a new financial institution, we applied a Cox (1972) proportional hazards model. The model is specifically designed to predict the probability that a \"non-successful\" advisor at time t will achieve the goal in the next instant, so it can forecast not only which advisors are likely to reach the goal, but to provide an estimate of the probable time required.\nConclusions and managerial implications: The purpose of this study is to investigate how some factors facilitate the rapid transfer of huge amounts of money from one financial institution to another one. The professional maturity of consultants, approximated by age, and their consultancy capacity developed over time, approximated by the size of the financial portfolios held, turn out to be significant variables in explaining the speed of transfer of clients and their portfolios from one bank to another. By contrast, the sex and qualifications of financial advisors are not significant variables in explaining the phenomenon we analyzed. We also find that financial advisors' bank of origin type and its leadership status in the industry take on statistical significance. Specifically, consultants moving from top traditional banks exhibit a greater and statistically significant ability in fully transferring the portfolios they manage.\nLimitations and direction of future research: The study has some limitations, mainly regarding the nature of the data, the period of observation, the geographical context of the study and the banks considered. First, we have little information about the financial advisors and no information about their customers. Moreover, we observe each migrating advisor only for one year. It would be interesting to analyze the link between financial advisors' and their investors' characteristics, taking into consideration the stability of their relationship over several years. Another limitation regards the lack of information about the real amount paid by the destination bank to the financial advisors. We believe that this could be a very important variable to analyze. It would also be interesting to better understand the relational context in which the transfer of clients' financial portfolios to other financial intermediaries is proposed and motivated by financial advisors.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine which individual traits of financial advisors influence portfolio transfer speed when a financial advisor recommends investors to migrate to a new financial intermediary.\nDesign/methodology/approach: With reference to the years 2014-2016, one of the three leading Italian tied-agent banks provided the authors with an exclusive and unique data set containing information regarding the financial advisors who had become tied agents, transferring their existing portfolios from their previous banks (traditional or tied-agent banks). The authors observed the ability of the migrant financial advisor in successfully transferring the entire portfolio declared within 12 months of observation. To investigate empirically which personal traits of financial advisors determine their success in the rapid transfer of clients' portfolios to a new financial intermediary, the authors applied a Cox proportional hazards model.\nFindings: The authors find that factors such as age, type of bank of origin and size of the managed financial portfolio positively affect the speed transfer.\nPractical implications: The obtained results may be interesting for guiding recruiting policies of financial intermediaries.\nSocial implications: Regulators should closely examine the phenomenon analyzed in this paper to avoid conflict of interests.\nOriginality/value: The literature on this topic is scarce, mainly due to the lack of available data. This paper represents an original contribution to open a new field of research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Risks and rewards in the world of social media: Firms - and staff - must tackle the ultimate "double-edged sword"
|
[
"Human resource management",
"Business ethics",
"Social media"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nMixed feelings: Few developments in recent years have provided employers with more mixed feelings than the rise of social media. The phrase \"double-edged sword\" could have been invented to convey a sense of the opportunities it creates but also the dangers and occasional anguish.\nSocial media as a toy: Employees often have difficulty understanding the distinction between private and work life. In its early days, when it was for some employees a new toy, many bosses had to lay down guidelines about avoiding excessive use of social media.\nHuman rights: Other issues include infringement of privacy (another Deloitte survey indicates that 63 per cent of 18-34 year olds did not think social media information is any business of their employer) and human rights. Many developed nations have legislation prohibiting employers from making employment decisions based on the likes of age, gender, race, religion, marital status, and sexual orientation.\nOnline background checks: Checks on employees should ideally only be made from publicly available sites, preferably after personal interviews. Applicants should be told beforehand that there would be an online background check, and employers should obtain clear authorization for doing so. Other advice offered by practitioners includes giving responsibility for these online background checks to clearly authorized individuals, for use in certain situations.\nFriendship issues: That is not to discourage employees from use of social media, which has benefits for them as it does for their employers. Nevertheless, employees would be well advised to keep abreast of employers' social media-related policies and their own legal rights in such areas as privacy. Online posts should not include anything you would not say to others in person or in any other written forms. By the same token, no one wants to be friends with everybody in the real world - so is it advisable to operate by different rules in the cyber world, following everyone's posts?\nComment: This review is based on \"Social media dilemmas in the employment context\", by Lam (2016). This is a well-balanced and sensible overview of legal and ethical questions facing employers and employees in the minefield area of social media. The article takes a sympathetic tone in looking at the issues that both sides must address.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Examines the issues that both employers and employees face in using social media. In particular, focuses on the legal and ethical dilemmas that both sides must address.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Prior research, statistical trends, and case laws are reviewed.\nFindings: Employers using social media for employment decisions may risk crossing several lines, including intrusion into personal privacy. However, social media also offers plenty of opportunities for firms. At the same time, ignoring social media and the way it is used by employees could lead to charges of negligent hiring as well as damages if improper employee messages are posted. Employees have a responsibility to remember that messages considered \"private\" may still be used as evidence in support of disciplinary actions and could affect the firm's reputation and their co-workers.\nOriginality/value: Breaks some new ground in considering this specific employment-related aspect of social media.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The influence of organizational culture on healthcare supply chain resilience: moderating role of technology orientation
|
[
"Organizational culture",
"Supply chain",
"Resilience",
"Technology orientation",
"Healthcare"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Healthcare firms require a supply chain (SC) perspective to control escalating costs and enhanced service delivery (Syahrir et al., 2015). Such a perspective can only be realized in practice once the key entities in healthcare SCs work in close coordination for delivering effective healthcare services. Hospitals are also troubled with increasing competitive pressures for providing effective and timely healthcare services (Zepeda et al., 2016). While healthcare research is increasingly becoming important as a consequence of lifestyle changes and increasing complications (Zepeda et al., 2016; Patel et al., 2016), an assessment of risks associated with healthcare service delivery is equally relevant (Zepeda et al., 2016). Risk assessment would help healthcare entities prepare well for adverse conditions and adapt to the same.\nTheoretical background: Resilience in healthcare supply chains\nHypotheses development: Development culture and healthcare supply chain resilience\nResearch methodology: Sampling and data collection\nDiscussion: The study is the first to adapt and develop the measurement instruments for development, group, rational and hierarchical cultures for medical SCs. Further, the study conceptualized resilience for medical SCs and also developed its measurement instrument. In terms of the proposed RQs, the study has empirically established development, group and rational cultures as dominant enablers of healthcare resilience. The study is also the first to explore the concept of resilience in the healthcare context. The importance of resilience in providing uninterrupted services to patients is more profound, as any failure in the same can be fatal. The study found a negative but significant influence of hierarchical culture on HCRES, supporting our proposed hypothesis. The study also showed that TO acts as a positive moderator for development, group and rational cultures in their influence on HCRES. This suggests that TO enhances the importance of development, group and rational cultures as effective enablers of HCRES. However, TO does not show any significant moderation on hierarchical culture - HCRES linkage.\nTheoretical implications: Our study has several theoretical implications. Theoretically, our study enriched the literature of resilience and organizational culture in multiple ways. First, the study has empirically established the importance of several important dimensions of organizational culture, namely, development, group, rational and hierarchical cultures, in enriching healthcare resilience. While development, group and rational cultures contribute positively and significantly toward healthcare resilience, hierarchical culture inhibits HCRES. So theoretically, the study has established that the CVF view of organizational culture and its associated dimensions contribute significantly to HCRES. An important contribution of the study is the empirical validation of the importance of development, group and rational cultures in enhancing HCRES.\nManagerial implications: The study holds several implications for healthcare managers. Because our study has showed development, group and rational cultures as dominant enablers of HCRES, managers therefore must focus on enriching these specific cultures in their respective organizations for enhanced HCRES. Increased operation restoration and protection being the key focus of managers, healthcare firms must focus on overall sustainability (Dayan et al., 2016). Such a focus would lead to modification of existing routines and procedures. Such remodifications are required for innovation and development of dynamic capabilities, e.g. HCRES (Teece et al., 1997; Ponomarov and Holcomb, 2009). With a strong emphasis on reinforcing sustainability issues, healthcare firms can create long-term value (Koufteros et al., 2007). Hence, using appropriate dimensions of organizational culture, managers can create long-term value for their respective healthcare SCs (Buschgens et al., 2013).\nLimitations and future research: Our study has several limitations. First, the study examined a cross-sectional survey to explore the influence of organizational culture on HCRES. With prime focus on facing disruptions proactively and restoring operations rapidly, a longitudinal study of specific firms would enunciate a better picture of the actual contribution of organizational culture. Second, our study has not explored the contribution of organizational culture dimensions on healthcare agility (i.e. the capability of fulfilling patient's treatment requirements in a speedy manner). Future study should use the first-order measures developed to explore further on the development of such agile capabilities in healthcare. Fulfilling patients' treatment needs in promptly can considerably harness healthcare entities with competitive advantage (Gligor and Holcomb, 2012; Teece et al., 1997).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore the influence of dimensions of organizational culture, namely, development culture, group culture, rational culture and hierarchical culture, on healthcare supply chain resilience (HCRES). Further, the study explored the moderating role of technology orientation on organizational culture dimensions and healthcare resilience linkages.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study adopted a multi-unit study of different hospital supply chains (SCs). Consequently, perceptual data were gathered from seven dominant entities in a typical medical/hospital SC: hospitals, hotels, chemistry and pharmaceutical, marketing/public relations/promotion, medical equipment manufacturers and surgical suppliers, food and beverage providers (i.e. restaurants) and insurance providers. The responses were gathered using online survey and were analyzed using structural equation modeling.\nFindings: Based on 276 completed responses, positive influences were found for development, group and rational cultures on HCRES. As expected, a negative influence of hierarchical culture was found on HCRES. Further, technological orientation was found to enhance the positive effects of development, group and rational cultures on HCRES. However, no prominent moderation was noted for hierarchical culture's influence on HCRES. The findings suggested managers to focus more on developing competing values framework (CVF)-based dimensions of organizational culture dimensions for effective risk mitigation so as to provide healthcare services in a timely manner to patients.\nOriginality/value: The study is the first to investigate the effects of organizational culture's dimensions on resilience. The study has empirically established the association between CVF view and dynamic capabilities. The study underlined the importance of resilience in healthcare SCs. Resilience is an important dynamic capability in healthcare SCs to provide uninterrupted treatments and services to patients. Any failure in such a service can be fatal. Further, the study developed the measures of development, group, rational and hierarchical culture for further investigation in healthcare. This study is also the first to develop a measure for resilience in the healthcare sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A lifestyle sport: idiosyncratic and dynamic belonging
|
[
"Sense of Belonging",
"Ambiguity",
"Membership",
"Overconsumption",
"Skateboarding",
"Lifestyle Sport"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Skaters I think they tend to be outsiders who seek a sense of belonging but belonging on their own terms (Rodney Mullen, 2012 Ted Talk).\nThe context: skateboarding: The term \"lifestyle sports\" captures an ever-growing list of mostly individualized activities such as surfing, BMX and skateboarding (Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011). Over the last 20 years, the exponential growth of participation rates in lifestyle sports far outpaced that of traditional sports (Brymer and Schweitzer, 2013).\nParticipants' sense of belonging: Skateboarding is a lifestyle sport for which many individuals develop a strong sense of belonging. Traditionally, in the marketing literature, belonging is a socialization process that \"arises from the trajectory or the development of practices that foster the exchange of collectively defined and valorized resources\" (Schau et al., 2009, p. 35). While there are several approaches to socialization (Allen et al., 2017), the commonly adopted one in marketing is a process of sequential stages, including welcoming, documenting, milestoning, badging and governing (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995), with an implied social hierarchy that normatively leads members to feel compelled to adopt group practices (Schau et al., 2009).\nMethodology: Our study takes place in a skateboarding community in a mid-size North American city. The skateboarding lifestyle represents one of both marginalization and threats to its existence, sprinkled with attempts at becoming mainstream and characterized by discussions of inclusion and exclusion. (Wheaton, 2013).\nA skateboarder's sense of belonging: The opening quote to this manuscript conveys a sense of belonging for a skater that is an idiosyncratic, dynamic, contextual, complex and ambiguous phenomenon. It is apparent that, even for Rodney Mullen, an elite, professional Hall of Fame skateboarder, a sense of belonging is anything but static.\nInterplay of individualism and collectivism: As in most communities, belongingness and kinship are critical elements in skateboarding (Beverland et al., 2010). Paradoxically, while the skating lifestyle celebrates individuality, freedom, effort (time) and creativity, it also appears that skaters do not like to do so on their own. The skateboarding ethos implies the paradox of forming collectives of people who really do not want to belong to collectives, yet are driven to seek a sense of belonging (Mullen, 2012 interview with Smithsonian's Lemelson Center).\nAn idiosyncratic and dynamic sense of belonging: By examining the skateboarding lifestyle through an approach embracing an idiosyncratic and dynamic sense of belonging, it becomes evident that even well-established members can experience an ongoing ambiguity of a sense of belonging.\nDiscussion: Unlike the more traditional conceptualization of belonging in which an individual seeks a secure feeling of fitting in and being an integral part of the group (Lambert et al., 2013), we adopt an approach defining belonging through a sense of belonging characterized as idiosyncratic and dynamic (Lahdesmaki et al., 2016; Mahar et al., 2013). The lifestyle sport of skateboarding provided an opportunity to examine this idiosyncratic and dynamic approach to a sense of belonging. The skateboarding ethos pushes idiosyncratic creativity, creating a context in which both a strong sense of individuality and a strong sense of belonging must co-exist, but not always harmoniously.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore what an idiosyncratic and dynamic sense of belonging entails for consumption in a lifestyle sport, an ever shifting and progressing world in which individuals engage in community while also seeking to individuate their own sense of belonging.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors adopt an ethnographic approach in the context of a regional skateboarding community. Over a year at local skateparks, we interviewed 15 well-established, committed members of the community identified by others (through snowball techniques) to allow us to delve into the phenomenon. These interviews were conducted as part of the primary author's doctoral thesis (See Harris, 2011).\nFindings: An idiosyncratic and dynamic sense of belonging is prevalent in the lifestyle sport community, even among well-established members. This is reflected in and motivated by a variety of consumption, as well as overconsumption practices.\nPractical implications: Understanding the idiosyncratic and dynamic nature of a sense of belonging allows marketers to design offerings to effectively deal with the ambiguities of belonging but also raises the potential for the destructive use of marketing.\nOriginality/value: The authors demonstrate how approaching belonging through a dynamic and idiosyncratic sense of belonging provides a deeper understanding of belonging and related consumption activities in a lifestyle sport.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Knowledge creation and play - a phenomenological approach
|
[
"Interaction",
"Knowledge creation",
"Knowledge management",
"Knowledge processes",
"Play",
"Phenomenology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Competition and turbulence in organizational environments have led to ever increasing research into knowledge creation (KC) in the field of knowledge management (KM) (Choo, 1998; Mehta, 2007). The essence of the phenomenon of organizational KC is in sharing know-how and experiences within the working community in order to accomplish something new, be it a product, service or a process (Mitchell and Boyle, 2010). Interaction is seen as a real place where the KC happens (e.g. Nonaka, 1994; Cook and Brown, 1999; Gourlay, 2006; Tsoukas, 2009).\nResearch questions: The aim of this paper is to explore, how the experiential nature of KC can be explicated theoretically, in order to develop a framework for studying it in organizational environments. The purpose is threefold: first, to examine how the research of KC is devoted to the idea of nourishing certain modes of being in interaction; second, to introduce the Gadamerian concept of play in order to explore these modes; and third, to define, how the Gadamerian concept of play is to be understood in the field of LIS, in relation to the research into play conducted in the field so far. The research questions are:\nResearch methods and materials: The research method applied is theoretical analysis (Niiniluoto, 1984). It consists of three phases: problematization, explication and argumentation, which by giving a structure to the analysis enhance the argumentation. This method is suitable when exploring the premises of research and striving to examine new possible ways of viewing a phenomenon. In the problematization phase, the key problem is stated. The explication phase exposes the implicitly present views concerning the key problem and makes them explicit. Also an optional solution to the problem is presented. In the argumentation phase, the explications and offered solutions are critically reviewed (Niiniluoto, 1984).\nProblematization: from knowledge to being: The exploration of KC in organizations has until recently widely relied on the models of Nonaka and his colleagues, based on the idea of tacit and implicit knowledge converted into explicit knowledge in knowledge processes (e.g. Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). However, since the 1990s a vast amount of conceptual exploration has been conducted to challenge Nonaka's views, and the interest has shifted from conversion of knowledge to the event of knowing and interpersonal relationships in working communities (Cook and Brown, 1999; Orlikowski, 2002; Kupers, 2005). The social and contextual aspects of knowledge processes have been studied in the field of LIS in recent years, and the importance of collaboration and context have been acknowledged (see, e.g. Ingwersen and Jarvelin, 2005; Talja et al., 2005; Hansen and Jarvelin, 2005; Savolainen, 2009). Nevertheless, in the research into KC the process of KC is still often formulated around the idea of tacit and explicit knowledge (see Suorsa and Huotari, 2014a). In other words, the research into KC still emphasizes the concept of knowledge as an asset inside the human mind, though the paradigms are changing. This has resulted in problematic positions concerning eclecticism, as quite cognitive ideas of the individual processing knowledge are combined with the idea of interaction as a hermeneutic process (Hjorland, 2005a; Day, 2011; Suorsa and Huotari, 2014a).\nExplication 1: implicit presuppositions concerning modes of being in interaction in KC research: In the first phase of the explication the nature of KC as a phenomenon connected with experience and different modes of being in interaction is examined. This exploration is based on the literature review.\nExplication 2: play explicating the event of interaction: In this chapter the concept of play used in LIS and in the thinking of Gadamer is introduced. The exploration in this study is based on the idea of phenomenology as a philosophical starting point, which provides an understanding of \"the experience-perception aspect of being\" on two levels: \"(1) as an ideal of being to which human action should be directed so that life can be most fully understood, and (2) as the lived experience of people, examined as people experience and perceive, without a priori imposition or regulation\" (Budd et al., 2010, p. 273).\nArgumentation: play in the context of KC: In the argumentation phase of this study the possibilities of using the Gadamerian concept of play when conceptualizing human interaction in KC research is examined. At the end of the first explication phase, implicitly present premises, which needed clarification, were brought to light. The phenomenological alternative provided answers to these needs to some extent. First of all, the examination of the hermeneutic phenomenology answers the need for an epistemologically and ontologically coherent conceptualization of being and experiences in KC. The conception of authenticity (Heidegger, 1985) clarifies the basic idea of being in an ideal state of interaction, also described in KC research with terms like open, trusting and reflective.\nDiscussion and conclusions: The aim of this paper has been to examine, how the concept of play could be used to understand the aspects of different modes of being in interaction in the event of KC. The purpose was to explore, in which ways the research into KC is based on the idea of modes of being of human beings. Furthermore this study aimed to explicate how the Gadamerian concept of play can be used to understand and explore the aspects of the different modes of being in the event of KC.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiential nature of knowledge creating interaction and to introduce a framework to explore it theoretically coherently with hermeneutic phenomenology and Hans-Georg Gadamer's concept of play.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper presents a literature-based conceptual analysis of the concept of play. Gadamerian conception is related with the descriptions of knowledge creating interaction in the research of knowledge management and with the uses of the concept of play in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). Theoretical analysis is applied in this study to structure the argumentation.\nFindings: This study illustrates how the preconceptions of experiences and different modes of being in interaction are implicitly present in the research of knowledge creation (KC) in the descriptions of interaction and human factors enhancing KC. A framework for examining KC in organizational circumstances is developed based on the hermeneutic phenomenology and Gadamer's concept of play, which provide a basis for understanding KC as being together in interaction.\nResearch limitations/implications: This theoretical study develops a framework for examining the process of KC also empirically. In this study the examination of hermeneutic phenomenology is limited to the conceptions of play, authenticity and everydayness; phenomenology offers means for further explication of human being and experience.\nOriginality/value: This study provides a new view on KC based on hermeneutic phenomenology and play, and contributes to the examination of interactive knowledge processes in the field of LIS.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Formalizing in business networks as a tool for industrial policy
|
[
"Contracts",
"Networks",
"Formalization",
"Industrial policy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper examines the issue of \"formalization\" in business networks as an instrument of industrial policy. We define formalization in business networks as the production of a contract between actors in the network, which takes on a definite form prescribed by law. The theme of formalization in the business network has been examined with respect to the \"industrial marketing and purchasing\" (IMP) approach on business networks (Hakansson and Snehota, 1995; Hakansson et al., 2009). According to the IMP perspective, a network represents a metaphor to describe the structure of exchange relationships and interdependencies within which the process of interaction among business actors takes place in the market (Ford and Hakansson, 2006b; Gadde et al., 2003; Ritter, 2000; Anderson et al., 1994). Within the full model on interactions and networks developed by the IMP group, formalization of the business interaction is one of the possible variables that can affect the substance of relationships. In business networks actors may formalize their relationships through a contract. Contracts are manifestations of legally enforceable agreements within business relationships (Mouzas and Blois, 2008; Mouzas and Ford, 2014).\n2. Formalizing in business networks: a literature review: In very general terms, formalization occurs in business networks any time network actors make formal contracts that govern their relationships according to the dictates of law. These formal contracts are specific to what they refer to. In any event, one essential element of formalization is that there be the \"consent\" of the actors (Macneil, 1980, p. 4), in the sense of \"an interactive assent that may take a variety of forms and include both moral and instrumental components\" (Mouzas and Ford 2014, p. 2). Long-term relationships and formalization have examined from different perspectives from the one we proposed here. Harrison (2004) deals with the issue of formalization of the contract governing a dispute that followed the ending of a relationship. In this case, there was no written form of the contract, but, following dissolution of the relationship, one of the parties requested damages, arguing that the relationship constituted an \"implicit contract.\" On the theoretical level, Harrison sets the issue of a long-term relationship as an implied contract in relation to the problems of relationship ending. To do this, she discusses the possibilities of legal redress using the theoretical basis proposed by \"transaction cost economics\" (Williamson 1979) from the literature on \"relational contracting \" (Macaulay, 1963; Larson, 1992) and \"industrial networks\" (Hakansson and Johanson, 1988; Hakansson and Snehota, 1995).\n3. Research methodology and goals: Starting with the observation that the small size of most companies is a major weakness in the Italian industrial structure, Italian legislators have introduced a normative tool to encourage networking among companies - the NC. The goals are to promote the qualitative and relational growth of small companies and financially target and support the many informal business networks already characterizing local clusters and industrial \"filieres,\" once they formalize themselves through the stipulation of NCs. The goal of the research is to understand whether the introduction of a legislative tool to enhance formalized networks can be effective in promoting network aggregations among SMEs. The second goal is to understand whether this formalization supports good-working networks, i.e., ones able to introduce new products or to enter new markets/customers.\n4. Industrial policy and the NC: In order to address the first question - whether the introduction of the NC as a tool for industrial policy can be effective in promoting network aggregations among SMEs - it is important to underline the political roots of this legislative tool, which are strictly linked to the characteristics of the Italian industrial structure. The following section first illustrates these characteristics and thus explains the political reasons underlying introduction of the NC. Second, the section reports on the results of the introduction of the NC in terms of number of aggregations that have been promoted.\n5. Evolutionary path of the NC: In order to reply to our second research question, in this section we discuss how the formalization of a network aggregation via stipulation of an NC may have a positive impact on the attainment of network goals. Following the conceptual framework of \"network lifecycle,\" that is to say, an adaptation to the formalized NC of the stages characterizing the \"relationship lifecycle,\" two main issues have been investigated: the first concerns the antecedents and the goals underlying the stipulation of an NC (preliminary and formalization stages); the second issue regards the main variables influencing the network start-up and development processes governed by an NC (the implementation stage). This analysis is aimed at gauging the effectiveness of formalization.\n6. Discussion and implication for theory: The institution of NCs is quite different from previous examples of formalization in the existing literature. In the case of the long-term relationship between William Blaird and M&S discussed by Harrison (2004), although there was a long-term, exclusive relationship that resulted in substantial specific investments, no written contract existed (Harrison, 2004; p. 108). The case of NCs examined herein is quite different because, first of all, by definition, the arrangement is stipulated by written contract and second, the effects examined do not involve disputes over the process of ending the agreement. As we have seen, in most cases of NC, a relationship already exists between the parties to the contract, who use the NC as a means to obtain new results.\n7. Managerial issues and policy implications. Some conclusions also for further research: In this final section we summarize some critical aspects that characterize NCs and differentiate them from unformalised business networks. We moreover formulate some managerial suggestions with regard to formalizing networks and provide some indications for industrial policy.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of \"formalization\" in business networks as an instrument of industrial policy. Formalization in business networks is not a debated topic but it can affect organizational and inter-organizational dynamics considerably. The aim of the paper is to understand if the introduction of a normative tool that enhances formalized networks can be effective to promote network aggregations among SMEs. Second, the aim is to understand if this formalization supports good-working networks, i.e., capable to introduce new products or to enter new markets/customers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper refers to a review of the literature and mainly to an empirical research on formalized network contracts (NCs) that have been conducted in the latest two years. This research has used both secondary data, collected accessing to databases and reports given by institutions and the government, and primary data, collected in specific direct interviews. These interviews have been concerned both institutions such as Chamber of Commerce, Confindustria and the Ministry of Economic Development and the Small Business Association, and 15 cases of NCs in Italy.\nFindings: The formalization has consequences both internally and externally to the NC. Internally it can act as an element to reduce ambiguity and building elements of \"fragile trust,\" in the absence of basic elements of \"resilient trust\" and in the presence of changes in the competitive environment. Externally, the formalization through the NC allows the policy maker to identify more clearly companies' aggregations in order to let them being destination of specific industrial policies. However even if the formalization has in some cases enhanced new networks' creation, in many cases formalization has generated positive results when companies had already experienced networking outside the frame of the NC.\nResearch limitations/implications: Further research on formalization in networks should be developed following the \"history\" of formalized networks over time in order to understand how much formalization should be used as a long-term tool for industrial policy.\nPractical implications: The paper can be useful both for companies that want to sign a NC and for the institutions developing industrial policies devoted to support companies' aggregations in the form of NC.\nOriginality/value: The paper presents a new legal tool - the \"NC\" - introduced in 2009 by the Italian Government to enhance firms' aggregation; second, the paper debates the topic of formalization in networks that is not much debated in literature; and finally, the paper also adopts an industrial economic approach and is among the few attempts to integrate industrial policies and industrial marketing and purchasing thinking.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Vlog and brand evaluations: the influence of parasocial interaction
|
[
"Brand preference",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Perceived brand quality",
"Branding strategies",
"Brand management",
"Brand affect",
"Parasocial interaction",
"Celebrity endoresement",
"Promotions management",
"Vlog"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The rapid growth of social media has significantly changed our everyday lives. As it provides consumers with easy and quick access to user-generated product information and allows them to browse product reviews before making a purchase (Lee and Watkins, 2016), social media is gradually substituting traditional media, such as television and magazines, and has become an important platform for marketers to promote brands and products. In particular, the video blog (vlog) has emerged as a popular marketing tool. Video bloggers (vloggers) upload videos about their personal lives and experiences with brands and products to social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram), which increases browsing traffic from followers and other viewers. According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2017, 92 percent of marketers state that social media is essential to their business, 57 percent of marketers use videos and 28 percent use live videos in their social media marketing. Moreover, 75 percent of marketers plan to increase their use of videos and 61 percent plan to increase their use of live videos. Creating videos is the area marketers want to learn about most (Stelzner, 2017).\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: 2.1 PSI and vlogs\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Analysis and findings: 4.1 Scale assessment\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the marketing results of video blogging (vlogging). In particular, the authors are interested in understanding which video bloggers (vloggers) can better help marketers develop their brand image, which vlog viewers tend to evaluate vlogger-endorsed brands more positively, and how these effects occur.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey was conducted with a convenience sample online. A total of 401 valid responses were collected. Regression analyses and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses.\nFindings: The authors found that vloggers' physical and social attractiveness and the audience's viewing motives (entertainment motive and relationship-building motive) and behavior (time spent on the media) increased the audience's evaluations of the brands endorsed by the vloggers (perceived brand quality, brand affect and brand preference). The authors also found that these relationships were mediated by the parasocial interaction (PSI) between the vloggers and the audience.\nPractical implications: The findings of this study suggest that marketers can develop relationships with consumers and enhance their brand evaluations via vloggers. This strategy is more effective when brand managers use more attractive vloggers and target viewers who spend a lot of time on vlogs seeking entertainment or hoping to build relationships.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature by showing that vlogging can affect brand evaluations through the development of PSI between vloggers and viewers. The authors extended the focus of vlog marketing research from consumers' watching and sharing behaviors and their perception of vloggers to brand evaluations, from vloggers' characteristics to viewers' characteristics and from the Western to the Eastern context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Aspirations and environmental performance feedback: a behavioral perspective for green supply chain management
|
[
"Green supply chain management",
"Aspirations",
"Environmental performance feedback",
"Sustainable production",
"Sustainable sourcing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Green supply chain management (GSCM) has drawn substantial attention in recent decades (e.g. Fahimnia et al., 2015; Geng et al., 2017; Ghisellini et al., 2016; Li et al., 2019a; Sarkis, 2012). GSCM is defined as the integration of environmental concerns in supply chain management practices (Sarkis et al., 2011). Several external and internal drivers of GSCM practices have been identified in the literature. For external drivers, the motivation of organizations to engage in GSCM practices is mainly derived from the pressure of external stakeholders, e.g. suppliers, customers, competitors, regulatory entities and community groups (Zhu et al., 2005; Chien and Shih, 2007; Giunipero et al., 2012; Hsu et al., 2013; Dubey et al., 2015; Santos et al., 2019). The internal drivers that motivate organizations to adopt GSCM practices come from factors such as the desire for cost reduction, waste and pollution elimination, quality improvement (Walker et al., 2008), increased resource utilization and competitive advantage (Giunipero et al., 2012) and sociocultural responsibility (Hsu et al., 2013).Thus, research on the drivers of GSCM practices has provided insight into the motivations of organizations to implement GSCM practices. However, the roles of performance aspirations and performance feedback have not been addressed in the literature. Considering that organizations have environmental performance expectations stimulated by both external and internal drivers, a behavioral perspective is appropriate for investigating decision-making on GSCM (Kirchoff et al., 2016a). The behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) has been widely applied in various research settings to understand organizational decision-making (Argote and Greve, 2007). One assumption of the BTOF is that organizations have limited attention (Cyert and March, 1963; Washburn and Bromiley, 2012). As a result, they allocate their attention by monitoring the achievement of goals and making sequential decisions, rather than focusing on all the goals simultaneously (Washburn and Bromiley, 2012). Besides, the BTOF assumes that organizations are boundedly rational and tend to follow stabilizing routines to solve short-term pressuring problems, instead of considering situations holistically and pursuing optimal solutions (Argote and Greve, 2007; Cyert and March, 1963). As the BTOF argues, organizations set an aspiration level for a performance dimension which can be derived from recent performance of their comparable organizations (i.e. social aspiration) and their own historical performance (i.e. historical aspiration) (Baum and Dahlin, 2007; Cyert and March, 1963). Afterward, they take strategic actions to respond to the performance feedback - the discrepancy between their actual performance and aspiration level. These strategic actions might vary according to different assessment outcomes of the performance feedback (Lant, 1992). There is considerable evidence that organizational behaviors are significantly influenced by aspirations (e.g. Kim et al., 2015; Ref and Shapira, 2017; Rhee, 2009; Xu et al., 2019). Nevertheless, the concepts of aspiration and performance feedback have not been widely applied in operations management (OM) research except for some pioneering studies (e.g. Kirchoff et al., 2016a; Wiengarten et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2017). To narrow this research gap and further understand drivers of GSCM decisions, this study investigates the impact of organizations' aspirations in adopting GSCM practices from the behavioral perspective.We employed data from an international survey and used hierarchical linear regression to test our hypotheses. The results indicated that organizations invest in GSCM practices according to environmental performance feedback, i.e. their environmental performance relative to aspirations. It is found that for environmental performance either above or below aspirations, the greater the aspiration-performance discrepancy, the stronger the organization's efforts put into the implementation of GSCM practices. Moreover, we tested an alternate model to check the possible role of financial performance aspirations in GSCM decision-making. This study identified a new pathway for GSCM research from the BTOF perspective and explored the role of environmental performance feedback in the implementation of GSCM practices. As a result, this study extended the frontier of GSCM research by understanding how organizations make relevant decisions about environmental management.The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The relevant literature is reviewed and research hypotheses are developed in Section 2. This is followed by the research method in Section 3. The analytical results of analyses are reported in Section 4. Research findings are discussed in Sections 5. Conclusions are summarized in Section 6 in terms of theoretical contributions developed based on the present research study, its practical implications and limitations and suggestions for future research.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses development: 2.1 Aspirations and performance feedback\n3. The research method: 3.1 The sample and data\n4. Analyses and results: 4.1 Main results\n5. Discussion: The empirical results support the proposed hypotheses. In short, the greater the aspiration-environmental performance discrepancy, the more efforts organizations put into the implementation of SP and SS. The results are consistent with the BTOF's argument that performance deviations from aspirations matter when organizations consider whether and how to adopt strategic actions (Greve, 1998; Labianca et al., 2009). When environmental performance is above aspirations, organizations are inclined to rely on the previous strategic profiles to maintain their advantageous positions (Greve, 1998; Labianca et al., 2009). When environmental performance is below aspirations, organizations are prone to change their previous strategic actions (Park, 2007) and imitate better-performing peers (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983).As shown in Figure 1, the slope of SS with negative performance feedback is steeper than that with positive performance feedback. That is, organizations with environmental performance below aspirations have stronger incentives to engage in SS for improving their unsatisfactory performance. This result is in line with previous studies that the slope is steeper in the failure range (Baum et al., 2005). According to the BTOF, decision makers react more strongly to threats than to opportunities and performance below aspirations is more likely to stimulate risk-taking activities (Baum et al., 2005; Tversky and Kahneman, 1986). In other words, firms with performance below aspirations are more likely to adopt strategic changes than firms with accomplished aspirations (Greve, 2003b; Lant and Mezias, 1992).Besides, our results disclose decision makers' preference toward the two GSCM practices. Figure 1 shows that the implementation level of SS is higher than that of SP, particularly in the case of negative environmental performance feedback. This may be due to the risk and potential benefits associated with SS and SP. Compared to SP, SS is riskier as it goes beyond the organizational boundaries and involves multiple supply chain members, which induce higher uncertainties in its implementation. At the same time, SS is likely to bring higher environmental performance improvement than SP (e.g. Geng et al., 2017; Zhu and Sarkis, 2007). Hence, organizations may take the risk of SS and adopt it as a more worthwhile solution, especially when they face negative environmental performance feedback. This finding is in line with previous studies that organizations with negative performance feedback tend to initiate risk-taking activities (Baum et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2019).The test for an alternate explanation shows that financial performance feedback does not have a significant relationship with the implementation of GSCM practices. Although existing studies tend to link GSCM practices with financial performance more (e.g. Chien and Shih, 2007; McGuire et al., 1988; Rao and Holt, 2005) and it is more intuitive to assume that financial performance feedback can stimulate the implementation of GSCM practices, this study provides strong evidence that GSCM decisions are made solely based on environmental performance feedback. The robustness check provides further support to this finding.\n6. Conclusion: 6.1 Theoretical contributions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study investigates the relationships between environmental performance feedback and green supply chain management (GSCM). It explores how environmental performance above or below aspirations affects the implementation of GSCM practices (specifically sustainable production [SP] and sustainable sourcing [SS]) through the lens of the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), which has received scant attention in the operations management literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study used data from the sixth round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS). It employed hierarchical linear regression to test the proposed hypotheses. Moreover, the study tested an alternate model to rule out the possible role of financial performance aspirations in explaining the implementation of SP and SS.\nFindings: The results indicate that organizations determine their efforts put into the two GSCM practices according to environmental performance feedback: the greater the aspiration-environmental performance discrepancy, the stronger the efforts put into implementing GSCM practices.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the GSCM literature by revealing the impact of environmental performance aspirations on the implementation of GSCM practices through the lens of the BTOF. It also extends the BTOF by applying it in the GSCM context and indicating that performance feedback is based on environmental performance instead of financial performance in this specific context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How HR practitioners must keep on learning: Phenomenographic study reveals need for broader outlook
|
[
"Learning",
"Continuing professional development (CPD)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nDevelopment never stops: It is surely no exaggeration to suggest that, in all professions and trades, the right kind of continuing professional development will determine the kind of contribution practitioners are able to make in their chosen field.\nSwedish origins: The research here examines the qualitatively different ways in which HR practitioners in the North of Scotland experience professional development and their experiences in the use of non-formal learning mechanisms as part of that professional development. It uses phenomenography, a research approach designed in Sweden during the 1970s, which aims at describing, analyzing and understanding experiences.\n\"Search for opportunities\": The findings actually suggest that participation in continuing development by HR professionals appears to be a feature of their day-to-day practice, rather than somewhat erratic: One correspondent suggested: \"I am constantly looking for opportunities to enhance my professional knowledge\". Participants seem to be aware of the breadth of skills and competences required by the contemporary HR practitioner. Another participant suggested that it was \"absolutely critical that you keep up to date\". And there was also an awareness that benefits of HR engagement extended to a wide range of stakeholders including the organization, line managers, other employees and colleagues.\nDiversity: Such approaches will help practitioners themselves to become more aware of the wide and diverse range of components they require to be effective HR practitioners, how these will change as their career progresses and how they can take responsibility for and develop their skills for both formal and non-formal development.\nComment: This review is based on \"Professional Development of HR practititioners - a phenomenographic study\" by Bailey (2015). A reminder of the need for constant renewing and development of skills in human resources, the thoughts here are, as Bailey acknowledges, potential food for thought beyond HR, including all employers and professional bodies.\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: In business management, no one emerges fully formed from their professional training. A serious issue in human resource might sometimes be a tendency for future development to be erratic. Traditionally, continuing professional development is all about formal experiences, the sort of things that practitioners meet up with over the years by turning up to do their job. There is, however, a growing view that non-formal learning mechanisms have a part to play. At the same time, continuing professional development has to be broader than conventional courses - a combination of both formal and non-formal learning experiences are surely required.\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"
}
] |
Taking the long view of medical records preservation and archives
|
[
"Archives",
"Classification",
"Theory",
"Information profession",
"Health",
"Information control"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: why medical records matter: Public understanding of mental illness and mental health has become increasingly possible through projects that present the perspectives and lived experiences of mental healthcare consumers and workers. For example, University of College London information studies doctoral student, Anna Sexton, collaborated with the Wellcome Library to launch a digital archive of recovery stories as told by individuals who have experienced mental health difficulties[1]. The Exploratorium in San Francisco, California, held a temporary physical exhibit in 2013-2014 called \"The Changing Face of What is Normal: Mental Health\" that included patient belongings from a defunct New York state facility, Willard Psychiatric Center, and video-based interviews in order to present the challenges and risks of defining mental illness[2]. The Austin, Texas-based art group, Four Plus Four Equals, attempts to raise awareness about mental health through audio recordings and co-created artwork by artists and people in recovery[3]. While oral narratives and artifacts are the primary informational sources for these three projects, health provider records can provide yet another critical viewpoint into the world of mental illness and institutional care. The accessibility of mental health records, and medical records in general, as archival documents is not always possible, however, dependent upon specific national and state laws and organizational policies.\nMedical records as actants: Pragmatist George Herbert Mead, while developing the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism in the early decades of the twentieth century, observed that an individual's social identity and sense of self is shaped by the physical world and the objects around him. This post-humanist argument for the agency of objects and recognition of their impact on our lives is, as sociologist Adele Clarke (2005) calls it, a moment of \"conceptual rupture\" (p. 56). By viewing language as a social phenomenon, Mead also began a rich line of inquiry into \"the continuity between non-human and human communication\" (Bernstein, 2010, p. 151). Mead's research on social actions, rather than just human actions, prompted other sociologists to examine the role of objects in dynamic social systems (Puddephatt, 2005; Gross, 2010).\nThe work of medical records: professional authority: Along with human actors, documents support the medical field as a professional discipline and in the disciplining of patients. Paul Starr (1982), a professor of sociology and public affairs whose research focusses on health care reform, alludes to the power of documents when he writes about how medical professionals create legitimacy to ensure their occupation's success as a cohesive group within society. A group creates a shared body of knowledge and standards, which in turn act as \"cultural authority\" to outsiders (p. 12). French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1991) observed that professionals strive to create cultural capital that is specific to their field; these shared resources - particular ways of thinking, talking, and acting - allow them to participate in and know the rules of the political game. Bourdieu's former colleague, Robert Castel, focussed on psychiatry as a profession that actively develops specialized, or \"expert,\" knowledge (Ingleby, 1983, p. 160). In turn, the public gives professionals, as a group and as individuals, their trust and, thus, a great deal of political capital and power.\nThe work of medical records: mental health classifications: Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Star (1999) discuss how categorizations and standardizations are embedded tools developed and shared within infrastructures, and specifically within social institutions. Their primary example of an organizational system is the Nursing Intervention Classification, which is a system used by nurses in their recordkeeping practices and is understood by the more general medical field. The classifications, or labels, applied to patients are often not based solely on the observed individual, but are rather a negotiated compromise of naming that allows harmony and understanding across a potentially diverse infrastructure (e.g. the US healthcare system). The resulting labels serve as \"boundary objects,\" a term Star and Griesemer (1989) introduced to describe objects that reside in multiple communities of practice in order to meet some information need (p. 297). While no system of representation entirely embody what it purportedly signifies (Yeo, 2007), medical records in particular are characterized by precision and brevity as substitutes for accuracy and representational work in order to accomplish efficiently the tasks at hand. Abbott (1982) describes \"a constant strain between the ideal of complete observation and the doctrine of crucial signs and symptoms\" faced by late-nineteenth-century doctors when diagnosing patients with mental illnesses (p. 313). Latour (2005) asserts that social classifications such as race and mental status, which are culturally created and defined, are reifiedand naturalized by being absorbed into what is considered natural, non-social, and scientific.\nMedical records as cultural heritage: Objects have the distinct ability to impact social activities and viewpoints beyond an individual human's lifetime. This temporal characteristic is especially powerful when thinking about how the same objects can be present throughout changes in institutional administrations and cultural frameworks. As Pickering (1995) reminds us, the meanings of records in relation to social environments are constantly shifting. In keeping with the fourth, pluralization dimension of the records continuum model in archival studies (McKemmish et al., 2009), institutional records can be part of many social worlds and networks of association over time. Records can serve several functions over the course of their existence; some persist across many human lifespans while others are highly ephemeral and have very short periods of use before being destroyed, never to be seen again or to be used by anyone outside of the institution. As \"active\" or \"in use\" institutional records, medical documents can belong to multiple social networks, some of which are based on administrative or \"official\" workflows while others, such as those Erving Goffman (1961) wrote about in Asylums, are informal and covert. Numerous studies have already shown medical records, in particular, as integral parts of institutional culture (Craig, 1989, 1990; Ngin, 1994; Yakel, 2001a, b; Mol, 2002). Institutions are constantly undergoing administrative changes, shifts in funding and policy, and other transitions, and records accordingly can continue to be utilized for other institutional purposes or be intellectually and/or physically located elsewhere in an archival capacity.\nConclusion: information professionals taking the long view: Mental health records can reveal to us a perspective, albeit a partial one, into an institutional environment that is relatively isolated and unfamiliar for much of our society. The accessibility of these medical records, whether currently or in the future, as data or heritage sources is necessary for the potential creation of new communities and new cultural endeavors (cf. Bastian, 2003; Ernest, 2004). For example, access to archival hospital records can lead to digital archives for hospital staff members or academic researchers, virtual museums on the web about mental institutions, and patient and staff oral narratives contextualized and compared with archival hospital records.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an argument for taking the long view of the retention and preservation of inactive medical records.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using the theoretical framework of Actor-Network Theory, the author examines medical records, and especially mental health records, as actants that participate in the classification and treatment of patients, and in the development of psychiatry and mental hospitals as social institutions.\nFindings: The varied and profound roles of medical records demonstrate the ability for records to have multiple \"lives\" that can touch many individuals beyond a single human lifetime.\nPractical implications: As the current and future custodians of historical medical record collections, information professionals are in a position to be greater advocates for the increased preservation of and mindful access to these materials.\nSocial implications: Medical records have potential to be cultural heritage documents, especially for emergent communities.\nOriginality/value: This paper articulates the ways in which medical records are an embedded part of many societies, and affect the ways in which illness is defined and treated. It thus suggests that while laws regarding the retention and destruction of and access to medical records continue to be deliberated upon around the world, such records can have enduring value as information artifacts.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Women's perceptions of technological change in the information society
|
[
"Gender",
"Information society",
"Communication technologies",
"Libraries",
"Perception",
"Attitudes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: the idea of an information society: The term \"information society\" is very widely used in the field of information studies and beyond, and this concept has been explored from a variety of theoretical standpoints (Castells, 2000; Golding, 2000; Martin, 1995; Robins and Webster, 1999; Webster, 2002) but empirical research that considers the impacts and implications of technological change, within the context of this concept, have been less common: theories tend to be accepted, rather than tested in practice. Do apocryphal tales of the fast and relentless pace of expansion of the Internet (Hannemyr, 2003), for example, stand up to empirical investigations of people's experience of technological change? In addition to theory, and even hype, we need to examine the evidence for the social implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Drawing on the findings of an ethnographic research project into women's perceptions of technological change, which used as an analytical framework theory about the information society and analyses of gender and technology (the author's doctoral research (Simon, 2003)), this paper focuses specifically on themes that emerge from data generated by a series of qualitative interviews with a group of individuals. This enables us to interrogate wider discourses (theory and literature) about the information society, and assumptions about the importance, and experience, of technological change in society.The library and information literature in this area often focuses on the changing role of the library and information service (LIS) worker in the context of the information society and on information policy in the UK (e.g., Dearnley and Feather, 2001; Feather, 2004, Spacey et al., 2004). There is wide debate about the validity, applicability and contexts of the information society, and the concept is made use of in a wide range of more popular literature (Gates, 1995; Negroponte, 1995) as well as academic debate. Some authors take a critical perspective towards the concept itself or the hyperbole that seems to attach to it (Golding, 2000; Robins and Webster, 1999; Webster, 2002), and many related issues are similarly critiqued; for example, the idea of a \"digital divide\" is far more complex than we may assume (Gunkel, 2003). The rapid development and expansion of new technologies, the \"death of distance\" (Cairncross, 2001) that ICT enables and the development of virtual networks has led, for example, to what van Dijk and Hacker refer to as the \"information and network society\" (Van Dijk and Hacker, 2003, p. 324), but also to discussion about the increasing centrality of information in social-political life and structures - \"informatisation\" as Castells (2000) describes it, and its relationship with changes in social and cultural capital.A review of information society-related literature reveals a range of areas of discourse, for example:* economic perspectives that focus on the changing nature of working life (e.g., Castells, 2000);* political debates about greater ease of access to information, but equally the problems of increasing surveillance (e.g., Webster, 2002);* the digital divide between the information rich and poor, on a local and global scale (e.g., Haywood, 1998);* the changing nature of community (both real and virtual) (e.g., Ellis et al., 2004); and* experiences of virtuality and cyberspace (e.g., Rheingold, 2000).This list is by no means exhaustive, but does indicate the great breadth of debate around the idea of the information or network society, and the technological and social changes that are often understood to be related to it, and as such can provide a framework for the discussion that follows.\nICT, libraries and women: Since 1997 there has been significant funding and government policies in the UK that have affected all those working in libraries and their use of ICT, as well as helping citizens \"to meet the new demands of the emerging information society\" (Library and Information Commission, 1997). The subsequent development of the People's Network (PN), which now provides free or low-cost access to the Internet from all 4,000 branches of the UK's public libraries, has been a significant measure aimed at overcoming social exclusion. It was evident that library staff were viewed as having an essential part to play in opening out the \"information society\" to the public at large and that appropriate training for all library staff was seen as a necessary part of the project. The impact of the PN on both digitally and socially excluded users is described by Sommerlad et al. (2004) whilst Spacey et al. (2004) report on attitudes of public library staff to the changes. Many staff in public libraries, as well as in other libraries, have undertaken basic training in ICT through the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL - http://www.ecdl.com).Women working in libraries were the original focus of this research, because they represent some variety, in terms of socio-economic background, and who need to engage, on some level, with technological change at work but who are not the early adopters that have been the subject of much research into new technologies. This sample was later expanded to cover other individuals as described in the next section. The choice to survey women was based on the researcher's interest in women's issues, gender and technology and allowed utilisation of theory and literature from this area, with the intention to produce data that could also be applicable to more general conceptualisations of technological change in everyday life.Women have long been dominant in the library field, accounting for 70-80 per cent of the workforce in the UK and USA (e.g., Harris, 1999). Women also form some 78 per cent of the membership of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) (Ritchie, 2000). Some commentators argue that women's relationship with technology is becoming increasingly important in the library sphere, as this traditionally \"female-intensive\" profession becomes a \"technologically dense site\" (Dilevko and Harris, 1997, p. 719). Technological change may deskill women or downgrade their traditional roles in libraries, although studies have identified an often-positive attitude to technological change in the workplace (Harris, 1992, 1999). And, of course, women have been using technology in libraries long before the advent of the Internet, as Green et al. (1993, p. 132) show. They observed that women were engaged with computerised library systems throughout the 1980s and were already \"intensive systems users\". What can be considered a more recent development is the way that public policy has sought to engage libraries and their staff with new technologies, making ICT skills less the domain of the specialist and increasingly within the remit of all staff.The expansion of the Internet and ICT has been of great interest to feminist scholars: focusing on the early Internet experiences of women, and the consequences for them of technological and social change (e.g., Harcourt, 1999). Much literature attests to the differences in experience of, and attitudes towards, computers between men and women - although many studies also acknowledge other cultural factors involved, indicating a greater complexity. As the Internet becomes widespread in, for instance, educational settings, women's attitudes to it become increasingly important (Li et al., 2001). Indeed, although analyses vary, there is little questioning of the importance of ICT in everyday life, and as such it becomes ever more vital to understand how women think about, and deal with, technology in their everyday lives.\nAims and method: The aim of the research was to investigate women's perceptions of technological change, using the information society concept as a flexible framework. The researcher's initial interest had been on women working in the library sphere as this is an area where public policy, rapid technological change, and developing experience of ICT intersect, while also allowing reference to studies of gender and technology. However, this sample was developed with additional interviews with women who were at the very early stages of using networked technologies or who had little or no experience. The intention behind this was to widen the variety of possible data, while retaining focus on less experienced users of technology, who have not often been the subject of research into ICT (which tend to centre on so-called \"early adopters\" or high-level users, e.g. Rheingold, 2000). The aim was to investigate individuals' reactions to technological change, rather than the library environment per se and as such just under half (12 out of 25) of the interviews took place in a non-LIS environment. (In fact, 26 participants out of 50 were non-LIS, making them the slight majority, but dispersed over fewer interviews due to the use of focus group interviewing). Participants were recruited through the researcher's contacts within the library profession and the wider community, and through a process of \"snowballing\" to gain new contacts, and a common device in qualitative research.Information was collected from a series of individual and focus group interviews with 50 women, aged from 20-70+, from a range of backgrounds. All but four were from a white ethnic background and two were non-UK nationals. Three-quarters of the participants were in full or part-time employment (as noted, just under half of the total being employed in the library sector - including public, academic and one specialist library), the rest were retired, full-time parents or not working for reasons unspecified. Educational experience ranged from Masters-level qualifications to those who left formal education at age 15 or 16. Experience of new technologies ranged from virtually none (two participants had never used a computer or mobile phone) to regular use of the Internet on a daily basis often in the workplace.Interviews (individual and group) took place during the period 2001-2002, and normally lasted between 45 minutes to one and a half hours. Interviews centred on perceptions and experience of new technologies in general, in whatever context the women used or were aware of them, in the workplace or otherwise: conversation thus focused on the most \"visible\" technologies of the information age: computers, networked technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones. Rather than analysing a specific technology or application, the focus was on investigating technological change as a part of everyday life.The research adopted an interpretative and qualitative approach. Tools from grounded theory methodology were considered appropriate for a project that was essentially exploratory, seeking to interrogate existing literature and theory through a \"ground up\" approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). This qualitative approach to research aimed at producing both richness and variety in the data, and also to generate and develop concepts, which can provide a way to think about and understand others' perspectives on technological change.\nFindings: It was soon evident that the data could be divided into three distinct, although fundamentally interlinked, categories, or discourses. These \"discourses\" had clear parallels in established literature on the information society and new technologies, but also differed in unexpected ways that are rooted in the everyday life experiences of the individuals who took part in the study. It can be considered valuable to understand how people actually experience and think about technological change, that is, how they \"make sense\" of it by relating it to, and integrating it with, daily life. This provides something of an antidote to the information society hyperbole, which has been characteristic of the Internet revolution, and refers us back to the social, cultural and political contexts in which ICT is experienced.The three discourses\nDiscussion: Ambivalence towards technological change may be seen as positive rather than a problem, in that it grounds us more in the \"here and now\" rather than a pre-interpreted future, and emphasising the agency of the individual in their interactions with the information society (Stevenson, 2000). This is a very academic viewpoint, but we can see how it resonates in the talk of the research participants - although their points of reference and how they \"make sense\" of change are clearly different.From a gender studies or feminist perspective, this does not mean that ambivalence does not reflect genuine issues of concern, such as the persistently low numbers of women entering the ICT industries. However, it seems clear that individuals are thinking critically about technological and social change, and this is reflected in the complexity and variety inherent in the interview data. Faulkner (2001) has referred to ambivalence toward technologies more characteristic of women's experience than the explicitly positive or negative accounts of some varieties of feminist writing and indeed accounts of technological change in general. Although many equivocal, even critical attitudes, were apparent in the interviews, these combine and coexist with positive accounts of the useful or enjoyable aspects of ICT. As such, it is argued that ambivalent or contradictory attitudes are integrated, or made sense of by the participants, seeing ICT both as positive and negative (rarely either/or). Binaries may be hard to avoid when framing discussion of the information society and the digital divide, but in everyday life, experience and perceptions are much more nuanced and linked to the social complexity that is the reality of people's work and social lives.Of course there is a range of possible barriers to the benefits that might be gained from new technologies, of which gender is a factor in many. This paper has attempted to demonstrate the wide variety of reactions to new technologies among those interviewed, and to show that women possess some agency in how they deal with ICT, either in accepting and enjoying them or in taking a more critical stance - or more commonly through a combination of these attitudes. This has been demonstrated via a focus on one aspect of the data that deals with the \"digital divide\" concept in the way it was discussed by the participants: from their optimistic accounts to more ambivalent responses that point to a sense of the pervasiveness of ICT in today's world, which may cause some to feel \"left behind\" by the pace of change and the assumptions that \"everyone\" is online. An awareness of the pressure that this may create, in the workplace or outside, has been highlighted. This should be placed in the context of the many positive experiences outlined, of which space had allowed us to highlight only a few. For some women, at least, their position as library workers may place them in an advantageous position as the information society has been \"rolled out\" into public consciousness with the People's Network and other policy endeavours, and in turn presents them with opportunities to \"own\" - to become familiar with and enjoy the technologies with which they work.This research has focused on a fairly defined group of individuals, with half of the sample working within a defined context (LIS), whilst also aiming for some level of variety in terms of experience of ICT. As such, the results discussed here do refer specifically to them: however, the wider value of qualitative studies such as this is considered to be in the concepts that they identify which may be more broadly applicable, pointing towards developing social attitudes and perceptions, and leading us into other areas of investigation. The last several years has seen a welcome increase in the number of empirical studies that investigate the role of new technologies such as the Internet in everyday life, helping us to ground our understanding more firmly in the context of individuals' lived experience (Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002; Woolgar, 2002), and it is to this growing body of work that it is hoped this research contributes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of empirical research and focus on specific aspects of the data that relate to the concept of the \"information rich and information poor\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Exploratory in nature and as such utilises an interpretive, qualitative methodology. In depth interviews and focus group interviews were analysed using tools from grounded theory methodology.\nFindings: - There was a positive, yet ambivalent, attitude towards new information and communication technologies (ICTs) amongst the women interviewed. It is shown that although the interview data resonates with the theory, it also differs in interesting ways that are linked to everyday experience and social contexts.\nResearch limitations/implications: - It is clearly focussed on a particular group of individuals and could be developed on a conceptual level to refer to wider contexts.\nOriginality/value: - It presents a \"grass roots\" view of responses to technological change and life in an information society, and emphasises the variety inherent in people's interpretations of and responses to ICT.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Differential effects of male and female managers' non-verbal emotional skills on employees' ratings
|
[
"Managers",
"Emotional intelligence",
"Management skills",
"Job satisfaction",
"Gender",
"Non‐verbal communications"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: According to numerous organizational scholars, managers and leaders need to attend to and perceive non-verbal cues such as emotional expressions from their followers (e.g. Hooijberg et al., 1997; Snodgrass, 1992). For example, managers need to be able to detect when employees are dissatisfied, even when verbal cues are not forthcoming. The reasoning is that accurately determining the meaning of others' non-verbal emotional expressions provides managers with information about the choice of an appropriate response (e.g. Zaccaro et al., 1991). In the above example, the manager may offer emotional support by asking the employees why they are unhappy.\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Emotion perception for female and male managers\nMethod: Participants\nResults: To test all three study hypotheses, I used moderated multiple regression to investigate the proposed interactive effects. Because recent research supports a less conservative threshold for interactions based on the difficulty of detecting interactions (e.g. Aguinis et al., 2005; McClelland and Judd, 1993), an alpha level of 0.10 was the standard for analyses testing interactions. For all regression models, I present the unstandardized regression coefficients and standard errors because standardized coefficients should not be used when an interaction is present.To test H1, I fitted two hierarchical regression models, one for each vignette, on the dependent variable, employee satisfaction. In the first step, I entered the two control variables, participants' sex and work experience; in the second step, I entered the manager's sex and emotion perceptiveness; and the third step consisted of the interaction term, manager sex x emotion perceptiveness. Table I shows the results of these regressions. In both models, the change in R2 was significant when the interaction term was entered, DR2=0.02, p < 0.05; and DR2=0.04, p < 0.05; respectively. Further, the form of the interactions for vignettes 1 and 2 supported the prediction of H1: Satisfaction ratings were significantly related to whether female managers were perceptive or not, such that they gave higher satisfaction ratings to female managers who were emotionally perceptive than to those who were not (M=4.42 versus M=3.51, and M=3.26 versus M=2.64; b=0.91, SEb=0.21, p < 0.01, and b=0.63, SEb=0.31, p < 0.05; for vignettes 1 and 2, respectively). In contrast, male managers' emotion perceptiveness was not as strongly related to satisfaction ratings (b=0.36, SEb=0.17, p < 0.05, and b=-0.37, SEb=0.29, n.s., for vignettes 1 and 2, respectively). As shown in Figures 1 and 2, the results of these tests provide support for H1, such that emotion perception was more strongly elated to employee satisfaction ratings for female than for male managers.Next, I fitted a regression model using data from vignette 1, which included a manipulation of the manager's persuasiveness, on the dependent variable, ratings of the manager's persuasiveness. In the first step, I entered the two control variables, participants' sex and work experience; in the second step, I entered the manager's sex, emotion perceptiveness, and a dummy variable representing the persuasiveness condition; and the third step consisted of the interaction term, manager sex x emotion perceptiveness. As shown in Table II, the change in R2 when the interaction term was entered into the model was statistically significant (DR2=0.02, p < 0.10). As expected, the form of the interaction supports H2: the relationship between male, as compared to female, managers' emotion perceptiveness is more positively related to their rated persuasiveness. Male managers who were emotionally perceptive were rated as more persuasive (M=3.77) than were those who were not perceptive (M=3.45), b=0.32, SEb=0.14, p < 0.05. For female managers, their emotional perceptiveness did not significantly contribute to their rated persuasiveness (b=-0.06, SEb=0.14, n.s).H3 predicted that managers' accuracy in non-verbal emotion perception would enhance the supportiveness ratings of female managers more than for male managers. To test this hypothesis, I fitted a regression model similar to the one described above using data from vignette 2 with two exceptions:1. the dependent variable was ratings of the managers' supportiveness; and2. the dummy variable represented the supportiveness, not persuasiveness condition.As shown in Table III, the change in R2 when the interaction term was entered into the model was statistically significant (DR2=0.01, p < 0.10). As hypothesized, the form of the interaction shows that the relationship between female, as compared to male, managers' emotion perceptiveness is more positively related to their rated supportiveness. Female managers who were emotionally perceptive were rated as more supportive (M=3.32) than were those who were not perceptive (M=2.68), b=0.64, SEb=0.22, p < 0.01. For male managers, their emotional perceptiveness did not significantly contribute to their rated supportiveness (b=0.14, SEb=0.18, n.s.).\nDiscussion: The aim of the present study was to replicate the finding that accurate non-verbal emotion perception is more strongly related to employee satisfaction for female than for male managers and to examine whether male and female managers might experience different benefits from being emotionally perceptive. The results of this study provide support for the prediction that, in general, non-verbal emotion perception is an ability that is differentially valued for male and female managers. Employees were more satisfied with female, as compared to male, managers who were emotionally perceptive. This finding suggests that stereotypes about women, in general, and about female managers, more specifically, influence how employees evaluate female managers. Specifically, female managers may be expected to be and are more highly valued for being perceptive of others' emotions. In terms of their employees' satisfaction levels, being able to perceive emotions helps female managers, and, not being able to perceive emotions seems to harm them. For male managers, non-verbal emotion perception is not as important; the relationship between emotion perception and satisfaction ratings was not as strong as that for female managers.How managers might use emotional information gleaned from others seems to also be important. Although male managers' accuracy in non-verbal emotion perception was not as important to their satisfaction ratings, it did contribute to the extent to which they were rated as persuasive, even after considering whether they attempted to be persuasive. In contrast, female managers' accuracy was not significantly related to the extent to which they were considered persuasive. Perhaps because persuasiveness is considered to be typically masculine, respondents may have assumed that the male managers would use emotional information to be persuasive. In contrast, female managers' accuracy in non-verbal emotion perception significantly enhanced their supportiveness ratings, even after controlling for whether they made an attempt to be supportive. Male managers' emotion perceptiveness did not significantly contribute to the extent to which they were rated as supportive managers. These findings are mostly consistent with the proposition that, in general, it behooves male and female managers to use emotional information in ways that are consistent with gender stereotypes. Further, it suggests that employees expect managers to use emotion in gender-congruent ways.However, taken together, the findings suggest that both male and female managers may seek to combine masculine and feminine behaviours or roles to enhance their employees' satisfaction. Female managers who combined a stereotypically feminine ability, emotion perceptiveness, with a stereotypically masculine role, being a manager, experienced higher satisfaction ratings than having either characteristic alone. These results seem to support the contentions of role congruity theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002), which suggests that female leaders and managers can temper the negative effects of being in a 'masculine' role by exhibiting feminine characteristics. Indeed, recent research suggests that the masculine stereotypes of what constitutes a 'good manager' and managers in general persist (Powell et al., 2002). The present study suggests that people have divergent notions of what constitutes a good female manager and what constitutes a good male manager.However, the results also suggest that a more androgynous set of characteristics can also benefit male managers. Namely, of all the conditions, employees were most satisfied with the male managers when they were both emotionally perceptive and persuasive. Further, merely being emotionally perceptive, regardless of whether they engaged in a persuasion attempt, enhanced male managers' persuasiveness, suggesting that employees may have expectations about how male and female managers should or will use emotional information gleaned from others.This study is not without limitations. The experimental design using vignettes may limit the generalizability of the results. Future research should use other research designs to replicate the results. For example, observational studies of managers may be used to test whether male and female managers' use of emotional information affects their employees' satisfaction in similar ways to those found here. However, the satisfactory manipulation checks, strong theoretical support, the work experience of the students, and the established use of vignettes in psychological research together argue for the validity of the findings.In addition, the present study focused on sex differences (i.e. male and female managers) and their gender role expectations and behaviours (i.e. masculine and feminine characteristics) but did not fully account for differences in gender roles. For example, managers in different industries may be held to differing standards; i.e. managers in female-dominated industries may be held to different standards than are managers in male-dominated industries. Male managers in female-dominated industries, such as nursing or teaching, may be expected to exhibit more communal characteristics, such as being emotionally perceptive and supportive, than are male managers in male-dominated industries, such as construction or financial services.The results of the present study also have practical implications. They suggest that both male and female managers may experience benefits from being more attuned to others' emotions at work. Male managers who attend to others' emotions may be seen as more persuasive, and female managers who do so may be considered more supportive and have more satisfied employees. However, the results also suggest that companies should be skeptical about unqualified claims regarding the benefits of emotional intelligence (EI) in the workplace (see for example Goleman, 1995, 1998). As mentioned previously, accuracy in perceiving others' emotions is considered one of the most primary and basic skills in emotional intelligence because the skill is learned early in life and is believed to form the basis for other more advanced skills that comprise emotional intelligence (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). These results seem to argue for a more cautious approach; rather than offering unqualified benefits in the workplace, the skills that comprise EI may be more or less beneficial in different situations and for different people.In conclusion, the present study increases knowledge about the role of one emotional skill, non-verbal emotion perception, for managers and, specifically, how this emotional skill may has differential effects for male and female managers. Future research may further examine whether emotional skills, such as the ability to regulate emotion or the ability to accurately convey emotion, may have similarly differential effects for male and female managers.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to examine whether employees are more satisfied with female, as compared to male, managers who accurately perceive non-verbal emotion expressions, and how male and female managers' non-verbal emotional skill differentially affects their employees' ratings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Students, nearly all of whom had work experience, were randomly assigned a vignette and asked to respond to the situation in the role of the employee. The situation described male or female managers either perceiving or not attending to the employees' emotional expression, and using or not using emotional information to be supportive or persuasive. Differences between the various situations were examined.\nFindings: - Participants indicated that they were more satisfied with female, but not male, managers, who accurately perceived their emotion. Similarly, failing to attend to emotion resulted in lower satisfaction ratings for female, but not male, managers. In ways consistent with gender stereotypes, male and female managers' non-verbal emotion perception had differential effects on their perceived persuasiveness and supportiveness.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The use of vignettes with a student sample may limit generalizability. However, satisfactory manipulation checks, strong theoretical support, the work experience of the students, and the established use of vignettes in psychological research together argue for the validity of the findings.\nPractical implications: - Working managers may increase their employees' satisfaction by increasing their accuracy in \"reading\" emotions and using emotional information in gender-congruent ways.\nOriginality/value: - This paper increases knowledge about the role of emotion perception for working managers and, specifically, how the use of emotional information may have differential value for male and female managers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Using customer equity models to improve loyalty and profits
|
[
"Customer retention",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Expenses",
"Profit",
"Customer loyalty"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Loyalty program operators love to talk about marketing to their best customers. But how many marketers actually define \"best\" customers as their most profitable ones?When I look at the loyalty cards in my own wallet, I see a lot of companies rewarding customers based on revenue - or stays, segments or miles. But isn't a best customer one who's exceptionally profitable? Shouldn't your knowledge of customer profitability be used not only to recognize your best customers, but also to improve the profitability of key customer segments?Enter customer equity models. A customer equity model allocates customer profits through the analysis of customer revenues offset by true cost to serve. A customer equity model is a descriptive model: it describes past behavior without making assumptions about future behavior.Because the model isn't dependent on any particular software - all you need is transaction data on individual customers - it's a great tool to get actionable profitability information that allows you to make better business decisions across your organization.What data do you need to build a customer equity model? Whatever data you can get your hands on. As you discuss how to retrieve each revenue and cost item with the respective departments within your organization, stress how better customer-level tracking of revenue and costs can improve the model and how each department can help capture that information systematically, accurately, and precisely. You must encourage collaboration with key constituents - or the model will never be used to drive decisions at your company.What skills do you need to create the model? You need an analyst to devise the algorithm - someone with a critical eye to discern the best way to allocate costs. Once the model is completed, you'll need the systems resources for each department to access the profitability information. You also need a database resource to create tables to program and support the model. Clearly, C-level support can be a boon - having department managers whose goals include cross-departmental initiatives never hurts.When performing the revenue side of the calculation, perspective is important. The goal is to build the best representation of profitability for your company. For retailers, the revenue calculation is straightforward - how much did the customer spend with you? Revenue is also simple for utilities and other subscription environments. But for other verticals - such as the hospitality industry, in which hotel chains run loyalty programs that allow travelers to earn points at both corporate-owned and franchised hotels - defining customer revenue requires more collaboration.In most cases, the time and energy you'll spend allocating expenses to individual customers far exceeds the time spent on the revenue side. Your first decision: will costs tie back to your annual report, or will you include only incremental costs? Ideally, you want the former; it's a philosophical stake in the ground that shows your recognition that all costs are incurred to support and grow your customers.However, there are times when your business situation may justify using incremental costs. For example, utilities often have extremely high fixed costs that may be capitalized over many years. Within reasonable bounds, the number of customers doesn't impact this fixed overhead amount - even in the unlikely event that your entire customer base attrites, the cost should arguably remain on your balance sheet.After deciding on your expense goal, you then should review each transaction type and outline all possible expense categories: cost of goods sold, servicing costs, advertising costs and bad debt and fraud losses. Again, your goal is to use all customer transactions to develop an individual cost to service. Can the complexity of these calculations become overwhelming? Certainly, but don't panic. Just rely on available data and plan to refine your model in future iterations.In retail, the toughest calculation is probably the cost of goods sold. Ideally, you'll have access to cost information on each item purchased. More likely, you'll have information on margin percentage by groups of products or even category shopped. While the cost of goods sold is important, don't forget to include other transaction-level costs such as shipping, returns and web site costs. Some costs may be allocated to transactions by geography or channel, including advertising, store and loss prevention costs. Finally, some costs, including direct marketing, private-label credit card and database costs, belong at the customer level.Other sectors have equally unique challenges. Once you have a process in place to assign revenue and costs to your customers, your next step is a big one: programming the tables required to calculate profitability. The program reviews individual customer transactions and joins tables together to properly assign revenue and costs. Store your interim calculations for further analysis.Understanding customer profitability is only half the battle. Ultimately, you have to take action to retain your best customers and convert your unprofitable customers to profitable ones. Consider a typical multi-channel retailer. How can you best use a customer equity model to design some marketing and customer service tests?We'll assume that you've split this universe into three profitability bands- highly profitable, marginally profitable, and unprofitable. For the high-profit group, you could choose to test soft benefits that might alleviate the majority of complaints from these high-value customers (see Table I). After six months, evaluate the test by comparing the increased expense to the lift in spend and reduction in attrition risk in this segment due to their special treatment.At the same time, you can also devise strategies for your marginal and unprofitable customers. For these customers, you can test tighter return policies, increased fees and cost-limiting behavior. Test, and then evaluate. Did a cost to service reduction occur? Did the savings offset any decrease in spend or increase in attrition seen in the test populations? Testing cost-reductions on customers who are already fundamentally unprofitable keeps you from unleashing them on the entire population - thus risking the wrath of your profitable divas.Once you've completed your first foray into customer equity models, you'll encounter two consistent truisms. Truism one: you'll always unearth another variable that influences profitability. Let's say you've determined the cost of an average customer service call and calculate customer profitability by the number of calls they make. Next, you recognize that some calls are shorter than others and calculate a cost by call type. Then you realize you have to factor in the length of time per call. Where does it end? Start where you can. Improve where and when you can. Don't let analysis paralysis stop you from utilizing a customer equity model.Truism two: the world marches on. You need to remain current. Changes in the marketplace, whether new technologies or new competitors, can affect the profitability of your customers.Remember that, while a customer equity model describes past behavior, the past is prologue. Your organization's next goal might be to predict a customer's next-year profitability based on her behavior from previous years. You can also use the model as a basis to explore other variables that factor into your marketing decisions: attrition risk, potential spend, price elasticity, response and \"up-sell ability\" should all be in play. As you treat customers differently, their behavior will change, and your goal will be to understand, measure and foster profitable shifts. Such is the essence of loyalty marketing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to teach the reader how to compile a customer equity model in order to calculate the true profitability of customers. The reader can use the information to make better business decisions across their organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Transaction data (as much as can be collected) on individual customers is needed to build the customer equity model. An analyst is needed to devise an algorithm and discern the best way to allocate costs. The goal is to build the best representation of profitability for the company. Once a process is in place for assigning revenue and costs to customers, tables must be programmed to calculate profitability. The final step is to take what is learned in the customer equity model and test ideas for retaining best customers and converting unprofitable customers into profitable ones.\nFindings: - It was found that customer equity models are important tools for describing past behavior, predicting a customer's next-year profitability, and exploring other variables that factor into marketing decisions.\nPractical implications: - Identifies the need for companies to do a more thorough job of identifying their \"best\" customers, that is, their most profitable customers. Provides direction on putting together a customer equity model that will help companies reach the above-mentioned findings\nOriginality/value: - This paper is valuable to anyone who could benefit by better understanding past behavior of customers, and by predicting a customer's next-year profitability. The reader can use the information to make better business decisions across their organization.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Principles and practice in impact assessment for academic libraries
|
[
"Data analytics",
"Academic libraries",
"Impact assessment",
"Value co-creation",
"Scorecards",
"Library assessment",
"Value frameworks"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In a comparison of two quality frameworks that could be used in academic libraries (LibQUAL+, and the customer service excellence (CSE), Atkinson and Walton (2017) refer to the need for academic libraries to prove to themselves and their institutions that they are providing quality services, that there are drivers for showing continued improvement, impact and return on investment. The LibQUAL+ approach emphasizes on customer service, and it uses gap analysis to measure the mismatch between customer expectations and perceptions of service quality (whether perceptions exceed, match or fall short of expectations). The CSE is a UK award, applicable to many types of organizations and focuses on customer service, but it is more interested in the user experience and the areas that are priorities for customers (generally taken to be delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude). This article does not aim to compare these two (or other frameworks) in more depth or review how the frameworks have been applied. The aim is to explore what we mean by customer or user, whether we can (or should) take into account background factors that may dispose the library user to some attitudes or behaviour. Theories may also help interpretation when using data analytics to assess usage of library services. Academic libraries are working in academic settings and should therefore be critical of the assumptions they may be making when using some quality assessment tools. Lilburn (2017) critiques the use of tools such as LibQUAL+, and without necessarily going along with his critique of the neoliberal principles forced on universities and the rise of the audit culture, we need to query whether simply recasting students as consumers, without making other major adjustments to the way libraries work, results in very superficial impact or library assessment. Use of the tool may satisfy senior management, but the results may not be very useful to library and the actions taken by libraries may not help students much with their learning. First, the article will examine some of principles around the value proposition and the idea of value co-creation (with the user). Next, the article will examine some implications of the ACRL framework for information literacy and how it might inform an existing value framework, as applied to information literacy assessment. The next section (data collection, data analytics and collaboration for strategic planning) considers the potential and possible pitfalls of using data analytics and the advantages of collaborative approaches. The section (Frameworks for ongoing library assessment and impact evaluation) examines the use of scorecards and other frameworks and how to help to link impact assessment with strategic planning. The final section on implementing the culture of assessment and process improvement, notes the cultural barriers, and the conclusions advocate a deeper level of inquiry about assessment.\nValue propositions: Value propositions often relate to a narrative-based approach to a marketing strategy that relates to customers (Germano, 2010) with emphasis on customer relationships and value creation within a service marketing framework. For special collections in academic libraries and archives, one of the challenges is to identify what the users actually value and whether there are any common themes. Dupont and Yakel (2013) suggest that most value propositions for special collections advocate that they are essential for advances in scholarship or enhancement of teaching and learning or increasing the prestige of the institution. The problem with many value propositions, as Dupont and Yakel point out, is that they are too general, too wordy and insufficiently precise for the user. The emphasis tends to be on the collection, rather than the user. Urquhart (2015) provides some examples of what a value proposition for some types of library might look like, with the example for a health library of \"helping you deliver quality care\", and Oakleaf (2010) provides many starting points for academic libraries to think about the value they add. Murray and Ireland (2017) discuss the role and likely format of reciprocal value propositions for libraries helping universities with student retention problems. The reciprocal value proposition is always in the format \"if we [...] will you?\" For example, Murray and Ireland (2017, p. 320) suggest one example for library/faculty as:\nUsing value frameworks for information literacy impact assessment: In 2015, the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) published its Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (ACRL, 2015), which is structured differently than a previous document that stressed competency standards. Lohmann (2015) presents a helpful overview of some of the background to, and critiques of, the ACRL framework, but briefly, the main changes are the shift to the idea of threshold concepts that developed from educational research within particular disciplines. Threshold concepts are the ideas that students need to grasp to progress (within that discipline). There has been some work (Hofer et al., 2012) to extend that to information literacy instruction and this has influenced the ACRL framework. The framework itself has six frames:\nData collection, data analytics and collaboration for strategic planning: A comprehensive review and report of the value of academic libraries (Oakleaf, 2010) emphasized that libraries need to define outcomes that are relevant to their institution and then assess the extent to which these outcomes are met. For academic libraries, outcomes should relate to student enrolment, student retention and graduation rates, student success, student achievement, student learning, student engagement, faculty research productivity, faculty teaching, service and overarching institutional quality. As important, perhaps, is the creation of an assessment management system that allows easier collection of data on the chosen outcomes, particularly outcomes related to student learning that need to be aggregated, with analysis of trends. The quantitative data should complement the qualitative data (e.g. the case stories mentioned earlier) and the evidence from formative assessment in information literacy. Data analytics does not necessarily mean a focus solely on quantitative data - the unstructured and textual data are important as well. Analysis of that type of data helps to formulate questions for further exploration, possibly through quantitative analysis. Jacobs and Koufogiannakis (2014) stress that different types of evidence (not just the hard data) may be required to support evidence-based librarianship. Dunne et al. (2014) discuss how a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence demonstrated value and impact.\nFrameworks for ongoing library assessment and impact evaluation: The report on the value of academic libraries (in the USA) (Oakleaf, 2010) reviewed assessment methodologies from public, special and school libraries as well as academic libraries. The type of data that could be collected is discussed in-depth, along with details of some of the methods that could be used. The discussion on economic evaluation methods indicates that the findings you obtain depend on the perspective taken, and Neal (2011) points out the problems of evaluation based largely on return on investment indicators.\nImplementing the culture of assessment and process improvement: Implementing a culture of assessment and process improvement may be easier in situations where there is a willingness to change. Jantti (2015) reflects on the use of the performance indicator framework at the University of Wollongong, Australia, how library staff was engaged with thinking about outcomes, and how new measures were implemented to assess how well new services were working to meet university goals. In situations where there have already been massive changes to working conditions and roles, organizational development may need to be guided by the findings of surveys such as ClimateQUAL(r), to help identify the perceived problems of staff and what might be done to improve the situation (DeFrank and Hillyer, 2013). Farkas (2013) used Kotter's eight-step change model to suggest how to implement a culture of assessment and how to deal with resistance to change. One of the problems is that library staff are often not able to analyse and present assessment data effectively (Hiller et al., 2008), they may lack skills in using data in both library and enterprise-wide information systems (Oakleaf, 2015) or in combining and correlating data for scorecard development (Town, 2015). Farkas et al. (2015), from a systematically derived sample of academic libraries in the USA, found that 59 per cent claimed to have a culture of assessment (and 41 per cent did not). Several factors were associated with the presence of a culture of assessment, notably assessment as an organizational priority, campus-wide assessment initiatives and a user-centred culture. One of the barriers to an assessment culture was the lack of systems or technologies to support assessment work. The authors agree with Oakleaf (2013) that assessment data need to be seen to be used. Creaser and Spezi (2012) found, in a case study of eight institutions across three geographic regions in the UK, that library managers often struggled to demonstrate the value of the academic library to teaching and research staff, although students appreciated the embedded information literacy instruction.\nConclusions: Strategic planning and ongoing library assessment will increasingly require more attention to data analytics. Such development work probably requires collaboration among library services to develop reliable data sets and effective data visualizations for managers to use. Frameworks such as the balanced scorecard may continue to be used to organize ongoing impact and performance evaluation, helping to clarify what data should be collected and analysed. Queries that arise during ongoing library assessment may require a framework, or logic model, to formulate suitable questions, assemble evidence (qualitative and quantitative) and answer new, deeper questions about perceived value. Academic library services may need to think more widely and deeply about value, and the perceived value framework of Holbrook's typology, the ACRL framework and the values scorecard all support the deeper level of inquiry required. Libraries can and do contribute to learning gain calculations in higher education, but libraries also need to gather evidence about more subtle changes in the way students learn and how their dispositions for learning affect their behaviour. Implementing a culture of assessment will require all library staff, not just managers, to appreciate the importance of the qualitative and quantitative evidence that they handle and how such data may be processed and analysed to help demonstrate the value of library services. Practitioners may need to develop value propositions and identify where and how value co-creation might occur, for example, with new audiences for e-resources or open data.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the principles that underpin library assessment, methods used for impact and performance evaluation and how academic libraries should use the findings, and it discusses how value frameworks help.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is a literature review covering aspects of value (value propositions, value co-creation), value frameworks (including the 2015 ACRL framework, Holbrook typology with worked example), data analytics and collaborative projects including LibQUAL+ initiatives and the use of balanced scorecard principles (including a values scorecard).\nFindings: The use of data analytics in library assessment requires collaboration among library services to develop reliable data sets. Scorecards help ongoing impact and performance evaluation. Queries that arise may require a framework, or logic model, to formulate suitable questions and assemble evidence (qualitative and quantitative) to answer new questions about the value of library services. The perceived value framework of Holbrook's typology, the values scorecard and the ACRL framework all support the deeper level of inquiry required.\nResearch limitations/implications: Includes examples of possible application of frameworks.\nPractical implications: A value framework might help data analytic approaches in combining qualitative and quantitative data.\nSocial implications: Impact assessment may require assessing how value is co-created with library users in use of e-resources and open data.\nOriginality/value: The study contrasts the varying approaches to impact evaluation and library assessment in academic libraries, and it examines more in-depth value frameworks.\n",
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An exploratory study of wine business philanthropy in the USA
|
[
"Ethics",
"Corporate social responsibility",
"United States of America",
"Conceptual/theoretical",
"Wines",
"Survey research",
"Wine industry",
"Philanthropy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In addition to products and tourism, wine businesses produce both jobs and economic activity. Although wine businesses are responsive to community concerns, many stakeholders remain uncertain about the other community benefits that these businesses may generate (McCuan and Hertz, 2015)[1]. While wineries are well aware of community stewardship issues and acknowledge the importance of being environmentally mindful to create direct community benefits apart from economic growth or jobs, it remains unknown to what extent wine businesses are engaged in philanthropy (Marshall et al., 2010). Charitable donations are often related to the business owners' personal values, many small businesses choose their \"cause\" because of experiences that have touched their lives, and consumers will associate a business with its cause (Cutler, 2008). Wine producers in the USA annually contribute $127m to charitable organizations, according to a Motto, Kryla, Fisher Research economic impact report (cited by Cutler, 2008). Charitable contributions by Napa wineries alone totaled US$84m by 2011, against Napa winery wholesale revenue of US$3.7bn and direct sales of US$744.7m in that year (Stonebridge Research, 2012). As noted in the popular press, numerous wine producers and trade associations host events, donate to auctions or create promotions to provide for many worthy charitable causes, e.g. alleviating homelessness and hunger, cancer research, disaster relief and mental health.\n2. Literature review: The word philanthropy literally means \"love of mankind\" (Acs and Phillips, 2010). Payton (1988) simply defined philanthropy as voluntary action for the public good. The voluntary or discretionary nature of philanthropy is similarly noted in other definitions (Seifert et al., 2003; Wartick and Wood, 1998). Although philanthropy is generally described in the literature as being voluntary in nature, Hemingway and Maclagan (2004) note that there are growing social expectations on firms to engage in providing support for charitable causes. As most prior research has focused on large corporations, the term \"corporate philanthropy\" is also frequently used in the literature. Wartick and Wood (1998) define corporate philanthropy as:\n3. Methodology: The questionnaire consisted of 17 closed-end, multiple-choice questions that had previously been pilot tested in interviews with wineries in New Zealand, California and Spain, with an additional open-ended question (\"Define philanthropy [...]\"), and was conducted via an online link to SurveyMonkey that was open from March 24, 2016-May 15, 2016.\n4. Findings: A slight majority (51 per cent) of respondents reported production under 45,000 liters (or 5,000 12 x 750 ml bottle cases) per annum, as shown in Table III. Nearly 7 in 10 (69 per cent) of respondents could be classified as small producers, i.e. under 180,000 liters or 20,000 cases.\n5. Discussion, propositions and future research directions: Our review of current literature and the preliminary descriptive data from the survey of 100 US wine businesses results in the development of a framework for investigating corporate philanthropy, consisting of testable hypotheses to be addressed in a future study. Some researchers have suggested that businesses can succeed and achieve sustained long-term competitiveness by understanding the interconnections between business and society (Porter and Kramer, 2011). A comprehensive review of CSR articles appearing in 20 journals concludes that:\n6. Conclusions and implications for researchers and practitioners: The results of this exploratory study help to address some of the gaps in the current philanthropy literature. We present four propositions for further testing. All respondents operate in a single industry sector and thus comparisons have been possible. The results indicate a large degree of similarity amongst the wineries, irrespective of size.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate philanthropic practices in the US wine industry, as prior research on charitable giving by wine industry participants is limited. Earlier studies on corporate philanthropy are inconclusive about the direction and the degree of community philanthropy on organizational effectiveness. There are also notable research gaps, including the lack of research into philanthropy in small businesses and the dominance of US studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper reviews the literature on corporate social responsibility and philanthropy, presents a series of propositions and a theoretical model, sets forth a research schema to investigate to what extent philanthropic activities are motivated by altruistic as well as strategic considerations across the global wine industry and reports preliminary findings from a sample of 100 US wine producers.\nFindings: In brief, 99 per cent of the wine businesses surveyed significantly engaged in altruistic behavior in their local communities, primarily helped local charities, donated at the median 150 cases each year, and those activities represented about 1 per cent of pre-tax profits, comparable to or above giving by other participants in other industries.\nResearch limitations/implications: As survey data were self-reported, empirical proof has yet to be obtained to support or refute the findings of this investigation. Comparisons to philanthropic practices in other wine regions of the world are not yet completed.\nPractical implications: Wine producers pursue community stewardship and maintain good corporate citizenship to create direct benefits apart from economic growth or jobs, but future research is needed to ascertain whether motivations are primarily altruistic or strategic.\nSocial implications: Communities embrace the presence of wine businesses to foster job creation and economic activity, but remain uncertain about the other community benefits.\nOriginality/value: This exploratory paper fills a major gap in understanding with respect to examining motives for giving and expected outcomes by wine industry participants.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Customer knowledge sharing, creativity and value co-creation: A triad model of hotels, corporate sales employees and their customers
|
[
"Employee creativity",
"Employee adaptiveness",
"Customer expertise",
"Customer knowledge sharing",
"Customer-perceived economic value",
"Organizational relationship orientation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the twenty-first century, the concept of service-centered marketing has guided the formation of a service science system based on service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008). From the perspective of S-D logic, service instead of goods is the basis of economic exchange (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). The operant resources of knowledge and skills are fundamental for competitive advantage. Furthermore, social and economic actors are resource integrators (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). This is the context of value creation in networks.\n2. Literature review, hypotheses and related model: This section provides a literature-based rationale for hypotheses that have to do with positive influences existing in an environment (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). The value of a customer knowledgeable about a product sharing that knowledge has been mentioned. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) state that customers can have rich purchasing experiences based on their knowledge of products or services and their interaction with enterprises and other customers. This implies that CE, which facilitates sharing worthwhile knowledge with an employee and thus with an enterprise, influences knowledge sharing. Influencing rather than causing knowledge sharing is referred to because what happens depends on a customer having knowledge worth sharing and an employee being prepared to tap into that knowledge. In other words, how much a customer thinks she/he knows about a product should affect knowledge sharing given circumstances are conducive.\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Analysis findings: 4.1 Demographics of respondents\n5. Conclusions, implications and limitation: 5.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to improve understanding of co-creation by focusing on customer knowledge sharing (CKS), which is something that can be influenced by organizational relationship orientation (ORO), employee adaptiveness (EA) and customer expertise (CE), and that influences employee creativity (EC) and customer-perceived economic value (CEV).\nDesign/methodology/approach: With subjects being conference and meeting organizers for hotel service, a survey was conducted in major Chinese cities. In the survey, high-star-rated hotels' corporate sales personnel provided data if a sales person got one of their customers to provide data. Only responses for hotels for which two employee-customer matched records were obtained could be used for analysis by using hierarchical linear modeling; so, 217 matched records from 48 hotels were processed.\nFindings: Accepting five hypotheses and having coefficients for control variables allow new insights into the importance of CKS. Insights regarding brand familiarity, employee seniority, etc. contribute to theory and improving research.\nPractical implications: Action can include fostering benefit from CE, nurturing EA and supporting ORO. Action can be recruiting and training employees with special considerations to their level and use of EA that facilitates acquiring valuable knowledge from customers. For researchers, practical implications relate to improving modeling and recognizing new research.\nOriginality/value: This study provides new findings on ORO, EA and CE affecting CKS, as well as showing relationships of CKS with EC and CEV. Coefficients of control variables yield insights beyond control that contribute to theory and to identifying new research. Examining response distributions highlights analysis issues, suggesting avenues for new research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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(Un)Sanctioned: young adult literature as meaningful sponsor for writing teacher education
|
[
"Teacher education",
"Young adult literature",
"Writing pedagogy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Researchers in teacher education document the numerous benefits of incorporating young adult literature (YAL) into teacher education coursework. YAL provides a platform for discussing a range of issues that adolescents (and, by proxy, teachers) experience and negotiate, including diversity, social justice, disability, sexuality, bullying and more (Pytash et al., 2013). Teacher educators (TEs) have been less concerned, to date, with how youth are represented as readers and writers in these texts and the implications for pre-service teachers (PSTs) learning about young people as writers. Brandt's (1998) work on literacy sponsors - including those objects, persons, and experiences that support or regulate literacy acquisition - helps frame the present inquiry. This article emerges out of a conviction that YAL serves as an important and overlooked sponsor for PSTs learning how to teach writing. We examine the writing and literacy practices of youth in select contemporary YAL texts, especially how and why literate activity is sponsored, negotiated or occluded by teachers and schools (Brandt, 1998). We present two case studies of contemporary YAL - Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero and The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy by Kate Hattemer - featuring youth as writers inside and outside educational institutions. Our analysis and reflection were guided by the following research questions:\nYoung adult literature and teacher education: There exists a wealth of scholarship on YAL and teacher education. Some scholars have discussed using YAL with PSTs to help them develop a \"youth lens\" and learn about adolescence to create instructional practices (Petrone and Sarigianides, 2017). Falter (2016) used YAL in a teacher education course to help PSTs reflect on and revise their negative assumptions and stereotypes about adolescent learners. Others have used YAL in teacher preparation to facilitate discussions of and learning about issues such as bullying and suicide (Pytash, 2013), race (Glenn, 2012), perspective recognition and empathetic reading (Cook et al., 2017), queer pedagogies (Bach, 2016), LGBTQ literature (Greathouse and Diccio, 2016; Malo-Juvera, 2015), social justice teaching and positionalities (Cook and Bissonnette, 2016; Glasgow, 2001), global perspectives on diversity (Duran, 2015), death and dying (Sams and Cook, 2018), and so forth. TEs have also used YAL in self-studies of their teacher preparation programs and courses (Parsons, 2006) and to critically reflect on their own teaching (Miller, 2008). Likewise, Shanahan and Dallacqua (2018) used a critical literacy approach to YAL to help PSTs consider how to engage their future students in questioning the texts and social issues that surround them. Bach et al. (2015) have used YAL and service learning to bring together teen readers and PSTs in field experience. Overall, YAL has been used in myriad ways in English teacher education to advance learning. Our project explores how YAL can help PSTs think critically and carefully about their future writing classrooms and youth as writers.\nWriting teacher preparation: Because we argue that YAL can contribute meaningfully to writing teacher education, we offer a brief overview of how PSTs are currently trained to become writing teachers. Providing focused instruction on teaching writing specifically can help PSTs reflect on how they define writing, how they view writing instruction as important for their future students and how their self-efficacy toward teaching writing develops (Hall, 2016). Johnson and Eubanks (2015) argued that to be successful teachers of writing, PSTs should experience a variety of instructional approaches and experiences within their communities of practice; have multiple opportunities to practice teaching writing; and continually reflect on these experiences. A large part of writing teacher preparation includes methods courses, where PSTs experience and reflect on writing instruction and evolve as teachers of writing. These experiences often include teacher modeling (Kaufman, 2009), reading like writers and examining instances and practices of writing (Morgan, 2010; Stockinger, 2007). Others (Kuehl, 2018) suggest the importance of professional learning communities in learning to teach writing. Scholarship (Colby and Stapleton, 2006; Kelley et al., 2007; Wake and Modla, 2010) also suggests the importance of PSTs' field experiences and other experiential opportunities to promote growth. The concepts and skills PSTs learn and acquire during writing teacher education have a significant impact on classroom practice (Grossman et al., 2000). Thus, it remains important to support PSTs in developing as rigorous, equitable, and ambitious writing teachers, which Kane (2016) suggests is rare in teacher preparation. Grisham and Wolsey (2011), for example, argued that writing teacher education (WTE) has long suffered because of a heavy focus on reading and literature instruction. Additionally, Tulley (2016) argued that writing methods courses often fail to integrate theory and practice - limiting the concepts and practices that PSTs transfer to internship and beyond.\nTheoretical framework: Our theoretical framework draws from English Education scholarship discussing settings of experience and the diverse learning opportunities - textual, experiential, conceptual, theoretical and practical - through which PSTs learn to teach. We then build on settings of experience by using vicarious learning to argue for an expanded definition of \"setting\" and \"experience\" to include the virtual classrooms and pedagogical spaces featured in YAL.\nMethods: Text selection\nFindings: In this section, we provide commentary on the research questions that guided our analysis, focusing on:\nImplications for practice: How might Gabi and Vigilante be meaningfully incorporated in writing teacher education courses? For Vigilante, English PSTs can conduct a character analysis of BradLee to determine the relationship among (and disjunctions between) who he says he is, who he appears to be, and who he is in reality, an approach that raises questions about the distance between stated literacy values and actual teaching practices. Reading Vigilante may help PSTs reflect on the (un)intentional ways teaching practices undermine and contradict philosophies of writing instruction - both in classes they observe and in their own teaching. For instance, after analyzing the distance between BradLee's stated values and practices, PSTs can similarly analyze the relationship between values and practices in field placement settings by observing how teachers talk about writing and compare these statements to the writing students actually do. To help PSTs provide writing instruction consistent with their values, TEs might use Vigilante to inspire the writing or revision of a philosophy of writing instruction statement and, subsequently, ask PSTs to note on lesson plans and other teaching materials how specific writing assignments align with their stated values and philosophies of writing pedagogy.\nConclusion: Both Vigilante and Gabi feature youth engaging in powerful literacy and writing practices across a range of modes to critically read and write their worlds. These particular texts - and other YAL featuring youth composing - offer TEs and PSTs opportunities for critical reflection on their evolving stances on literacy and writing instruction; identities as writing and literacy educators; and pedagogies that enable robust literate activity. While specific countries and regions have different requirements and practices, instances of internships, student teaching, and other practical induction experiences remain integral components of teacher education programs around the world (Howe, 2006). YAL offers a unique setting of experience that can be productively paired with more traditional field placements to complement WTE. The writing pedagogies represented in YAL offer opportunities for PSTs to reflect on their complicated roles as literacy sponsors, including the numerous decisions that regulate and facilitate student learning and composing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine youth literacy and writing practices in select, contemporary young adult literature (YAL), especially how and why literate activity is sponsored, negotiated or occluded by teachers and schools.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors position young adult fiction as case studies of youth composing in and out of school. Drawing on Stake's (1995) features of case study research in education, the authors present readings of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero and The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy by Kate Hattemer that highlight particular problems and insights about youth literacy practices that are worth extended examination and reflection.\nFindings: Both novels feature youth engaging in powerful literacy and writing practices across a range of modes to critically read and write their worlds. These particular texts - and other YAL featuring youth composing - offer teacher educators and pre-service teachers opportunities for critical reflection on their evolving stances on literacy instruction; identities as writing and literacy educators; and pedagogies that enable robust literate activity.\nOriginality/value: In the US educational context, teacher education programs are required to provide pre-service teachers numerous opportunities to observe and participate as teachers in public school classrooms. YAL offers a unique setting of experience that can be productively paired with more traditional field placements to complement pre-service writing teacher education. Reading YAL featuring youth composing can serve as a useful occasion of reflection on pedagogies that limit and/or make possible students' meaningful engagement with words and the world.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The influence of food trucks' service quality on customer satisfaction and its impact toward customer loyalty
|
[
"Food truck",
"SERVQUAL",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Customer loyalty"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Food truck is a change of road sustenance and has added to the imperatives of urban life crosswise over societies for a considerable length of time and this business as of now turns into the overall business pattern. The food truck industry has grown for an average of 9.3% per year since 2012 (Bandaru and Venkateshwarlu, 2017), in which it can be seen anywhere in Malaysia (Nuur Hafizah et al., 2019). Food trucks satisfy consumers' expectations as it blends a variety of food options with an appealing and innovative marketing model. Since its specific concept, the food truck has grown to be popular and it gives terrific opportunity and earnings (Mokhtar et al., 2017). In order to run their business, food trucks provide several quality services to customers that can enhance repeated customer visit to their food trucks.Quality is one of the facets of almost all service items most desired by the customers. High and exclusive quality is a way of attracting customers and making them loyal for a long time to come (Wieslaw, 2009). Several earlier studies and writers have pointed out that the definition of quality in service varies from that existing in the goods market. Service quality means the willingness of a service provider to serve consumers in an effective way from which can boost market efficiency (Ramya et al., 2019).After broad research studies on service quality, Parasuraman et al. (1985) discovered five measurements customers use while assessing service quality. They named their overview instrument service quality (SERVQUAL) (Niveen, 2015). SERVQUAL scale was initially created by Parasuraman (1985) by contrasting desires and recognitions on ten service quality angles. This scale was additionally related to five measurements of service quality to be specific tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy (Nguyen, 2015).Tangibles concern the presence of hardware, physical facilities, correspondence materials and work force. This measurement means the appearance and inside of the association. It signals quality and passes on the picture of a firm (Parasuraman et al., 1998). Reliability comprises of the correct request satisfaction, exact records, precise statement, directly in the bill, results are more exact than commissions and keep the guarantee of services (Abdel, 2015). Responsiveness is readiness to react to the desires or needs of the customers' help and quick services (Rasyida et al., 2016a, b). Assurance incorporates the learning, politeness, aptitudes and trust-value of the workers, just as free from peril, hazard or uncertainty (Gronroos, 1990). According to Ananth (2011), empathy gives singular consideration and simple activity time for individual consideration and comprehends the particular needs of customers. A thorough investigation of a good service-based business surprisingly shows that the willingness of service providers to incorporate tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy effectively in their daily work can have a significant impact on positive customer outcomes, particularly customer satisfaction (Azman and Yusrizal, 2016).The choice of product to satisfy precise needs relies on the perception of the customers, approximately the product service capable of satisfying their needs. According to Jamal et al. (2018), service quality is turning into one of the maximum essential factors inside the subject of offerings because the customers are now more privy to the level of the service they get which has led the organization to give extra interest to the extent of the service they provide to their customers so that it will be able to get extra satisfaction that could result in better loyalty from customers.High-quality service is part of customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction will result in customer loyalty which influences repurchase intentions (Choi and Chu, 2001; Wicks, 2009) and decreases purchaser switching to different shops (Wallace et al., 2004). Satisfied customers have a higher probability of repeating purchases in time Zeithaml et al. (2006), of suggesting that others attempt the wellspring of satisfaction, and of ending up less responsive to the competitor's contributions (Ghafoor and Rehman, 2014).Meeting customer demand and desire is the businesses' primary target resulting in satisfaction and satisfied customers with their paying product or service level. In general, although there is an absence of accord about the conceptualization of the service quality-satisfaction relationship, service quality is a precursor to customer satisfaction and is considered as a predominant position in ongoing research, particularly in the service setting industry (Ngo and Nguyen, 2016). According to Cosmas (2019), service quality and customer satisfaction have for quite some time been recognized as playing an essential role for progress and endurance in the present competitive market.In order to satisfy the consumer and build customer loyalty to acquire new productive customer, service quality dimension has become a very important issue. Customers' loyalty toward food trucks' service can be only achieved when the customer is satisfied toward particular needs.Research framework\nMethods: Participants\nResults: Descriptive analysis\nDiscussion: The purpose behind this research was to recognize the connection between service quality toward customer satisfaction of food trucks and its impact toward customer loyalty. The research showed that among the five dimensions of service quality on food truck tangibles, reliability and assurance have positive connection toward customer satisfaction. Whereas the other two service quality attributes such as responsiveness and empathy do not have the significant connection toward customer satisfaction.According to Ahmed and Nawaz (2010), service quality is simply the execution of service and that it is a management operation, thus satisfaction represents the interaction of consumers with the service. Positive expectations indicate that the customer will be associated or emotionally committed to the product or service, and negative expectations will repel the customer. If the relationship is unfavorable, there is a better risk of switching the customer to another product (Fraering and Minor, 2013). According to Rahman (2012), tangibles component has the huge association with customer satisfaction. Barber and Scarcelli (2010) has characterized the tangibles component of service as physical environmental quality which allude to work force, appearance of the physical facilities, information materials and other physical highlights work to give service in the service facility. According to Kincaid et al. (2010), \"servicescape\" comprises of various tangibles components such as ambient conditions; spatial layout and usefulness which influence satisfaction level of customer and indirectly impact customer loyalty.Other than that, this research also shows that there is a positive connection between reliability and customer satisfaction on food truck. According to Parasuram et al. (1985) reliability element of service quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Miklos, Hossam, Janos, Jozsef and Judith (2019) characterized reliability as the capacity to do and play out the required service for customer reliably, precisely, and as guaranteed and the ability to treat issues looked by customers. Reliability as a service factor guarantees that the customers are satisfied with the opportune and privilege services. This additionally prompts expanded trust in service suppliers and loyalty (Kumar, 2018). Thus, the reliability dimension is a significant factor to meet customers' satisfaction on food truck business.Moreover, the dimension assurance shows supportive associations between customer satisfactions of food truck. According to Chowdhary and Prakash (2007), assurance is a vital measurement in the service quality which demonstrates that the higher assurance will prompt the higher service quality and will in general increase customer satisfaction. Lo, Osman, Ramayah and Rahim (2010) discovered that assurance is measurably huge and has relationship with customer satisfaction. Therefore, the assurance element in service quality directly affects the customer satisfaction on food truck.On the other hand, in this research the service quality dimension responsiveness and empathy of the food truck is not significant with customer satisfaction. These are where food truck staff need to work to improve customer view of service quality. Responsiveness is the auspicious response toward the customers need. The previous research proposed that responsiveness has relationship yet no noteworthy impact on customer satisfaction. It can be concluded that responsiveness is a need in giving quality service yet not an absolute necessity (Jayaraman, Shankar & Hor, 2010). Thus, it shows that the counter staffs in food truck needs to be persistently prepared with legitimate ability of giving care and brief help.There is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The degree of customer satisfaction will increment fundamentally when the customers end up in agreeable and exceptionally fulfilled from the product or service where as though the customer loyalty is influenced adversely through product or service then the degree of customer satisfaction drops in a rapid way (Nirbhay, 2016). According to Jefry and Maskarto (2019), the more prominent the satisfaction got by customers and the higher the value of customer loyalty, the more prominent the benefits the organization will get. Additionally, Selvakumar (2015) acknowledged the impact of the standard of service on customer satisfaction on the basis that if a customer receives the level of service they deserve their level of loyalty will increase and the organization's reputation will have a profound effect.Therefore, this research shows that when a food truck customer is highly satisfied then there is an influence in customer loyalty which can benefit the food truck operations. By maintaining a loyal customer, higher customer satisfaction is directly related. The service quality is the aspect that connects customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Siddiqi, 2010). It shows that the food truck vendors have provided a truck which visually appeals to the consumer to attract the consumer attention toward the food truck and provide a service to the customer on a right time, on a consistent basis with error free. However the food truck vendors have to improve on providing representation of customer service accessible and respond quickly toward customer.\nConclusions: Service quality can be characterized as the discrepancy between customer service standards and actual service. When expectations are higher than performance, perceived quality is less than acceptable and therefore consumer disappointment exists which eventually decreases customer loyalty toward a product or service. Customer satisfaction is one of the main goals of any company. Organizations understand that it is more profitable to keep current customers than to win new ones to replace those lost. Therefore, it is crucial for all the food truck vendors to understand the importance of service quality that satisfied customer needs which influence the loyalty of the customer. Thus, this research has revealed the influence of food trucks service quality on customer satisfaction and its impact toward customer loyalty. The SERVQUAL model was used to measure customer satisfaction which has five dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.Based on the results obtained, it is known that among the five dimensions of service quality only three dimensions highly satisfied the customers, they are tangibles, reliability and assurance. This shows that the physical image of the food trucks' service like physical facilities, how the service being performed and also courtesy and knowledge of the food trucks' employees are very important to transfer confidence and trust to customers, which then will influence them to be loyal. Moreover the other two dimensions of service quality which is responsiveness and empathy are least satisfied by the customers in which the food truck vendors need to improvise in willingness to provide timely service to customers and provide the customers with individualized service.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Service quality has been highlighted as the vital element in fulfilling customers' needs, which contributes to the customers' evaluation on the services given. As food truck business is increasingly popular in Malaysia, it is important for the food trucks' service provider to ensure that their service quality meets the standard to satisfy the customers in order to build customer loyalty. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between food trucks' service quality with customer satisfaction and its impact toward customer loyalty. The customer service was measured using service quality (SERVQUAL) attributes (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quantitative study was conducted to examine the influence of food trucks' service quality on customer satisfaction and its impact toward customer loyalty. A total of 100 food truck customers have been randomly selected to answer the self-administered questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using frequency, descriptive, reliability, Pearson correlation and regression analysis.\nFindings: Findings indicated that three out of five attributes of service quality have significant relationships toward customer satisfaction. They are tangibles (b = 0.225, p < 0.05), reliability (b = 0.349, p < 0.05) and assurance (b = 0.311, p < 0.05). Moreover, the customer loyalty (b = 0.643, p < 0.01) has a significant relationship with customer satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: Service quality can be characterized as the discrepancy between customer service standards and actual service. When expectations are higher than performance, perceived quality is less than acceptable and therefore consumer disappointment exists which eventually decreases customer loyalty toward a product or services. The study suggested that physical image of the food trucks' service like physical facilities, how the service being performed and also courtesy and knowledge of the food trucks' employees are very important to transfer confidence and trust to customers, which then will influence them to be loyal.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Research to practice: a disaster behavioral health framework
|
[
"Behavioural health",
"Disaster response",
"Evidence‐based practice",
"Stress and trauma"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Disasters can cause severe stress for individuals and communities impairing their abilities to adapt and forcing them to rely heavily on their coping resources to continue functioning effectively in their life roles (Norris et al., 1994). Complicating the situation is our biologically hard-wired response to fear that involves the shutting down of parts of the brain that control thinking, problem solving, judging, and planning as energy is directed toward ensuring survival (Van der Kolk, 1994). As these brain functions shut down, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage changes, adapt, and meet the new demands caused by the disaster in healthy ways (Reyes, 2006). The increase in the number of physical, cognitive, and emotional demands tends to have a ripple effect (Masten and Obradovich, 2008) and the routine everyday aspects of a healthy-functioning society are disrupted as large numbers of individuals may struggle to contribute to society in routine ways (Tierney et al., 2001). Fortunately, experience has demonstrated that people who are naturally resilient rise to the occasion, and at least initially, are able to come together and meet the new challenges posed by disaster. Within the disaster behavioral health field this process is often referred to as the \"heroic\" or \"honeymoon\" phase following an event (US Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.).\nReducing the effects of extreme stress: Increased recognition of the effects of extreme stressors has prompted researchers to explore how to best decrease stress levels and promote adaptive functioning. Mental health professionals have been identified as key players in the development and implementation of programs and interventions aimed at reducing stress following disasters (Reyes, 2006). Fundamental to this role is the promotion of adaptive functioning by supporting and equipping responders to address fear and distress and support indigenous resilience. Critical to this process is the swift dissemination and implementation of psychological resources (Chandra et al., 2010), as well as the provision of interventions that are likely to increase resilience and recovery among those who lack resistance and resiliency factors (Norris and Stevens, 2008).Hobfoll et al. (2007) describe five evidence-informed intervention principles that promote stress-resistant and resilient outcomes in individuals and communities. Recognized internationally as a framework for disaster behavioral response, these essential components have been included in a variety of consensus documents based on the findings and recommendations of a number of expert panels (Watson et al., 2011). The presence of these elements (safety, calming, connectedness, efficacy, and hope) have been correlated with positive outcomes including increased abilities to successfully decrease stress levels and function adaptively following exposure to extreme stress (Hobfoll et al., 2007). The five essential components are described below.Promotion of a sense of safety\nBridging the gap: implementing the five elements in practice: While Hobfoll et al.'s (2007) article is noted for its synthesis of expert opinions, related fields of research, and experience, there is little support for the application of hope, safety, calming, connectedness, and efficacy in practice (Norris and Stevens, 2008).However, the five principles have been touted internationally as a valuable framework for disaster response and it is suggested that effective disaster behavioral health interventions include the promotion of safety, calming, connectedness, efficacy, and hope intentionally at every level (Watson et al., 2011). Norris and Stevens (2008) note that the five elements are not reserved only for traditional psychological interventions (i.e. counseling, therapy, coaching), but are promoted within well-functioning social systems and structures. Essentially, the ingredients of a healthy-functioning community, combined with intentional efforts to promote these five elements will result in more resilient communities with a greater capacity to effectively cope with and adapt to stressors (Norris and Stevens, 2008; Norris et al., 2008).Further, these five components provide the foundation for Psychological First Aid (PFA; National Child Traumatic Stress Network and National Center for PTSD, 2005), an evidence-informed response program developed by disaster behavior health experts (Bonanno et al., 2010). Research indicates that when used as an early intervention, PFA can greatly reduce the incidence rate of PTSD following exposure to disaster (e.g. Galea et al., 2002, 2003). That said, how these principles are applied, what types of interventions are delivered by whom and for whom, and the goals and desired outcomes depends on the specific context in which PFA is delivered (Forbes et al., 2011).The five elements provide a foundation for behavioral health disaster response planning; however, a means by which these elements might be specifically advanced into practice and how application of these elements might be incorporated into existing public health plans and behavioral health intervention programs is needed. Benedek and Fullerton (2007) identify three key strategies to promote hope, safety, calming, efficacy, and connectedness in society. These strategies (dissemination, delivery, and prioritization/validation) can help guide and direct future prevention and intervention practices. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is no evaluation or critical analysis of the model in the disaster response literature.Dissemination\nImplementation of the five essential themes in Colorado: Our proposed guidelines derive from the work of our group of behavioral health professionals within the Emergency Preparedness and Response Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. We have made conscious efforts to translate the five themes into practice via dissemination, delivery, and prioritization/validation. Our work provides ideas and initiatives ripe for others' adaptation and serves as an initial roadmap to guide disaster behavioral health professionals.Dissemination\nTapping into federal funding streams: Tying our activities to the objectives of the federally funded Hospital Preparedness Program has allowed us to develop community assets through training and system development linked to hospitals. As a result, hospitals know whom to contact in the event that they need additional assistance to support survivors following extreme stressors. The local connection piece of this equation is critical. Connecting local behavioral health responders, teams, and resources with hospitals builds a sense of community efficacy in knowing that the community possesses resources to address the psychosocial impacts of emergencies and disasters.We have also integrated our work with the federally funded Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program activities. The PHEP grant provides prioritized objectives, and we align and organize our work activities to complete those objectives that are focussed on supporting local public health agencies' preparedness and response activities.Supported by this funding, we currently provide options for local public health agencies to select specific deliverables that will promote the five elements based on what is best suited for their population. It is important to note that the local communities do not use the language \"promoting hope,\" but rather they discuss the activities that involve those essential themes. An example of this dialogue involves local public health identifying and considering their community engagement activities (thereby promoting connectedness and efficacy) or their self-care strategies (thereby promoting calming, connectedness, and efficacy).Plan and policy integration\nConclusions and future directions: This paper articulates how behavioral health professionals at the state level are bridging the gap by translating research into practice to promote the five essential elements of hope, safety, calming, efficacy, and connectedness within the emergency response community (Hobfoll et al., 2007). Linking this work with the concepts of dissemination, delivery, and prioritization/validation (Benedek and Fullerton, 2007) clarifies how program activities are translated in the context of recommendations found in the literature. Our model provides a framework for other state governments in the USA, as well as other developed areas that seek to develop a modern disaster behavioral health approach.Our disaster behavioral health-related efforts in Colorado have focussed on decreasing stress and increasing adaptive functioning in individuals and communities impacted by disasters. Informed by the disaster behavioral health literature, our work has resulted in a variety of training and intervention programs that integrate and promote the dissemination, delivery, and validation of the five essential components. Moreover, we have established relationships with emergency medical services, emergency management personnel, and academia, as well as other key partners and stakeholders and have sought to plan for and provide multilayered supports and a range of services.A wealth of research and experience following a variety of recent natural and man-made disasters has fostered the development of a range of evidence-based and evidence-informed guidelines and strategies to support disaster behavioral health efforts (Watson et al., 2011). These advances have informed our work in Colorado to produce a framework that can be used by others charged with developing emergency preparedness and response plans. This initial step opens the door for the development and refinement of disaster behavioral response activities and potential for improved psychosocial outcomes for individuals and communities following a disaster. Continued growth in this area is contingent on progress towards key next steps.Clearly, one important next step is the evaluation of the disaster behavioral health efforts described in this paper. Although a good amount of anecdotal support has been gathered for these initiatives and practices, there has been no systematic evaluation of them to date. A comprehensive assessment system that can be used for actual behavior health disaster response efforts needs to be developed so that effectiveness and efficacy of these strategies can be evaluated. Evaluation of effectiveness should be broad and include individual, group, organizational, and community outcomes (Watson et al., 2011). Moreover, attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of the five elements in any given context should be tailored to the manner in which the intervention is operationalized and the specific outcomes it aims to achieve (Forbes et al., 2011).Perhaps the greatest support for the framework exists in its comparison with the traditional public health intervention approach. The public health approach of identifying a problem, identifying the cause of the problem, identifying proposed solutions to that problem, and then translating and evaluating identified solutions to the public complements the structure of this paper's proposed framework (Satcher and Higginbotham, 2008). Fostering hope, safety, connectedness, efficacy, and calming as identified by experts in the field (Norris and Stevens, 2008), present the most promising solutions to addressing the effects of extreme stress and have been incorporated in national and international consensus documents pertaining to disaster behavioral health interventions (Watson et al., 2011). The actions of dissemination, delivery, and prioritization/validation are the actions proposed to best translate these solutions to the general public. Clearly, wider adaptation of the theoretical framework and additional case studies are needed to expand the knowledge base in this area and foster the development and adaptation of the approach to better address the impact of disasters on individuals and communities and facilitate resilience and recovery. Using the proposed model to guide research and evaluation in this way can provide the basis for the creation of standards and guidelines. In addition, further work that delineates how to best integrate research related to the enhancement of social connectedness within social structures is needed. Identifying populations that lack social capital appears to be an important means in targeting social capital initiatives. However, little research focussed on the impact of the support of the enhancement of social capital has been conducted.To inform prioritization dialogue, community behavioral health surveillance could be used to identify primary concerns within the community. Ongoing work in this area has the potential to aid in the identification of the needs in the population at given times to best provide appropriate interventions. If we can identify the needs, it can help to prioritize most appropriate intervention and guide conversation about prioritizing the themes toward promoting the best outcomes.Promoting hope, safety, calming, efficacy, and connectedness, even in small doses across the emergency response field holds potential for bigger change. Promoting these components within existing practices and structures can lead to a cultural shift, whereby all response partners and social structures consider the impact of the five elements in reducing stress, and daily emergency response activities could contribute to healthier communities and health security. The ultimate outcome of these activities is a community with a high level of wellness and resiliency (Norris et al., 2009). The efforts made to date by disaster behavioral health professionals in Colorado have moved the field closer to realizing this outcome. Continued cross-discipline collaboration, research, and experience will further foster high levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life of individuals and communities impacted by disasters.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: - Research and experience following a variety of recent disasters has fostered the development of a range of disaster behavioral health interventions that can be used post-disaster. Consensus documents recommend that five guiding principles be used to inform intervention efforts. These five essential elements, a sense of safety, calming, efficacy, connectedness, and hope, appear critical to the fostering of adaptation and resilience in affected communities. This paper aims to examine the use of these principles in practice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Translating these five evidence-informed principles into practice requires dissemination, delivery and prioritizing and validation of the elements. Scholars identify actions for dissemination, delivery, and prioritization and validation, and this paper expands on the literature to identify processes that actualize the research into a framework for practice.\nFindings: - This article describes how disaster behavioral health professionals in Colorado have advanced these five principles into practice.\nOriginality/value: - While literature clearly dictates the importance of addressing the impacts of extreme stress on individuals and communities, there remains a gap to explain how to bridge the research and practice. These strategies included in this paper begin to bridge this gap and can be used by others charged with disaster planning and response to inform their practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
How do we deal with sepsis in the twenty-first century?
|
[
"Sepsis",
"Global burden",
"Clinical strategies",
"Management",
"Health care",
"Hospital management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite significant advances in health care provision, sepsis continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in rich and poor countries alike. Approximately 750 000 people die from sepsis in the USA annually at a cost of over $16bn (Angus et al., 2001). Furthermore, sepsis rates have been increasing by 8-13 percent per year with hospitalization for sepsis exceeding those for myocardial infarction (Hall et al., 2011). In low and middle income countries 50-68 percent of fatalities in children are the result of infectious diseases (Black et al., 2010; Lopez et al., 2006). It is estimated that 20-30 million cases of sepsis occur each year across the globe, with over six million cases of neonatal and early childhood sepsis and over 100,000 cases of maternal sepsis (Kissoon et al., 2011). From the clinical perspective, it is well known that the development of shock and organ dysfunction are directly related to poor outcomes from sepsis, hence the key recommendation for early administration of intravenous fluids and antibiotics, which has been shown to significantly reduce morbidity and mortality (Kumar et al., 2006).Apart from the nature of the disease, several factors have impeded effective responses to the problem. First, health care providers have grappled with the definition and stratification of sepsis for decades. The terms \"septicemia\", \"bacteremia\" and \"sepsis syndrome\" served to cloud rather than illuminate our understanding. In 1992 some clarity was reached when the SCCM/ACCP definitions for sepsis were adopted (Bone et al., 1992). The \"Surviving Sepsis Guidelines\" have prompted a surge in interest promoting evidence-based strategies to reduce the impact of sepsis (Dellinger et al., 2008). The guidelines are comprehensive and serve as a description of all aspects of care for the critically ill patient, with a focus on those with sepsis. Whilst there is good evidence for benefit from implementation of the guidelines (Levy et al., 2010), there has been variable application of the guideline for care of the critically ill. This has been the result of variability in knowledge, attitude and resources in developed countries (Reade et al., 2010). In low and middle income countries, there are major limitations in human resources and infrastructure precluding implementation of all the recommendations of the guidelines (Becker et al., 2009). Lastly, the guideline did not include considerations for the pediatric population. The net result has been an inconsistent response to sepsis from health care providers across the globe.A second key factor has been a lack of public awareness about sepsis. As much as 88 percent of people surveyed were unaware of the term \"sepsis\". This impacts on the time taken to respond to symptoms and the quest for medical attention. A clear lesson from all sepsis studies is the profound benefit from early effective treatment in reducing morbidity and mortality.Lastly, there is a paucity of data on the role of key stakeholders in addressing the problem of sepsis. Improving clinical practice and awareness among the public are key interventions to reducing the burden of this disease. The humanitarian, societal and economic consequences of this disease are substantive; solutions require concerted efforts from politicians, NGOs and professional societies.\nThe emergence of the GSA (Global Sepsis Alliance) and World Sepsis Day: In October 2010, 150 sepsis experts from 18 countries convened to form the GSA (see www.globalsepsisalliance.org). The mission of the organization is to address the needs of those with sepsis by clearly describing the problem of sepsis to the people and key stakeholders, to mobilize people and infrastructure to tackle the problem and to promote research and programs that will alter awareness and outcomes from sepsis. The group recognized the importance of creating political prominence before scientific transformation could achieve benefit; a mantra elegantly articulated by our colleagues in other fields including cancer (Mukherjee, 2010). The GSA was founded by three world federations, the International Sepsis Forum (ISF) and the Sepsis Alliance (SA); it now has 25 committed organizations.In March 2012, the GSA launched an ambitious initiative to drive World Sepsis Day (WSD; see www.world-sepsis-day.org) with the first day being September 13, 2012.Five targets were identified in the World Sepsis Declaration, which are:1. reducing sepsis incidence through prevention by at least 20 percent;2. improving survival for children and adults in all countries;3. raising public and professional awareness and understanding of sepsis;4. ensuring improved access to adequate rehabilitation services; and5. creating and maintaining sepsis incidence and outcomes databases.The initiative was a success on many fronts. The website received 132,000 hits (between March and September 2012) which compares favorably to World AIDS Day and World Cancer Day. More than a hundred events were held worldwide (from Beijing to Lima) with a primary goal of educating health care workers and the public about the devastation caused by this disease and well-described treatment strategies to improve outcomes from sepsis. These events were supported by policy makers, members of parliament, health care authorities and included coverage by national television and the press. Over 900 health care organizations representing more than 1,250 hospitals supported World Sepsis Day. The global involvement was reflected by representation of 93 countries, more than 1,000 individuals with over 170 professional societies involving all relevant medical fields. Perhaps the greatest achievement for the day was the solid bond that has been established between patient advocates, past victims of sepsis, health care professionals and policy makers. This relationship saw the realization of a key objective of the World Sepsis Day movement, which was to create awareness that sepsis is a responsibility for all of us: the general public, the health care community and political stakeholders.In the USA, several activities characterized the response to WSD. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a call to action to its membership in their August issue of AAP. Similarly the Journal of Critical Care called for improved awareness among the public and professional communities for the early recognition and treatment of sepsis. Nature Medicine highlighted the difficulties with designing trials for sepsis, limited application of the Surviving Sepsis Guidelines and the major impact of sepsis on morbidity and mortality. Two major events were held in New York and Houston: in New York there was a tribute to healthcare professionals and individuals promoting sepsis awareness and a celebration of the efforts being made to promote awareness and education, whilst in Houston the focus was on informing people about prevention, early recognition and treatment of sepsis. At other centers, there were local within-institution discussions and presentations about sepsis to health care personnel and the public. An unmeasured benefit of the initiative was the fostering of new relationships among health care workers, interest groups and government agencies that share the common interest in modulating sepsis.\nClinical governance and sepsis: how do we move forward?: Efforts to reduce the burden of sepsis must embrace all components of the problem. To begin with, creating a greater level of public awareness must be a goal for organizations such as the GSA as well as public health institutions and government agencies. Delays in accessing care on the part of the patient must be addressed as a priority.Whilst we are surrounded by a plethora of data, there is a disconnection in the implementation of this data to practice. Improving safety and outcomes from critical illness (including sepsis) requires careful attention to systems of care (Pronovost and Bo-Linn, 2012). The critically ill patient represents a complex milieu in which attention to all elements of care is vital if we are to impact on outcome. There is little value in improving intravenous fluid administration but failing to administer antibiotics simultaneously. Addressing this requires education as a first step to ensure that the evidence for practice is well known to health care providers. In addition improving systems of care requires both the implementation of protocols and guidelines as well as steps to ensure that the behavior of care providers has changed consistent with current evidence. Non-compliance with current guidelines is a common and pervasive problem that must be addressed. This requires creating a culture of evidence-based practice and the adoption of the team approach to critical care practice. Fundamental to the culture is making the team believe that the best outcome will be achieved if the team shares a commitment to this goal. Research imperatives in this regard should include determining reasons for non-adoption of current best practices, testing strategies for creation and sustaining a team culture and review of outcomes of implementing evidence-based practice.In resource-limited settings it is impractical to implement current guidelines for sepsis because the guidelines assume minimum human capacity and infrastructure. There is a need for education of health care providers regarding best critical care practices within the constraints of resource limitations. Modification of the guidelines and novel approaches to managing sepsis in these circumstances are vital research areas.There are several avenues being explored that offer prospects for earlier diagnosis of sepsis. These include more specific markers for sepsis and better identification of the causative organism. Since early detection is the key to effective treatment, this area of work is likely to improve outcomes.Since the creation of the first intensive care units, the quest for highly effective treatments for sepsis has been unrewarding. Whilst the prospects for identification of novel therapeutic options are low, research efforts should be focused on implementing what we know rather than the quest for the \"magic bullet\".\nConclusion: Sepsis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in all countries. The burden to society is also substantive based on the economic impact, loss of function of victims of sepsis and the diversion of health care resources. The GSA and WSD initiatives are key to promoting solutions to sepsis. Creating public and health care worker awareness are a crucial first step. The success of protocols and guidelines is dependent on their implementation by committed care-givers and the presence of systems that ensure they may be applied. Human capacity and infrastructure limitations in low-income countries are major factors in sepsis care. Lastly, the development of novel diagnostic tools for sepsis will likely result in earlier, more effective treatment, while the quest for novel therapeutic agents is unlikely to succeed.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to outline the problem of sepsis and a global initiative to reduce the burden of this disease.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This is a summary description of the strategy being applied by the Global Sepsis Alliance (GSA) and its partners to deal with sepsis.\nFindings: - The paper outlines the problem of sepsis, primary goals of the GSA, early indicators of the outcome from initiatives and proposes strategies for the future. The key initiative was WSD (World Sepsis Day), which succeeded in creating public and stakeholder awareness via the use of focused and informal meetings, use of the media and the internet.\nPractical implications: - Tackling the problem of sepsis requires a two pronged approach that creates public and stakeholder awareness that prompts action as well as focused research efforts that address the key clinical challenges in sepsis.\nSocial implications: - The importance of community education and support for initiatives that change attitudes and behavior are highlighted.\nOriginality/value: - The proposed initiatives for sepsis that have been implemented as outlined in this paper are novel for the field and have proven to be successful. On-going supports for such initiatives are warranted.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Do perceived CSR initiatives enhance customer preference and loyalty in casinos?
|
[
"Branding",
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Customer loyalty",
"Responsibility",
"Service industry",
"Brand preference",
"Relationship marketing",
"Consumer behavior",
"Casinos",
"CSR initiatives",
"Premium customers",
"Macau"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Being capable and doing good have been very important for business corporations throughout history. Contemporary developments in these concepts have led to what is now coined as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and is being paid close attention (Schmeltz and Denmar, 2012). CSR has been an important research area for more than three decades, and has evolved from executives' idiosyncratic philanthropic activities to widespread acceptance as a valuable component of stakeholder management and incorporation into strategic performance models (Kolodinsky et al., 2010). Engaging in CSR behaviors is prevalent across various types of businesses in different industries and countries (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2009; Singh et al., 2008). Corporations increasingly integrate CSR programs into their business strategies in efforts to generate branding benefits (Hoeffler and Keller, 2002). Sen and Bhattacharya (2001) have pointed out that these efforts can be effective by pointing out CSR's impact on buying intention and stating that the strength of the latter depends on consumer's support of social causes in which a company invests. Kolodinsky et al. (2010) found that customers' positive attitudes toward corporate social activities could affect their perceptions of and behaviors toward brands. Critics argue that these CSR initiatives are not directed toward fulfilling moral obligations per se, and that they are better recognized as a corporate social agenda that is used as a strategic imperative to improve the corporate image and to placate pressure groups, especially in stigmatized industries such as casinos (Porter and Kramer, 2006). As such, this study refers to CSR initiatives as customer perceptions of a firm's efforts in fulfilling its obligations toward a society and its stakeholders; rather than the actual CSR activities that a firm implements.\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: It is particularly important before embarking on the current study to understand CSR classification. Carroll (1999, p. 283) delineated the CSR construct by stating, \"the social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical and discretionary (philanthropic) expectations that society has of organizations\". This definition has become fairly widely accepted in the literature (Mandhachitara and Poolthong, 2011; Mohr et al., 2001), with an emphasis on four principle types of responsibilities: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic (Matten and Crane, 2005). Maignan et al. (1999) defined social responsibility as the degree to which firms assume economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities toward their stakeholders. According to Aguilera et al. (2007), CSR is an activity that demonstrates concern for both customers and stakeholders through socially responsible activities. CSR activities can take many forms, such as diversity initiatives, recycling programs, the use of green materials, support of community events and donations of money to charitable causes (Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001). These CSR initiatives are also prevalent in the casino industry and not only do they improve a casino's brand image but they also help in attracting employees and leads to better financial performance (Vong and Wong, 2013). To many casino operators, CSR is mandatory because many of them are listed in the stock market and are required to comply with a set of regulations and moral obligations. Yet, firms in stigmatized industries also realize the role of CSR on customers and other stakeholders, as it is often utilized as part of a marketing campaign and serves as an avenue to mitigate harm to the society, as security to placate legal and moral concerns in order to continue their license to operate, and as a marketing communication channel to promote a company's reputation and brand image (Porter and Kramer, 2006).\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Measurements\n4. Results: The results indicate that the overall model for each regressed equation has a good fit with a highly significant F value and satisfactory R2 (between 0.310 and 0.510) and adjusted R2 (between 0.308 and 0.490). All variance inflationary factor values of independent variables in this model are less than 3.0; therefore, no significant multicollinearity problem exists. Regression analyses were used to test the impact of perceptions associated with perceived CSR initiatives and brand preference on loyalty intention. The results are illustrated in Table IV, where the two perceived CSR variables and brand preference produce significant effects on loyalty intention. Between the two perceived CSR factors, CSR to stakeholders displayed a stronger influence on loyalty intention (b = 0.486, p < 0.001) than CSR to society (b = 0.377, p < 0.001). The results indicated that H1, H2 and H3 are all supported.\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate how perceptions associated with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence customers' preference and loyalty in a controversial consumer market. The mediating effect of brand preference between perceived CSR initiatives and customer loyalty is also examined.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology in the current study involves the use of questionnaire surveys delivered to a convenience sample in the city of Macau in 2012. A total of 616 valid samples were collected among casino players in a high bet limit area in six major casinos. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses formulated for carrying the study forward.\nFindings: The findings indicated that customers' brand preference can be enhanced by their perceptions on CSR. Two CSR initiatives (stakeholders and society) significantly increase loyalty intention, although to varying degrees. The impact of CSR on stakeholders has a stronger influence on customers' brand preference. Another important finding of the current study is the fact that brand preference is a partial mediator of perceived CSR initiatives and customer loyalty.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study verified the relationship among CSR initiatives perception, brand preference and loyalty intention in the context of the Macau gaming industry. Perceived CSR initiatives enhance customer loyalty. Additionally, this study found a partial mediating effect of brand preference between CSR perception and customer loyalty.\nPractical implications: Customer loyalty can be enhanced with companies' appropriate investments in social responsibilities. Although a socially responsible brand image of a company is not guaranteed to be a competitive advantage that attracts more premium customers, there is a general consensus that it may result in the latter with appropriate CSR strategies involving the greatest attention directed toward improving stakeholders' interests. From the marketing perspective, retaining premium customers with a higher brand preference level is a key to both long-term competitiveness and profitability.\nOriginality/value: This study investigates how premium customers' perceived CSR initiatives of a casino influence their loyalty intention, and also examines how brand preference, as a mediator, influences the relationship between perceived CSR and loyalty intention. Extending the realm of CSR study to understand the linkage between CSR and customer behaviors is also important because multiple theories predict different benefits, and assessing the value of CSR, therefore, requires multiple approaches. Finally, evidence from the research is significant for researchers and practitioners, especially when working on conflicting issues.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The vision thing at the BBC: Director-General looks to the periphery for the "next big thing"
|
[
"Strategic planning",
"Predictive process",
"Organizational change"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Just before Mark Thompson took up his new job as BBC Director-General he walked into a small electronics store and saw a small hand-held high-definition camera on sale for a low price. He immediately recognized that the device represented the future of amateur news filming and that the BBC needed to understand it better.\nThe BBC does not focus entirely on its immediate business environment: In such ways, Mark Thompson is ensuring that the BBC does not focus entirely on its immediate business environment - complicated enough though that is, since it embraces markets, customers, competitors, regulations and technological change. He is trying to detect, interpret and act on important but weak and ambiguous signals of fresh threats or new opportunities emerging on the periphery of the BBC's usual business environment. He is attempting to make the BBC less vulnerable, in the long-term, to rivals who may see and take advantage of these early signals sooner.At the periphery, the BBC, like other major organizations, needs to monitor other industries, remote markets, theoretical research, exotic business models and arcane demographic data that may, at first sight, appear to have little relevance to the organization. Research in the 1980s into the development of personal computers, rather than the mainframe computers that had dominated until then, may have seemed to have little relevance to a national broadcaster running television and radio stations and with a publishing arm. But out of this research came the reality of a computer in (almost) every home, and the internet a few years later. Not by coincidence, the BBC is now a national and international leader in providing internet content for a wide-range of age groups and interests.Mark Thompson has simultaneously ensured that, while the BBC scans the broad periphery, it is not overwhelmed and its attention is not diffused. Thus, the organization is paying particular attention to the demands and opportunities of the digital age - the time, in the not-too-distant future, when almost everyone in the UK will have equal access to portable and personalized digital services on demand, and the audience is no longer simply the passive receiver of content but also its co-creator.The BBC has also tapped into \"cool hunters\" - people who are among the first to spot new trends - to feed observations into the creative production process. Its chief-technology officer often visits parts of Asia that have already adopted aspects of the digital world that the BBC is developing in the west.\nLessons from the periphery: Several principles can help leaders to manage how their organizations monitor their peripheral business environment:* Peripheral vision is more about anticipation than prediction. The signals are often weak and may be contradictory. Leaders should ask their managers for assurances that the organization has systems and procedures in place to deal with the unknown and unexpected, rather than asking their managers to give accurate predictions about the future. In this context, companies like Shell and Procter & Gamble make good use of such tools as trend analysis, scenario planning, war gaming, role-playing and designing monitoring systems.* The problem is not lack of data, but lack of good questions. Too much information often prevents managers from seeing the true picture. The right guiding questions will direct the organization's attention to the places that matter, while filtering out meaningless noise.* Scan actively, but with an open mind, because the periphery will not always come to you. Passive scanning does have an important role to play in peripheral vision, but organizations need to explore the periphery through directed hypotheses as well as undirected journeys into the unknown. Active scanning is not a one-off or annual event; it has to be an ongoing process that draws on a wide range of techniques and approaches.* Use multiple perspectives to understand the periphery better. Scanning the periphery should involve different people with diverse views and using a wide range of techniques to collect information. The resulting differences in viewpoints, as well as multiple hypotheses, can help to illuminate different parts of the picture.* When catching glimpses from the periphery, probe before jumping. Managers should not jump to hasty conclusions. Rather, they should entertain various hypotheses, and look for both confirming and disconfirming evidence.* Balancing peripheral and focal vision is a central leadership challenge. Resources and attention devoted to the periphery are often taken away from investments in the focal area. Organizations therefore need to strike the right balance between focal and peripheral vision, based on the needs of the organization and its environment.* Respond to the challenge of knowledge management. Somewhere in the organization is probably someone who knows about weak but potentially important signals of changes on the periphery. The organization as a whole must be able to capture this person's insights. This is a classic challenge of knowledge management.\nNote: This review is based on \"Leading the vigilant organization\", by Day and Schoemaker (2006), in Strategy & Leadership. The article puts forward, in a clear and concise manner, the view that most organizations lack the capacity to detect, interpret and act on the weak but important signals of fresh threats or new opportunities that emerge on their periphery of their usual business environment, and suggests how they can develop this capability. The authors present particularly useful guiding principles to help leaders to monitor their peripheral business environment more effectively.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Suggests how organizations can develop the ability to detect, interpret and act on important but weak signals of fresh threats and new opportunities that emerge on the periphery of their usual business environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Offers a programme that organizations can put into place to become more vigilant. Explains the role of leaders in improving the peripheral vision of an organization.\nFindings: - Shows how the BBC uses peripheral-vision programmes to improve its understanding of the changing environment.\nPractical implications: - Stresses that peripheral vision is more about anticipation than prediction.\nOriginality/value: - Presents lessons that can help leaders to implement a programme of monitoring, evaluating and responding to important events on the periphery of their normal business environment.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Developing the entrepreneurial skills of farmers: some myths explored
|
[
"Farms",
"Entrepreneurship",
"Attitudes",
"Social change"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Hoggart et al. (1995) note how we proclaim the virtues of the countryside and submerge ourselves in the cultural symbolism to so ennoble its character that the reality can bear little relationship to sentiment and imagery. But what we know, and think of as the rural, is essentially agricultural; the classic figure on the rural landscape is the farmer. Yet Hoggart et al. (1995), also note that the most striking feature about agriculture in Europe is its relative decline. In examining the rural in this way we can recognise that the presence of farmers on the land is a necessary part of the social and economic rural fabric on which the positional and cultural good of rurality is painted. The economic changes, which beset the European countryside, the dramatic rises in agricultural productivity, globalisation and exposure to world markets have impacted on the social. Farming, especially farming in marginal areas, is barely viable; farms have consolidated; farm workers have left to better jobs in the cities, so the agricultural landscape is at risk of losing the classic figure of the farmer. One solution that has been offered for this social problem is that farmers diversify, that they set up businesses which can augment their farm income and allow them to continue to live on the land.It is this \"solution\" of farmers becoming entrepreneurs that is the focus of our paper. Our research question is compellingly simple; can we teach farmers to be entrepreneurial? However, like many simple questions the answers are much more complex. Our literature review demonstrates that entrepreneurship appears to contain two distinctive and very different categories of activities. The first is, broadly speaking, those managerial skills that are required to start and run a business effectively. The second category is much harder to define, but can be generally described as entrepreneurial attitudes. Both seem important, but whilst the former can be taught, the latter group is much more problematic. Indeed a good argument can be made that many farmers are already excellent managers. In their economic role as price takers, they have developed some outstanding competencies in making the most of their assets. However the role of price taker, in isolated circumstances, and the focus on husbanding resources, may be the very conditions which militate against innovation, risk taking and the leadership which seem to typify entrepreneurial attitudes.The objective of our paper is not to provide a neat, concise and normative formula for teaching entrepreneurship to farmers. Rather it is about how we ourselves can develop a fuller understanding of the nature of the skills that farmers need to become entrepreneurial. We do this by unpicking, deconstructing if you like, the assumptions that underlie and underpin the rhetoric. In the empirical part of the paper we present an \"interesting\" case study of a farmer who appeared to be diversifying his farm business very successfully. His business seemed to be all that could be desired for farm diversification; it added value to an existing rural product, was sold outside the rural area and created employment. In response to the economic shifts described earlier he had developed an alternative cheese making business. He was aware of the many new skills, such as marketing, that he required to make this business work. However, he has now withdrawn from diversification and now concentrates on conventional farming. This case is not intended to be more than illustrative, but the farmer's narrative highlights how the practical skills of entrepreneurship are but part of what seems to be needed to be an entrepreneurial farmer.Enskilling farmers for diversification\nTheory and practices: In this section of the paper we will present some theoretical starting points for approaching the concept of entrepreneurial skills as a general topic in the study of entrepreneurship. We will then focus on the context of the farming business with the help of a case example, and return to the theoretical discussion by offering our interpretations as inspired by this case.The variety of entrepreneurial tasks\nThe case study: \"cheesed off with entrepreneurship?\": Context\nDiscussion: entrepreneurship in conventional farming and in diversification: In our narrative, farmer Maitonen comments on the activities related to both diversified farming (i.e. the cheese business) and conventional farming (i.e. the dairy cattle farming). Referring back to the ideas regarding entrepreneurial skills presented earlier in this paper, we note how Maitonen comments on his activities both on the level of functional tasks and on the level of meta-tasks. For example, he talks about rational business planning, production, product development, sales and marketing on one hand, and on the other hand he talks about risk-taking, growth orientation, and recognising business opportunities. We can make an interesting comparison between the entrepreneurial tasks identified by Maitonen in conventional farming and in diversified business. For example, production and growth orientation are connected both to conventional farming and diversified business. Notably however, in many respects the entrepreneurial tasks associated with conventional farming appear different than those associated with diversified business. For example, product development and marketing related functional tasks are mentioned only in the case of the cheese business. In addition, the meta-tasks of identifying business opportunities and achieving the resources that are needed in pursuing these opportunities are connected solely to the diversified business. Thus, our farmer makes a clear distinction between the categories of skills.According to some studies, conventional farmers are not as entrepreneurial as non-farm business owners, or other farmers involved in business diversification (Carter, 2001; Vesala and Peura, 2003). On the other hand, it has also been emphasised that entrepreneurial behaviour is quite possible to identify among conventional farmers (Salamon, 1992). Nonetheless, at least according to our narrative, the entrepreneurial tasks are considered to be somewhat different in conventional farming than in a diversified business. This does lend some support for our argument that different kinds of entrepreneurial skills are needed in conventional farming than in diversified business.The core of this difference seems to be in the market relation; functional skills such as salesmanship and marketing, as well as meta-task-level skill of gaining access to resources are emphasised in diversified business. Yet they do not seem to be crucial in conventional farming - if needed at all. These skills are directly connected with social resources, social ties or networks, (clients, customers, employees, sales promoters and so on). Hence, the questions of - not only social skills - but of skills implied by the perspective of social embeddedness (Jack and Anderson, 2002; Granovetter, 2000) and of social capital (Markman and Baron, 2003) are most relevant in this connection.In addition to entrepreneurial skills, there are also other factors in the farmer's narrative that affect the success of diversified and conventional farming. Some of these factors can be seen as characteristics of the individual, Mr Maitonen; others appear as characteristics of the business context. Certain demographic factors were of importance. In his mid-30s, the farmer was a father of two young children and owner of the family farm. He had a college level education in agriculture and additional education related to the manufacturing of cheese. In addition, attitudes were mentioned, for example, self-confidence (he had a strong faith in his product and believed from the start that his unit is able to produce a quality cheese brand) and his attachment to the farm.Even though these personal factors help us to sharpen the picture of the forces at play in diversified and conventional farming, there are still some important dimensions in the narrative that are missing from the classifications sketched thus far. In addition to personal factors, Mr Maitonen mentions several situational factors that had strong impacts on the success of cheese business and conventional farming. On the part of the cheese business, the farmer emphasises strongly the situational factors related to marketing and available resources; for example, competitors and the vertical food chain, outlying location of the farm, and the availability of work force and collaborative partners in sales promotion.The picture of the relevant situational factors is quite different when we look at those factors Mr Maitonen mentions regarding conventional farming. In his dairy business he did not need extra labour force and the existing resources on farm - machinery and buildings - are well suited to dairy cattle farming. The most relevant partners were the Finnish interest group of farmers (MTK), and his client, the largest Finnish milk processing company. Moreover, in terms of the situational factors, according to our narrative, there is a remarkable difference between conventional farming and diversified business. This difference is analogical and consistent with the difference observed in the entrepreneurial tasks and required skills.Interpreting the ending of the cheese business\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Entrepreneurship is currently at the focus of much theoretical, practical and political interest. In Europe, agriculture has faced dramatic pressures for restructuring, and facilitation of the entrepreneurial skills of farmers and stronger entrepreneurial orientation in the rural areas have been hailed as possible solutions for the emerging problems. The aim of this paper is to use this nexus of agriculture and entrepreneurship as an illustrative example, through which the nature of entrepreneurial skills and the elements underpinning their adoption can be examined.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The task is carried out by reflecting theoretically on the concept of entrepreneurial skills and on their embedded nature, before demonstrating the usefulness of the concept as a tool in understanding the case of an enterprising Finnish farmer, active both in conventional farming and in diversified business.\nFindings: - The theoretical and case study analyses reveal that the concept of entrepreneurial skills is far from an unambiguous one, as well as is the aim to develop them through teaching. If proper care is taken to distinguish the concept from, and relate it to, the elements in which it is embedded, the notion is a useful tool for empirical investigation. By applying such a procedure, it is shown that the contexts of conventional farming and business diversification call for clearly different entrepreneurial skills, some of which are more amenable to teaching than others.\nOriginality/value: - This paper shows how one can develop a fuller understanding of the skills that farmers need to become entrepreneurial by diversification.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Managing brand consistent employee behaviour: relevance and managerial control of behavioural branding
|
[
"Employee behaviour",
"Brands",
"Brand management"
] |
[
{
"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 and background: Market saturation and consumer confusion have changed the role of branding dramatically during the last decades. Consumers try to handle the flood of apparently exchangeable products and services by demanding those goods that provide a holistic and coherent consumption experience (e.g. Bendapudi and Bendapudi, 2005; Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Aurand et al., 2005; Mitchell, 2002; Berry, 2000). Brands are no longer simple product labels, but they are communication platforms towards customers and other stakeholders that convey specific attributes of products or services as well as company values and mission statements (Davies and Chun, 2002; de Chernatony and Dall'Olmo Riley, 1998; Aaker, 1996). Microsoft, for example, uses its recent corporate branding campaign to communicate both purchase relevant product criteria as well as corporate values reflecting the passion of the company. The claim \"Your Potential. Our Passion\" tells customers that achieving their personal objectives will be accompanied and advanced by Microsoft's products and services. Microsoft presents itself as an omnipresent partner promising solutions for every existing and potential customer need. Consequently, Microsoft's employees are under pressure to live up to this promise in each interaction situation in order to promote a consistent brand image (Bendapudi and Bendapudi, 2005; Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Mitchell, 2002; Berry, 2000). However, what does \"passion\" mean to a call centre agent in comparison to a software engineer, and how can both groups of employees be motivated and guided to act in a \"passionate\" way?The aim of this study is to assess the importance of personal employee interaction within the company's effort to display a holistic brand performance. We investigate the role of brand consistent employee behaviour. We term such behaviour behavioural branding and analyse how it can be implemented. With respect to Watzlawick and Beavin (1967), who posited that it is not possible to not communicate, it can be reasoned that only those companies, which are able to create, communicate and keep a unique and differentiating brand promise via behavioural branding, have the possibility to reach an undisputed positioning in the customer's relevant set (e.g. Grace and O'Cass, 2004; de Chernatony, 2002; Berry, 2000).Theoretical support for this assumption can be found in the fields of research on service quality and strategic organisational behaviour. Service quality studies show that the brand experience of customers is exceedingly determined by the moment of their interaction with the firm (e.g. Hartline et al., 2000; Iacobucci and Ostrom, 1995; Bowers et al., 1990; Zeithaml et al., 1988; Surprenant and Solomon, 1987; Solomon et al., 1985; Parasuraman et al., 1985). Employees are critical to consumers' perceptions of brand image (Berry, 2000; Bitner et al., 1990; Swartz and Brown, 1989). Furthermore, a customer's attitude toward the outcome of the service and his/her ultimate satisfaction are highly dependent on the employee he/she interacts with (Hanna et al., 2004; Dean, 2004; Winsted, 2000; Kelley and Hoffman, 1997; Bitner et al., 1990; Swartz and Brown, 1989). In line with this notion, research in organisational behaviour arrives at the conclusion that different strategies require different and very specific employee behaviours (e.g. Hanna et al., 2004; Hartline and Jones, 1996).Considering these findings, we hypothesise that a company can realise continuous brand success only if the brand promise which is communicated through mass media campaigns is lived up to by its employees. A brand experience that does not fit with mass media-based brand expectations may lead to customer dissatisfaction and possibly even to a refusal of the brand (Bendapudi and Bendapudi, 2005; Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Hanna et al., 2004; Mitchell, 2002; Berry, 2000). In order to achieve consistent personal communication of brand values, high quality customer interaction in the form of generally accepted standards such as friendliness or competence is not sufficient. It is also necessary to promote complex employee behaviours communicating specific brand values (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; Olson et al., 2005; Berry, 2000; Van Scotter and Motowidlo, 1996). A potential BMW customer, for example, may expect a friendly and competent, but also cultivated and dynamic, car seller, whereas a Mini customer may also anticipate a friendly and competent Mini agent who communicates different brand values such as independence and self-actualisation. Hence, although both BMW and Mini customers have equal expectations with regard to conventional service quality indicators (friendliness, competence, etc.) they may exhibit strongly different expectations considering the brand-oriented employee performance (cultivated and dynamic vs independent and self-actualising). Accordingly, we propose the construct behavioural branding as any type of verbal and non-verbal employee behaviour that directly or indirectly determines brand experience and brand value.However, whereas a lot of research has been done on the antecedents of successful brand management within the context of mass media communication (e.g. Florack and Scarabis, 2006; Grace and O'Cass, 2004; Deighton et al., 1994) the effect of personal employee interaction on brand performance has been largely neglected. Moreover, the question of how to manage employees to act in a brand consistent way remains predominantly unanswered. Consequently, this paper aims to bridge this gap by assessing the importance of behavioural branding and identifying managerial approaches for its promotion.To achieve this, we develop and test a structural model on the relevance of behavioural branding as well as its drivers. The effect of personal employee interaction on brand performance is investigated by conceptualising \"behavioural branding quality\", \"functional employee performance\" and \"mass media brand congruency\" as variables determining the brand's contribution to company success. In addition, based on the theory of marketing control (Jaworski, 1988; Jaworski et al., 1993), the model conceptualises employee empowerment, management through formal communication and management through informal communication as antecedents of functional employee performance and behavioural branding quality. Finally, we study the effect of mass media brand congruency on behavioural branding quality in order to examine whether external brand activities affect the thinking and acting of employees (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2005, 1991; Gilly and Wolfinbarger, 1998). The paper is structured as follows: first, we present the conceptual foundation and derive our hypotheses. Next, the empirical results of our management survey are presented. This is followed by scientific and managerial implications that we have elaborated in focus groups with managers of nine leading companies (BMW Group, REWE Group, Zurich Financial Services, Swisscom Mobile AG, Deutsche Telekom AG, Holcim Group Support Ltd., UBS AG, ENBW AG, and Nestle AG). Finally, we discuss future research directions.\nConceptual model and hypotheses: The theory of marketing control\nEmpirical study: Data collection and subjects\nConclusion and implications: Brand consistent employee behaviour is a critical success factor from a management point of view. Our central hypothesis, that continuous brand success can be improved if the brand promise that is communicated through a company's mass media campaigns is lived up to by each of its employees, is empirically supported through a survey among 167 senior marketing managers from Switzerland and Germany. Further, the results of our study imply that the management of customer contact employees involves more than training employees to act \"socially conform\" but also to promote those complex employee behaviours that may generate a highly distinguishing brand performance (e.g. Olson et al., 2005; Berry, 2000). In brand driven industries employees need to be able to adapt and respond quickly to customer needs with respect to the brand values of their company (Hartline et al., 2000). They need to know the goals and the brand values of their company. Moreover, they need to be conscious that their day-to-day activities and behaviours in customer contact situations build the cornerstone of their companies' external appearance. To overcome these challenges, structures, processes, and incentives are needed to enable brand-oriented employee behaviour (Olson et al., 2005; Slater and Olson, 2001; Hartline et al., 2000). In this context the results of our study indicate that a combination of formal and informal control systems as well as a high degree of employee empowerment affects employee performance in general as well as brand-oriented employee behaviour. Managers have to spend time explaining and discussing targets of behavioural branding, and they have to create an organisational environment that enables employees to find their individual ways of brand communication. Further, we have shown that functional employee performance by itself has no significant effect on brand performance from the management point of view. Finally and contrary to our expectations, mass media branding has no significant direct impact on behavioural branding quality. As we have shown this is due to the fact that employee performance completely mediates the effect of mass media communication on the quality of behavioural branding.After conducting the study, we discussed our results with senior managers of nine leading companies in the field of brand management (BMW Group, REWE Group, Zurich Financial Services, Swisscom Mobile AG, Deutsche Telekom AG, Holcim Group Support Ltd., UBS AG, ENBW AG, and Nestle AG) in order to develop managerial implications. Thereby, we elaborated management techniques that may improve behavioural branding quality as well as communication strategies in order to better translate the brand values into realisable behaviour. The results of this qualitative research provide examples of how informal control and employee empowerment can by employed to increase brand consistent employee behaviour.To optimise the efficiency of managerial activities absolute top management commitment is needed. By representing the company top managers affect both the external and the internal audience. They have the function of brand ambassadors toward customers and external stakeholders, but also the function of role models toward their employees. Hence, acting brand inconsistently may affect employees' brand perception negatively whereas a brand congruent behaviour may motivate employees to copy top management behaviour (e.g. Lockwood et al., 2004, 2002; Lockwood and Kunda, 1997). Ikea's founder Ingmar Kamprad, for example, acts as a role model living up to Ikea's brand values such as price consciousness and simpleness by using low cost airlines and driving a 15-year-old car. Hence, marketing professionals should think about approaches to bring their own senior managers in line with brand strategy. Similarly, advertisers should think about communicating brand promises that can be kept by top managers.Additionally, it is recommended to bridge the gap between top management and front line personnel by requesting senior managers to join their employees regularly. This procedure is expected to emphasise the role model function of senior managers and to improve the team feeling across functional boarders. Coke's managers, for instance, are bound to pass through all levels of the organisation when entering the company in order to get a holistic picture of the unique Coke spirit. Finally, a higher degree of cooperation between human resources management and marketing management is needed to ensure a consistent and integrated dissemination of corporate values resp. brand values throughout the firm.Moreover, in order to make brand values understandable and behaviourally convertible it is recommended to translate brand values into brand stories. Breaking down rather abstract contents into concrete brand stories is a possible means to motivate employees to reflect the brand message and to act brand consistently. For example, telling the story of an 3M scientist who invented the legendary \"Post-it\", while singing in a choir wishing he had bookmarks that would not fall out of the hymnal, transports values like creativity and innovation in a way customers, managers and employees are likely to understand similarly (Shaw et al., 1998). With respect to the production of advertising campaigns it is finally recommended to pool advertising professionals as well as marketing and human resources managers precociously in order to create original as well as convertible advertising campaigns motivating employees to act brand consistently (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2005, 1991; Gilly and Wolfinbarger, 1998). In addition, it is conceivable to cast employees for the ads in order to increase the credibility of the spot and in order to guide employees through advertising role models to show them how to act brand consistently in real life situations.\nLimitations and future research directions: This study has several limitations that should be addressed in future research. First, restricting the sample to marketing managers is limiting. Future researchers within the field of brand consistent marketing control should aim to address employees in order to afford a concluding judgement regarding the effectiveness and acceptance of the given marketing control instruments. Second, advancements of the behavioural branding quality-scale are required in order to acquire brand relevant facets of employee behaviour in more detail. Finally, future research is needed focussing on the effect of advertising on employees. Although some interesting implications can be found in the work of Wolfinbarger and Gilly (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2005; Gilly and Wolfinbarger, 1998; Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 1991) more detailed research is needed in order to investigate success drivers of advertising campaigns affecting customers as well as brand consistent employee behaviour.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study aims to show that brand success can be improved if the brand promise that is communicated through mass media campaigns is lived up to by each employee of a company. The paper terms such brand consistent employee behaviour behavioural branding and identifies managerial instruments for its implementation and management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The model in the paper explains the brand's contribution to company success by brand consistent employee behaviour, functional employee performance and brand congruent mass media communication. Brand consistent employee behaviour and functional employee performance in turn are modelled as determined by formal and informal management techniques as well as employee empowerment. The model is tested on a sample of 167 senior managers using partial least squares and finds empirical support. Furthermore, practical implications are provided based on additional top management focus groups.\nFindings: - The paper finds that behavioural branding determines the brand's contribution to company success. Further, the results show that informal management and employee empowerment have a far stronger impact on the brand consistency of employee behaviour than formal management instruments.\nPractical implications: - Managers should spend more time explaining and discussing targets of behavioural branding, and they should create an organisational environment that enables employees to find their own individual ways of articulating a brand to customers.\nOriginality/value: - The framework in the paper integrates personal and non-personal facets of interaction for a holistic explanation of brand performance. It provides a broader understanding of factors affecting the accruement of a customer's brand experience and enables researchers and practitioners to develop more consistent and promising brand management activities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A novel framework for owner driven reconstruction projects to enhance disaster resilience in the long term
|
[
"Capacity building",
"Post-disaster reconstruction",
"Project management",
"Framework",
"Disaster resilience",
"Owner-driven reconstruction"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction--what we already know!: Over recent decades, our knowledge and understanding of disasters, risk and resilience has grown; however, hazards-related losses have seemingly risen at an exponential rate. While humans cannot prevent natural hazards, which are continuously increasing in intensity, frequency and complexity (Guha-Sapir et al., 2012); we can future forecast and reconstruct housing and built environment after a disaster in an owner-driven approach so that it can \"pay for itself many times over in the form of disaster avoided and lives safeguarded\" (Clinton, 2006, p. 22).\n2. Research design: This paper deployed a comparative case study and mixed methods methodology (predominantly qualitative). In order to integrate issues from different fields of study (i.e. technical, social, financial), the research is designed as a multi-disciplinary case study (Yin, 2009) (Figure 1). Consequently, empirical data collection relied on a mix of research methods--social sciences methods including semi-structured interviews, and architectural methods including the visual analysis of photographs and sketches. Due to the intent of this research to identify long-term \"project impacts\" (Blessing and Chakrabarti, 2009), one of the criteria for the selection of ODHR project (as a case) was to be at least six years old.\n3. Case study description: 3.1 The 2001 Gujarat earthquake and reconstruction programme\n4. Findings: short-, mid- and long-term impacts: 4.1 Case studies 1 and 2: post 2001 Gujarat earthquake\n5. How short- and long-term outcomes differ?: There has been limited research on the longer-term impacts of ODHR, as noted before. The case studies in Gujarat, confirms that since ODHR was adopted for the first time in India, practitioners understood and implemented it in varying manner (Vahanvati and Mulligan, 2017). Besides, the short-term outcomes are different to the mid- and the longer-term outcomes, in all the four settlements. These differences are discussed in respect to the five resilience characteristics:\n6. Practical and scholarly implications: Few similar patterns have emerged from findings from the long-term investigation of four ODHR projects in India. These findings draw causal linkages between practices (inputs) during ODHR that influenced disaster resilience outcomes. These findings are grouped into four project components as:\n7. Conclusions: This purpose of this empirical paper was to assimilate findings--contingent and generalisable--from long-term investigation of good practice ODHR projects which influenced project's strategic success at enhancing disaster resilience of communities, into one framework. The research was imperative in context of increasing disaster risk, and to inform practitioners and further existing scientific knowledge, since lessons from the past have often been narrowly documented and long-term project outcomes have largely remained unexamined. Comparative case study investigations were conducted for four ODHR projects in India's Gujarat and Bihar states. The findings confirm that the CSOs and the state acted as \"enablers\" at four stages: envisioning strategically based on systemic analysis, building soft assets or social mobilisation including community trust and capabilities, proposing minor modifications to the conventional construction technology for its multi-hazard safety as well as climatic and cultural relevance, and sustaining capacity building efforts beyond reconstruction completion or beyond one project life-cycle, for human development. These findings were assimilated in a novel ODHR framework and illustrated in spiral form for use by practitioners, globally. The most significant finding that further current scholarship on OHDR and resilience is a need for enhancing people's capabilities--their freedom to choose--to maintain their own disaster resilience. The research concludes that only a systems based, flexible, patient, dignified and capabilities-based ODHR process can have better long-term resilience outcomes for communities.\n8. Recommendations: The framework discussed in this paper is built on and refined from an earlier publication (Vahanvati and Mulligan, 2017). While the four components are illustrated separately in a spiral form ODHR framework, they need to be viewed as interconnected or working in tandem, as they would in practice. For ease of use by practitioners, the spiral framework has also been presented in a tabular form (Figure 9). The author of this paper cautions that the framework must be used as a guide, rather than prescription, and practitioners must customise it to suit the specifics of a particular context.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Post-disaster reconstruction poses a double-edged sword to its implementers as it demands addressing survivors' need for speed as well as meeting the growing expectation to trigger resilience. While an owner-driven housing reconstruction (ODHR), inter-disciplinary and long-term approach has been promoted internationally; however, there is limited research focussed on the long-term impacts (>10 years after a disaster) of ODHR. Furthermore, there is no one accepted framework for practitioners to guide through the process of ODHR projects to carve pathways for disaster resilience. The purpose of this paper is to assimilate findings--contingent and generalisable--into a novel framework for future change in practice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper deployed a mixed methods methodology with a comparative case study research method. Two case study projects were from the Indian state of Gujarat, 13 years after the 2001 earthquake and the other two from Bihar, 6 years since the 2008 Kosi river floods. Due to multi-disciplinary nature of research, empirical data collection relied on a mix of social sciences methods including 80 semi-structured interviews, and architectural research methods including the visual analysis of photographs and sketches. Three sample groups of agency members, beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were purposively selected. Thematic content analysis was used for the data analysis.\nFindings: The paper provides empirical insights on how ODHR projects in Indian states of Gujarat and Bihar succeeded at enhancing disaster resilience of communities. It suggests that the civil society organisations acted as \"enablers\" at four stages: envisioning strategically based on systemic understanding, building soft assets including community trust and dignity for social mobilisation prior to, proposing minor modifications to construction technology for its multi-hazard safety as well as cultural relevance, and sustaining capacity building efforts beyond reconstruction completion or beyond one project life-cycle.\nResearch limitations/implications: The author of this paper cautions that the spiral framework needs further development to make it flexibility and customisable to suit the specifics of a particular context.\nOriginality/value: The implications of the findings discussed in this paper are primarily for practitioners involved in disaster recovery and development sector. Since prevailing models or frameworks neither incorporate multi-disciplinary approach (demanded by socio-ecological systems resilience concept), nor represent project scale, a novel, four-pronged framework for ODHR has been proposed in this paper for strategic success. The framework has been illustrated in spiral and tabular forms, and has been kept abstract to provide practitioners the much-needed flexibility for adapting it to suit the specifics of a particular context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Why the leadership of change is especially difficult for Chinese principals: A macro-institutional explanation
|
[
"China",
"Context-embedded logic",
"Institutional analysis",
"Leadership impact",
"Principal leadership",
"School changes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: principal leadership of school change for student learning: According to Meyer and Rowan (1977), schools as an institution reserve inertia against changes under the protection of decoupling and the logic of confidence. However under the tides of systematic educational reforms, the logic of confidence has been largely weakened (Rowan, 2006). Schools are no longer immune to various forces of globalization as epochal and social changes, and suffer from endemic policy borrowing and their own crisis of effectiveness (Fullan, 2000; Hargreaves and Goodson, 2006; Hargreaves, 2010; Lauder et al., 2006).\nChina as a meaningful case: The significance of introducing and analyzing the case of China is to illuminate the exploration of context sensitive management research to capture context features and understand context-embedded logics (Jia et al., 2011; Whetten, 2009). Although China has distinct cultural attributes and specific contexts, using China as a case study enables the study of principal leadership of change within a centralized school system undergoing radical and profound changes which have aimed at an institutional reengineering toward student learning-centered \"quality education.\" This deep change of schools was noted as national curriculum reform for primary and secondary schools since 1999 (Guan and Meng, 2007; Zhao and Qiu, 2010; Zhong, 2006). A major purpose of the large-scale educational reform is to change the traditional examination-oriented educational model to a competence developmental model for all Chinese students. Teachers and principals have been trained to prepare for making deep and authentic changes in schools. This is a revolution of the Chinese \"Grammar of schooling\" (Tyack and Tobin, 1994). China is not alone in such deep school changes as a total paradigm shift in the global educational systems.\nFramework and analysis: As there are many approaches of institutional analysis, in the light of Fernandez-Alles and Valle-Cabrera's (2006) theoretical exploration to link new institutionalism and organizational theories and Ke's (2007, 2011) original institutional analysis of school change dilemma in Chinese context, the three institutional pillars developed by Scott's (2001) were used to formulate an interpretive framework in this study. Three perspectives - regulative, normative and cognitive - were adopted to identify the major institutional forces mediating the impacts of principal leadership on school changes in China.\nConclusions: Principal leadership is not a magic panacea for school changes that is independent from internal and external factors. Although quantitative studies in which indirect linear models with in-school mediating variables were used have clarified the effect of principal leadership, the limitations of these studies in accounting for variables, measurable and immeasurable, that fall outside their scope require the development of an interpretive framework to explicitly manifest the contextual intricacy and iterative complexity of the impact of principal leadership on school changes.\nLimitations and further research suggested: Admittedly this conceptual paper has the following limitations which shall be noted but extended into suggestions for further study. First, unlike the prevailing studies on principal leadership impacts, we examined the state-of-the-art of principal leadership in China from a macro and systematic level, but did not examine cases of individual schools. Effective school changes that are implemented under the leadership of certain principals have occurred in China; although cultural and institutional perspectives are theoretically useful for connecting the micro and macro levels, individual cases in which effective changes were implemented are worthy of further study to inform how individual principals have navigated the institutional maze and made effective school changes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: There is research evidence emerging to show that Chinese principal leadership appears to have a limited effect on the large-scale and deep school changes, but reasons for this have not been well explored. The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptually framed explanation. By using China as an illustrative case, the authors propose using a macro-institutional framework to examine how principal leadership is mediated institutionally and why the leadership of change is especially difficult for Chinese principals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In order to facilitate a contextualized understanding, the three institutional pillars developed by Scott's (2001) were used as a macro-institutional framework to explain difficulties confronting principal leadership in China when making deep and sustainable school changes from regulative, normative and cognitive perspectives.\nFindings: The appeared change inertia and school changes on surface can partially be attributed to the cultural and institutional contexts of Chinese principal leadership. For principals, professional incentives and their change initiatives are institutionally and culturally constrained. Consequently, Chinese principals are left with very limited professional space to focus on making visible and endurable student-centered school changes.\nOriginality/value: This is a first macro-institutional application to address principal leadership of change from the context of China. The regulative, normative and cognitive aspects are analytically useful to differentiate and manifest the institutional complexity and intricacy which are mediating principal leadership impact on school changes. This also illuminates the exploration of context sensitive leadership research to capture context features and understand context-embedded logics.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How inter-country similarities moderate the effects of consumer ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism in out-group country perceptions: An Asian perspective
|
[
"Country image",
"Consumer ethnocentrism",
"Consumer cosmopolitanism",
"Intergoup rivalry",
"Intergroup similarity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The topics of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and cosmopolitanism (COS) have been studied widely in past research. This research indicates that CET and COS have strong impacts on consumer dispositions toward foreign products and countries (Bartsch et al., 2016: Cleveland et al., 2015; Han and Won, 2018). CET represents \"the beliefs held by consumers about the appropriateness, indeed morality, of purchasing foreign-made products\" (Shimp and Sharma, 1987, p. 280), while COS refers to consumers' consumption tendencies that \"transcend any particular culture, locality or community\" (Riefler and Diamantopoulos, 2009, p. 415).\nLiterature and hypotheses: Consumer ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism\nStudy 1: Study 1 was conducted with adult consumers in two major cities in China: Beijing and Zhengzhou. Zhengzhou is a large metropolis in central China, with a population of 9.6m. As stated above, we assessed these consumers' perceptions of two European countries (Germany and Italy), two North American countries (the USA and Canada), and two Asian countries (Japan and Korea) and their respective product images. In order to ascertain perceived differences in inter-country similarity/dissimilarity between Western and Asian countries, we measured perceived cultural similarity with out-group countries in our pretest with 30 Chinese individuals. For this measurement, we used three items adopted from Mittelstaedt et al. (2004) that suggest potential dimensions for cross-national differences. Specifically, subjects were asked \"how similar/different do you think (out-group country) values, lifestyles, and cultures are compared to China?\" The respondents clearly perceived a greater similarity with the Asian countries than with the European and North American countries (3.154 vs 2.582 and 2.503 on the scale of 1 (different) to 5 (similar), F=13.703, p<0.01).\nHypothesis testing: For our hypothesis testing, we carried structural equation model analyses, as depicted in Figure 1. In our analysis, we tested the hypotheses in two settings: Asian vs North American origins and Asian vs European origins. The results are shown in Table III. Estimates of the measurement models are shown in Table AI. In the structural model, we included three covariates of individual characteristics: inter-country similarity and two demographic variables, including age and gender. As we discussed previously, inter-country similarity can have main effects on perceptions of out-group countries, as suggested by similarity-attraction theory (Byrne, 1961; Mansted and Hewstone, 1996). Note that our hypotheses examine the moderating effects of inter-country similarity.\nStudy 2: Study 2 was conducted to retest the relationships we found in study 1 with different country samples. Specifically, we assessed consumer perceptions of Asian countries (China and Korea) and their products within two non-Asian countries, Germany and Chile, and compared them with consumer perceptions in Japan. In this assessment, Asian countries would be dissimilar out-groups to German and Chilean consumers, and similar out-groups to Japanese consumers. Germany and Chile were chosen because their consumers were expected to be reasonably familiar with Asian countries and products. In fact, these two countries are main destinations for Asian exports. Germany is the biggest European market for Asian products and Chile is also an important market for Asian producers, with Chinese and Korean products accounting for 26.8 percent of its total imports in 2017[1]. In addition, consumers in these two countries were expected to be neutral in terms of their perceptions of intergroup rivalry with Asian countries of origin. By examining non-Asian consumers, we can test if what we found for dissimilar out-groups in study 1 holds for Asian origins outside Asia.\nHypothesis testing: Similarly to study 1, we first assessed the overall effects of CET and COS on consumer perceptions of Asian origins for all three country samples combined. The results are shown in Table VIII. As expected, CET had negative effects on country attitudes (b=-0.190, p<0.01). It also indirectly affected country-product attitudes through country attitudes, although its direct effects were not significant (b=-0.020, p>0.10). In addition, COS were found to have positive effects on country attitudes (b=0.514, p<0.01) and country-product attitudes (b=0.068, p<0.01). These results suggest that CET can negatively affect and COS positively affect out-group country perceptions. For our hypothesis testing, we carried out structural equation model analyses, as depicted in Figure 1. In study 2, we tested the hypotheses in two settings: Japanese vs German and Japanese vs Chilean samples. The results on the structural model and measurement models are shown in Table VIII and Table AI, respectively.\nDiscussion and conclusions: Our study examined how CET and COS affect Asian consumers' perceptions of out-group countries and their products across countries of origin, specifically, similar out-groups vs dissimilar ones. For these investigations, we examined consumer perceptions of Western countries (dissimilar out-groups) and Asian countries (similar out-groups) in China (study 1). In addition, we investigated how CET and COS affect consumer perceptions of Asian countries in non-Asian countries (dissimilar out-groups) and in Japan (similar out-groups), and then compared their effects across the two types of out-groups (study 2).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and cosmopolitanism (COS) may affect Asian consumers' perceptions of out-group countries and their products, doing so by examining similar vs dissimilar countries across countries of origin. Given the strong inter-country rivalries that exist among Asian countries, the authors propose two alternative hypotheses, drawing from social identity theory and realistic group conflict theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To test the hypotheses, the authors examine consumer perceptions of both Western countries (dissimilar out-groups) and Asian countries (similar out-groups) within China (Study 1). In addition, the authors investigate how CET and COS affect consumer perceptions of Asian countries in Japan and in non-Asian dissimilar countries, and compare the effects between the two regions (Study 2).\nFindings: The findings indicate that CET shows greater negative effects on perceptions of a country and its products, when the country is from a similar out-group than when it is from a dissimilar one. On the other hand, COS showed equally strong positive effects among consumers for both similar and dissimilar out-group countries.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results suggest that Asian consumers feel a sense of intergroup rivalry with other Asian countries, and, as a result, exhibit a greater degree of ethnocentric biases toward these countries and their products than they do toward Western countries and products. Also, the results suggest that COS may transcend national differences and inter-country rivalries in consumer consumption tendencies.\nOriginality/value: The study examines inter-country similarities as a moderator of CET and COS effects, which has not been extensively researched in the past. In addition, the study discusses the concept of intergroup rivalry among neighboring countries and examines how it affects consumer perceptions of out-group countries and their products in Asia, where strong inter-country rivalries exist.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Maximizing talent management through the cloud: New technologies offer opportunities to develop skills and careers
|
[
"Talent management",
"Cloud computing",
"Human resource management",
"Organizational change",
"Information and communications technology",
"Organizational innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Like many previous technological revolutions, cloud computing will have a significant impact on how organizations operate. A Gartner (2008) report published in 2008 indicated that cloud computing would be at least as influential as e-business, which has revolutionized supply chains and commerce in recent years. What does cloud computing mean for human-resource (HR) specialists?\nBreaking down the barriers to effective talent management: Research consistently demonstrates that having a mature, integrated talent-management strategy pays dividends. A report from Bersin & Associates (2010) found that such organizations in the US enjoyed 17 percent lower voluntary turnover, 26 percent higher revenue per employee and better business stability.However, the report also noted that technology is a key enabler for success. Organizations struggle to deliver an effective talent-management strategy without the support of an integrated technological platform.Innovative providers are starting to move talent-management technology solutions into the cloud, but this technological change will have a wider impact than just moving the location of a piece of software; it will reduce current barriers to the implementation of an effective, organization-wide talent-management strategy.Traditionally, there have been four common barriers to effective talent management:* Siloed talent-management initiatives. In most businesses, processes for learning management, performance management, succession planning and other talent initiatives have been separated, managed and owned by different parts of the organization. Therefore, these processes are not always integrated.* Limited application of talent-management processes. Activity has been rooted in traditional management thinking. It has focused on developing the talent of senior executives and other high-flyers, and also perhaps addressing the weaknesses of the worst-performing employees, rather than maximizing the talent of all employees.* Lack of quality HR information. The information driving talent-management activity has not been generated and used in a timely way. This can be because of a lack of systems to support talent initiatives, stand-alone legacy systems that do not meet current needs, or modern applications to support talent management not being integrated with other HR management-information systems, so talent decisions are based on incomplete or inaccurate information.* Lack of support to implement flexible and robust technology platforms. Simply replacing existing legacy systems can be seen as a prohibitively expensive and complex way to roll-out and maintain new applications to support talent-management initiatives. Instead, HR is encouraged to pursue the false economy of adopting discrete applications to meet specific needs.\nTaking the SaaS/cloud approach: In recent years, businesses have adopted Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, particularly in areas like accounting, collaboration, invoicing and, increasingly, human-resource and talent-management applications. This type of application is not hosted on the corporate network or desktop PC. Instead, the application provider hosts the application centrally - increasingly, in the cloud - and users gain access to the application remotely, normally using a web browser over the internet.Far from being a niche play, all the leading enterprise software vendors have a SaaS/cloud strategy. However, confusion can arise because the definitions are still being written. Infrastructure providers, hardware providers, software providers and online retailers are all inviting customers to be part of their \"cloud\" or claiming their software to be SaaS. This means businesses can find that they have bought into an application that becomes as limited over time as traditional legacy systems.To avoid this outcome, HR managers need to be sure their application provider is offering true multi-tenant SaaS, where there is one platform, one version of the application (or application suite) and one central support team for all customers.The applications and data must reside on hardware that is owned, maintained and supported by the application provider so there are no specific in-house hardware, software or support costs. What is more, any number of permissioned users should be able to gain access to the application. This makes it possible to provide access to every employee and line manager, according to their particular needs, enabling and supporting the roll-out of a comprehensive, organization-wide talent-management strategy. Thus, if there is the will to introduce an organization-wide talent-management system, it is easy and cost-effective to do so.\nFuture-proofing through constant innovation: One primary advantage of cloud applications is that the provider's investment is directed into improving and upgrading the application itself, meaning users benefit from more frequent service updates. In addition, application providers tend to be more responsive to customer requirements.The nature of the technology means it is easier to poll HR specialists to ask them to rank the functionality that would help to improve their experience or results - and prioritize those aspects for development in the next version of the release.Organizations tend to have similar needs, so the most in-demand changes do tend to benefit the greater proportion of customers. The technology itself is more dynamic and flexible in meeting customers' talent-management needs than traditional software, because it is more configurable and processes and structures can be changed on the fly. Ultimately, as organizations change, the software evolves with them.Many vendors claiming to have SaaS/cloud solutions actually run and have to support several different versions of their applications. It is easy to see that this is not likely to be as efficient as a true multi-tenant SaaS, cloud-based application that has one single platform, with one continuous version of the software, supporting all customers. Only this approach ensures that everything is focused on driving constant value and innovation into the application, to deliver the best results for customers and users.\nThe benefits for users: There is also an inherent benefit in the fact that cloud-based applications are always \"on\", available to users to update at any time. The ability to input information directly can help HR specialists, employees and line managers to reduce the errors and discrepancies that tend to creep in when processes associated with talent management are duplicated or delayed (say, when line managers fill out forms that are then sent to HR for input). In addition, that information is immediately available to be shared and used. As such, the timeliness of management information is much improved and the decision-making process potentially strengthened, resulting in improved talent management.In turn, this helps HR specialists to overcome another barrier - persuading the organization of the case for change. HR specialists can use the system to engage line managers and employees, demonstrating that their involvement can actually empower them and make it easier to manage their own needs, careers and responsibilities.For example, an employee may have more insight into his or her own development needs, the career paths open to him or her and development opportunities that are available within the organization - all of which empowers the person to take more responsibility for his or her own career development. Line managers may be able to input information, run reports or approve training requests directly on the system, reducing time and effort on their part. And for the entire organization, access to integrated social-networking tools can facilitate the sharing of valuable knowledge and opinions among teams and across different departments and geographical locations. Connecting and engaging dispersed workforces on a continuous basis can help to engender a greater sense of company loyalty and job satisfaction. It can also help HR specialists and line managers to identify high-potential individuals or other employees who play an active and vital role in the organization.\nThe cloud breathes life into talent management: To compete, organizations want to learn more about their people and make the most of the talent available to them, through a continuous cycle of planning, review and development. An easy-to-use, fully integrated suite of talent-management applications that is always \"on\" and accessible across the organization will help HR specialists to move towards providing real-time HR. Activities like setting objectives, agreeing development goals, reviewing progress, discussing career aspirations, and workforce and succession planning move from being one-time events or annualized cycles into living, breathing ongoing processes. Additionally, these processes become more transparent and integrate a greater degree of continuous feedback from employees and line managers to engender confidence, understanding and trust.HR specialists develop much more insight into the talent that is currently available in-house. This enables the organization to become much more focused on developing its talent pipeline - ensuring the right people have the right development opportunities to meet the organization's current and future needs. It also helps HR to compare internal and external talent, reducing the need to recruit externally and providing internal opportunities for career development that help to retain and motivate talented people.To sum up, cloud computing can help HR specialists to overcome many of the barriers to effective talent management, because it can help to address key issues of accessibility, affordability, timeliness, ease of use and integration. Moreover, it offers a technological solution that can change organically in step with the organization's own changing needs.Adopting a cloud-based approach to talent management can deliver massive benefits to: individual employees, whose career aspirations can be better met; HR specialists, whose effectiveness can be increased; and the organization, where performance is enhanced.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Argues that cloud computing will have a vital role to play in the effective management of organizational talent and human resources over the next decade.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Draws on personal knowledge of the latest developments in information technology and experience of planning, developing, delivering and supporting applications and technology platforms that help organizations to manage their human resources. Identifies potential pitfalls in the adoption of cloud computing and provides advice on how to ensure that the organization secures the best solution for its needs.\nFindings: - Reveals that cloud computing will enable organizations and individuals to automate and standardize key processes, as well as gain access to and generate a greater volume of timely and useful information, thus helping to maximize the organization's talent-management strategy in a cost-effective manner.\nPractical implications: - Argues that when an organization uses an integrated suite of talent-management applications, hosted in the application provider's \"cloud\", it benefits from more frequently updated, high quality and flexible functionality. It also saves the organization the cost and effort associated with maintaining the hardware and software necessary to run the applications and store the data in-house.\nSocial implications: - Demonstrates how opportunities to develop skills and careers can be improved through the use of new technologies.\nOriginality/value: - Draws on the author's breadth of skill and experience to demonstrate how cloud computing can be used to improve the practice of talent management.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Understanding researchers' strategic behaviour in knowledge production: a case of social science and nanotechnology researchers
|
[
"Mode1",
"Mode2",
"Mode3",
"Nanotechnology researchers",
"Social science researchers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research universities play a key role in today's economy by being providers of highly specialised knowledge and professionals. Both the produced knowledge and graduates are transferred to society and add to the competitive advantages of single companies as well as whole countries. To fulfil their missions and to remain innovative and competitive in the changing scientific landscape, universities face the challenge of managing and leading highly educated and autonomous professionals - researchers organised around very diversified knowledge domains or scientific disciplines with distinct organisational cultures, goals and strategies. We address this challenge by analysing the behaviours of researchers, which will help scientific leaders in developing strategies and policies relevant for the variety of behaviours.\nKnowledge production: Researchers seek to share their research results with the academic community as part of the academic ethos and owing to their primary goals (Merton, 1957). Research institutes and universities encourage their researchers to create more knowledge to increase their own competitiveness and innovativeness. Various factors increase scientific productivity. Personal interests seem to be an important factor (Ramsden, 1994) but, more often, external factors such as department characteristics (including research facilities, intellectual stimulation and motivation) (Allison and Long, 1990; Carayol and Matt, 2004; Louis et al., 2004), internal management tools (such as communication, supervision, rewards system, co-ordination and research evaluation practices) (Van der Wijden et al., 2008), entrepreneurial leadership with a strong network (Harvey et al., 2002) and human resources (Harvey et al., 2002; Crespi and Geuna, 2008) positively influence research outputs. The departmental environment might substantially help, especially young researchers in their careers to build their number of publications (Ramsden, 1994; Van der Wijden et al., 2008). Therefore, it is important to consider knowledge production management.\nStrategic positioning theory: To improve their competitive positions and expand research capabilities, researchers seek access to research resources such as knowledge and expertise, research equipment, instrumentation and financial resources (Heinze and Kuhlmann, 2008; Jeong et al., 2014). In the literature, the sharing of heterogeneous resources is seen as a necessary condition for any alliance (Kale and Singh, 2009), including a research alliance. Wilts (2000) stresses the importance of researchers' dependency on financial resources from economical and political actors. Resources in research usually refer to human capital (mainly knowledge and skills) and social capital (Price and Beaver, 1966; Van Rijnsoever et al., 2008). External resources such as funding are seen as opportunities for new initiatives (Auranen and Nieminen, 2010). Access to resources is the primary driver of establishing collaborations (Leisyte, 2007) and is therefore expected to result in higher knowledge production. Because engaging in a collaboration requires the allocation of time and other resources and involves sharing in the decision-making, the choice to engage in a relationship that eventually might help researchers to attain their goals of increased knowledge production is a strategic choice (Bozeman and Corley, 2004).\nSample and data collection: The data for this research were collected at a Dutch research university. While the Dutch scientific system is small, Dutch researchers are very productive, with a high global share of knowledge production (OECD, 2014). Dutch researchers also actively participate in various international collaborative research programmes (OECD, 2014). The main reason to choose this particular university was the combination of technical, behavioural and social sciences and, resulting from that, some visible differences in publication output, resources as well as size of the research institutes. This university has a number of research institutes and educational schools to separate their budgets and management. The institutes and schools report to the university. We selected two research institutes that represent two academic fields: nanotechnology and the social sciences. The same context for these academic fields - both national and institutional - allows us to compare their strategic behaviours and choices within a given context. Even though the institutional context is the same, these two institutes differ concerning access to resources, the intensity of resources used and size. The nanotechnology institute is large and internationally renowned with 500 employees, of whom 275 are PhDs or post-Docs. The institute's scientific fields include physics, electrical engineering, chemistry and mathematics. It acquires 60 per cent of its revenue competing for external sources and was chosen owing its competitive environment (nationally and internationally). The social sciences institute is a smaller institute, with 104 full-time equivalent staff members (at the time of the study) conducting research in public governance, entrepreneurship research, business administration, health systems and environmental studies. Its researchers earn most of their revenue from education programmes. The university is embedded within the local economy by its connections with industrial stakeholders and entrepreneurial activities.\nMeasuring researchers' strategic behaviours: To measure the strategic behaviour of researchers when producing knowledge, we asked questions regarding their choices when writing scientific papers. We selected three peer-reviewed journal papers (or less if they did not publish three) of each interviewee and asked questions about the writing of these papers, resources shared with co-authors and decisions made during the process. The publications needed to represent different researcher roles (indicated by a place on the authors list) and the variety of (institutional and international) co-authors. We chose papers that present a spectrum of co-authors of a researcher, such as PhD candidates, supervisors and researchers from other universities and institutes. To explore the contexts in which the interviewees did their research, we asked what motivates them to make their research results public and about their perceptions of the competition in their field. Such competition is seen as increasing, putting pressure on researchers (Teelken, 2012). Further, we reconstructed the researchers' needs for strategic interdependence and for organisational autonomy by observing the organisation of making research results public and the acquisition of scientific information - knowledge dissemination and knowledge acquisition.\nResults: Context of strategic behaviour\nDiscussion: We have analysed the strategic behaviour of researchers in relation to knowledge production, expressed in behaviour modes. An understanding of such behaviour is necessary for scientific leaders to be able to manage diversified groups of researchers with own goals, strategies and organised in specific organisational cultures. The results of a qualitative empirical study of two scientific fields show that that there are large differences in the strategic behaviours of social science and nanotechnology researchers. Nanotechnology researchers behaved mostly in mode3, i.e. as research entrepreneurs, sharing resources and being highly autonomous, while social science researchers behaved mostly in mode1, i.e. the ivory tower (highly autonomous, but without the need to share resources). We have seen that researchers are willing to give up some autonomy when it serves their goals, that is, when it increases their knowledge production. Nanotechnology researchers collaborated, i.e. they shared both explicit and tacit knowledge with researchers from various disciplines in the lab and when writing papers. This seemed more natural to them because the knowledge is often specialised, and they needed to collaborate with researchers from other domains to innovate. This argument is consistent with the analyses of publications by Leydesdorff and Rafols (2009) and Jansen et al. (2010), indicating heterogeneity within nanotechnology concerning the multidisciplinarity of topics. A possible explanation of social science researchers' low need for strategic interdependence is that they do not need to share expensive research facilities such as clean rooms or specialised labs. Further, social scientists are not yet used to connecting various scientific disciplines in one research project.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper seeks to understand the strategic behaviour of researchers when producing knowledge in two scientific fields - nanotechnology and social sciences.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author conducted semi-structured interviews with 43 researchers to analyse the needs for strategic interdependence (resource-sharing) and for organisational autonomy (decision-making) in knowledge production. When aligned, these two concepts form three modes of behaviour: mode1, mode2 and mode3.\nFindings: The empirical study results show that, besides well-studied differences in various publications, there are large behaviour differences between social science and nanotechnology researchers. While nanotechnology researchers' behaviours are mostly in mode3 (sharing resources; highly autonomous), social science researchers' behaviours tend to be in mode1 (highly autonomous; no need to share resources).\nPractical implications: This study delivers an understanding of the differences in the strategic behaviours of researchers in different scientific fields. The author proposes managerial interventions for research managers - university and research group leaders.\nOriginality/value: While most studies that compare scientific fields look at knowledge production outcomes, the author analyses conditions that differentiate these outcomes. To this end, the author compares individual researchers' behaviours in different fields by analysing the need for collaboration and the need for autonomy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Population ageing and a lack of semi-skilled workers in Switzerland: Opportunities for refugees?
|
[
"Refugees",
"Aging",
"Job opportunities",
"Labour market dynamics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: According to Eurostat, the database of the European Commission, in 2017, nearly 705,000 refugees applied for international protection, (i.e. asylum in the member states of the European Union - EU). This was just over half the number recorded in 2016, when nearly 1.3m asylum applicants were registered. This figure is comparable to the level recorded in 2014, before the peaks of 2015 and 2016. The main groups of refugees by nationality were Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Nigerians and Pakistanis.\nThe current Swiss labour market: In 2015, Switzerland had one of the highest proportions of foreign residents among all nations (i.e. 24.6 per cent of the total population). Only a few other nations, such as oil-producing nations like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar that employ many foreigner workers, or city-states like Luxembourg, had higher numbers of foreign residents. However, it is notable that over 80 per cent of the foreign residents living in Switzerland are from European countries of which almost half come just from France, Germany, Italy and Portugal. The remaining 20 per cent originate from the rest of the world (Nguyen, 2017). All sectors of the Swiss economy, almost without exception, are dependent on a foreign labour force with numbers of foreign workers increasing every year. For example, in the second quarter of 2017, out of a workforce of 5.015m people, the number of employed foreign workers was 1,563,000, an increase of 2.6 per cent over the previous year (FSO, 2017).\nIllegal immigration in Switzerland and its costs: In 2015, the number of illegal immigrants in Switzerland was estimated to be 76,000, with 86 per cent working illegally (Morlok et al., 2016). Their lack of residential status is clearly a barrier to legal employment which means that they must seek labour in what is widely known as the \"black economy\". Whereas this form of work provides them with a source of income, illegal workers do not receive the same social and financial benefit as the permanently and legally residing members of the population. Moreover, they do not contribute in the same way to the financing of the welfare state. Whereas illegal work is not as widespread in Switzerland as in other European countries, it still creates a major challenge to the national social insurance system. For example, in 2004 the \"black economy\" was estimated to amount to 37bn Swiss Francs, equivalent to 9 per cent of GNP. This is especially problematic if we also consider that for every billion Swiss Francs undeclared, 100m could have been used for social insurance and 20m for unemployment insurance (FSO, 2004).\nSwitzerland as an ageing society: In addition to concerns about shortages in the labour force, there are growing concerns about Switzerland becoming an aging society. Currently, 18.23 per cent of Switzerland's population is aged 65 and older, amounting to approximately 1,526,391 people as of 2016 (World Bank, 2017). According to some reports, population ageing is an unprecedented phenomenon that threatens Switzerland and its European neighbours. As the table below indicates, using data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office report Les scenarios de l'evolution de la population de la Suisse, 2015-2045, the total economically active population in Switzerland is predicted to increase by approximately 500,000 in the next 30 years, where the economically active population is defined as people between the ages of 20 and 64 who participate in the workforce, whether employed or unemployed. This relatively modest increase, however, is mostly due to the large projected increase of foreign workers (expected to increase by 39.9 per cent), in contrast to workers of Swiss nationality, who are expected to increase by only 0.3 per cent in the next 30 years (FSO, 2015). However, perhaps the most challenging concern, also outlined in the table below, is the increase in the proportion of people aged 65 and older in relation to the economically active population. In 2015, there were 33.6 persons aged 65 or older in Switzerland for every 100 economically active persons between the ages of 20 and 64. By 2045, this ratio is expected to nearly double to 55.7 elderly persons for every 100 economically active persons (FSO, 2006).\nUsing refugees to address labour market challenges in Switzerland: While some economic stakeholders and particularly small and medium enterprises may believe that outsourcing their activities can help them be more competitive and reduce the impact of the ageing population, it is difficult to be sure that such measures will be sufficient to counter current trends in Switzerland (Saner and Velebit, 2009). Nevertheless, in an attempt to increase Swiss firms' capacity to outsource their services, numerous initiatives have been undertaken to support professional training programmes in emerging countries, particularly by the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology. However, the process of then relocating the newly trained labour from developing countries to Switzerland has encountered significant problems. Moreover, given that most of the shortfall in the labour market is in the service sector, outsourcing is rarely an option. Therefore, in order to resolve this problem, Swiss authorities have recently launched numerous initiatives to draw Swiss nationals into the healthcare positions, such as care assistants and community health assistants.\nSwiss laws and procedures allowing refugees to work: The Swiss Government has expressed concerns about the integration of refugees and provisionally admitted asylum seekers into the national economy. In order to address these concerns new initiatives were launched in December 2017 including the nomination of Mr Eduard Gnesa, a high ranking Swiss Government official with past experience in the field of migration, to be in charge of informing enterprises domiciled in Switzerland about the possibilities of employing refugees and provisionally admitted asylum seekers and exploring possibilities to create apprenticeship opportunities which would improve the chances of integration into the Swiss labour market. His mandate extends from January to end of July 2018. In the meantime, however, it is important to signal some of the barriers that refugees to Switzerland encounter.\nConclusion: In this paper, we have reported how many Swiss companies are having difficulty recruiting semi-skilled workers to meet their labour demands, particularly in the caring profession. This problem will be exacerbated in coming decades due to population ageing. Several measures have been adopted to overcome the problem such as initiatives to encourage Swiss nationals to pursue careers in the respective fields, but we believe the use of foreign workers and specifically refugees may be one of the fastest and most effective solutions to this growing national concern. Companies and the Swiss authorities are aware of the role that migrant workers, including refugees could play in the economy; however, Swiss policy towards migration and refugees in particular is based on advocating full employment for Swiss citizens. As a result, the legislation, which restricts the admission of foreign workers, including refugees, prevents them from being utilised to meet the demand for semi-skilled workers. However, more positively, a new policy passed by the Federal Administration in Switzerland provides a pre-apprenticeship training opportunity to refugees with asylum status in Switzerland. The pre-apprenticeship programme consists of a two-year pre-training which allows a young refugee to learn one of the national four languages and acquire basic skills in one of the main sectors - industrial or service. Once these basic skills have been acquired by the refugee, he or she can more easily succeed in entering and completing a full apprenticeship programme, which, in turn, increases the likelihood that the refugee - apprentice - can find sustainable employment in the Swiss labour market.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The question being discussed in this paper is how can refugees be integrated into a host country's labour market with Switzerland serving as a case example experiencing specific local challenges, such as an aging society and gaps in the labour market, particularly relating to semi-skilled jobs in the public sector. The paper aims to discuss this issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper examines Switzerland's intake of refugees and analyses existing refugee and labour market policies and how the integration process is being managed by the authorities and responded to by Swiss citizens.\nFindings: The analysis shows that refugees can potentially find jobs in all three segments of the Swiss labour market (highly skilled, semi-skilled and low-skilled labour) and provide mutually beneficial solutions for all parties concerned that include: for refugees seeking employment and asylum; for the aging population requiring care delivered by low- and semi-skilled workforce; and for public and private sector enterprises in need of qualified and motivated labour force.\nOriginality/value: This paper examines the interplay between refugees seeking work and demonstrates the importance of relating job entry by refuges with actual labour market constraints and opportunities of the host country, Switzerland.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Strategic CSR for airlines: does materiality matter?
|
[
"CSR",
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Sustainability",
"Materiality",
"Airline industry",
"Airline type",
"Economic conditions"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The lack of public trust in many businesses, especially large corporations, is not surprising. A survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in 2016 found 55 per cent of the CEOs who participated in the survey to perceive lack of trust as one of the key threats to their business; this number was 37 per cent in 2013. In fact, this trust problem toward businesses has always existed historically; many surveys still show that \"business is typically last or second to last among most-trusted institutions to operate in society's best interests\" (McElhaney, 2008, p. 8). The public distrust to businesses has risen even further after the global economic meltdown in 2008, and business leaders are fully aware of this issue. Consequently, companies are increasingly investing in socially responsible initiatives to better connect with the public, including multiple stakeholders (e.g. consumers, employees, suppliers and community), and eventually regain trust and improve their brand image and reputation (Chandler and Werther, 2017; Freeman et al., 2010). Supporting this trend, the PwC reported that 64 per cent of the CEOs increased their investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in 2016.\nLiterature review: CSR in the airline industry\nMateriality and hypothesis development: The US Supreme Court considered information as material if there is \"a substantial likelihood that the disclosure of the omitted fact would have been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the 'total mix' of information made available\" (TSC Indus. v. Northway, Inc., 1976). The SASB adopted this definition of materiality and developed their Materiality Map with 79 industries in 10 sectors (healthcare, financials, technology and communications, non-renewable resources, transportation, services, resource transformation, Consumptions I and II, renewable resources and alternative energy and infrastructure). The SASB Materiality Map shows the material CSR/sustainability (or important) issues for each industry, thus providing general guidelines to both practitioners and investors in an industry-specific manner. For example, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and air pollution are likely material for transportation-related industries, but these factors would not be material for the financial services industry. The airline industry is included in the transportation sector along with rail transportation, marine transportation, air freight, logistics and so on.\nMethodology: Data\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Considering the increasing significance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the corporate world and the mixed findings of the financial implication of CSR investment in the financial economics literature, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between (im)material CSR investment and firm performance and the moderating role of airline type and economic conditions based on the stakeholder theory and institutional pressure argument.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses a two-way random-effects model by firm and year along with using clustering coefficient estimation by firm to control for the possibility of inflated standard errors because of autocorrelation across years within a given firm.\nFindings: This study finds that both material and immaterial CSR initiatives do not directly influence firm performance, but airline type and economic conditions do moderate the relationship. In specific, the study found that airlines' investments in material CSR initiatives show an indifferent effect on firm performance between low-cost and full-service carriers and also between non-recessionary and recessionary periods. On the other hand, investments in immaterial CSR initiatives present different impacts on firm performance between low-cost and full-service carriers and between non-recessionary and recessionary periods. In details, the effect is more negative for low-cost carriers and recessionary periods than full-service carriers and non-recessionary periods.\nOriginality/value: This is the first empirical investigation of materiality for the airline industry in relation to firm performance using the industry-specific Materiality Map developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Further, this study incorporates two additional moderators (airline type and economic conditions) to enhance the understanding of the proposed relationships between (im)material CSR and firm performance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Investigating a best practice model of microfinance for poverty alleviation: Conceptual note
|
[
"Microcredit",
"Poverty alleviation",
"Best practice models",
"Microfinance best practice"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A review of microfinance literature shows fairly growing academic interest in knowledge development within the microfinance sector although the scope is arguably still very limited particularly on the subject of best practice models. The significant proportion of published literature on microfinance tends to focus on evidencing impact of microfinance on the poor, either negative or positive (Duvendack et al., 2011). No specific work adequately addressed the question of best practice in microfinance although some important discussions on the subject are covered in a few publications. Microfinance best practice models for poverty alleviation as a theme seems very rare. The concept is partially covered in few publications on double and triple bottom line discourse (Sivalingam et al., 2012; Tulchin, 2003). The double bottom line approach focusses on the economic and social impact of microfinance activities on the poor while the triple bottom line approach goes a step further to also consider the environmental impact. This paper will critically analyze and explore the current arguments and debates on best practice microfinance models in general and best practice microfinance models for poverty alleviation in particular as well as commenting on differences in approach and focus between commercial and developmental microfinance providers.\n2. Background: microfinance context in poverty alleviation discourse: The concept of microfinance has its roots in theoretical views and paradigms on who the poor are and how to assist them out of poverty. Therefore, contextual appreciation of the meaning of poverty helps clarify the philosophy behind the principles which underpinned early development of microfinance activities. The World Bank described poverty as pronounced deprivation in well-being (World Bank, 2011). However, Sen (1987) defined poverty as deficiency due to a lack of resources, both material and non-material, e.g. income, housing, health, education, knowledge and culture. Haynes (2008) added that poverty requires a threshold to measure it. Quite often poverty leads to social exclusion which according to Kakkadan and Sameeksha (2006), refers to the inability to participate in society due to lack of resources that are normally available to the general population. Therefore, the process of lifting the poor out of conditions of poverty involves transforming the economic capacity of those poor individuals. Thus, as Hulme and Mosley (1997) put it, the principle of microfinance focusses on equipping the poor people to take an active role economically in their lives through financial and technical support that encourage enterprise development.\n3. Who are the main players in microfinance?: The underpinning philosophical approaches, operating models and motivations for engaging in microfinance activities vary significantly among practitioners (Hulme and Arun, 2009). Arguably, contemporary microfinance practice can be anything from a purely commercial micro bank operating strictly on conventional banking principles driven by profits, to a small community-based organization driven purely by social motives and managed by non-bankers, and everything in between (Brau and Woller, 2004). However, microfinance indeed has attracted the interests of various stakeholders in the last three decades, from multinational bodies such as the United Nation and the European Union, governments and the voluntary sector, to the private sector (Imran et al., 2002).\n4. What constitutes best practice in microfinance?: Microfinance approaches are influenced by the underlying motivations and philosophies of different players (Gueyie and Fischer, 2009; Morduch, 2000; Mcguire and Conroy, 2000), whether to focus on social or economic performance or both with others adding the environmenntal dimension as well, making it difficult to establish a universal best practice model for microfinance. The overall agreed microfinance best practice include social, economic and environmental considerations covering sustainability, product innovation and services, pricing and product costing and clientele targeting and outreach as key underpinnings of best practice models as will be discussed on sections below (Barnes and Sebstad, 2000). Furthermore, best practice should achieve international standards of sound financial performance, program transparency through reliable reporting systems and minimize environmental impact while effectively promoting wide social impact on the poor (Duvendack et al., 2011).\n5. Existing microfinance models of approach: Arguably, two main approaches exist in modern microfinance as observed by (Morduch, 2000) in what he referred to as microfinance schism. On one hand is the broad approach where the capital market demands seems the most important determinant factor in how microfinance services are delivered, with private investors as the major source of capital (Morduch, 2000). Consequently, the majority of MFIs following this approach strives to be attractive to private investors while drawing their motivation from the need to satisfy investor demands through maximizing MFI profitability. For the purpose of this paper, we shall refer to this approach as the capital market driven (CMD) model. On the other hand lies another approach which seems reluctant to respond to the capital market demands and prefers to maintain the traditional focus on poverty reduction through primarily donor capital grants. However, in the wake of dwindling donor support in the sector, MFIs are increasingly seeking to make their operations financially viable by adopting sound business modeling while at the same time striving to maintain their primary goal of poverty alleviation (Morduch, 2000). We shall refer to this broad approach as poverty reduction driven (PRD) microfinance model.\n6. What constitutes best practice models of microfinance for poverty alleviation?: According to Cornford (2001), microfinance \"models\" usually refer to the products and services provided as well as the method in which they are provided. Some of the most well-known microfinance models include the Grameen Bank solidarity group, the Latin American solidarity group, the rural financial systems approach as epitomized by Bank Rakyat Indonesia's unit desa system, community-owned village banks, savings and loans associations, credit unions, and self-help groups. However, best practice should achieve international standards of sound financial performance, program transparency through reliable reporting systems and minimize environmental impact while effectively promoting wide social impact on the poor. Morduch (2000) contends that previous microfinance best practice studies have centered on important but general aspects of institutional performance, such as maintaining financial transparency, standardizing products and achieving scale. Hence the need for more research in microfinance best practice models with a specific focus on poverty alleviation. The above argument is supported by Simanowitz and Walter (2002) who also argue that microfinance is a compromise between social and financial objectives. However, to date most emphasis has been on financial and institutional performance and the social and environmental dimension impact remains a missing link. This has compromised the opportunities for maximizing poverty impact and client performance. In agreement to Murdoch's observations on mainstream best practice models' focus on institution, Walia and Monika state that the significance of bringing the focus back to \"people\" from \"institutions\" and adoption of localized people centric approach can hardly be overemphasized.\n7. Conclusion: In conclusion, microfinance best practice should achieve international standards of sound financial performance, program transparency through reliable reporting systems and minimize environmental impact while effectively promoting wide social impact on the poor (Duvendack et al., 2011). However, Cornford (2001), quoting Seibel specifically challenges the use of the adjective \"best\" and its implication is that there is only one optimal way of doing things. Instead, he argues for the need to talk of \"sound practices\" (Carolyn, 2001). According to Marulanda et al. (2010), the one size fits all approach to microfinance models of best practice have led to many mistakes been made when trying to replicate successful experiences from one context directly into different context without adjusting practices to take into account the specific characteristics of each case. They went on to argue that believing that an institutional model that worked in one country, has to work in another country or institution is unrealistic.\n8. Key recommendations for academics and researchers: The paper has demonstrated that microfinance ideology and practice of the 1980s and 1990s is now a distant history. The race is no longer about proving that the poor are bankable as major banks across the world are now actively involved in providing services to the poor population in one form or another. The world of microfinance is now a jungle of financial innovation and market exploitation by anyone with spare cash to try their lucky. Regulation is always playing catch up in all markets, marking it difficult to establish reasonable order, never mind internationally agreed standards. However, in all this somewhat chaotic environment, one thing is very clear; that is the new phenomenon is more about profit seeking than real development or poverty alleviation. Unfortunately, the research community and academics are still using the default ideology of poverty alleviation when discussing microfinance. This creates a lot of confusion as commercial and developmental microfinance providers behave very differently to a given poverty scenario which also have implications on how the individual poor person concerned experience intervention. Although evidence shows that more and more developmental MFIs are being forced by difficult circumstances to become more commercially oriented, it is very unlikely that all microfinance activities will be on purely commercial basis. This paper therefore, strongly recommends a clear distinction between the CMD and the PRD microfinance models of approach in all literature and discourse to enable clarity and precision in future innovation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish what constitutes best practice models of microfinance for poverty alleviation. It argues that the new microfinance phenomenon characterized by two camps; commercial and developmental players should be recognized as legitimate separate microfinance approaches with different aims and motives. This paper aims to establish strong foundational argument for developing parallel thinking and separate best practice models for effective engagement with each approach.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Rapid evidence assessment methodology was used to systematically identify and analyze a comprehensive list of relevant literature on best practice models of microfinance for poverty alleviation from both online and offline publications. Over 40 publications on microfinance best practice were critically reviewed with a specific attention to how the two approaches to microfinance (commercial and developmental) were dealt with in relation to impact on poverty and best practice approaches.\nFindings: The paper argues that, business priorities of commercial microfinance providers differ significantly to those of development microfinance providers and this impacts on the program design which means clients of each regardless of coming from the same target group may have different experiences. The microfinance concept evolved far beyond any single philosophical or ideological confinement that there is now need for formal recognition and acknowledgment that commercial and developmental microfinance paradigms are parallel models of approaches whose continuous evolution is less likely to converge in the near future, so should be treated separately.\nResearch limitations/implications: Because the purpose, challenges and requirements of commercial and developmental microfinance approaches are different, continued lack of purposeful distinction between the two will continue to cause confusion and lack of precision in policy response on specific sector challenges. Further work and discourse on the impact of both commercial and developmental approach to microfinance on service delivery to the poor is required to test the implications on best practice.\nOriginality/value: The paper highlights the fundamental flaw in the current perspective of microfinance sector which fails to recognize irreconcilable parallel approaches underpinned by different motives.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Combined quality function deployment and logical framework analysis to improve quality of emergency care in Malta
|
[
"Total quality management",
"Healthcare",
"Quality function deployment",
"Service quality",
"Process management",
"Malta",
"Patient satisfaction",
"Quality frameworks",
"Logical framework",
"Accident and emergency unit"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In many tertiary care hospitals accident and emergency (A\nQFD and LFA, and their applications in healthcare system: QFD is a method to transform user demands into design quality, to deploy the functions forming quality and to deploy methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts, and ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing process (Akao, 1990). QFD is designed to help planners focus on characteristics of a new or existing product or service from the viewpoints of market segments, company or technology-development needs. The technique yields charts and matrices. QFD helps transform customer needs (the voice of the customer) into engineering characteristics (and appropriate test methods) for a product or service, prioritising each product or service characteristic while simultaneously setting development targets for product or service. For example, Camgoz-Akdag et al. (2013) used QFD to translate customer needs and expectations into the quality characteristics in a private healthcare setting. Other researchers have published number of case studies in healthcare using QFD (Mazur et al., 1995; Einspruch et al., 1996; Lorenzo et al., 2004).\nMethodology: This study adopts a case study action research method, which is succinctly defined by Gilmore et al. (1986, p. 161) as \"Action research aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of social science simultaneously. Thus, there is a dual commitment in action research to study a system and concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in changing it in what is together regarded as a desirable direction. Accomplishing these twin goals requires the active collaboration of researchers and industry practitioners, and thus it stresses the importance of co-learning as a primary aspect of the research process\". The case study involved the A\nApplication: The proposed framework is then applied to the case study A\nResults: Currently the project is in various stages of implementation. However some results are already evident. The study reveals that the top three patient requirements were faster patient flow, expert triage and shorter waiting time for both medical attention and for admission to hospital. It also reveals that the availability of emergency department consultant cover needs to improve. While the number of patient reviews increased from 74,949 in 2010 (of which 49 per cent were admitted and 51 per cent discharged) to 76,153 for 2011 (of which 32 per cent were admitted and 68 per cent discharged), the number of hospital admissions decreased by 17 per cent from 2010 to 2011. This can be explained by the shift towards consultant-based service. Additionally, the increase in patients reviewed could very well be explained by the ageing population, which showed an increase of 1.6 per cent of over 65 year olds from 2010 to 2011. The patient turnaround time of the A\nDiscussion: High quality of care in A\nConclusion: Although QFD has been extensively researched, its deployment in healthcare is relative less as application of QFD needs slightly different approach than other quality management tools and techniques (Gremyr and Raharjo, 2013). Therefore, this study adds value to healthcare quality management research and practices through demonstration of real life application of combined QFD and LFA framework.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated patient-focused analytical framework to improve quality of care in accident and emergency (A\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study adopts a case study approach. First, a thorough literature review has been undertaken to study the various methods of healthcare quality management. Second, a healthcare quality management framework is developed using combined quality function deployment (QFD) and logical framework approach (LFA). Third, the proposed framework is applied to a Maltese hospital to demonstrate its effectiveness. The proposed framework has six steps, commencing with identifying patients' requirements and concluding with implementing improvement projects. All the steps have been undertaken with the involvement of the concerned stakeholders in the A\nFindings: The major and related problems being faced by the hospital under study were overcrowding at A\nPractical/implications: The proposed framework can be easily integrated within any healthcare unit, as well as within entire healthcare systems, due to its flexible and user-friendly approach. It could be part of Six Sigma and other quality initiatives.\nOriginality/value: Although QFD has been extensively deployed in healthcare setup to improve quality of care, very little has been researched on combining QFD and LFA in order to identify issues, prioritise them, derive improvement measures and implement improvement projects. Additionally, there is no research on QFD application in A\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Energy efficiency actions at a Brazilian university and their contribution to sustainable development Goal 7
|
[
"Universities",
"Energy efficiency",
"SWOT analysis",
"Sustainable development goals",
"Energy sustainability"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Energy efficiency is the practice to reduce energy consumption and its costs, and it is also related to the efforts to increase clean energy production. The gains associated with it, including cost savings and resource efficiency, are critical considering that the global resource costs are rising and countries need to become economically efficient (Maistry and Annegarn, 2016). In addition, the high levels of energy consumption increase emissions of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, impacting people's health and global climate.\n2. Methodology: The object of the case study is the University of Passo Fundo (UPF), a multi-campus university, located in Southern Brazil. The main campus occupies a peripheral zone of the city, with a built-up area of more than 110 thousand square metres, receiving a population of approximately 16,000 users (including students, professors and staff) with several impacts on the neighbourhood context and mobility (Frandoloso and Brandli, 2015).\n3. Data presentation: In this section, the results of the case study about energy-efficiency initiatives and their contribution to SDG 7 are presented. From the data collected, three initiatives were analysed and are described in the following discussion:\n4. Discussion: Lighting is responsible for approximately 15 per cent of the global electricity consumption and about 5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions (The World Bank, 2018). However, in this decade, the use of LED lamps has occasioned an energy revolution, because of energy savings of up to 80 per cent compared to conventional lamps (Department of Energy, 2017). In addition, LED lighting delivers a high level of brightness, long lifespan and reliability (Garrido et al., 2018). Light or its absence has a fundamental effect in learning environments (Wu and Ng, 2003), and it can influence student's performance and academic achievement. Next steps can be guided by the experiences shared through the case study of Fonseca et al. (2018), as the authors present similar energy actions (such as the LED replacement and the use of a photovoltaic system) but guided by a renovation plan aiming to achieve nearly zero energy goals.\n5. Research limitations and implications: The limitation of this research is mainly due to the focussed approach in only three initiatives towards energy efficiency applied at UPF. In general, universities have the necessity to reduce operational costs, leading to the choice to improve their environmental stewardship. To accomplish it, internal barriers such as capital funds, internal capital budgeting procedures and energy managers' choices need to be overcome. In this case study, the results of the three energy-efficiency initiatives represent an example to show how it is possible to save energy and to invest in a clean energy source. Given its focus, this study did not include another important variable, which is the occupants' behaviour, especially because people can have different views concerning energy efficiency and actions not always focussed on energy-saving habits. This approach can be a topic for future research.\n6. Conclusion: The main goal of this study was to analyse UPF's initiatives towards energy efficiency and the seventh SDG. As a result, among the initiatives, this article focussed on three: Lighting - use of LED lamps; Photovoltaic Solar Power Generation; and the Free Energy Market. The first initiative is the replacement of fluorescent lamps for LED lamps in the library, causing a monthly reduction in consumption of approximately 3 per cent. In the main avenue, the replacement resulted in approximately 60 per cent of reduced energy consumption. The second initiative, regarding the Solar Photovoltaic Generation Park, has generated an average of 1,431 kWh/month in five months and can be higher depending on the season and intensity of solar radiation. The third initiative, concerning the use of Free Energy Market, is also an economic approach comparing to regular electric power bill prices, with financial savings of 22 per cent in October 2018. Besides the financial economy, the three initiatives contribute to the development of a more sustainable campus, with less greenhouse gas emissions and as an example for the academic community's environmental awareness.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse recent actions of energy efficiency implemented by University of Passo Fundo, a higher education institution located in the south of Brazil, and their contributions to Goal 7.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The analysis is based on collected energy data and information of energy efficiency actions applied at the university.\nFindings: The paper shows the progress related to the energy practices and discusses opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses of applying energy efficiency at universities and its contributions towards sustainable development goal (SDG) 7.\nPractical implications: The findings of this study can inform readers about University of Passo Fundo's initiatives towards energy efficiency focussed in lightening, photovoltaic solar power generation and free energy market. Readers are able to improve their knowledge with the discussion of internal and external factors related to the initiatives.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper is connected to the idea of sharing the experiences from University of Passo Fundo, connecting energy efficiency practices at universities to SDG 7 and also exploring opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses of applying these practices in the context of a higher education institution.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Strategies for modern operations management: Answers from European manufacturing companies
|
[
"CSR",
"ERP",
"Design management",
"Servitization",
"Lean-agile",
"Supply orchestration"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the last decade the scenario concerning production management and at-large operations management has dramatically changed. Companies of whatever sector have faced crises with unprecedented frequency, complexity and impact (Mitroff, 2005), which has affected operations management and its processes. As a consequence, companies have to set and deploy new strategies and objectives for modern operations management. Among manufacturing companies, strategies such as servitisation, agile processes, lead time reduction, on-time delivery performance and quality management have become fundamental to compete worldwide. These strategies are typically linked to Lean and agile manufacturing (Hallgren and Olhager, 2009; Bhasin, 2012; Karim and Arif-Uz-Zaman, 2013) as well as Six Sigma and total quality management (TQM) (Chiarini, 2013a, b; Bhamu and Singh, 2014). These strategies also involve the whole supply chain not just internal operations. Specific competencies of the supply chain have to be built and integrated into operations.\nLiterature review: There is much research on strategies and trends suitable for modern operations management. Dey et al. (2013) classified the emerging trends in operations from an analysis of ten papers developed from a series of research seminars funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. According to the authors (Dey et al., 2013), the new trends are servitisation of manufacturing, E-operations, outsourcing, Leanness and agility and performance measurement.\nMethodology: In order to collect data and information on the key issues, the research has employed a questionnaire in which data have been collected once in a period of time with a cross-sectional inquiry.\nDiscussion of the results: The results of the questionnaire were analysed by means of SPSS. Table III recaps the results achieved from the Cronbach statistical analysis. The a coefficient is equal to 0.856; the closer a is to 1 the better and, as a general rule of thumb, a value over 0.80 is considered good (Bryman and Cramer, 2011).\nConclusions: This research is based on the results of a questionnaire derived from eight key issues which stemmed from a literature review. The questionnaire was completed by 152 senior operations managers from 120 large European manufacturing companies. The eight key issues are new strategies for modern operations according to different authors.\nAvenues for further research: Researchers should deepen the theoretical issues raised by the findings and validated in this research. For instance employing some different quantitative research such as structural equation modelling using partial least squares. Furthermore they should research the controversial aspects that emerged from the respondents. Researchers should investigate, first of all, on what servitisation implies for production processes and how a servitisation strategy can work with customisation. The respondents believe that servitisation is a pure cost. Why would this be? Is this finding just a bias from this sample of large manufacturing companies? Moreover we need more theory concerning how servitisation can be combined with Lean and agile systems.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This research enlarges the debate on the operations management strategies pursued by manufacturing companies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on issues concerning servitisation and customisation, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Lean-agile, supply chain orchestration, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Lean for design management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire of eight questions which stemmed from a literature review was completed by 152 senior operations managers from 120 large European manufacturing companies. Responses were scaled from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The results were tested for reliability using Cronbach's a test. The questions were tested through a one-sample t-test.\nFindings: The 152 respondents consider servitisation and standardisation to be a trade-off. They consider integration of ERP strategies with Lean and agile systems and customised products/processes to be difficult. Furthermore, suppliers' orchestration is considered not that suitable for manufacturing companies and suppliers' CSR performance measurement excessive. By contrast, a CSR internal performance measurement is helpful for increasing sales. The respondents also indicate that there is a lack of Lean tools for design and development processes and Six Sigma is the only strategy for improving quality performance in design and development processes.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings are applicable only to the manufacturing sector. The findings of this research indicate many avenues of research for scholars.\nPractical implications: The findings can be very useful for manufacturing operations managers deciding their future strategies on operations.\nOriginality/value: Findings related to servitisation and customisation, ERP and Lean-agile, supply orchestration for manufacturing companies and Lean and agile for product design are original and open a valuable debate.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Like a chameleon: the polychromatic virtue of dynamic brands
|
[
"Colour",
"Logo design",
"Brand identity",
"Dynamic brands"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: For decades, visual identities have been structured around their visual identity systems (VIS), which forms a unit extremely important for brands to standardise their visual identity usage and application, ensuring consistency and recognition. However, the current info-communication environment - which is defined by Passarelli et al. (2014) as the context immersed in digital technologies that create, use and store the information that will be used in the communication processes for the exchange of messages - brought participation, interaction, appropriation, motion, mutability and ubiquity to many different aspects of human life, and is also changing the way brands are used as communication instruments. Brands now adapt to the context in which they operate, where they know their audiences will be and, more than ever before, brands are currently allowed a certain amount of flexibility to develop, which is inherent to a constantly evolving process. Grounded in this hypermodern perspective (Lipovetsky, 2007), the brand is assumed to be something that is much more than a form of differentiation, and instead to be something that is intrinsically part of an identity, liable to convey a massive complexity of contextual meanings, many of them potentially unexpected and depending on pure serendipity.\n2. Literature review: It is widely recognised that brands, which are one of the most relevant manifestations of organisations and any other self-promoting entity (either a group or a single individual), are composed of several intangibles, such as the style of management, the structure, the behaviour and procedures (Lambert, 1989), values and culture, skills, assets and resources (Davidson, 1997), personality and self-image (Kapferer, 1997), but also of tangible, functional components that, altogether, form the brand's VIS, one of the strategic resources for brand's identity consistent use and systematisation: name, logo/symbol, typography, colours, slogan, signage, language (Grossman, 1994; Kapferer, 1997, 2001; Mollerup, 1999; Aaker, 2004; Kreutz, 2005; Olins, 2008; Keller et al., 2008; Peon, 2009; Wheeler, 2012; Van Nes, 2012; Oliveira, 2013).\n3. Method: In the case of this research, a qualitative descriptive research was elected and framed by an interpretivist and post-positivist enquiry. As opposed to positivism, the interpretivist paradigm emphasises the existence of a subjective reality, understanding the world as it is made meaningful by humans (Collins, 2010), and, drawing from this, post-positivists believe that reality exists, but it can only be imperfectly and probabilistically experienced, grounded on human conjectures (Popper, 1994).\n4. Findings: 4.1 Study 1 - matrix analysis\n5. Discussion and implications: The supposition to be tested using RQ is that dynamic brands may not rely on static/fixed corporate colours or are not necessarily concerned with transmitting traditional specific values or meanings through colour. The identification of a tendency, via an exercise which takes into account the principles of fashion trend forecasts, can bring insights into how brands with dynamic visual identities communicate as trends - now and in their future endeavours - and remind us that trends should be critically examined so that innovation remains the priority. On the other hand, identifying trends helps marketers and designers translate concepts into something physical, sensorial and yet true or authentic to the brand philosophy.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the chromatic approaches in dynamic brand identities, describing and analysing new trends, patterns or shared strategies which seem to be taking place and renunciating the consistent use of corporate colours in some brands.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research consisted of a qualitative visual content analysis, based on the comparison and scrutiny of 50 dynamic visual identities, verifying the changes that their colours would undergo in their numerous forms of representation and the symbolic associations these would carry. This analysis was performed using three different studies.\nFindings: The results show that colour in dynamic brands does not follow any consistent pattern regarding its application and none of the most common colour harmonies seem to be an obvious strategic preference.\nPractical implications: This research provides insights for brand managers to look at how this dynamic positioning can be successfully implemented without affecting recognition whilst establishing or maintaining customer loyalty, and for brand designers and marketers to clarify how brand guidelines will explain the usage of such colourful approaches.\nOriginality/value: This paper is a contribution to the knowledge of how a traditional visual element such as colour is being combined, deconstructed and reassembled in the context of modern visual identities. Three patterns are identified, and two of them draw attention to the apparent unnecessity of colour consistency and the way this may affect the relevance of colour in transmitting certain meanings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How to win the attention of top executives: The interaction of an issue's characteristics and environmental threats
|
[
"Organizational change",
"Bottom-up process",
"Environmental threats",
"Headquarters’ attention",
"Issue’s characteristics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Studies often portray organizational changes as discrete events initiated by top managers at organizations (Dutton et al., 2001). And most of the previous research in this area focused on how organizations implement (e.g. communication) and react to (e.g. employees' resistance or involvement) organizational change (Jacobs et al., 2013; Myungweon, 2011; Oreg et al., 2011). However, in high-velocity environments, continuous improvements rather than discrete interventions are of critical importance to organizations (Oswick et al., 2005). An effective continuous change usually begins with a key component process, in which change issues are \"sold\" by managers outside of top management to those at tops of organizations (Dutton et al., 2001). For instance, 3M company's \"Post-it note\" (i.e. sticky note) is a popular example to indicate how a change issue was sold by managers at lower organizational levels and leveraged competitiveness of the whole organization. This early process of a bottom-up change is named issue-selling, by which managers affect top executives' attention to and understanding of the issues that concern the change content, these change issues including the events, developments and trends that have implications for organizational performance (Dutton and Ashford, 1993). Therefore, issue-selling is a key process in a bottom-up change, which is not paid enough attention to in previous studies on organizational change.\n2. Theoretical background and hypotheses: Issue-selling represents an important means to initiate a bottom-up change by subsidiary managers. Before an issue is approved and then executed in organizational change, it should be included into a corporate decision list. Thus, how to draw top executives' attention and make them accept the issue becomes a critical task to subsidiary managers if they purpose to initiate a relevant change (Cho and Hambrick, 2006; Sullivan, 2010). Although scholars have examined useful strategies when selling issues, such as packaging an issue as incremental or radical, and involvement of others (Dutton et al., 2001; Ling et al., 2005), few have examined the issue's characteristics that facilitate or hinder top executives' attention.\n3. Research methodology: 3.1. Sample and data collection\n4. Analysis and results: 4.1. Construct validity\n5. Discussion: This study tends to answer the question of how two key factors, in terms of an issue's characteristics and environmental threats, jointly influence the attention of top executives at headquarters in the initiation of a bottom-up change. Three critical characteristics were identified, including organizational benefits, legitimacy and novelty. Our empirical results show that these characteristics have substantial influences on headquarters' attention. An issue's organizational benefits have a positive effect on the attention of top executives.\n6. Conclusion: We identified three critical characteristics of an issue in change initiation and examined their interaction effects with environmental threats on headquarters' attention. Theoretically, we suggest that issue-selling can be used more effectively as a mechanism in a bottom-up change process when environmental conditions are met. Empirically, we found that subsidiary managers should propose the right issue in the right circumstance in initiating a change, i.e. proposing legitimate issues in control-reducing threats while taking action to push innovative issues in threats of likely loss. The present study, therefore, helps answer the question on how subsidiary managers take charge of the destiny for their proposed issues, and how top executives at headquarters allocate their attention more productively.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how subsidiary managers gain attention from top executives at headquarters for their desired issue in order to initiate a bottom-up change. Specifically, it focuses on relationships among a change issue's characteristics, environmental threats and top executives' attention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An empirical test of hypotheses by a hierarchical regression approach has been applied to analyse the data collected through a survey of 81 headquarters-subsidiary dyads in China.\nFindings: There are three main findings, including first, the headquarters' attention is positively related to the organizational benefits of an issue; second, there exist inverted U-shaped curves between an issue's legitimacy or novelty and the headquarters' attention; and third, the headquarters' attention to an issue is also moderated by environmental threats.\nOriginality/value: The present study has noted that the headquarters' attention to the issue varies not only according to the issue's distinctive characteristics but also to their perception of environmental threats. It contributes to the advancement of organizational change theory by focusing on the empirical examination of an issue-selling process which is a key component part in a bottom-up change.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Shaping business through and within networks: evolving from a traditional to a digital firm
|
[
"Actor",
"Conflict",
"Individual interest",
"Collective interest",
"Alignment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The nature of the actor has only been researched within IMP to a limited extent (Hakansson et al., 2009; Munksgaard et al., 2017; La Rocca, 2013). This article follows the shaping of a firm from start-up to becoming a dominant actor by studying the interests of individual and business actors, the interaction processes and the emerging interfaces. Firms do not operate alone; they need to interact (Hakansson and Snehota, 1989). Joint development of solutions can be useful for individual firms - in fact, interaction can facilitate solutions a firm may find difficult or impossible to develop on its own (Axelsson and Hakansson, 2016; Hakansson et al., 2009). Thus, interacting with other firms provides opportunities for newly established firms to develop and innovate. However, interacting with counterparts comes at a cost - inherent in substantive interaction are consequences related to adaptation and commitment (Axelsson and Hakansson, 2016; Hakansson and Waluszewski, 2002a).\nBusiness development and actors: A start-up may know less than an established firm about other firms in a particular context (Snehota, 2011). Therefore, start-ups need to learn about contexts, other actors and actors' interests and goals. To be able to operate, start-ups need to interact to acquire resources, link activities and gain knowledge from other actors (Aaboen and Aarikka-Steenroos, 2017). An established firm has learned about the peculiarities of a context, as well as its and other firms' roles and interests. However, the context, roles, interests and goals are not a given; rather, they evolve over time. Both start-ups and well-established firms need to understand how the business landscape operates and evolves (Ford and Mouzas 2013). In an evolving business landscape, firms search for different kinds of partners with whom to develop new relationships or seek to take advantage of relationships that may have existed before the establishment of the firm (Aaboen and Aarikka-Steenroos, 2017; Havenvid and La Rocca, 2017). Relating with other actors in a business landscape unfolds through the connection of resources and activities but also to some degree through the alignment of interests (Corsaro and Snehota, 2011). The choice to relate or not to relate becomes a double choice wherein two or more parties must agree (Wilkinson et al., 2005). Force may play a role (Ritter and Ford, 2004), but an agreement mostly requires that firms learn about each other and reveal their interests and goals, at least to some extent. However, firms may be reluctant to reveal their interests and goals openly because they may be uncertain about the other parties' aims and goals and to what extent these will be conflicting (Munksgaard and Medlin, 2014). The individual firm needs to progress in its search for business partners. Thus, actors and their interests, alignment and interaction are pivotal for understanding how businesses are shaped. Next, the study addresses the challenges of business development in terms of actors, uncertainty and interfaces.\nMethodology: The chosen case involves a firm called Systime, representing an exemplary or extreme case of a business and its shaping over a forty-year period (Miles et al., 2014). During that period, the firm Systime has succeeded in becoming a major player in the publishing industry in Denmark. Case research has the advantage of being able to handle complexity and changes and can provide rich insights through which multiple views can be portrayed (Dubois and Gibbert, 2010; Halinen and Tornroos, 2005).\nCase study: An overview of the shaping and reshaping of the firm Systime occurring between 1978 and 2018 is presented next. Each identified stage reveals various major events and challenges influencing the development of the firm as well as how various actors' interests influenced the development of Systime.\nDiscussion and conclusion: In line with Cantu's (2018) claim, the two Systime founders' ability to create a business and relate to others was an essential issue at the start. When a business starts, no relationships exist per se; relationships must be established. Relating to others is a key activity when establishing a new firm (La Rocca et al., 2013), although there is always uncertainty for the parties involved at the beginning of a relationship. The case firm's founders had limited resources. Founders' interests were motivated by the desire to bring out new, updated and relevant books that fit well with a printer's interest in helping to create new customers and promote competition in the industry. Another actor, a bank, was more interested in whether a loan could be paid. This disparity shows that differences in interest were important for a firm's initial development and success. Munksgaard (2015) noted it is easier to get along when both parties in a relationship are aligned. Getting the \"right\" actors with whom to relate was an essential part of the founders' attempts to develop and shape Systime. In the early years, the firm represented an unsafe bet for counterparts; the founders were perceived by other actors to be the core of the relationship with other business partners (Cunningham and Turnbull, 1982). How interfaces were set up was primarily based on the two founders' abilities to handle and activate the use of resources (Axelsson and Hakansson, 2016). Hence, the founders had a decisive influence on how interfaces with different actors were formed.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although individual and business actors are often mentioned as an important part of clarifying the stages that firms and their networks go through from starting up to becoming established, most studies have emphasised activities and resources rather than actors. Therefore, more needs to be known about how actors shape and are shaped through and within firms' networks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To clarify the process of reshaping business in networks, the focus of this study is on the role of actors in firms' networks during the main stages of development. The major events for each stage are described in terms of how these events affect the interaction, alignment and interfaces between individual actors and business actors with a focus on individual and collective interests.\nFindings: The individual actor plays a key role in the start-up stage, whereas the business actor has a key role in the final stage when the firm has become an important player in the industry. In later stages, the individual actor plays a gradually decreasing role and the business actor an increasing role. However, it appears that an analysis of the interplay between the two levels of analysis provides deeper insight into the shaping.\nOriginality/value: This study provides new insights into the role of the actor and how the actor shapes and is shaped by a firm and its network in different stages. Further, the study contributes by clarifying actors' roles on two levels of analysis and shows the roles of interests, conflicts, interfaces and alignment in shaping firms and their networks.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
When does "liking" a charity lead to donation behaviour? Exploring conspicuous donation behaviour on social media platforms
|
[
"Conspicuous Donation Behaviour",
"Materialism",
"Self-esteem",
"Altruism",
"Self-monitoring",
"Social media platforms"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Charities and non-profit organisations recognise the value of online social media platforms for influencing consumer responses, particularly among younger consumers. The 2014 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge viral campaign on Facebook achieved four times the previous years' donations (Zillman, 2014). Yet insights suggest baby boomers account for 43 per cent of all charitable giving, cf. millennials' 11 per cent (Blackbaud, 2011). Although younger consumers may find different donation routes, extant literature notes the proportion of 16-25 year olds volunteering has stagnated (Ho and Donohoe, 2014), despite this group being key targets of charitable organisations' social media campaigns (O'Leary, 2016). To ensure organisations optimise their fundraising potential, Facebook launched a \"social good\" team, supporting social causes (Fiegerman, 2015). Yet for consumers, \"self-sacrifice\", such as charitable donations, or even charitable mentions on social media, might actually be \"self-presentation\" (Griskevicius et al., 2007). However, little is known about the relationship between such \"self-presentation\" by young people and their offline donation behaviours.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: This research focuses on CDB. It investigates its antecedents and outcomes, when that CDB is completely virtual, i.e. when it is represented by mentions on a social media platform and when it is unrelated to any prior offline donation behaviour. To better understand these ideas, in this section we first explore the literature about donation behaviour, and donation behaviour on social media in particular. Then, we examine the CDB construct and investigate how it has been explored in extant studies. Finally, we present the research hypotheses informing the structural model.\n3. Method: 3.1 Participants and context\n4. Results: 4.1 Measurement model results\n5. Discussion: Findings reveal that the relationship between online and offline charitable behaviour depends on the orientation of an individual's CDB, which in turn is informed by their personality traits. Results show that people who have higher self-esteem are more likely to engage in CDB on social media platforms to make themselves feel good (self-oriented CDB). In turn, those expressing self-oriented CDB are likely to donate money and volunteer time to that charity. By contrast, individuals who are high self-monitors are more likely to engage in CDB to impress others (other-oriented CDB). By engaging in other-oriented CDB, high self-monitors seek to show others they are a good person, and to make themselves look good. This study reveals a significant negative relationship between other-oriented CDB and individuals' intentions to donate money to charity. Findings also indicate that more materialistic social media users are likely to engage in both self-oriented and other-oriented CDB. The study also provides new insights into \"impure\" altruism, as results show high self-esteem has a positive effect on self-oriented CDB, among people low in altruism. For people low in altruism, materialism positively influences other-oriented CDB, whereas the influence of self-monitoring on other-oriented CDB is higher for people high in altruism. The implications of these findings are discussed below.\n6. Conclusion: While social networks present opportunities for promotion, the ability of charitable organisations to attract donations or volunteers remains challenging. CDB is in its infancy and little is known about the relationship between conspicuous behaviour on social media platforms and \"real\" donations of time or money. This study provides important insights into the relationship between CDB on Facebook and offline behaviours. Findings also inform the understanding of conspicuous behaviour on social media platforms and the role of personality traits in influencing those behaviours.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate the relationship between young people's Conspicuous Donation Behaviour (CDB) on social media platforms and their offline donation behaviour, specifically intentions to donate and volunteer time. It also explores materialism, self-esteem and self-monitoring as CDB trait antecedents, as a form of conspicuous consumption on social media. Finally, it considers the influence of altruism on these relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted of regular Facebook users mentioning a charity brand on Facebook in the past year. Data from 234 participants were analysed and hypotheses tested using structural equation modeling.\nFindings: Results confirm two forms of CDB - self and other-oriented. Materialistic consumers are more likely to engage in both forms of CDB on Facebook. High self-esteem increases self-oriented CDB; high self-monitoring increases other-oriented CDB. Self-oriented CDB is positively associated with donation intentions, but other-oriented CDB is negatively associated. Findings reveal how altruism moderates this model.\nResearch limitations/implications: Findings show how personality traits influence CDB and reveal the relationship between CDB, as virtual conspicuous consumption on social media platforms, and donation behaviour.\nPractical implications: The study provides implications for managers about enhancing charitable donations through social media.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to explore donation behaviour as a form of conspicuous consumption on social media, where virtual conspicuous consumption (i) does not require any offline consumption and (ii) may achieve the desired recognition, without any charitable act. It provides new insights into CDB, its antecedents and influence on donation behaviour.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Experiencing time in prison: the influence of books, libraries and reading
|
[
"Prison libraries",
"Reading",
"Time",
"Library usage",
"Reading motivation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The way we experience time is influenced by the amount of time available to us, and the context in which that time is experienced. Time spent in prison is experienced significantly differently to time experienced outside prison, with prisoners needing to manage significant amounts of unstructured time, often over a period of many years. To fail in the challenge of filling this time productively and positively leads to poor prisoner mental health, behaviour and general wellbeing. One way many people, both inside and outside prison, choose to spend time is by reading books and visiting a library. People outside prison use libraries for many reasons. Frequently cited reasons to visit a library include returning and borrowing books, reading books and searching for information (Library Council of New South Wales, 2008; Australian Library and Information Association, 2013). The desire to pass unstructured time is not identified as a motivating factor for visiting libraries in studies such as these that look at library use. Similarly, the desire to pass time is not identified as a common motivator in choosing to read. According to Schutte and Malouff (2007), we are motivated to read to challenge ourselves, to improve our knowledge and to satisfy curiosity, rather than to pass time. These findings are at odds with the experiences of Australian adult prisoners who choose to use both reading and libraries to pass their large amounts of unstructured time. In this paper, the experience of Australian adult prisoners using reading and prison libraries to pass time is explored. Their unique experience of time is used to explain their motivation to read and use their libraries to pass time. In addition, the study described here has found that using a library and reading has the capacity to alter the experience of time itself for adult prisoners.\nReview of the literature: The experience of time in prison\nMethodology: The current research is part of a broader study examining the phenomenology of prison library use. For further detail of the research process, readers are directed to Garner (2017). Phenomenology was chosen as the most appropriate research method as it provides a mechanism to investigate experiences that ensures the voices of those who are experiencing the studied phenomenon are heard. van Manen (2014) states that phenomenological practices are constantly being reinvented, reordered and disordered. He encourages a resistance to formulating a specific method and to instead deal with data phenomenologically. He prefers researchers to adopt a phenomenological way of thinking about and approaching their data that will lead to a unique treatment and analysis. However, there are a number of interpreters of van Manen's descriptions of phenomenological thinking who have outlined procedures for the phenomenological analysis of data. One such interpretation has been provided by Moustakas (1990) and it is this method that has been used in this research. Moustakas states that the phenomenologist's goal is simply to obtain an understanding of people's experiences of a phenomenon, to illuminate the nature and meaning of that phenomenon rather than to identify a definite truth or to prove or disprove a hypothesis. The goal of the research is to understand the lived experience of prisoners, rather than to prove a theory or test a hypothesis, and phenomenology provides a mechanism to allow this to happen. The Moustakas process has guided all stages of this research including the data analysis and reporting.Sample participants\nFindings: Of the 29 prisoners interviewed for the study, 12 described how reading and the use of their library influenced their experience of time. As a phenomenological study, it is the voices of the participants that are the best descriptors of the lived experience of prison time and the influence of books, reading and libraries on that experience. Accordingly, verbatim comments from the prisoners are included here to illustrate this experience. Pseudonyms for the prisoners are used to ensure their anonymity; however, the names of the prisons in which the participants live are included accurately. This is in accordance with the permission granted by those facilities and the government departments that are responsible for them.Prisoners often describe boredom and its associated frustrations as a common experience of prison life. Alice, a prisoner in the women's section of the Alexander Maconochie Centre in the Australian Capital Territory, recognises the experience of boredom and the negative impact it can have on a prisoner's life: \"you've got to have something to be able to occupy your time, I think. A lot of the time, the bullshit and everything that goes on in here, the fights and that, is because people are bored and have got nothing to do.\" Gabriel, who lives in Marngoneet, a medium security prison in Victoria also expresses the boredom associated with years of largely unstructured time: \"Now it's become very boring. I find it incredibly boring. It's just too many hours with not enough to do.\"Library as a place to pass time\nDiscussion: The words of prisoners demonstrate that the experience of time in prison can be changed by access to books and a prison library. Books and libraries can transform the experience of time from an experience of boredom and frustration to that of a positive experience where time can be spent productively. Prisoners are using books and prison libraries as \"chronotelic\" (Johnsen et al., 2019) resources to help them combat the negative effects of extensive amounts of unstructured time. Although public library users may enjoy spending time in a library, the use of libraries just for this purpose is not a commonly stated experience. The experience of using libraries explicitly to pass time is not supported by existing literature or research about library use outside prison. Much of the literature that illustrates the use of public libraries is quantitative in nature, describing measures such as the number of items supplied on loan, the number of people who use libraries over a given period or the amount of money saved by patrons through using a library. For example, a report by the Library Council of New South Wales Enriching communities: the value of public libraries in New South Library Council of New South Wales (2008) provides details of the demographics of users, the economic activity generated by libraries and the estimated economic benefit of using libraries. This report also describes the main activities undertaken by visitors to public libraries, none of which include the use of a library to pass time. The principle reported uses of public libraries were to borrow books and audio-visual materials and to use library materials without borrowing them (Library Council of New South Wales, 2008). However, the Pew Research Centre survey (2013), which looked at how Americans value their public libraries, found that 75% of all respondents stated having a safe and quiet place to spend time at a library was important to them. Despite this, the Library Council of New South Wales report identified that public library users are not spending long periods of time in their libraries, with the average length of a visit being just 35 min (Library Council of New South Wales, 2008). The use of a library to pass time is not identified in this report as a common practice among public library users.An Australian Library and Information Association report provides similar findings. National welfare and economic contributions of public libraries: final report (2013) details the economic costs and benefits of public libraries, and other quantitative data about economic stimulus and impact. A section quotes comments from public library users about how public libraries benefit them. These comments mention the use of libraries as meeting places, the friendliness of staff and the diversity of the collections. One comment mentions time passing: \"I can read a book and before I know it two hours have passed\" (Australian Library and Information Association, 2013). Although this observation is also commonly expressed by prisoners, the quote does not imply that the user came to the public library with the desire to pass time. Rather, it emphasises that time merely passed without being noticed - an unconscious experience of time. In contrast, prisoners purposefully seek out these opportunities to make time pass by engaging in reading.Unlike the prisoners interviewed, adults not in prison are unlikely to visit libraries as a place to spend their leisure time. A 2016 Wall Street Journal article (Van Dam and Morath, 2016) noted that Americans choose to spend most of their leisure time watching television, engaging in sports or religious activities and eating and drinking. A study of how Australian adults use their time found that they make similar choices in how to spend their leisure time, with over half of their available free time spent interacting with audio-visual and media-based activities (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006). Prisoners have fewer opportunities to engage in the leisure activities commonly chosen by adults. In Australian prisons, many prisoners do not have televisions in their cells or access to a shared television. Therefore, the choice to spend time watching television as a form of leisure is not always possible. There is generally no access to computers outside classrooms, and no access to the Internet or games on these computers. Prisoners in lower-level security prisons who may be permitted to have a computer in their cell must demonstrate that it is needed for educational purposes. It is likely that the prisoners interviewed are choosing to use their libraries to pass time because they have much more free time than people outside prison, and many fewer options on how to fill those hours. The findings of this study are therefore in contrast to existing literature that describes typical public library visits as brief, and as an unlikely choice of activity for people outside prison to choose when faced with free time.Rainie et al. (2012) and Schutte and Malouff (2007) identify many motivating factors amongst the general population in choosing to read, none of which include the desire to pass time. This contradicts the experiences of prisoners but can perhaps be explained by their need to fill excessive amounts of free time, and the subsequent chronopathic effect (Johnsen et al., 2019), coupled with the limited opportunities to fill this time. Such a situation is in opposition to the assumptions made about leisure time by Hammermesh and Lee (2007), and Molina, Camana and Ortega (2016) who identify that leisure time is a scarce commodity, and that people have many competing leisure options available to choose from. Living constantly with a conscious experience of time (Cope, 2003), and the resultant negative influence of this on wellbeing, leads prisoners to search for ways to pass time constructively, as opposed to searching for ways to have time for leisure, including reading. For the prisoners in this study, reading and visiting their libraries has become an important factor in how they cope with their experience of time.Practical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this article is to explore the influence of books, libraries and reading on the experience of time within the prison environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using semi-structured interviews with Australian adult prisoners, and a phenomenological data analysis method, the researcher has been able to identify lived experiences that explain how books, libraries and reading influence the experience of time, within a prison environment.\nFindings: Prisoners' experience of time differs from the experience of time outside prison. Unlike readers and library users outside prison, prisoners are motivated to use books, libraries and reading to pass time. They are using books, libraries and reading to assist in their struggle to manage the negative effects of excessive quantities of unstructured time.\nResearch limitations/implications: Research regarding the motivation to read and use libraries in the general population does not identify the desire to pass time as a factor. In contrast, the current study identifies readers and library users in prisons are strongly motivated to read and visit libraries as a means of passing time. This study adds a new understanding of the motivation to read and visit libraries within prison environments and provides insight into the beneficial influence of prison libraries on prisoner wellbeing.\nOriginality/value: This research contributes valuable new knowledge regarding the experience of time in prison, and the influence of books, libraries and reading on this experience.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Factors influencing healthcare choices by the elderly in India: role of social interactions
|
[
"Gender",
"Health care",
"Developing countries",
"Ageing",
"Social interactions"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Healthcare for the elderly is an important concern for any society but more so for a highly-populated developing country like India which does not provide any comprehensive social security or public assistance programs and where the proportion of 60+ age group is projected to increase sharply over the next few decades, from 8 percent in 2010 to 19 percent in 2050 (United Nations Population Division (UN), 2011). According to Census forecasts, older Indians estimated to reach 173 million by 2026 will dominate the world's elderly population. One can logically expect this demographic transition to lead to several socio-economic and healthcare policy challenges for the elderly particularly given the country's patriarchal social norms and a gradual breakdown of the traditional extended family system. Given this scenario, the primary objective of this paper is to identify and analyze factors that influence choice and quality of healthcare of the elderly population in India. Specifically, this paper hypothesizes that informal channels of knowledge transmission such as social interactions, social support, and communication play an important role in influencing the choice and quality of healthcare received by the elderly in India. It is being assumed here that the better the training/licensure of the healthcare personnel, the superior the quality of healthcare. Specifically, health providers are divided into specific types, trained professionals relative to other providers (faith healers, indigenous healers, etc.) and it is being assumed that trained professionals provide a higher quality of care as compared to other providers.\n1. Brief literature review: According to the United Nations Population Division (Department of Economic and Social Affairs), the number of individuals aged 65 or older in the world is expected to expand from an estimated 495 million in 2009 to 974 million in 2030. This will result in a world population in which 12 percent will be 65 years of age or older by the year 2030, as compared to 8 percent today. By 2020, there will be significantly more people over 60 years of age than children under five years. This structural aging of the world population driven by rising life expectancy and falling fertility[2] is a harsh reality of contemporary time (Kirk, 1996). Fortunately for India, this demographic changeover has been relatively slow to set in given India's consistently high birth rates. However, several recent decades of high economic growth have led to increases in life expectancy and a slowing down of morbidity and mortality rates, which has made the prospect of the aging of the population much more of a reality (Berkman et al., 2012).\n2. Empirical model and data: Before discussion the specific characteristics of the data, we begin with a brief introduction to the LASI project, an explanation of how this project constitutes a good starting point, and how representative our sample is of the Indian population. For this discussion we borrow from Arokiasamy et al. (2012). To begin with, one needs to understand that unlike most developed countries where the aging of the population has been a reality for a while now, India is in the early stages of demographic transition into an older society. This is a reality the country is trying to come to terms with. Given the relative newness of this demographic phenomenon in India, data, knowledge, or research on this issue was almost non-existent. One of the primary motivations behind undertaking the LASI was to bridge the gap in knowledge about the status of older people in India. The LASI project was intended to be a large-scale, nationally representative, longitudinal survey on aging, health, and retirement. LASI joins several existing surveys of the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal survey of Americans aged 50 and older conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.\n3. Results: Before discussing regression results we present descriptive statistics in Tables III and IV. Table III relates to the entire sample while in Table IV we present descriptive statistics segregating the sample along gender lines. The descriptive statistics give us some insight and understanding of the characteristics of the variables being utilized for the analysis. From Table III we see that the average age of individuals in the sample is over 58 years and a majority of the people in the sample (72 percent) live in rural areas. Most of the people in the sample (80 percent) are currently married. A third of the people in the sample belong to religions other than Hindu and over two-thirds of the sample belongs to the lowest caste. A third of the people live with an adult child.\n4. Conclusion: In this paper an attempt has been made to identify factors that influence choice of healthcare by elderly people living in four Indian states. The specific focus has been on the role of informal channels of knowledge transmission such as social interactions, social support, and communication in influencing the choice and quality of healthcare received by the elderly in India. It is being assumed here that the better the training/licensure of the healthcare personnel, the superior the quality of healthcare. What makes this paper unique is that there has been very limited work done on aging in India due to limited availability of data. This paper utilizes some pioneering work done in this area and data made available via the LASI[13], which is intended to be a large-scale nationally-representative longitudinal survey on aging, health and retirement. This paper utilizes data from the LASI pilot project. There are few other studies that have used this pilot project data but such studies are predominantly of descriptive nature and draw inferences without quantitative analysis, unlike the present one. In addition, this paper maybe one of the first to look into factors that affect quality of healthcare for the elderly in India.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The primary objective of this paper is to identify and analyze factors that influence choice and quality of healthcare of the elderly population in two northern and two southern states in India. The purpose of this paper is to look beyond the obvious factors that influence choice and therefore the quality of healthcare and seek to find whether there are some additional indirect factors that also influence choice and quality of healthcare.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper utilizes data from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India pilot project, which was a cross-sectional survey of men and women aged 45 and over focusing on two northern states (Punjab and Rajasthan) and two southern states (Kerala and Karnataka). In this paper the authors carry out a Probit analysis to estimate the factors that influence the elderly's choice of healthcare.\nFindings: The authors find that social activity via different types of social interactions outside the home and access to a phone (which is one of the cheapest and most commonly used methods of communication used by people in India) are statistically significant in influencing better quality of healthcare for the elderly. Moreover, gender-segregated results suggest that social activity is particularly important for elderly females. Relative price of healthcare is also an important determinant of the quality of healthcare sought. The authors also find some consistent regional influences on healthcare choices by the elderly.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main limitation is the data itself which is cross-sectional in nature. However, as further rounds of survey are conducted the authors hope to be able to build on the results of this paper using a longitudinal approach. A second limitation is the lack of variables available for carrying out an instrumental variables analysis. The results imply that elderly males and females are influenced by different things when it comes to healthcare choices. Thus for policy to be effective, the government needs to pursue avenues that would be most likely to succeed.\nPractical implications: One of the most important practical implications of this research is the understanding that informal channels of knowledge transmission are important especially for the elderly in India. Traditional methods of knowledge transmission such as education, media, and income are less likely to be effective in a country where majority of the people are illiterate and poor. Social interactions appear to be most effective in influencing healthcare choices of elderly females.\nSocial implications: The most obvious social implications of this paper are the importance of social interactions via social activities outside the home and ability for social communication via access to a phone for the elderly population in India to make better healthcare choices and therefore receive better healthcare.\nOriginality/value: The literature on elderly healthcare is limited when it comes to developing countries. What makes matters worse for India is that up until recently there have been no comprehensive efforts to collect reliable data on the elderly population in India. As a result there is extremely limited availability of policy-relevant research dedicated to issues relating to the older population. Most of the existing literature looks at self-reported health and healthcare status or utilization. This paper would be among the first to address factors influencing quality of healthcare received by the elderly population in India.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An exploration of dynamic relationship between tourist arrivals, inflation, unemployment and crime rates in Malaysia
|
[
"Crimes",
"Inflation",
"Unemployment",
"Tourism",
"Malaysia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Throughout almost two decades since 1990, reducing crime rate in Malaysia has been viewed as an urgent task for policymakers and also the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) department, because it has a deep impact on socio-economics development. Beginning from the twentieth century, crime rate in Malaysia has increased tremendously. The statistics compiled by RMP shows that crime rate in Malaysia surged from 66,000 cases in 1990 to approximately 182,000 cases in 2000. For a decade, the crime rate in Malaysia has increased about 165 per cent (on average 16.5 per cent a year). Furthermore, this criminal statistics continues to increase and created a new record in the Malaysia's history with approximately 250,000 cases in 2008. In other words, almost 685 cases occurred per day or about 30 cases occurred per hour. No doubt, the crime figure in Malaysia is relatively low compared to the high crime rate economies; however, it has created Malaysian awareness to call for effective strategies to combat the critical criminal phenomenon. Therefore, it is of utmost important to establish an empirical study to examine the determinants of crime rate in Malaysia. We are aware of the fact that, investigation on the determinants for crime rate is not a fresh area of exploration; however, the surging trend of crime rate in Malaysia has sparked the interest of many researchers to investigate factors behind the increasing pattern to provide valuable information for policymakers to combat crime.For Malaysia, studies on crime are relatively scarce. At best, we only observed several published studies on crime rate for the case of Malaysia. Among them are Meera and Jayakumar (1995), Sidhu (2005), Habibullah and Law (2007), Baharom and Habibullah (2009), Habibullah and Baharom (2009) and Tang (2009b). Initially, Meera and Jayakumar (1995) estimated the crime function for Malaysia through the simultaneous equation technique. Their study demonstrated that crimes in Malaysia are affected by three major categories of determinants. Among them are:1. deterrence and punishment;2. economic or incentive of crime; and3. socio-demographic.They found that unemployment in Malaysia is positively related to crime rate and statistically significant at the conventional level. This result supports the presence of criminal motivation theory (Becker, 1968). Ironically, this study does not take into consideration the order of integration I(d) for each series under consideration; therefore, the provided regression results may be spurious if the estimated variables are non-stationary (Granger and Newbold, 1974; Phillips, 1986). In the similar vein, Sidhu (2005) also found that unemployment is an important determinant to explain the increasing pattern of crime rate in Malaysia. However, his study also falls into the same category of methodological flaws as Meera and Jayakumar (1995).Apart from that, Habibullah and Law (2007) attempt to investigate the connection between crime rates and financial determinants (e.g. real per capita income, financial wealth and lending rate) in Malaysia with annual data from 1973 to 2003. Their findings suggested that crime rate and its determinants in Malaysia are co-move in the long run. Surprisingly, the results of variance decompositions analysis based on vector error-correction model (VECM) implied that criminal activity in Malaysia cannot be explained by the selected macro-financial instruments. In addition, Baharom and Habibullah (2009) demonstrated that crime rate in Malaysia is not subjected to income inequality phenomenon. On the other hand, Habibullah and Baharom (2009) examined the effect of real income per capita on 12 categories of crimes in Malaysia. Their findings suggested that in a strong economic performance all categories of criminal activities will increase, except armed robbery. These contrary evidences may be attributed to the omission of relevant variables such as inflation and unemployment (Tang and Lean, 2007). As a result, the existing empirical studies are not without questions and the results should be accepted with caution. Owing to the limitation of the previous studies, Tang (2009b) employed annual data from 1970 to 2006 to re-investigate the crime function for Malaysia with the explanatory variables of unemployment and price level. The Johansen's cointegration test suggests that unemployment and price level are cointegrated and both variables are positively related to crime rate in Malaysia.To this end, most of the crime literatures in Malaysia were focused on the impact of unemployment and income, but they have omitted some potential determinants such as inflation and tourist arrivals. As a result, the earlier empirical studies may have lost some valuable information and have caused the mis-specification problem to emerge. In the past literatures, several studies done abroad have observed the crucial effect of inflation on crime (Curtis, 1981; Ralston, 1999; Teles, 2004; Tang and Lean, 2007, 2009). They claimed that inflation will reduce the purchasing power and increases the cost of living. Therefore, crime rate may increase when an individual is unable to maintain their standard of living as before. Moreover, Tang and Lean (2007) argued that this is not an immediate phenomenon because it is time consuming for inflation to gradually \"reduce\" the purchasing power.Apart from that, the tourism-crime literatures have indicated that crime and tourism are closely related. However, the relationship between crime and tourism is mixed (Pizam, 1982). On one hand, McPheters and Stronge (1974) conducted an empirical study on the relationship between crime and tourism in Miami, Florida. They found that the effect of tourism on crime rates in Miami is positive and statistically significant at the 5 per cent level. In line to that, Ryan (1993) pointed out that tourism is frequently used as a means to smuggle drugs from country to country. Moreover, the author also documented that tourists are the potential victim of crime and hence the increase of tourist arrivals will also increase the crime rates. Eventually, the author concludes that tourism is the catalyst of criminal activities. Similarly, Brunt et al. (2000) also demonstrated that the influx of tourist is positively contributes to crime rates. Therefore, tourist arrival is an important determinant for the change in crime rates. Harper (2000) performed a brief survey on tourist robbery in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. Consistent with Ryan (1993) finding, the author observed that tourists are the victim of crime and there are certain degree of planning and selection criterion of a victim such as time, location and tourists behaviour. For example, the frequency of tourist robbery is very high during weekends because more people to choose on the weekends and the robbers are easy to hide in the crowd and escape. On the other hand, Levantis and Gani (2000) examined the relationship between crime and tourism in eight developing economies of the Caribbean and the South Pacific. The author found that crime rate and tourists arrivals are inverse relation and it is statistically significant at the 5 per cent level for all the selected economies, except Solomon Islands. In addition, Pizam (1999) noted that when concerning the issue of tourism and crime or safety, tourists willing to cancel or to postpone the travel destination or to choose alternative travel destinations that involve less risk. Obviously, safety is the primary concern for tourists when choosing travel destination, thus tourism and crime is negative relation (Barker et al., 2002; Alleyne and Boxill, 2003).Motivated by the imperfections of the existing empirical studies for crime rates in Malaysia, the goal of the present study is to re-assess the relationship between crime rates and its determinants (i.e. unemployment, inflation and tourist arrivals) in Malaysia within a multivariate framework with the updated dataset from 1970 to 2008. This study is more comprehensive compare to the earlier studies on crime rate in Malaysia. This study will be implemented in four steps. First we incorporate two novel determinants - inflation and tourist arrivals into the conventional unemployment-crime (U-C) model specification to avoid the mis-specification problem and further explain the criminal behaviour in Malaysia. Second, we employ Phillips and Perron (PP, 1988) unit root test and also Kwiatkowski et al. (KPSS, 1992) null stationary test to ascertain the degree of integration for each series under investigation. Third, we applied the Johansen and Juselius (1990) multivariate cointegration test in association with the Pantula's (1989) principle to examine the presence of long-run equilibrium relationship between crime rate and its determinants in Malaysia. Fourth, the forecast error variance decomposition analysis and impulse response function will also be used in this study to examine the dynamic interrelationship between crime rate and its determinants.The remaining part of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 will briefly discuss the data, model specification and econometric techniques used in this study. The empirical results of this study will be reported in Section 3 and finally the conclusion and policy implications will be presented in Section 4.\n2. Data, model specification and econometric techniques: 2.1 Data and model specification\n3. Empirical results: 3.1 Unit root tests results\n4 Conclusion and policy implications: Given that the crime rate for Malaysia has increased tremendously, it is extremely important to establish an empirical study to investigate the criminal behaviour in this country. This study attempts to investigate the dynamic relationship between tourist arrivals, inflation, unemployment and crime rate in Malaysia. The annual dataset from 1970 to 2008 were used to achieve the objectives of the present study. With the application of relatively comprehensive econometric methodologies for time series analysis, several conclusions could be drawn from this study.First, this study performed the Johansen-Juselius cointegration test in association with Pantula's principle and Cheung and Lai (1993) response surface procedure to examine the existence of potential long-run equilibrium relationship between crime rate and its determinants. The Johansen-Juselius cointegration test result shows that the variables under investigation are co-move in the long run. This reveals that tourist arrivals, inflation and unemployment rates are coalescing with the crime rate in Malaysia to achieve their steady-state equilibrium in the long run, although deviations may occur in the short run. Second, the presence of cointegration relationship between the variables of interest indicates that there must be Granger causality in at least one direction. The Granger causality test within the VECM framework was employed to examine the causality direction between the variables of interest. The causality test result reveals that in the long-run inflation, unemployment rates and tourist arrivals Granger cause crime rate in Malaysia. Nevertheless, in the short run we observe uni-directional Granger causation running:* from inflation to tourist arrivals; and* from crime to inflation.Additionally, we also observe that unemployment, tourist arrivals and crime are Granger-cause with each others.Through the variance decompositions and impulse response functions analyses, this study provides policymakers with additional insight on the relative importance of random shocks and the response of variables to the shocks. In the long run, most of the variations in crime are explained by unemployment and inflation. While, tourist arrivals explained smaller portion of the variation in crime compare with the rest of two explanatory variables. Meanwhile, tourist arrival is the most important variable in explaining shocks to unemployment and also inflation. In similar vein, shock to unemployment rate will decrease the crime rate in the short run, while increase in the long run. Therefore, both the criminal opportunity and the criminal motivation theories are vindicated in Malaysia. In addition to that, shock to inflation and tourist arrivals have a positive effect on crime rate in Malaysia, however, shock to crime rate has a negative effect on tourist arrivals to Malaysia.In view of policy implication, the findings of this study may shed some light to the policymakers that reducing inflation and unemployment could be one of the effective measures to combat crime rate in Malaysia. This is because the Granger causality and also the variance decomposition analysis results show that both unemployment and inflation are equally important in explaining the criminal behaviour in the long run. In order to achieve this, policymakers may implement supply-side economic policy that is shifts the aggregate supply (AS) curve to higher position, so that both inflation and unemployment rate will reduce simultaneously that will decrease crime rate in Malaysia. Although the empirical results indicate that the relationship between crime and tourist arrivals is strongly positive, the development of tourism industry may gauge more foreign exchange and create employment opportunities, thus reduce the number of tourist arrivals is not an ideal criminal prevention strategy for Malaysia. In this case, this study recommends the policymakers to increase the frequency and also the number of police on patrol duties in the potential crime areas (Sherman et al., 1989; Harper, 2000, 2001), thus improving tourist's safety which at the same time attracting more tourist arrivals to Malaysia.This study endeavours to analyse the crime rates and its determinants in Malaysia, nevertheless, it does not denounce the fact that there are limitations to this discourse. The first limitation of this study is that the analysis is at an aggregated level. Inflation, unemployment and tourist arrivals may have different effects on different categories of crimes. For example, Gale et al. (2002) argued that violent crimes are usually an outcome of hate and revenge; hence it may not be related to any economic determinants. Second, this is a country specific study, hence, the results and findings would not accord a uniform model of macroeconomic policymaking to combat crime rates in other countries. Therefore, this study presumably would ignite further exploration in the Southeast Asia economies by taking into account the pitfalls of this study. As a result it would be expected that more comprehensive and effective regional criminal prevention strategies would be suggested.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: - The main purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationship between tourist arrivals, inflation, unemployment and crime rates in Malaysia. This study covered the annual data from 1970 to 2008.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The multivariate Johansen-Juselius cointegration test is employed to examine the potential long-run equilibrium relationship. While the Granger causality test within the vector error-correction modelling (VECM) framework is applied to determine the causal relationship between crime rate and its determinants.\nFindings: - The Johansen-Juselius cointegration test result reveals that the variables are cointegrated and the dynamic ordinary least squares estimator suggest that unemployment, inflation and tourist arrivals are positively related to crime rates in Malaysia. For Granger causality, in the long-run tourist arrivals, inflation and unemployment rates Granger cause crime rate in Malaysia. However, in the short run we find bilateral causality between unemployment, crime and tourist arrivals. Finally, the variance decompositions and impulse response functions analyses implied that unemployment, inflation and tourist arrivals are important in explaining the variation in crime for Malaysia.\nOriginality/value: - The estimated crime rate function for Malaysia demonstrated that promoting supply-side economy and also increases the numbers of police and patrolling duties in the potential crime areas will reduce the crime rate in Malaysia and in the same time attract more tourist arrivals to Malaysia.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Thinking globally, leading locally: Chinese, Indian, and Western leadership
|
[
"India",
"China",
"Chief executives",
"Cross‐cultural management",
"Western leadership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Globalization has changed the competitive landscape of national and multinational organizations, restructured the supply chain of many others, and, in general, changed the required set of skills for leaders to succeed. In this increasingly interconnected and global world, much has been argued of the significance of cultural and international understanding and awareness. As international strategic alliances and multicultural teams are on the rise (Adler, 2002; Javidan et al., 2006), leaders are advised on the importance of nurturing cultural empathy and becoming culturally savvy (Deresky, 2006) to succeed. Yet, the recognition of the need for understanding cultural differences has not proportionally translated into actionable advice for senior leaders. What are global leaders exactly to understand, and what are the specific behaviors that can help them to be more effective in different contexts?Researchers have suggested that leaders go beyond cognitively \"knowing\" or \"being aware\" of cultural differences to actually grasping and understanding the behavioral implications of such differences in daily managerial practices (Javidan et al., 2006). As an increasing number of chief executive officers (CEOs) and top executives interact with others around the world, they need to understand how cultural values, national variables, and business context change or influence the behavior of their counterparts (Harris and Moran, 1987; Woldu et al., 2006). Understanding the context of the behaviors can help avoid misunderstandings and, in general, improve communication when partnering and negotiating (Hofstede, 1983; House et al., 1999). The high failure rate of strategic alliances has been related to cultural challenges, including differences in communication among partners (Deresky, 2006). Similarly, understanding these differences might also help leaders to learn from each other and HR professionals to effectively design developmental tools and opportunities.Recently, researchers have called for further exploration of leadership characteristics and competencies globally (Ardichvili and Kuchinke, 2002; Morrison, 2000). Most of those who have endeavored to study leadership cross-culturally have undertaken ambitious, longitudinal studies (Hofstede, 1983; House et al., 1999; Trompenaars, 1993) that have offered an important macro perspective. These studies have used cultural dimensions to understand cultural effects and have been widely used in the literature. The leadership literature has extensively built on those studies applying the same or modified versions of the surveys. Yet, there is a lack of richer, qualitative accounts of cross-cultural differences regarding leadership competencies or characteristics in specific business contexts. Such studies would help us to continue adding nuances to our understanding of cross-cultural issues.What are the specific leadership characteristics related to cultural difference and business context and how do they play out? What issues do chief executive leaders in different countries and contexts deal with? How do they solve them? What, if any, are the common characteristics? Answering these questions may give us some specific insights and help us more finely understand the complex question of unpacking cultural and national differences.In this paper, we attempt to do so by bringing together three different samples of top leaders and looking at the key competencies they show. As China and India continue to gain a more prominent stage in the global marketplace, there seems to be a corresponding need to better understand the characteristics of their business leaders. Thus, we aim to contribute to the cross-cultural leadership and human resource literature by offering a rich and detailed understanding of some differences and commonalities among Chinese, Indian, and Western top leaders. This study explores the leadership capabilities most associated with effectiveness in three different cultural contexts. It looks at cultural differences in the role of senior leaders, as well as how successful leaders go about executing their roles in different cultures. The exploratory nature of this research provides insights into the everyday challenges confronted by leaders and how they address these challenges in different contexts. Our research adds to both the academic and practitioner literature in understanding cross-cultural differences in leadership behaviors and competencies.\n2 Leadership, culture, and business context: Despite the large number of leadership studies (Bass, 1990), we still have a lot to learn about cross-cultural leadership in general and senior leadership in particular. Researchers have warned about the predominantly American and North-American nature of the theories we use (Adler, 2002; House, 1995). Yet cultures do not share the same assumptions (Den Hartog et al., 1999; Hofstede, 1983), nor do nations share the same realities. Thus, the business context of leaders across the world may vary, which in turn might elicit different behaviors and styles to succeed. Some of the differences across cultures and nations include values, beliefs, legal systems, economy, and stakeholders. For instance, different property rights, financial systems, union organization, and career patterns influence the role of management and, in turn, corporate governance (Aguilera and Jackson, 2003). Similarly, network configuration and even stock market history has been found to influence corporate governance in different contexts (Chan and Cheung, 2008; Rowley et al., 2000). These differences create particular business contexts that may, in turn, require distinct competencies to be an effective leader.The vital impact of context on organizational and individual behavior has been comprehensively discussed (Johns, 2006). Although some attributes have been found to universally contribute to outstanding leadership (Den Hartog et al., 1999), there is a dearth of research on how specific characteristics may vary across countries (Javidan et al., 2006; Morrison, 2000), in particular regarding senior leaders. More importantly, the implications of the answer remain chiefly unexplored. If particular leadership competencies associated with leadership effectiveness differ across contexts, that can be instructive about:* the unique demands of that business context for those interested in operating there; and* the American-centric nature of leadership theory (Adler, 2002).There is no denying, however, many similarities in the business context exist in a global world. Comparable administrative requirements and standards, similar curricula in business schools, common technologies, cross-cultural interactions, motivation, needs (Alderfer, 1972; Maslow, 1943; McClelland, 1985), and common situational demands are some of the reasons we might find similarities across cultures and business contexts in leadership roles, behaviors, and styles. The literature has focused more on these commonalities than in the ways leadership roles, behaviors, and styles could differ in different cultural or business contexts. Some researchers might still be looking for \"universal leadership prototypes\" (Scandura and Dorfman, 2004, p. 279) instead of trying to gain a richer understanding of the dissimilarities. Cross-cultural studies have mostly focused on measuring cultural dimensions through either the Hofstede (1983) or GLOBE (House et al., 1999) frameworks. The significance of these seminal studies is not contested. They have tremendously helped to move the field forward and give a foundation to our understanding. However, to continue to advance in our knowledge, researchers are calling for a combination of qualitative and quantitative studies that could give us more nuanced knowledge of differences across countries (Scandura and Dorfman, 2004).The question of how similar, or dissimilar, chief executives around the world are remains largely unanswered. Werner's (2002) literature review of top international management journals identifies ten categories of research, including international joint ventures, strategic alliances and networks, subsidiary and multinational team management, and expatriate management. A deeper understanding of differences regarding the context in which senior business leaders have to operate and the associated behaviors of those who have succeeded in such contexts could significantly contribute to all the previous streams of research.\n3 Senior leaders and competencies: The importance of zeroing in on top executives, given their influence on organizational performance, has been well-documented in strategy literature (Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996). Upper echelon theory argues that individual characteristics, such as values, cognitive content, and experiences affect the strategic choices of top managers and, in turn, organizational performance (Hambrick and Mason, 1984). From designing developmental plans that include specific career experiences (McCall and Hollenbeck, 2002) to understanding the impact of job demands on strategic decisions and behaviors (Hambrick et al., 2005), studying the specific competencies or characteristics of leaders in different business contexts could contribute to our understanding of cross-cultural management.Being aware of contextual differences does not necessarily translate into adequate behavior in these situations. There is a difference between \"knowing\" about a cultural context, and being able to execute effective behavior. For senior leaders to be successful, they need to put this knowledge into practice. Competence is not mere knowing; it is actionable knowledge tied to excellent performance. Thus, \"competency\" refers to an underlying, enduring characteristic of a person (demonstrated by certain defined types of behavior) that is related to effective or outstanding performance in a specific job or role (Boyatzis, 1982; Meger, 1996; Spencer and Spencer, 1993). It is fundamental to differentiate competencies from tasks, e.g. \"motivate one's team\" or \"provide strategic vision,\" which are not competencies. Competencies portray how a person usually approaches or attempts to carry out a task, e.g. the skills, attitudes, level of complexity of their thinking, and the depth of perception s/he uses (Spencer et al., 2007). For example, the competency of \"initiative\" describes the tendency of the person to spontaneously take action now to capture opportunities or avoid problems in the future. It can be measured by the number of times a person describes such behavior in a behavioral event interview (BEI) (McClelland, 1998) and by the time frame of the anticipated opportunity or problem (i.e. acting on a problem that is anticipated to materialize in a year scores higher than acting on a problem anticipated only a month ahead, but lower than acting on problem that is not likely to occur for two years). Different contexts could evince distinct abilities or skills. More importantly, particular abilities or skills could be more relevant in specific situations.The competency approach was first proposed by McClelland (1973) and has been used by academics and practitioners alike. Some competencies are said to be fundamental to leaders' success in general and chief executives' effectiveness in particular. Wolff et al. (2009) argue that some competencies, i.e. organizational awareness, impact and influence, team leadership, and initiative, are more likely to be present in leaders with more senior-level experience. They point out that other competencies, such as the ability to identify the relationship between an organization and its environment, as well as the opportunities and challenges associated with that environment, might also require higher level experience to completely develop (Tushman and O'Reilly, 1996; Wageman et al., 2008). This analytical thinking is fundamental to effectively enacting the interpersonal and decision-making roles of the CEO (Mitzberg, 1973).Cross-cultural researchers have started to study and gain insight into competencies in a global context (Mobley and Dorfman, 2003; Mobley and McCall, 2001). By studying the specific characteristics associated with effective senior leadership, we could nuance our understanding of top leaders in different countries. The potential for deeper understanding by highlighting possible differences has not been realized completely. Some researchers continue striving to emphasize commonalities by looking for global \"templates\" of competencies. Yet there is also a lot to learn from the differences and many countries from which to study and learn lessons. The behavioral demands required of chief executives in those different places and contexts are real and, although widely suggested and discussed, such behavioral differences have not been sufficiently studied. We could do more to fully realize the potential value of the competency approach at the senior leadership level. Looking at specific business contexts and situations and studying the key competencies showed by successful senior leaders in those situations could offer lessons for leaders to draw on and new questions for researchers to explore. Thus, our research question is:RQ1. What capabilities of senior leadership roles are most associated with effectiveness in different cultural contexts and situations?\n4 Methods: 4.1 Research strategy\n5 Findings: In this section, we will compare the three groups by elaborating on their business contexts, the focus of their stories, and the leadership capabilities we found. Then we will present some distinctive leadership capabilities found in the Indian and Chinese studies, comparing them with the Western sample. These leadership capabilities or characteristics are distinctive to that context, contribute to effectiveness in dealing with business situations, and are shown by most of the CEOs in that context.5.1 Comparison of context\n6 Discussion and conclusions: 6.1 Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine senior leadership behaviors across samples of Chinese, Indian, and Western chief executive officers (CEOs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this exploratory study, 101 CEOs from three different business contexts were interviewed to understand the leadership demands of widely different business and cultural contexts and the competencies associated with effective performance. The specific situations addressed by leaders were identified.\nFindings: - The authors found some common characteristics of outstanding CEOs across contexts, such as results orientation/achievement drive and forward thinking. There are also distinctive competencies manifested in the three cultures. While Indian CEOs are more likely to display consideration of the welfare of their nation in business decisions, Chinese CEOs uniquely influence for mutual benefit as well as criticizing themselves. Western CEOs, use interpersonal understanding and talent management.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Although the competencies observed are linked to performance by comparisons within each group of outstanding leaders, the authors were unable to obtain contrast groups of more typical leaders in India or China. The Western group was less rigorously defined, perhaps accounting for the less focused nature of their competencies and situations. This study nevertheless suggests that the cultural context is an important variable in leadership.\nPractical implications: - Leaders may use the paper's insights to suggest how they might expand their own repertoires, either in their own context or in dealing with organizations from other cultures.\nOriginality/value: - This study contributes to the understanding of cross-cultural management by identifying competencies that are unique to particular business contexts, as well as some that are common to the role.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The temporal evolution of the normalized web distance: Is a "Wirikuta empowerment" of the Huichol measurable on the internet?
|
[
"ICT",
"Normalized web distance",
"Social empowerment",
"Temporal evolution"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The internet entices millions of users around the globe to gain access to billions of web pages and social media entries, and actively create online content.\nThe NWD and its temporal evolution: NWD\nMethodology: In our Wirikuta case study of the temporal NWD method three key-terms were selected to identify our case of focus (see Appendix 2). Also, 13 classifier-terms were chosen and subdivided into three categories; positive, negative and neutral, according the alleged type of discourse they are related to. The list of positive classifiers includes terms that would normally be related positively to culture, hence determined as indicative - or with importance - for the identity of the concerned people; the Huichol. The list of the negative classifiers in the Wirikuta case contains terms that could be perceived to have a negative relation to the Huichol culture. For the three key-terms central to the \"Wirikuta case\" we have chosen Wirikuta, Huichol and Wixarika. These key-teems unequivocally identify the core elements of the case; the Huichol indigenous community and their target of activism, the Wirikuta. Since the Huichol name themselves in their proper language the Wixarika, the latter term is considered key as well. The seven selected positive classifiers are; sacred land, Marakame, peyote, ancestors, Wixaritari, music, fashion. The five selected negative classifiers are; violence, addiction, discrimination, racism and mines. The choice of these classifier-terms is to certain extent underdetermined; the terms have been selected after analyzing the various perspectives which cross the Wirikuta case (see also Appendix 2), such as economic benefits, cultural precarity, and discriminatory prejudices. These selected classifier-terms have been chosen to provide insight in possible polarizing discourses concerning empowerment, it is however possible to determine other classifier-terms in order to gain insight on other aspects of the online evolution of the Huichol. In order to have a negative control to our interpretation of approaching or receding NWD over time, we considered a single term that would maintain an invariable semantic relation with respect to the Huichol culture, and chose the term table[3].\nData reduction and interpretation: Volume growth\nConclusion: First we observed the well established fact that the NWD adequately expresses semantic similarity of terms, i.e., a smaller NWD distance corresponds to a close relationship of terms in a natural language. The key terms Wirikuta, Wixarika and Huichol are close among them, as well as to their most typical cultural classifiers marakame, sacred land and peyote - among our selected classifier-terms. Larger distances to the key-terms are observed for mines and ancestors, and all other negative classifiers but also for music and fashion and the control classifier table. Closest NWD are in particular found among terms of the same language - Wirikuta, Wixarika and Wixaritari. The term sacred land is marginally closer related to the land Wirikuta and, Marakame is closer to the people named in their own language, Wixarika, than in Spanish, Huichol. The term mines has about the same distance to all three key terms (measurement Y=2013).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the temporal evolution of the normalized web distance (NWD) between significant terms concerning, e.g., a case of online activism can be used as a meta-data technique to measure evolution over time of, e.g., progress or decline of social empowerment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The NWD between two terms has been identified as a quantitative measure for semantic proximity, ascertaining a defining relation between them. A trend analysis is made by performing on the internet a time window restrained series measurement of NWD of all combinations of key-terms and classifier-terms. Case defining key-terms, positive and negative discourse polarizing classifier-terms, and neutral classifier-terms for negative control need to be determined by discourse analysis of information on a targeted case. An example of NWD evolution from 1994 until 2013 is presented to measure the empowerment effects of the Wirikuta online movement on the Huichol people in Mexico.\nFindings: The application of the NWD temporal evolution method to the Wirikuta case shows a slight but significant semantic change of the key-terms with respect to some of the positive and negative classifier-terms. The neutral classifier correctly shows no significant distance variation, as required for valid application of the method. The method provides indications for a complex image of empowerment of the Huichol identity.\nResearch limitations/implications: The accuracy of the method is limited due to short-term and between-user variability of the search tool's page counts. More reliable access to a web-index will be required for more accurate NWD-based trend analysis.\nPractical implications: The monitoring of temporal NWD evolution provides a potential tool for more comprehensive trend description compared to classical frequency based methods.\nOriginality/value: Trend analysis is key to internet research, to which the temporal NWD method provides an innovative contribution.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Positive effects of nonwork-to-work facilitation on well-being in work, family and personal domains
|
[
"Sociology of work",
"Family",
"Individual psychology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The growing interest in work-life balance may originate from changes in many global and local domains. For example, the traditional family consisting of the husband going out to work and the wife staying at home to look after the children is now less common (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006), and statistics demonstrate a greater participation of women in paid work, family structures altering, an aging workforce and the desire for some workers not to be \"married to the job\". More families are juggling work and family and having greater difficulty in doing so (Hammer et al., 2005). These changes have affected both work and \"nonwork\" life and their interaction (Frone, 2003). Consequently, work-life balance is becoming increasingly important but also perhaps increasingly complex.\nFacilitation between domains: Individuals place values on roles which determine their level of importance (Clark, 2000). As argued by the scarcity theory, active participation in nonwork domains such as family, community and recreation has been viewed historically as reducing the time available for work, as well as individuals' feelings of commitment to their job (Marks and MacDermid, 1996). On the other hand, some research has identified involvement in multiple roles as protecting or buffering individuals from the effects of negative experiences in any one role (Barnett and Hyde, 2001). Rather than draining energy from work and reducing performance, workers' commitments in other domains may provide multiple opportunities for satisfaction and resource gaining and may energize them for work (Ruderman et al., 2002). This \"expansion\" model considers personal resources to be abundant and expandable (Crouter, 1984) and provides the theoretical basis for facilitation (Hammer et al., 2005). From this perspective, high levels of participation in nonwork domains may be associated with an individual experiencing facilitation to work (Kirchmeyer, 1995). Psychological involvement and investment of time are two variables that can be used to reflect a person's level of commitment to and participation in a domain (O'Driscoll, 1996).Some research suggests that work-family facilitation (which is one manifestation of positive spillover) may be a crucial component of work-family balance (Frone, 2003) and balance may be improved by increasing facilitation levels. Facilitation represents the extent to which participation in one domain is made easier because of the experiences, skills and resources gained or developed in a different domain. Balance would be demonstrated by not only low conflict, but also high facilitation levels between the different domains (Frone, 2003; Grzywacz and Bass, 2003; Keene and Quadagno, 2004). For instance, Grzywacz and Bass (2003) found that most positive outcomes accrued almost exclusively from low levels of work-family conflict and high levels of work-family facilitation.Facilitation rests on the expansion theory (Hammer et al., 2005), along with Seiber's (1974) classification of the positive outcomes of role accumulation into four types:1. role privileges;2. status security;3. status enhancement; and4. enrichment of personality.Seiber noted that certain role privileges or rights are institutionalised in each role, for example, the buying privileges of a salesman or the free game tickets for a chief executive. Therefore the greater number of roles accumulated the greater number of privileges that can be enjoyed. Status security stems from the idea that role strain in one domain can be buffered by participation in other roles. Status enhancement occurs when the by-products of one role, such as personal contacts, are utilized in other roles. Seiber's fourth type of outcome, which is highly salient in the context of the present study, is personal enrichment or development. Skills and attitudes acquired in one domain can be valuable in a different domain. Kirchmeyer (1992) argued that Seiber's classification accounts for the positive spillover experiences identified in her study, and Greenhaus and Powell (2006) suggested that this classification captures the concept of work-family enrichment.\nHypotheses: Nonwork to work spillover\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Descriptive statistics for all variables are presented in Table I. The mean scores indicate that, on average, moderate levels of family-to-work facilitation (M=4.12) and personal activities-to-work facilitation (M=4.11) were reported by respondents. Means of the nonwork-to-work conflict measures were lower than those for nonwork-to-work facilitation, suggesting that on average interference between nonwork domains and work was relatively low. The means for psychological involvement in the nonwork domains were moderate, signifying a moderate level of involvement in these domains (family involvement M=5.65 and personal benefit activities involvement M=4.49). Well-being means were M=3.56 for positive work well-being, M=4.19 for positive family well-being and M=4.24 for positive personal benefit activities well-being, suggesting that participants generally experienced positive well-being in all three domains.Correlations\nDiscussion: A major aim of the present research was to explore the relationship between experiences in two nonwork domains and the work domain, firstly family life to work, and secondly personal benefit activities to work. As noted earlier, the changing nature of individuals' lives makes it important to identify factors that contribute to well-being. Of particular interest in this context was the relationship between personal benefit activities and well-being. While the results involving the family life domain concur with the limited extant research (e.g. Graves et al., 2007, Kirchmeyer, 1992), the present study explored new territory by also investigating the relationship between personal benefit activities and work-related well-being.Psychological involvement\nFuture research: One limitation of research in this field, referred to previously, is the lack of a clear conceptualization of the expression work-life \"balance\". To progress our understanding of the role of this construct in promoting overall life satisfaction and psychological well-being, research needs to investigate both the meaning of \"balance\" for individuals and its association with other (related) constructs, such as interrole facilitation and conflict. In addition, further development of appropriate measures of work-life balance is required (see also Greenhaus et al., 2003).More research investigating inter-relationships between the nonwork domains could also be enlightening, as the perceived lack of balance may be due to conflict between nonwork domains as well between these domains and work. However, typically workplaces are identified as the principal cause of imbalance. Society labels the issue as \"work-life\" balance, resulting in a focus on the \"work\" portion of life.A methodological limitation in the present study is that we did not assess the role of choice and control over work and nonwork activities and demands, which clearly may influence individuals' affective experiences in these areas of life. Another potential limitation is that respondents were given freedom to choose exactly which activities they included within, for example, the family domain and the personal activities domain, which may have created considerable variability in time allocations, depending on how activities were classified. On the other hand, this approach did enable respondents to identify family and personal benefit activities in terms of their own schema, rather than one imposed by the researchers.A final limitation is participants in this research were all local government employees, which means that the findings cannot necessarily be generalized to other industry sectors and types of employment. However, we have no reason to believe that the current respondents' perceptions and attitudes concerning work, family and personal benefit activities would be substantially different from those held by other workers.\nPractical implications: The results emerging from the present study have several practical implications. If organizations embrace these results and findings from other related research, both the employee and the organization may benefit. Employers should encourage employees to enjoy rich nonwork activities, as the benefits of engagement in these off-the-job activities may spill over into the work context. There are good reasons to encourage facilitation - improved health and well-being and less depression. Increased attention needs to be given to how facilitation can be developed and cultivated.Finally, our findings should also encourage individuals to pursue nonwork activities that are important to them and which can enhance their lives. Not only will they benefit personally from these activities, but facilitation may create positive well-being at work and in their family life.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The paper seeks to examine whether spillover from \"nonwork\" to work contributes to individuals' well-being.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An online survey was administered to New Zealand local government employees. Positive (facilitation) and negative (conflict) spillover from two \"nonwork\" domains (family and personal benefit activities) to work were investigated. The survey also assessed psychological involvement (in work, family and personal benefit activities), time devoted to each domain, and self-reported well-being in each area.\nFindings: - Levels of nonwork-to-work facilitation were moderate, and significantly higher than nonwork-to-work conflict, and well-being was moderately high (although greater for the family and personal benefit domains than for work). There were significant positive relationships between psychological involvement in the nonwork domains and levels of facilitation from these domains to work, and nonwork-to-work facilitation was associated with higher well-being. Time invested in family and personal activities was not linked with greater nonwork-to-work conflict. Mediation analyses indicated that psychological involvement (in family and personal activities) was associated with increased facilitation, which in turn enhanced well-being.\nPractical implications: - Engagement in family and personal benefit activities yields positive outcomes for individuals, in terms of their psychological well-being and facilitation of work-related outcomes. Encouragement to engage in these areas can therefore be beneficial for both individuals and their employing organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The main contribution of this research is that involvement in personal benefit activities (as another component of the \"nonwork\" domain, in addition to family activities) can have positive outcomes for individuals, resulting in facilitation of work outcomes and positive well-being.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Broadening borders to build better schools: Virtual professional learning communities
|
[
"Professional development",
"Professional learning communities",
"Teacher collaboration",
"Virtual professional learning communities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: General introduction\nMethods: Qualitative data were collected from and about participants to investigate perceptions and practice of the lived experiences of educators working in rural schools in Texas and the Dominican Republic. A phenomenological case study-based approach was leveraged to investigate established vPLCs at both schools (Creswell, 2013; Stake, 2010). Qualitative data were collected from multiple sources to obtain participant teacher perceptions on the impact vPLCs have on their practice (Creswell, 2013).\nResults: Context of participants\nDiscussion: In this study, the experiences of participants in vPLCs were explored. Examination of the information collected resulted in two conclusions: educators in vPLCs experience similar benefits as normal face-to-face PLCs and vPLCs were an effective model to improve teacher practice and confidence at implementing an inquiry-based teaching and learning model, PBL.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how rural teachers provided a PLC by leveraging virtual technologies to connect educators of like subject disciplines from several schools, foreign and domestic.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A phenomenological case study-based approach was leveraged to investigate established vPLCs at schools (Creswell, 2013; Stake, 2010). Qualitative data were collected from multiple sources to obtain rural teacher perceptions on the impact vPLCs had on their practice (Creswell, 2013).\nFindings: Teacher collaborative teams build relationships comparable to teams that met face to face as part of a similar PLC and PD experience. Participant reflections in this investigation showed that rural educators favored face-to-face meetings; however, vPLCs provided similar teacher experiences to that of the face-to-face PBL model. Results indicated that educators recognized virtual collaboration just as valuable a tool for enabling PLCs than face-to-face collaborations while still offering similarities to improved teacher practice.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research was limited to teachers in rural settings in the USA (Texas) and in the Dominican Republic. The research was limited to teacher perceptions of change, and observed changes as part of their participation in a research-based virtual PLC model. The research was limited to the school setting over an academic year.\nPractical implications: The findings from this study have practical implications for rural teachers and school implementation of a professional learning community model.\nOriginality/value: The promise provided by this study is that vPLCs may provide opportunity for rural schools to provide a job-embedded professional development model (Croft et al., 2010) for otherwise isolated teachers (Barrett et al., 2015).\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Do high-performance HR practices augment OCBs? The role of psychological climate and work engagement
|
[
"India",
"Work engagement",
"Psychological climate",
"IT professionals",
"Organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One way for organizations to become more effective is to capitalize their employees' capabilities and willingness to work in a virtuous manner and shoulder responsibilities over and above their in-role activities, i.e. organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Especially, the IT sector where work is more knowledge based and less rigidly defined, organizations place high demands on their employees to be more positively involved in the work processes, take voluntary initiatives to perform work roles, and exhibit positive behaviors in ongoing co-ordinations, team performances and interdependences in the work groups (i.e. collaborative skills) for the success of boundary spanning projects. Many scholars and practitioners now endorse that the behavior of IT professionals who \"go extra mile\" facilitates stronger knowledge-sharing, better relationships with other departments, and a heightened quality of software development and customer service (Yen et al., 2008; Lin and Huang, 2010; Teh and Sun, 2012; Sahu, 2018). However, encouraging factors predictive of employee expressions in OCBs remains a major concern in reaching strategic goals of IT organizations (Chiang et al., 2013; Pradhan and Jena, 2017).\nLiterature synthesis and hypothesis: Considering the implications of the developments in the field of positive organizational scholarship (POS), the study examines HPHRPs, PC and WE as precursors of OCBs. POS, as a scientific area of inquiry, seeks to study the \"positive outcomes, processes, and attributes of organizations and their members\" (Cameron et al., 2003, p. 4). Within this context, this paper emphasizes the study of enablers of best of human conditions in the organizational settings (HPHRPs), individual attributes and psychological processes (PC and WE) and considers positive outcomes such as OCBs as viable ends and thus worthy of investigation in the organizational studies. This study focuses on PC as core psychological mechanism that influences IT employees' OCBs through WE. But this study also aims to examine whether the HPHRP is a powerful organizational attribute that basically influences PC in IT organizations.\nMethodology: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between employees' perceptions of HPHRPs and OCBs as fully mediated by PC and WE. The study employs a cross-sectional design, which uses structural equation modeling (SEM) for data analysis.\nResults: Testing the measurement model\nDiscussion: The results demonstrate the critical role of HPHRPs in generating employees' favorable perceptions of their work environment attributes. Corroborating with the fact that HR systems serve as a monitoring system for employees to make sense of and to define the psychological meaning of their work context (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Wei et al., 2010; Pereira and Gomes, 2012), this study verifies the positive influence of HPHRPs on employees' perceptions of PC in IT organizations. This reflects that HPHRPs in IT organizations have the strategic potential to enhance the quality of IT professionals' workplace experiences. HPHRPs such as empowerment, effective communication, fair rewards and compensation and opportunities for internal growth, learning and development may facilitate congenial work environment for employees, while developing a sense of enhanced personal well-being at work. And, this augments employees' positive perceptions of their immediate working conditions. The results also indicate that IT organizations place greater importance not only on developing skills, motivation and capacity of their human capital to enhance job performance, but they also try to accommodate employees' psychological needs of meaningfulness, safety and availability at the workplace. So that employees' work experience is holistic and psychologically fulfilling leading to human flourishment at work. It might be possible that when IT professionals perceive HR practices in the organization as supportive and conducive to their own personal well-being, they attain a sense of being valued and treated fairly at the workplace.\nConclusion: The present study assesses the temporal ordering of HPHRPs, PC and WE as antecedents of OCBs. And, the results provide clear evidence that the above-said factors are the antecedents of OCBs. Importantly, this study demonstrates that IT employees choose to perform OCBs depending on the basis of how well their psychological needs, aspirations and preferences are met in the organization. The focus of organizations on HR practices when moves to employee-centered HR practices enables the IT workforce to perceive their work environment in a better way based on the experimentation with and the evaluation of the working conditions in relation to their own well-being. In positive working conditions, they will find means to satisfy their own preferences and aspirations while feeling themselves meaningfully attached with and absorbed in their work roles, thereby creating the foundation for highly productive employment relationship. All these conditions set the stage for establishing social-exchange mechanism and creating reciprocal interdependencies among parties involved in obligatory relationship that may enhance employee readiness to make the extra efforts and voluntary initiatives in order to meet organizational objectives.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between high-performance HR practices (HPHRPs), psychological climate (PC), work engagement (WE) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) among IT professionals. This study further intends to provide a framework to understand and predict factors affecting organizational citizenship performance in the Indian IT sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The analysis is based on a sample of 464 IT employees working in 29 information-intensive global organizations, and the statistical method employed is structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The results of the present study demonstrated the significance of employees' perceptions of PC through which HPHRPs can boost employees' WE, which, in turn, has come out to be the principal mechanism through which HPHRPs and PC have impact on OCBs.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results have established a platform where HR managers can be motivated to open up new avenues to employees where they can be psychologically involved in work roles and feel highly motivated to bring their good spirits at the workplace in order to benefit the organization at large.\nOriginality/value: This research explores the changing dynamics of Indian business scenario in the IT context. IT professionals may perceive and react differently to the HR system in the organization and have higher expectations of congenial working conditions that enhance their capability to employ personal skills and resources in the realization of organizational goals. Thus, the study tries to tap their experiences and perceptions and map their performances in the organization.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Supplier development with benchmarking as part of a comprehensive supplier risk management framework
|
[
"Risk management",
"Benchmarking",
"Factor analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Connecting with reliable and trustworthy suppliers has become a key factor for successful organisations. Therefore, supplier decisions are important, but difficult, due to the challenges firms face in today's business environment. These challenges include the increased competition from international as well as from domestic sources (Hill, 2007). The situation becomes even more complex, because, at the same time, various catastropic events such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes and floods have reinforced the awareness of vulnerability along the entire supply chain for manufacturing firms (Knemeyer et al., 2008), down-stream in dealing with customers and up-stream in dealing with suppliers (Juettner, 2005).Manufacturing firms respond to this situation through active management of their suppliers including the management of risks inherent to the supplier. Kearney (2005) study has revealed that approximately 90 percent of organisations attach great importance to the risk management of their supply chains, because the organisation's purchasing activities have a considerable influence on its financial performance. The objective is to develop long-term relationships with low-risk suppliers, because these can prevent firms from struggling in the prevailing dynamic business environment (Hartley and Choi, 1996).Prior research in operations management has created numerous rating mechanisms, frameworks, and approaches relating to supplier risk (Steele and Court, 1996; Harland et al., 2003; Cousins et al., 2004; Ritchie and Brindley, 2007a,b; Hallikas et al., 2004; Association of Insurance and Risk Managers, AIRMIC, 2002). Early work focused on assisting firms with supplier rating, evaluation, and selection (Muralidharan et al., 2002). These approaches used mainly descriptive criteria for assessing suppliers (e.g. delivery time or price variations) and focused on supplier ability to deliver. However, a broader and more realistic view of suppliers means considering a number of different risks in supplier assessment (Zsidisin, 2003b; Chopra and Sodhi, 2004; Kleindorfer and Saad, 2005; Manuj and Mentzer, 2008).In addition to considering a comprehensive set of supplier risks, firms need to undertake the right activities to manage supplier risks, which the literature refers to as management responses (Ritchie and Brindley, 2007a,b). Among these responses, supplier relationship development mitigates some of the potential threats a firm faces from supplier risks (Ritchie and Brindley, 2007a). Supplier development can be defined as \"... any activity that a firm undertakes to improve a supplier's performances and/or capabilities to meet the buyer's short-term or long-term supply needs\" (Krause, 1997). Supplier development aims at improving supplier performance and enlarging the firm's supplier base with viable partners (Krause et al., 2007). Although supplier development is part of the conceptual supply risk frameworks by Ritchie and Brindley (2007a), little was done to translate the conceptual work into an operational approach which addresses all risk management phases. The latter approach would offer firms guidance on how to conduct an effective supplier development program that builds on established risk assessment methods (monitoring, classification and representation of the risk structure of the supply base). Ritchie and Brindley (2007a) found evidence that firms search for partners that are experienced in relationship development. Having no experience becomes crucial for firms when making decisions about their suppliers and undertaking related actions to improve the performance of the supplier base.In this paper, we present a theoretically sound, operational framework that focuses on supplier development by means of a benchmarking approach. Using a case study of a UK firm, we demonstrate the operation of the framework. Through incorporating risk categories and risk management response into supply chain management, we address what Ritchie and Brindley (2007a, p. 319) describe as work that is \"... timely and reflects both theoretical imperatives and practitioner requirements.\"\nLiterature review: For firms, the creation of a comprehensive risk management system requires knowledge of the risk types to which it is exposed. Risk is the danger that a decision leads to negative deviations from set goals (Zsidisin, 2001). In other words, risk is the product of the probability of occurrence of a possible loss and the resulting damage (March and Shapira, 1987). Recent legal regulations (e.g. the COSO report in the USA, the Turnbull Report in the UK, and 1998 German legislation KonTraG) already require firms to identify, communicate and monitor risks (Pausenberger and Nassauer, 2000). Nevertheless, these regulations ignore the problem of intercompany risk management (Lam, 2003). Thus, these risk management approaches ensure only compliance with government regulations and focus excessively on formal, quantitative aspects. Conversely, a forward-looking risk management approach enables a firm to focus on the intercompany risks, and can thus prevent goal deviations and the associated damages.Definition and classification of supply chain procurement risks\nResearch methodology: In this section, we present the methodological approach adopted for this research.Research design\nAnalysis and results: Exploratory factor analysis, based on principal component analysis with varimax rotation, was conducted to identify the risk structure for the 17 suppliers. The objective was to obtain fewer dimensions, which makes the risk management process feasible and manageable. A factor analysis was performed with SPSS 13.0. Standard tests (Bartlett's sphericity and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) were used to determine the appropriateness of factor analysis (Hair et al., 2006) and the results suggest sufficient correlations (Bartlett-test: kh2=58.173; KMO = 0.543). The factor extraction and varimax rotation of the factors resulted in a two-factor solution and both factors explain more than 71 percent of the variance of all seven risk types. The eigen-values for both factors are greater than 1.0; Factor 1 = 2.667, Factor 2 = 2.314. Means, standard derivations, and correlations for the seven risk types are shown in Table V.The varimax rotation was suitable, because the loadings were greater than 0.6 (Guadagnoli and Velicer, 1988). We also calculated Cronbach's alpha to determine how accurately the risk types measure the two factors. The test is deemed acceptable if the reliability coefficient exceeds 0.7 (Hair et al., 2006). The values exceed 0.8 for each of the seven risk criteria. The results of the factor analysis are reported in Table VI, which shows factor loadings, eigenvalues, variance explained, and Cronbach's a.The two uncorrelated factors are linear combinations of the original seven risk types. The first factor can be related to internal firm risks and value-related risks and consists of the risk types of price, process, technology, and economic.This factor is interpreted to represent four risk types, which can be controlled by a firm and actively managed, so as to reduce the risk levels. Juettner et al. (2003) describe organisational risks as those that are within the boundaries of the supply chain partners, but network-related risks as stemming from the interactions between the partners. Factor 1 captures both perspectives and emphasises the financial value aspect. Therefore, we labelled this factor organisational-network value risks.The second factor can be associated with product-related risks and external risks that are beyond the control of a firm. This factor covers the risk types of quantity, quality, and environment. The risk types captured by this factor are, on the one hand, very specific and detailed, but on the other hand, very abstract as a result of the potential for massive, disruptive events. We refer to this factor as product-centred and disaster risks.Small sample sizes may affect the stability of the factor analysis solution (Guadagnoli and Velicer, 1988). Therefore, to ensure that the two-factors are stable, certain tests were performed. First, the research team conducted controlled manual tests, in which the data were changed in small iterations and the factor analysis was repeated numerous times. We then used the Wu and Wang (2006) approach, that proposes three decision rules that indicate when a solution is deemed to be unstable: eigenvalue < 1, loading of less than 0.35 on all item factors, and loading > 0.35 on two or more item factors. Our results fulfil these criteria and we showed that small changes in the assessment of risk types did not change the representation and classification of the suppliers.Second, we conducted a non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS), which confirmed the significance of the factor plot (Kruskal, 1964). The starting configuration of the NMDS was chosen at random. An equivalent representation of the supplier portfolio with a very good stress value (stress value = 0.0589; dynamic increment) was achieved after 26 iterations.While the factor loadings in Table VI indicate to which factor a certain risk type is attributed, the factor scores are estimates of those which the suppliers would have received on each of the factors, had they been measured directly (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007). Thus, the factor scores indicate the position of the suppliers in relation to the two risk factors. The factor scores from SPSS 13.0 for each individual supplier are plotted in two dimensions in Figure 2. We use the factor plot to identify groupings of suppliers. Suppliers positioned close to each other have similar risk levels. We identified six clusters as illustrated by the circles in Figure 2.The origin in Figure 2 represents the average risk of all suppliers. Consequently, suppliers within the clusters A (firm 5) and B (firms 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 14) represent top performance suppliers, as their risks are below average with respect to the two factors; firms 5, 6, and 12 are furthest from the origin. Thus, cluster A and B firms are potential candidates for supplier relationship development activities. The suppliers in cluster E achieve above-average risk values in terms of all seven risk types. These suppliers should be subjected to increased risk controls, and consideration should be given to whether they should be removed from the supply base. The suppliers within clusters C and D (second quadrant) achieve above-average risk values with respect to the first factor and below average risk values in the case of the second factor. Cluster F (in the fourth quadrant) yields the opposite risk performance levels. For these suppliers, the company needs to carefully consider the future of the relationship. Table VII lists the 17 suppliers classified into six risk clusters.\nDiscussion: This section describes how the manufacturing firm conducted the supplier development process with respect to the selected suppliers. The risk management framework used is also discussed, and finally there is a look at the limitations of the study and future research.Development of the suppliers using benchmarking\nConclusions: Ensuring the continuity of supply is one of the most critical goals in purchasing and supply management. We have seen that, while business organisations generally attach great importance to the risk management of their suppliers, the existing literature provides little in the way of operational frameworks for effective supplier risk management. This gap is crucial for firms making decisions about their suppliers, particularly in the face of the globalisation of production, where supply chains often transcend international boundaries and business cultures. We developed a supplier risk management framework with five stages, namely supplier risk identification, assessment of supplier risk, reporting and decision of supplier risk, supplier risk management responses, and supplier risk performance outcomes, all of which focuses on the development of suppliers into low risk performers. Within the framework, we use a multivariate statistical method and a benchmarking approach. The application of the framework was demonstrated through a case study of a manufacturing firm. As expected, the manufacturer was able to identify the low and high risk suppliers, evaluate them, and subsequently, undertake activities to further reduce the risk associated with selected suppliers.From a research perspective, this study extends the work on supplier risk management and presents details of one of the later stages of the risk framework (i.e. management responses stage). Our study therefore contributes to a cumulative tradition in operations management. We provide the outcomes as a first step in facilitating a greater understanding of how supplier development can be conducted in order to encourage proactive, rather than reactive risk management. From a practical perspective, managers can use the five stage risk management framework to develop firm-specific risk management programs, and to create management responses that influence the relationships with their suppliers, so as to build better relationships with them. Assuming that suppliers would also use the same framework for the risk management of their own suppliers, the risk within the entire supply chain will decrease.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to present and empirically support a theoretically sound, operational, and easy-to-implement supplier risk management framework that focuses on supplier development using a benchmarking approach.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper develops a five stage framework for supplier risk management, entailing supplier risk identification, assessment of supplier risks, reporting and decision of supplier risks, supplier risk management responses, and supplier risk performance outcomes, that builds on the conceptual approach of Ritchie and Bridley and the approach of the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (AIRMIC). The operation of the framework is illustrated in a single case study of a UK firm.\nFindings: - The paper contributes to research in operations management and particularly in risk management in the specific field of supplier risk management. The study presents details of one of the later stages of the risk framework (i.e. management responses stage) and enhances understanding of how the development of suppliers can be conducted so as to create a viable supplier base.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As an analytical method, the use of factor analysis generally requires metric scaled data, but ordinal-scaled data were applied to it. Therefore, two-factor solution with non-metric multidimensional scaling was confirmed. In addition, the operation of supplier risk framework is demonstrated within one firm only. Further case studies are therefore needed to strengthen the research findings.\nPractical implications: - Managers can use the supplier risk management framework to develop firm-specific risk management programs, and to create management responses that influence and improve their relationships with suppliers. The framework is fully operational, easy to implement; and facilitates proactive supplier risk management, rather than reactive crisis management.\nOriginality/value: - The study goes beyond the conceptual discussion of supplier risk management, and demonstrates the activities a firm can undertake in response to supplier risk ratings and assessments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The impact of business networks on foreign subsidiaries development: Internationalizing by surfing on several global factories
|
[
"SMEs",
"Internationalization",
"Foreign subsidiaries",
"Global factory",
"Industrial network",
"Medium-sized enterprise"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Internationalization and the international operations of firms have over time attracted considerable interest in IMP research. Not only have early IMP studies considered international business (IB) relationships (Hakansson, 1982), but also the importance of business relationships and business networks for firms' internationalization is stressed for instance by Johanson and Mattsson (1988) and Johanson and Vahlne (2009). More specifically, rather than geographical or psychic distance (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977, 1990), this literature views relationships and networks as the drivers behind a firm's learning and market commitment which make it successively internationalize in those particular markets.\n2. Theoretical framing: 2.1 Business relationships and networks affecting internationalization: the IMP view\n3. Methodology: This paper utilizes an exploratory, longitudinal, single-case study (Easton, 2010; Yin, 2003) of Loccioni group, an Italian system-integrator company, in order to illustrate the specific dynamics of the influences of industrial networks on the internationalization of subsidiaries. The advantages of adopting a case study strategy deal with the explorative nature of our study. In this perspective, it is a useful method to provide an exploration of reality, namely, to support the understanding of phenomena in practice. Another important merit of qualitative case studies concerns their capacity of highlighting and explaining complex contexts (Dubois and Gadde, 2002). Moreover, this methodology is also advantageous for capturing phenomena, such as internationalization, which unfold over time (Langley, 1999).\n4. Case study: internationalization at Loccioni group: Loccioni group is a private firm established in 1968 by Mr Enrico Loccioni. It operates as a system integrator of measuring and controlling automatic systems to improve the efficiency and the quality of complex products/processes of their customers. Most of Loccioni's customers are multinationals operating in the automotive, healthcare, energy, home appliances, transport and aerospace sector. The company's headquarters is located in Italy where all the production activities are carried out in three different manufacturing sites. Three subsidiaries have been established between 2009 and 2014 in the USA, Germany and China. Loccioni's systems have been sold in 44 different countries without any intermediators. The company's turnover in 2017 reached almost EURO 100m and it currently employs approximately 400 people.\n5. Discussion: In our discussion below, we intend to bring to the fore four specific aspects of Loccioni's internationalization that together allow us address our two research questions:\n6. Conclusions: This paper adopted an IMP network perspective to explore the internationalization of a medium-sized enterprise though the establishment of three subsidiaries. We focus specifically on how the interdependences between the various subsidiaries' industrial networks have evolved in time and between markets and how they thereby have influenced the company's internationalization.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore two specific areas pertaining to industrial networks and international business (IB). First, the authors look at how business relationships influence the internationalization in time, from the establishment of the first subsidiary in a foreign market to the following ones, and in space, that is, across different markets. Second, the authors investigate how an increasing external network dependence of subsidiaries in their internationalization may cause a detachment of a subsidiary from the mother company as its knowledge becomes insufficient to guide a subsidiary's internationalization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper utilizes an exploratory, longitudinal, single-case study of Loccioni - a manufacturer of measuring and automatic control systems for industrial customers - to illustrate the specific dynamics of the influences of industrial networks on the internationalization of subsidiaries.\nFindings: The case study helps to elucidate the roles, entailing also free will and own initiative, of small suppliers' subsidiaries which operate inside several global factories, and how \"surfing\" on many different global factories, by means of several local subsidiaries, actually supports these suppliers' own international developments. This notion adds to our understanding of the global factory phenomenon a supplier focus that stresses how the role of suppliers is not merely that of being passive recipients of activities and directions from a focal orchestrating firm, but can also be that of initiative-takers themselves.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to the IMP tradition by providing a multi-layered and geographically more fine-grained view of the network embedding companies that operate on internationalized markets. This paper thereby sheds light on a less investigated area of research within the IMP tradition: the link between internationalization in different countries and the interconnectedness between the industrial networks spanning these countries. At the same time, this paper contributes to IB theories by showing how a late-internationalizing SME can enter highly international markets by \"plugging into\" several established \"Global Factories\" as a way to exploit further opportunities for international expansion.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
To insource or outsource the sourcing? A behavioral investigation of the multi-tier sourcing decision
|
[
"Interpersonal trust",
"Multi-tier sourcing",
"Behavioural experiment",
"Sourcing strategy",
"Behavioural uncertainty"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Strategic sourcing and supply base reduction trends have seen tier-1 suppliers assume significant sourcing responsibilities on behalf of their customers, extending into the selection and management of the suppliers at upstream supply chains (Choi and Linton, 2011). Yet, high profile incidents linked with the delegation of sourcing authority, such as Boeing's delayed 787 Dreamliner program and the BP oil spill, would call for the re-evaluation of the central role tier-1 suppliers play in making sourcing decisions at tier-2 and further upstream supply chains. A critical decision facing buying companies then is how much lower-tier sourcing work to delegate to their tier-1 suppliers (Kayis et al., 2013). As principal boundary spanners who interact with tier-1 suppliers (Zaheer et al., 1998), individual supply managers play the critical role in the lower-tier sourcing decisions. Nevertheless, their behavioral tendencies in making such decisions have been overlooked.\n2. Theory development: 2.1 Multi-tier sourcing as a response to uncertainty\n3. Methodology: We utilized an EVM, also known as the scenario-based role-playing experiment (Rungtusanatham et al., 2011). EVM is used to enhance experimental realism, while also manipulating and controlling independent variables, hence preserving both internal and external validity of the experiment (Aguinis and Bradley, 2014). EVM is particularly useful when \"it is difficult to experimentally manipulate sensitive topics in an ethical manner\" (Aguinis and Bradley, 2014, p. 357). Since EVM utilizes hypothetical scenarios, it can address sensitive topics. Decisions regarding multi-tier sourcing inevitably involve confidential information of the buying companies and suppliers. Moreover, the complexity of real-life supply networks means that field or laboratory experiments are not feasible. Therefore, EVM is well suited to the context of our study.\n4. Discussion: Our study contributes to the emerging area of multi-tier supply chain management. Previous literature has pointed to the role of different organizational objectives (Choi and Linton, 2011) or relative procurement competence between the buyer and supplier (Brewer et al., 2013) in the adoption of multi-tier sourcing but little attention has been paid to the decision of individual purchasing managers. In contrast, our focus is on the decision making of individual supply managers, who typically have significant discretion over selection and management of lower-tier suppliers. By investigating how individual supply managers adjust the extent of multi-tier sourcing in response to behavioral uncertainty, interpersonal trust and familiarity with lower-tier suppliers, our study adds novel findings to the growing stream of work in this area.\n5. Limitations and future research: Given our focus on the multi-tier sourcing decisions of individual supply managers, we emphasized their connection to the tier-1 supplier and broader familiarity with potential tier-2 suppliers. In our study, we were unable to unpack how the characteristics of individual lower-tier suppliers influence the sourcing decision. Since subcomponents supplied by tier-2 suppliers are embedded within the component supplied by a tier-1 supplier, the decision regarding whether to control a particular subcomponent sourcing can be influenced by the factors at both tier-1 and tier-2 levels. Incorporating this hierarchical nature of multi-tier sourcing decisions into a multi-level experimental design (Quinn and Keough, 2002) will further enhance our understanding of how buying companies use multi-tier sourcing practices.\n6. Conclusions: We investigate the emerging practice of multi-tier sourcing. While the strategic thrust of multi-tier sourcing may lie at the organizational level, the decision to engage in this practice rests primarily with individual supply managers. Shedding light on the behavioral aspects of their efforts to achieve efficient sourcing through delegation to a key supplier vs the managing risks through exerting sourcing control over lower-tier suppliers is valuable. In particular, we highlight the moderating role of familiarity with lower-tier suppliers in enabling supply managers to adjust the extent of multi-tier sourcing in response to behavioral uncertainty of a tier-1 supplier's performance and the level of interpersonal trust. Further work exploring the dynamics of multi-tier sourcing is encouraged.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the behavioral tendencies of supply managers when they are faced with uncertainty in making multi-tier sourcing decisions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses the literature on multi-tier supply chains and behavioral decision making to develop a theoretical framework for examining factors influencing a supply manager's decision to retain control over sourcing in the multi-tier context. An experimental vignette methodology is used to gather data from 259 supply managers.\nFindings: Results suggest that supply managers choose to exert less multi-tier control when they have high levels of interpersonal trust in the tier-1 supplier's sales representative. This effect is accentuated by a high level of familiarity with potential lower-tier suppliers. Under high levels of familiarity with potential lower-tier suppliers, supply managers will exert greater levels of multi-tier sourcing control as the behavioral uncertainty of the tier-1 supplier increases.\nPractical implications: Buying firms can enhance their understanding of supply managers' multi-tier sourcing decision making and the potential biases associated with it. Suggestions for a more effective use of multi-tier sourcing are provided in the Discussion section.\nOriginality/value: Multi-tier sourcing is an increasingly important area of research, and this paper is the first to examine individual supply managers' behavioral decision making in the multi-tier context. This paper also contributes to the outsourcing literature by investigating behavioral factors influencing the outsourcing of sourcing activities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Toward a contagion-based model of mobile banking adoption
|
[
"Mobile banking",
"Trust transfer",
"Adoption intentions",
"Attitude transfer",
"Self-service technologies",
"Social contagion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The proliferation of information and communication technologies prompts companies to diversify and extend their distribution channels in order to better serve their customers and inherently gain a competitive edge (Verhagen and van Dolen, 2009). Channels' extension is indeed becoming a standard business practice in use by many firms as much as it is instrumental in enhancing their existing business processes and positively affecting their bottom lines (Yang et al., 2013). Nowadays, self-service technologies (SSTs)[1] are massively provided and used by many organizations and institutions. Needless to say, SSTs are reshaping the relationship between customers and organizations (Curran and Meuter, 2007). In fact, technology infusion brings organizations closer to their clients through the creation of customized, flexible and delightful service encounters (Bitner et al., 2000). Aware of the benefits of SSTs (Bitner et al., 2000; Curran and Meuter, 2007), firms are relentlessly trying through marketing campaigns to entice their clients to adopt these SSTs.\n2. Conceptual framework: research hypotheses: 2.1 Conceptual model\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data collection and sample characteristics\n4. Results: 4.1 Measurement model and psychometric properties\n5. Discussion and implications: The main goal of this study is to propose and test a model aiming at investigating how the customers' responses in terms of attitudes toward and trust in mature SSTs along with social factors influence the customers' intentions to adopt a newly introduced SST, namely, mobile banking. Accordingly, drawing from the TRA (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975), the SSTs intention to change behavior model (Curran and Meuter, 2007), the trust transference literature (Lee et al., 2007) and the social contagion theory (Shi et al., 2008), this study proposes an integrative model that simultaneously investigates the transference effects of attitudes, trust and contagious impacts of social pressure on mobile banking adoption intentions.\n6. Limitations and future research directions: This study has some limitations that may offer opportunities for future research. First, the study has been conducted in only one county (i.e. France). As such, the findings cannot be generalized to other countries where the level of information technology infrastructure and legal framework as well as customers' exposure to and experience with SSTs could be different (Al-Ajam and Md Nor, 2015). Additional studies in other countries are needed to further enhance the generalizability of our tested model. In the same vein, this study has been conducted in a banking context. It would be interesting to replicate the study's model in other contexts where SSTs are in use.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: Can a bank capitalize on its well-established self-service technologies (SSTs) in order to entice customers to adopt a newly introduced SST, namely, mobile banking? More specifically, it proposes an integrative model that simultaneously investigates the transference effects of attitudes, trust and the contagious influences of social pressures on mobile banking adoption intentions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Structural equation modeling is applied to data collected from banks' clients who are actually non-users of mobile banking.\nFindings: The results indicate that attitude toward and trust in mobile banking along with coercive, normative and mimetic pressures are key antecedents to mobile banking adoption intentions. In addition, attitudes toward automated teller machines (ATMs) and online banking significantly predict attitude toward mobile banking. The results also support the effects of trust in ATMs as well as trust in online banking on trust in mobile banking. Moreover, predicted differences in the relative effects of attitude and trust are supported. Particularly, attitude toward online banking has a stronger impact on attitude toward mobile banking compared to the impact of attitude toward ATMs. In the same vein, the effect of trust in online banking on mobile banking is significantly stronger than the effect of trust in ATMs.\nPractical implications: The study's results hint at some practical and worthwhile guidelines for banks that can be leveraged in communication campaigns aiming at boosting the adoption rates of mobile banking. Banks can take advantage of the transference effects of the established attitudes toward and trusting beliefs in their mature SSTs as well as the contagious social influences in inducing the adoption of a newly introduced SST.\nOriginality/value: The present study represents a first step toward generating new insights into the role of the joint effects of attitudes, trust and social influences in the adoption of a new SST.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
No accounting for taste: problems in hiring and retaining millennials
|
[
"Distributive justice",
"Organizational justice",
"Procedural justice",
"Millennials",
"Public accounting"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Call them what you want - millennials, Generation Y, the millennial generation - but they are causing established firms and industries huge headaches. The generation that were born in the 1980s and 1990s do not conform to earlier norms, and a failure to understand the shifts that have taken place can have devastating consequences for firms. In particular, the expectations they have around flexibility, support of work-life balance, and corporate social responsibility are far in excess of their forebears, and these expectations are having a huge impact on recruitment and retention of this generation.\nBig Four losing their luster?: One of the industries feeling the changes more than most is accounting. Accounting firms were the darling of the college crowd born in the 1960s and 1970s, who were signed up to graduate recruitment schemes, expensive training schemes, and traditional benefits such as healthcare schemes. However, not only did a number of Generation X either drop out or start to avoid these firms, then with Generation Y the besuited, restrictive image they had failed to provide much of a draw. In addition, we then had corporate scandals and the global economic crisis with many major firms in the center of the maelstrom.\nIt is not about the money, money: But first, the problem. The statistics quoted in George and Wallio's paper are frightening - millennials at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) were leaving the company at an unprecedented rate, and they suddenly accounted for four-fifths of its entire workforce. In addition, despite taking steps to rectify the situation and understand the needs of the new generation, there was little change in the rate of departures, which was also being seen across other large accounting firms.\nRough justice?: What George and Wallio want to investigate is to what extent do the senses of both distributive justice and procedural justice contribute, all things being equal, to the turnover intentions of millennial workers. Using an online survey, the authors found that, as you might well imagine, both forms of justice, if perceived highly in a given accounting firm, were less likely to produce turnover intentions of younger workers. While this could have perhaps been predicted, the authors also found that procedural justice was a stronger factor than distributive justice - in other words, what millennials really seem to care about is transparency and how decisions are made rather than the outputs of those decisions.\nComment: The article \"Organizational justice and millennial turnover in public accounting\" by George and Wallio (2017) may at first look like producing some relatively benign, obvious conclusions from a study of how younger workers behave at large US accounting firms. However, there is much to learn in the detail of how and why millennial workers prefer open systems to open results, and this is key in furthering our understanding of a generation that will inhabit half of all jobs by the end of the decade.\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: Call them what you want - millennials, Generation Y, the millennial generation - but they are causing established firms and industries huge headaches. The generation that was born in the 1980s and 1990s does not conform to earlier norms, and a failure to understand the shifts that have taken place can have devastating consequences for firms. In particular, the expectations they have around flexibility, support of work-life balance, and corporate social responsibility are far in excess of their forebears, and these expectations are having a huge impact on recruitment and retention of this generation.\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"
}
] |
Organizational memory and empowerment
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Ageing workforce",
"Organizational memory",
"Knowledge transfer",
"Mentoring",
"Older workers",
"Empowerment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Knowledge management is aimed at the effective dissemination and leverage of knowledge to enhance effective organizational performance (Easterby-Smith and Lyles, 2003). Effective knowledge management involves the creation, capture, storage and transfer of knowledge including the sharing of knowledge by organizational members. In many cases effective knowledge management depends on the ability and willingness of experienced employees to share their organizational and work related knowledge.Over the next 25 years, the working-age population of Europe is projected to fall by almost 50 million due to the retirement of members of the baby-boomer generation born between 1945 and 1964 (New Zealand Department of Labour, 2004). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2006) decreasing fertility rates among many of its member countries mean that fewer new workers will be available to replace those employees entering retirement. While this demographic trend is not necessarily reflected in all companies and/or industries (Capelli, 2003) it is a concern to many. The predicted loss of older workers is associated with the potential loss of important organizational knowledge. That is, there is a potential threat to an organization's competitive advantage whenever an experienced employee leaves, in terms of the potential loss of organizational memory - the \"stored information from an organization's history that can be brought to bear on present decisions\" (Walsh and Ungson, 1991, p. 610).The risk of diminished organizational memory makes research into the knowledge management implications of the ageing workforce salient. Some works have specifically addressed the threatened knowledge management crisis (e.g. Beazley et al., 2002; DeLong, 2004; Strack et al., 2008). Furthermore, Beazley et al. (2002) while acknowledging the specific threat to knowledge management created by the retirement of the baby-boomers, also note the chronic threat to productivity and competitiveness through regularly occurring and ongoing transfers, resignations and terminations.The knowledge management literature recommends involving older experienced workers in knowledge sharing initiatives as one way of avoiding potential knowledge loss (Beazley et al., 2002; DeLong, 2004). Sharing knowledge offers both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards for employees. Beazley et al. (2002) suggest that while intrinsic rewards are intangible, they are arguably among the most satisfying and motivating incentives. Having opportunities to share knowledge, being connected to others and being valued, represent likely intrinsic rewards of transferring operational knowledge from departing employees to their successors (Beazley et al., 2002). The classic maxim that claims that \"knowledge is power\" would seem also to suggest intrinsic rewards for the possession of organizational knowledge. Those with considerable tenure within their job and organization, and who are repositories of organizational memory, are also likely to report personal empowerment within that organizational context. Furthermore those repositories of organizational memory that are targeted as mentors within their organizations are also likely to cite organization-based self-esteem due to this recognition given to them. Consequently, managers can cite beneficial outcomes of mentoring that include intrinsic benefits for those experienced older workers that seek to engage in knowledge sharing practices and knowledge management strategies.1.1 Organizational memory\n2. The organizational memory and empowerment model: While it is expected that in general older workers represent potential knowledge repositories and mentors, there is some indication that caveats need to be attached. In a survey focusing on workplace attitudes to older workers, McPherson (2008) found that while employers and managers valued older workers for their experience and willingness to share their knowledge, they also acknowledged that not all older workers are potential mentors, claiming that experience rather than age was the most relevant qualification. As two respondents in the McPherson study commented:We buddy people up, older workers and new young ones. But the older workers do that not because of their age, but because of their longer service and experience, and they pass that on (p. 15).Each year we admit a couple of new people to the Legends Hall of Fame. These are always the people who have lots of wisdom, share their knowledge and are known as the go-to people for advice (p. 15).Both comments are pertinent. The first implies conditions need to be placed on the assumption that all older workers have organizational memory by introducing the caveats of \"long service\" and \"experience\", while the second acknowledges that some employees become known as the \"go-to\" people for sharing knowledge and that this role is particularly valued and celebrated by organizations. The proposed model of the relationships between organizational memory and empowerment (see Figure 1) recognizes these insights and aspects of organizational practice.Empowerment, according to the model, refers to that of the individual, and indirectly, also their organization. Psychological empowerment for individuals incorporates the sense of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact that knowledgeable employees may attain in their work. These employees however, also represent potential empowerment for the organization in terms of the frequency with which they are requested to share their knowledge by colleagues and associates. The model suggests that enhanced organizational-based self-esteem is a likely outcome of both empowerment for the individual and the extent to which they are sought to share their knowledge. The following sections outline the study variables and the hypothesized relationships.2.1 Theoretical antecedents of organizational memory: age and organizational tenure\n3. Method: 3.1 Sampling\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Discussion: The central aim of this study was to test a model of organizational memory and empowerment in order to identify positive outcomes of knowledge sharing for individuals and organizations. This involved investigating potential antecedents of organizational memory (specifically age and organizational tenure), and an examination of the relationships between organizational memory and its proposed outcomes, including empowerment, the frequency participants received requests to share knowledge, and organization-based self-esteem. A further aim was to examine the relationship between organizational memory and manager requests to train/mentor. The results of this study offer several encouraging findings.5.1 Potential antecedents of organizational memory\n6. Conclusion: The knowledge management literature acknowledges that older workers through their long tenure can be significant repositories of organizational memory and that their involvement in knowledge sharing initiatives like mentoring can bring them intrinsic rewards. This study tested those assumptions and confirmed that while age is related to organizational memory, it is primarily through the relationship age also has with organizational tenure and this is the salient predictor. It is important for managers to recognize potentially misleading positive stereotypes that may surround older workers in mentoring roles, and that age does not necessarily equate to organizational memory without the requisite tenure.There is also some support from this study regarding positive outcomes for those who are recognized knowledge repositories and mentors in the form of a sense of empowerment and organization-based self-esteem, particularly when requested to take on a mentoring role. Accordingly, it would appear that in general many older workers, with long tenure, are recognized repositories of organizational memory, and that they can anticipate positive outcomes for being so in the form of psychological empowerment, organizational regard and recognition (e.g. through requests to share knowledge), and self-esteem. Those individuals who are also targeted as mentors in their organization may also benefit further through an increased sense of worth in that context, and these benefits can be cited by organizations who wish to recruit mentors for knowledge sharing purposes. There is also the potential for organizations to benefit too, through the knowledge resources those experienced employees represent for their fellow employees.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to test a model of the relationship between organizational memory and empowerment. The model posited that organizational memory would be related to requests to share knowledge, psychological empowerment in the workplace (meaning, competence, self-determination and impact), and organization-based self-esteem.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The model was tested with 134 employees representing six companies using hierarchical regression analysis.\nFindings: - Significant relationships were found between organizational memory and requests to share knowledge, empowerment, and organization-based self-esteem. Findings indicated that a positive stereotype may exist towards older workers and the frequency they are requested to share knowledge, and that a halo-type effect may operate, where knowledge of an organization's history is generalized to other knowledge domains.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Causal implications cannot be made as this was correlational research. Some of the research measures while achieving acceptable to good reliability were in an early development stage. The study utilized a convenience sample that may limit how the results can be generalized.\nPractical implications: - The paper indicates that organizations can emphasize positive outcomes for those who are knowledge repositories and mentors. It is also important to consider possible \"positive stereotypes\" which may be operating when organizational members evaluate older workers as knowledge repositories and mentors.\nOriginality/value: - The paper addresses the assumptions in the human resources literature concerning the role of older workers as repositories of organizational memory and suitable mentors. The study introduces the \"requests to share knowledge scale\".\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Joined up approach to global leadership: Managing change the intelligent way
|
[
"Organizational change",
"Organizational capacity",
"Culture",
"Global strategic change"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: The difficulties in managing change across globally in a large company will be familiar to many people - not least because when it goes wrong, it is also highlighted globally across business news networks and eventually in MBA classrooms. There is the example of a \"world car\" given a name that meant \"doesn't go\" in Spanish, or the internal process with an unfortunate sounding acronym in Chinese. All these examples exemplify the major headaches that can be created when any change is made throughout a multi-cultural entity.\nContexts: Now, as with most things, Apple is the exception that proves the rule, but maybe its directness and clarity of its message is something that leaders could take on board when embarking on their own change programs. In their book chapter \"Global strategic change: a synthesis of approaches\", authors Lane et al. (2014) introduce the concept of Global Strategic Change (GSC) in a bid to help overcome many of the familiar barriers leaders encounter when driving through change in a large organization.\nManaging global strategic change: Global strategic change is the term the authors introduce to analyze these issues, and they define it as \"strategically aligned alterations in patterns of employee behavior across national boundaries\" (p. 232). They identify it as having two underlying assumptions. Firstly, that change is a result of the employment of a new strategy, and secondly that a thorough understanding of cultures involved in the change will help those managers implementing the changes. In practice, such strategic changes are likely to involve at least one of the following:\nThe power of four: Context: However, many articles a global leader reads or MBA classes their executives attend, the focus of a company will default to control, and thus heighten its vulnerability to change. This is best understood through the equation used to define dynamic complexity, where a multiplicity of factors combines with interdependencies within a global organization and ambiguity in cultural contexts and markets. Add into this the fact that all three states are in flux and prone to change at any time, then any change program must have such understanding at the absolute core of all actions by all agents of change to be effective.\nResearch into practice: So what does all this look like? The authors helpfully provide further context by describing the change process through the inclusion of cultural contingencies. For example, stage one would be the identification of the desired state or goal to be achieved through change. The second stage would be the activities of redesigning a process, mapping participation and key touch points for individuals and departments and creating solutions for the problems identified. The third stage - before moving on to a next phase of understanding the ability to change of those involved - would be to look at cultural contingencies. These include understanding attitudes toward conflict, communications styles and the time elements already discussed above.\nComment: The article \"Global strategic change: a synthesis of approaches\" by Lane et al. (2014) provides an insightful piece of research on managing change in a global organization. While the context will be familiar to many, the practical applications give valuable pointers to deal with these issues from a leadership perspective.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: The difficulties in managing change globally in a large company will be familiar to many people - not least because when it goes wrong, it is also highlighted globally across business news networks and eventually in MBA classrooms. There is the example of a \"world car\" given a name that meant \"doesn't go\" in Spanish, or the internal process with an unfortunate sounding acronym in Chinese. All these examples exemplify the major headaches that can be created when any change is made throughout a multi-cultural entity.\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"
}
] |
Analysis of optimal accelerated life test plans for periodic inspection: The case of exponentiated Weibull failure model
|
[
"Inspection",
"Tests and testing",
"Optimization techniques",
"Optimum design"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Accelerated life tests (ALTs) are used to estimate the lifetime of highly reliable products within a reasonable testing time. The test units are run at higher than usual levels of stress to induce early failures. The test data obtained at the accelerated conditions are analyzed in terms of a model, and then extrapolated to the design stress to estimate the life distribution.Two inspection modes are applied in ALT. One is the continuous inspection that results in exact failure times (Cherrnoff, 1962; Meeker, 1984; Meeker and Nelson, 1975; Nelson, 1990; Nelson and Meeker, 1978). The other is the periodic inspection in which test units are inspected for failure at predetermined points in time. The periodic inspection is frequently employed by many authors (Ehrenfeld, 1962; Meeker, 1986; Ahmad and Islam, 1996; Ahmad et al., 1994; Islam and Ahmad, 1994; Yum and Choi, 1989; Seo and Yum, 1991) because it requires less testing effort and is administratively more convenient. For more details on recent research and issues in ALTs, see Meeker and Escobar (1993).This paper considers ALT planning for items whose lifetimes follow an exponentiated Weibull (EW) distribution (Mudholkar and Srivastava, 1993). This distribution is an extension of the well-known Weibull, which includes exponential and Rayleigh sub-models. The EW family accommodates unimodal, bathtub shape and a broader class of monotone failure rates (Mudholkar et al., 1995; Nassar and Eissa, 2003, 2004; Figure 2). Particularly, many items have lifetime failure data that are of bathtub shape or upside-down bathtub shape, and so the EW distribution as a failure model is more realistic than that of monotone failure. Currently, there are little studies for the use of the EW distribution in reliability and survival analysis (Mudholkar and Hutson, 1996; Cancho et al., 1999; Nassar and Eissa, 2003; 2004) so this paper is to promote its use in life testing applications. The EW distribution can be widely and effectively used in reliability and life testing applications because it has a wide variety of shapes in its density and failure rate functions (Figures 1 and 2; Table I; Mudholkar and Hutson, 1996; Cancho et al., 1999; Jiang and Murthy, 1999; Nassar and Eissa, 2003, 2004).This paper is a generalization over the previous works on the design of ALT plans for Type I censoring and periodic inspection such as Yum and Choi (1989), Ahmad et al. (1994), Islam and Ahmad (1994) and Seo and Yum (1991). The EW distribution has been considered to describe the failure mechanism of the units under test. Statistically optimal ALT plans have been developed for the EW distribution under Type I censoring and periodic inspection at two test stress levels. It is assumed that a log-linear function exists between the EW scale parameter and the stress and that the shape parameters are constant and are independent of the stress. The unknown parameters in the log-linear relationship are estimated by maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method. Under the case of known shape parameters, the low test stress and associated proportion of test units are optimally determined at design stress. The optimal test plans are derived by minimizing the asymptotic variance (AsVar) of the maximum likelihood estimator of log mean life or of qth quartile at design stress. This paper may also be viewed as an extension of Mudholkar and Srivastava (1993), Mudholkar et al. (1995), Mudholkar and Hutson (1996), Cancho et al. (1999), Jiang and Murthy (1999) and Nassar and Eissa (2003, 2004) work to the case of ALT with censoring and periodic inspection. A self-developed software program has been used to carry out the computations and is available from the authors.Computational studies are conducted for various combinations of parameters to examine how the optimal plans vary with respect to these parameters at design and high-test stresses. Sensitivity analyses have also been performed for various combinations of parameters to assess the effect of inaccuracy to misspecification of imputed failure probabilities on the optimal plan at design and high-test stresses. It is shown that optimal plans obtained for exponential (Yum and Choi, 1989), Rayleigh (Ahmad et al., 1994), and Weibull (Islam and Ahmad, 1994; Seo and Yum, 1991) distributions become special cases of the EW distribution. Procedures for selecting a sample size and for planning an ALT are discussed.\nProposed model and test procedure: Basic assumptions\nEstimation of parameters: Maximum likelihood method\nResearch methodology: Several test plans have been proposed and investigated by Meeker (1984), Nelson (1990) and Seo and Yum (1991). An alternative is the optimal plan, which provides the smallest AsVar for the MLE of log mean life (Ahmad and Islam, 1996). However, the optimal plan is suitable only if the assumed life-stress relationship, as well as the assumed lifetime distribution, is correct.Optimization method\nComputational results: The results of the analysis of optimal plan are presented in Tables II-IX for various combinations of Pu, Ph, K, d, and s. Tables X-XII summarize computational results of sensitivity analysis for various values of Pu, Ph, d, and s with K=2.The following trends are observed:* For given values of Pu, Ph, d, and s, AsVar(m^0) is almost same over the number of inspection (K). Thus, increasing K has little effect on the AsVar. This implies that the number of inspection need not be too large.* For given values of d and s, AsVar(m^0) is insensitive to K as Pu increases and/or Ph decreases.* For all the cases considered, the values of ratio in last column of Tables II-IX indicate that there is no significant difference in AsVar(m^0) for variation in K, because it is much closed to 1. Therefore, unnecessarily large K is not needed, which is an encouraging result in terms of testing efforts.* When Pu and Ph are fixed, s1* and a1* are fairly stable over K in all the cases under study.* For selected values of d, s, and Pu, as Ph decreases, AsVar of m^0 increases and it is minimum when Ph is 0.99.* For selected values of d, s, and Ph, as Pu increases, AsVar(m^0) decreases and it becomes is minimum when Pu equals 0.01.* For given d and s, s1* gets close to zero (the design stress) and a1* to 1, as Pu increases and/or Ph decreases. For instance, when Pu =0.1 and Ph <= 0.99, s1*[?]0 and a1*[?]1. Similar trends are also observed when Pu is less than 0.1, for small values of Ph. This implies that there is almost no need for an ALT.* For each Pu and Ph, AsVar of m^0 decreases as s increases when d is fixed.* For each Pu and Ph, AsVar(m^0) decreases as d increases when s is fixed.* For each Pu and Ph, when d and s both increases, AsVar(m^0) decreases.* For given d and s, ratio values of sensitivity analysis indicate that the plan is robust against the likely departures of the true Pu and Ph from their guessed values for all K.* The results of optimal plans obtained by Yum and Choi (1989) becomes the particular case of the result obtained here for d=1 and s=1 (Table V).* The results of Ahmad et al. (1994) are also special cases to the result of EW distribution for d=2 and s=1 (Table VII).* The optimal design obtained by Islam and Ahmad (1994) are special cases to those obtained here for different values of d when s=1 (Table II).\nProcedure for planning ALTs: We suggest the following procedure for planning an ALT.* Provide pre-estimates of Pu, Ph, d, and s and the ranges of their plausible values.* Determine an optimal test plan using the pre-estimates.* For given d and s, conduct sensitivity analysis with respect to the plausible values of pre-estimates.* Check the necessity of an ALT based upon s1* and a1*.* Determine the sample size.Example\nConcluding remarks: In this paper, we develop optimal ALT plans for minimizing AsVar(m^0) under the assumptions of EW lifetime distribution, periodic inspection, and Type I censoring.Based upon computational results, we indicate various patterns of optimal plans and conclude that the EW distribution is widely and effectively applicable family of reliability models for ALT plan as compared to the exponential, Rayleigh, and Weibull distributions. It can also conclude that the number of inspections need not be large and the plan is insensitive to misspecification of imputed failure probabilities at the design and high stress levels. We also observe that the schemes with equally spaced inspection times at each stress level are administratively convenient and statistically optimal.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this research paper is to generalize the previous works on the design of accelerated life tests (ALTs) for periodic inspection and Type I censoring and to promote the use of an exponentiated Weibull (EW) distribution in accelerated life testing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Statistically optimal ALT plans are suggested for items whose lifetime follows the EW distribution under periodic inspection and Type I censoring. It is assumed that the mean lifetime (scale parameter) is a log-linear function of stress and that the shape parameters are independent of stress. Given shape parameters, design stress and high test stress, the test plan is optimized with respect to the low test stress and the proportion of test units are also allocated to this test stress. The asymptotic variance (AsVar) of the maximum likelihood estimator of log mean life at the design stress is used as an optimality criterion with equally spaced inspection times. A FORTRAN program was written to calculate the optimal plans. Procedures for planning of an ALT, including selection of sample size, have also been discussed. An illustration of the optimal ALT plans has been done through a numerical example.\nFindings: - Computational findings for various values of the shape parameters indicate that the AsVar of log mean life at the design stress is insensitive to the number of inspection times and to misspecifications of imputed failure probabilities at design and high test stresses. Computational findings also show that optimal designs of ALT previously obtained for exponential, Rayleigh, and Weibull distributions become special cases of the EW distribution. Thus, the EW distribution is a useful and widely applicable reliability model for optimal ALT plans.\nOriginality/value: - The present investigation features the EW distribution of lifetimes of test items and it generalizes the previous works on accelerated life testing. Furthermore, the propose test plans can be applied to estimate the lifetime of highly reliable product or material, if a researcher designs a test under the assumption of this model.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Brand forgiveness
|
[
"Brand relationships"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The branding literature includes extensive research showing the importance of building and maintaining positive brand relationships (Fetscherin and Heinrich, 2015). A little over a decade ago, the flow of research shifted to include negative brand relationships. The most notable constructs that have been studied include, for example, brand dislike (Dalli et al., 2006; Romani et al., 2009), brand disgust (Alba and Lutz, 2013) or brand hate (Kucuk, 2008; Bryson et al., 2013; Zarantonello et al., 2016; Hegner et al., 2017). Consumer responses to negative brand relationships vary, and different individuals often react to the same stimulus in different ways. The literature has found that consumers have different coping strategies such as \"take a flight\" by avoiding, \"fighting\" by attacking or re-engaging (Gregoire and Fisher, 2006; Zourrig et al., 2009; Gregoire et al., 2010; Johnson et al., 2010) with brands. Three main conclusions can be drawn from our literature review.\n2. Forgiveness: 2.1 Origins and domain\n3. Hypotheses: As Tsarenko and Tojib (2015) argue, it is impossible to encompass all aspects of forgiveness within one research design and model. Furthermore, because of the novelty, complexity and ambiguity of forgiveness, this article focuses on and assesses three types of brand transgressions (performance, image and value) and two degrees of severity (low vs high) for brand forgiveness. It goes on to assess the relationship of two degrees of forgiveness (high vs low) on three different consumer coping strategies (switching, attacking and purchasing again).\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Items\n5. Results: 5.1 Validity and reliability tests\n6. Discussion and implications: 6.1 Theoretical discussion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore and discuss the concept of brand forgiveness. It empirically assesses the relationships among three types of brand transgressions, brand forgiveness and three consumer coping strategies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A 3 x 2 research design is used to evaluate the effects of three types of brand transgression (performance, image and value) and two degrees of severity (high vs low) for brand forgiveness. Then, this paper use a 2 x 3 research design, evaluating two degrees of brand forgiveness (high vs low) together with their effects on three different consumer coping strategies (switching, attacking and purchasing again). Using a representative sample of 472 US consumers, various hypotheses related to these research designs are tested.\nFindings: The results show that almost half (48 per cent) of the consumers are unlikely or very unlikely to forgive a brand compared to about a third (32 per cent) who are likely or very likely to forgive. The results of ANOVA show the more severe the brand transgression, the less likely the forgiveness. Consumers who are more likely to forgive are less likely to avoid the brand or engage in attacking behaviors; they are also more likely to purchase the brand again. The results of regression analyses show that consumers witnessing a performance-based brand transgression are more likely to forgive the brand than in the case of image- or value-based brand transgressions.\nOriginality/value: This paper explores and outlines the brand forgiveness construct, both theoretically and empirically.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
On the determinants of firm leverage: evidence from a structural estimation
|
[
"Trade-off theory",
"Dynamic structural model",
"Efficient method of moments",
"Firm leverage determinants",
"Speed of mean-reversion",
"Structural estimation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: I provide further evidence on the determinants of corporate capital structure by estimating a dynamic trade-off model of the firm that includes investment, leverage, and payout decisions. The structural model generates a leverage ratio that oscillates around a long-run, time-invariant level and consistently reproduces the convergence and stability of leverage reported by Lemmon et al. (2008). The dynamic model sheds light on the role played by the primitive characteristics of the firm (e.g. production technology) to explain the cross-sectional variation in capital structure. I use Efficient Method of Moments (EMM) to recover the structural parameters.\nI. Literature review: Leverage decisions have been analyzed extensively in the corporate finance literature. For example, Titman and Wessels (1988) find that leverage is significantly related to firm size, profitability, and the uniqueness of the firm's line of business. Using international data, Rajan and Zingales (1995) report that the factors that are significant leverage determinants for US firms (e.g. profitability, market-to-book ratio, sales, etc.) are similarly important in other developed countries. In a more recent study, Frank and Goyal (2009) find that profitability, market-to-book ratio, and firm size, among others, are the most reliable factors explaining capital structure decisions[2]. However, Lemmon et al. (2008) challenge that literature suggesting that the explanatory power of those determinants is rather limited and that most of the variation in capital structure at the cross-sectional level is captured by firm-specific fixed effects, which proxy for unobserved factors. This study complements the latter by using a dynamic model of the firm to both confirm their results and provide some insights on the possible factors underlying the unobserved fixed effects.\nII. The model: The methodology I use to develop the model is discrete time, infinite horizon, stochastic dynamic programming. The objective of the firm is to maximize its value, which is achieved by maximizing the expected discounted sum of cash flows to investors.\nIII. Data: The data used in this study are from the yearly Standard\nIV. Identification: I discuss the sources of identification of (Equation 39), the vector of structural parameters of the model that will be estimated. To achieve identification of these ten model parameters, I assume the remaining two parameters have the following values: b=0.98, t\nV. Estimation: This section presents the estimates of the structural parameters of the dynamic model. The estimation technique I use is the EMM developed by Gallant and Tauchen (1996). The underlying idea of the methodology is to match the moments generated by the simulation of the model to those implied by the observed data.\nVI. Model predictions about capital structure choice: The identification of the determinants of capital structure is a strongly contested area in corporate finance. Part of the literature (e.g. Titman and Wessels (1988); Rajan and Zingales (1995); Frank and Goyal (2009), etc.) suggests that variation in capital structure is explained by time-varying firm characteristics, such as profitability and growth opportunities. On the other hand, Lemmon et al. (2008) suggest that the role of those factors in the determination of leverage is fairly limited and, therefore, important factors are missing in existing regressions. I use the dynamic model to investigate these issues in the following subsections. In agreement with the latter, I find that most of the variation in leverage is explained by the fundamental characteristics of the firm and the power of traditional determinants to explain such variation is rather small.\nVII. Conclusion: I estimate a dynamic structural model of the firm based on the trade-off theory of capital structure that features endogenous investment, leverage, and payout decisions. The model explicitly includes the benefits (i.e. interest tax shields) and the costs (i.e. costs of financial distress) of debt, as well as the costs of external capital. I use the EMMs to estimate the structural parameters that best fit the characteristics of the data.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomena of convergence and stability of leverage reported by Lemmon et al. (2008).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A dynamic trade-off model of the firm was used to simulate investment, leverage, and payout decisions for different types of firms. From an econometric standpoint, the Efficient Method of Moments was used to recover the structural parameters.\nFindings: The structural model generates a leverage ratio that oscillates around a long-run, time-invariant level and consistently reproduces the convergence and stability of leverage reported by Lemmon et al. (2008). The model also suggests the causes of those observed properties of the data. That is, convergence is due to the mean-reversion of profits while stability is due to the different fundamental characteristics (e.g. capital elasticity, volatility of profits, etc.) of the firm.\nPractical implications: Determining the optimal capital structure of a firm is a complex problem that has challenged academics and practitioners for a long time. Understanding leverage decisions is of great importance not only for financial managers, but also for investors, such as banks, debt-holders, equity-holders, and other capital providers, who need to understand how firms make capital structure decisions in order to achieve an efficient allocation of funds.\nOriginality/value: The author shows that the firm-specific fixed effects in leverage regressions are not related to the usual determinants (e.g. profitability, market-to-book ratio), but to the primitive characteristics of the firm (e.g. elasticity of capital in the production function, the volatility of profits, the capital depreciation rate, the income tax rate, etc.)\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The interplay between change and learning at the workplace: A qualitative study from retail banking
|
[
"Professional education",
"Performance management",
"Workplace learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Workplace changes are an omnipresent phenomenon in contemporary work environments, and thus continue to raise the interest of researchers with psychological (Oreg, 2006; Wanberg and Banas, 2000; Van Dam et al., 2008) and educational backgrounds (Billett, 2006; Reardon, 2004; Watkins and Marsick, 1993). From different perspectives, scholars from the field of workplace learning analyse the mutual relationship between change in the workplace and individual or organisational learning (Bauer and Gruber, 2007; Doornbos and Krak, 2006; Simons and Ruijters, 2004). The acquisition of knowledge and the development of professional competencies emerge alongside workplace reorganisation. Because of ongoing workplace changes, employees' professional competencies and knowledge, once acquired, are no longer considered stable and secure throughout a professional career. Instead, educational theorists assume that employees are urged to permanently adapt their knowledge, skills and work routines to meet new requirements resulting from organisational changes (Billett, 2008a; Fenwick, 2001; Raelin, 2007). Learning to cope with new requirements means employees must modify existing work routines or establish new ones (Becker, 2004; Becker et al., 2005; Hoeve and Nieuwenhuis, 2006). In this way, changes in the workplace can foster learning and professional development (Gartmeier et al., 2008; Raehalme, 1999).\nA workplace learning perspective on workplace changes: When seeking to analyse changes in the workplace from a workplace-learning point of view, two issues are prominent. On one hand, a change provides opportunities for every employee to modify work routines and to acquire knowledge and skills. For an educational analysis, this individual perspective is most important. On the other hand, organisational changes shape the way in which individuals engage in their work in multiple ways.The individual perspective\nChange context of the study: The present interview study was conducted in the retail-banking department of a German bank. In spring 2007, the bank's management introduced a new concept for client advising called the Integrated Consulting Concept (ICC). This concept urged client advisors to give up their existing specialisation in a limited number of products as they were expected to sell a larger number of products. Further, they had to adopt standardised procedures in customer conversations. Hence, they had to confront each customer with a detailed set of fixed questions meant to obtain information such as the client's wishes and objectives in several areas of life. Information collected through the scheme concerned the client's:* financial situation, including financial investments, insurances and pension schemes; and* private situation and occupation, including career, current and anticipated family status, real estate, retirement plans, health and lifestyle.Along with this standardised set of questions, the management introduced guidelines for client conversations. The ICC can be considered a drastic change for several reasons:* Client advisors had to adapt a new work process by following standardised schemes in client conversations. Before the change, they individually developed and applied a structure for consultancy according to the premises of the client and their own product specialisations. Client advisors could easily modify this structure according to the dynamic of the resulting conversation. The ICC's implementation gave the advisors only a little space for modification, as every part of the scheme had to be discussed with the customer.* The range of products each client advisor had to sell increased after the change. Beforehand, each client advisor specialised in selling a few specific products. This change signified a drastic increase in the amount of knowledge required.* Before the ICC's implementation, client advisors have not served a specific number of clients. Further, there was no specified frequency with which each client had to be invited for a counselling interview. With the ICC's implementation, management classified customers according to their economic situation and their family status. These groups of clients were distributed to the client advisors, so that each advisor then had to serve a fixed group of around 200 clients. Moreover, the ICC demanded that each advisor contact and, if possible, meet each of the 200 clients on a predetermined, frequent basis.* The ICC included the implementation of a new software program for the calculation of financial products and investment models as well as the generation of product offers. This program replaced previously used computer tools. In addition to the software, the bank's management required all client advisors to use specific paper worksheets for client conversations.The implementation of the ICC affected employees in different ways, which are interesting from an educational perspective: the client advisors needed to modify existing work routines and to acquire extensive new knowledge.\nResearch questions: In the subsequent section on methodology, we describe the conceptualisation and accomplishment of our interview study addressing the following research questions:RQ1. How did the employees perceive the change (implementation of the ICC) and what were the resulting requirements for learning?RQ2. Which factors were perceived as supportive or inhibitive for learning in the context of the change?\nMethod: Sample\nResults: The analysis yielded a total of 410 statements which were allocated to the ten categories as follows: routineness (19 per cent), discretion (13 per cent), intensity (11 per cent), multiplicity (9 per cent), complexity (10 per cent), accessibility (9 per cent), homogeneity (5 per cent), working with others (14 per cent), status of employment (4 per cent), artefacts and external tools (6 per cent).RQ1. How did the employees perceive the change (implementation of the ICC) and the resulting requirements for learning?\nDiscussion: Our study confirmed that the micro perspective is valuable in revealing why employees experience workplace change as both challenging and promising. Participants had to modify work routines, to gain knowledge quickly, and to engage in cooperative problem solving and reflection in a short amount of time. According to Billett (2008a), individuals' intention to engage in workplace learning is determined by their interpretations of the situation. They then navigate and negotiate between learning opportunities, the organisational context and their personal dispositions to complete learning. When applying this to the situation in the bank's workplaces, it seems the most urgent problems guided professional engagement. Thus, the participants often felt like fire fighters; one participant noted, \"Often, I feel like I'm always running around trying to put out the flames where they burn brightest to keep the house from tumbling down.\" This is in line with Ellinger and Cseh's (2007) study results on contextual factors that influence the facilitation of others' learning. They found that employee's attitudes, fast-paced change and lack of time to adjust to workloads were factors inhibiting individuals' learning and the facilitation of others' learning. Our results revealed that the change especially affected employees regarding:* work performance;* professional knowledge; and* professional role.Work performance\nLimitations of the study: Despite the richness of the data, there are some limitations associated with this research. First, the findings cannot easily be generalised because they are based on a small sample of individuals who are client advisors in retail banking. Second, the focus of the study was on employee perspectives, and the study is therefore limited in that it looks at a specific workplace change through the employees' eyes only. Other perspectives, such as those of employers, managers and supervisors, were not investigated. A respective extension in a future study on workplace change and workplace learning is advisable. Third, the study addressed only the perceptions of experienced employees with at least five years of work experience, because it focussed on modifications to existing work routines and processes. It might be interesting to investigate young professionals who do not yet have stable work routines. Fourth, the design of our study is not suitable for analysing the speed of learning, as self-report measures do not yield valid information about the pace with which a person learns. A longitudinal design that involves some form of objective measure, such as performance outcome tests, is more appropriate to address such questions. Nevertheless, our results contribute to a better understanding of the effects of workplace changes on employees, and how organisational contextual factors shape learning processes in the context of change.\nConclusions and implications for practice and future research: As theoretically assumed, the change fostered individual learning processes as the employees were urged to adapt their knowledge, skills and work routines to meet the new work requirements. Although the occasions for learning were perceived rather as obligations than as opportunities for professional development, all employees described individual ways of coping with the situation and thus exploring the learning potential. The study revealed factors that supported or constrained learning processes. These factors are subjective to the individuals and to the place and practice in which they work, but they show how adults' conceptual and practical learning is affected by the characteristics of the work they are doing and the environment they are working in.Implications for practice\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyse employees' perception of a change at their workplaces and the requirements for learning, and factors supporting or inhibiting learning in the context of this change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data collection included personal face-to-face semi-structured interviews with ten client advisors in the retail-banking department of a German bank. The interviews took place during a time when the participants' workplaces were affected by a drastic change, namely the implementation of an integrated consulting concept. The data were analysed by a qualitative, content analysis approach, adapting Billett's framework for analysing workplace changes.\nFindings: - Challenges and requirements for learning as a consequence of the workplace change were analysed. The results show that the employees realised many affordances of the modification of work routines, especially concerning work performance, professional knowledge, and professional role. Thus, employees recognised the change as an opportunity for the acquisition of knowledge and competence development.\nOriginality/value: - This paper contributes to the understanding of workplace change's effect on employees' knowledge, work routines and professional development.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
"Woman" on the move: mobile subjectivities after intersectionality
|
[
"Intersectionality",
"Globalization",
"Neoliberalism",
"Mobile subjectivities",
"Post-identitarianism",
"Transnational processes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The practices by which mobile subjectivities produce their provisional identities open up the possibility of producing against the grain, of participating on the daily practices that mark gender, race, and class in an unpredictable way, on a slant, and thus making a difference. Even the most hegemonic insistences that we be a certain way must be negotiated, not simply absorbed and regurgitated. Local possibilities for undoing and re-doing naturalized identity claims are a starting point (not a final resting place) enabling mobile subjectivities to do their work (Ferguson, 1993, pp. 162-163).\n1. Introduction: This paper has its origins in challenges faced in trying to theorize and research organizing practices and processes of actors engaged in transnational business activities as part of their everyday lives. One key issue of concern to us was the prevalent assumption in our field of research that as these actors move from one place to another they nonetheless remain the same. That is, the common assumption is that identity is fixed regardless of time and place. Thus, for several years we have been developing a project to come to terms with the implications of this assumption. Specifically, we have been following Amy Sun (a pseudonym), a woman originally from China but now a US resident, who started and operates a transnational business in the education sector. At first the business was based only in the USA but she has since extended it to China as part of her entrepreneurial \"business plan\" and is considering further expansion to other Asian countries. As we have gotten to know her better - or so we think - we observe that she is a \"woman\" always on the move; a Chinese woman to many of those who would see her on the street in New England; an immigrant woman to her neighbors; an American woman when she meets an important corporate executive in Shanghai; a hard worker making ends meet to support her extended family; a powerful entrepreneur in Beijing; a millionaire to those who encounter her business activities, etc.\n2. Intersectionality and its discontents: Since the late 1980s feminist theorizing has produced several notions helpful for rethinking questions of identity and agency after the postmodern and discursive turns, Ferguson's mobile subjectivities being one of them. While maintaining a discursive focus, a number of theorists have also argued for a return to materiality without abandoning multiplicity. For some, questions of identity are processual, relational, and multiply inflicted by economic and social inequalities (e.g. Acker, 2006). For others, they are questions of materialization requiring a return to the body as site of inscription of a subject's multiplicities (e.g. Butler, 2004).\n3. Mobile subjectivities in a transnational world: Our opening quote, drawn from the final chapter of Ferguson's (1993) book, exemplifies her metatheoretical argument for reconsidering feminist identity claims assumed to be lost under the discursive turn of poststructuralism. Her notion of \"mobile subjectivities\" allows for maintaining agency without relying on a stable location of either identity (no matter how complex) or of place as a requirement for political engagement and for effecting social change. Instead, the identitarian argument is turned around for \"[i]n the shifting temporal and spatial possibilities offered by specific locales, mobile subjectivities find the resources for de-articulating and re-articulating themselves\" (Ferguson, 1993, p. 163).\n4. Conditions of possibility for mobile subjectivities: an empirical example: In this section, we offer an ethnographic account about Amy Sun, the businesswoman mentioned in our introduction. The primary aim of our explorations here is to seek an understanding of Amy as she negotiates diverse social relations in day-to-day activities and how, while being \"on the move,\" she may come to inhabit multiple subject positions and embodiments. How might the premises of mobile subjectivities, as a guiding epistemological orientation informed by transnational postfeminist micro-politics, help understanding a relational accomplishment of subjectivity by a \"Chinese\" businesswoman's translocational existence? How do her subjectivities unfold? What happens next?\n5. Understanding Amy: a transnational postfeminist mobile subject?: Analyzing some aspects of this ethnographic narrative through a transnational postfeminist micro-politics lens, and centering Han's voice in her relationships with Amy in the analyses, we make the broader case that Amy's life experiences can be helpful in recasting intersectionality as a mobile, precarious, and transitory accomplishment of selfhood for translocal subjectivities. In these resignifications, notions of \"choice\" and \"self-empowerment\" in neoliberal rhetoric sustaining globalized capitalism play a large role. But, with what consequences?\n6. Gendered micro-politics and transnational geopolitical and economic regimes: In summary, although analyzed separately above, Amy's \"selves\" should not be understood as separate but rather in relation to one another across time space and possibly constituting postfeminist mobile subjectivities in the process. For example, the motivation behind Amy's million-dollar purchase of real-estate properties in the USA could be well related to her motivation behind purchasing expensive apartments for her relatives in China. Similarly, her consumption preference of real-estate property over food could be a consequence of intersecting political forces including, but not limited to, media-friendly depictions of femininity (e.g. a skinny look), consumerist demands of capitalist culture (e.g. house ownership), and neoliberal individualism (e.g. \"choice\" and \"self-empowerment\" rhetoric). Consider, concurrently, the complicated geopolitical and economic relations between China and the USA at present and the mall and hotel in Beijing, which today could be anywhere else. Under neoliberal globalized capitalism subjectivities formed at one geographical site should not be understood as an outcome of forces limited to that very site. Instead, the \"local\" forces are inevitably intertwined with those operating in transnational social spaces, and this is of value for better understanding transnational practices and processes of contemporary organizational actors and the subjective spaces they may construct and inhabit.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: -The paper originated in challenges trying to theorize and research practices and processes of actors engaged in transnational activities for business and everyday life. Key concern was the assumption that actors' identities remain the same regardless of time/space. While intersectional analysis once seemed a reasonable analytical approach the authors wondered about starting from identity-based categorical schemes in a world where mobility may be ever more the ontological status of everyday experiences and social structuring. Thus, the paper addresses limitations of intersectional analysis in such situations and advances its recasting via mobile conceptualizations, redressing its analytical purchase for contemporary subject formation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Discusses emergence of intersectionality at a particular point in time, its success and proliferation, and more recent critiques of these ideas. Develops alternative conceptualization - mobile subjectivities - via literatures on mobilities in the context of globalization. Illustrates the value of these arguments with ethnographic examples from a multi-sited ethnographic project and analyses. Concludes by examining implications for new feminist theorizations under neoliberalism and globalization.\nFindings: Observing the constitution of a \"mobile selfhood\" in actual transnational business activities is a step toward making sense of complex processes in contemporary subject formation under globalized market neoliberalism.\nResearch limitations/implications: \"Mobile subjectivities\" suggest that analyses of oppression and subordination must be ongoing, no matter which \"new subjectivities\" may appear under \"the latest regime.\"\nOriginality/value: Theoretical and empirical analyses facilitated a reconceptualization of intersectionality as a mobile, precarious, and transitory accomplishment of selfhood temporarily fixed by the neoliberal rhetoric of \"choice\" and \"self-empowerment.\" This is of particular value for understanding transnational practices and processes of contemporary organizational actors.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Adapting to the changing needs of managing innovative projects
|
[
"New product development (NPD)",
"Front-end phase (FEI)",
"Managerial activities",
"Managerial challenges",
"Project manager"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Innovative projects pose challenges on the project manager, involving a variety of parallel, competing, and conflicting simultaneous processes (Buijs, 2007). Characterized by uncertainty (Lenfle and Loch, 2010; Collyer and Warren, 2009), the needs of the project change as the innovation process evolves (Kim and Wilemon, 2002b; Koen et al., 2001). The responsibility for managing both the innovation process and the people in the team is usually in the hands of the project manager (Elkins and Keller, 2003). The role of the project manager seems to be crucial in the context of innovations, leading the professionals, guiding the development team through the iterative and chaotic front-end phase (FEI), and managing the process in the development phase (Valle and Avella, 2003).\n2. Background: 2.1. Managing innovative projects\n3. Methodology: 3.1. Data collection\n4. Results: Tables III and IV present all of the categories of managerial concerns with example quotations (including activities and challenges related to a particular theme) that were brought up by the interviewees. Further, in Table V, the number of reported managerial concerns (i.e. activities and challenges) in each phase is presented. The results are grouped into two types of managerial concerns; task-oriented, and people-oriented (Fleishman, 1953) where task-oriented managerial activities target the problem at hand and people-oriented managerial activities the satisfactions of the group members. Task-oriented managerial concerns (activities and challenges) were dominant in all three phases and in all, they were reported approximately three times as much as the people-oriented concerns; the managers described altogether 382 task-oriented activities in comparison to only 146 people-oriented ones (see Table V). Interestingly, the reported activities decreased as the projects proceeded while at the same time the reported challenges increased. A total of 218 task-oriented challenges were recognized compared to 110 people-oriented ones. In both, most challenges were faced in the LDP and project managers reported almost as much challenges as they did activities (see Table V).\n5. Discussion: Although there is a widespread agreement that the various phases in the innovation process have different natures and requirements (e.g. Kastelle and Steen, 2011; de Jong and Den Hartog, 2007; Koen et al., 2001), management research largely ignores phase differences in its recommendations for appropriate managerial approaches in the context of innovative projects. The present study provides further support to the view that project managers of innovative projects need to be able to adapt and respond to the variations between the periods of stability and clarity, and creativity and ambiguity (e.g. Dougherty, 1996; Lewis et al., 2002). This study addresses the gap in knowledge by exploring changes in managerial concerns (i.e. activities and challenges) in the front-end and development phases of the innovation process. The results reveal that project managers do indeed report different types of activities and challenges in different phases of innovative projects, and that the transition between phases is somewhat problematic. Five contributions to management literature are discussed in more detail, after which implications for practitioners are presented.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the changes in managerial activities and challenges at different phases of innovative projects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Six NPD project managers were interviewed in three different project phases in a qualitative, longitudinal design. The resulting 18 semi-structured face-to-face interviews were content analyzed and categorized according to thematic similarity.\nFindings: Altogether 19 categories describing managerial concerns in managing innovative projects were recognized. Task-oriented, rather than people-oriented, approaches were dominant throughout the projects, although the reported concerns clearly varied at each phase. The early development phase emerged as a transition point, where managers had to transform their roles, reported activities decreased, and reported challenges increased.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although based on a small number of participants in a single setting, the results highlight the need for longitudinal studies and differentiating between the various phases of the innovation process, as there was great variance in the concerns of each phase. Furthermore, domain expertise seemed to have a large impact on how the managers reformulated their role in transitioning from the front-end to the development phases.\nPractical implications: The present study emphasizes the need to support managers in transitioning between different innovation phases and to recognize the need to adjust managerial roles. Further, it seemed crucial to establish the practices supporting successful teamwork in the front-end phase before the first phase transition.\nOriginality/value: The study is a rare example of a longitudinal research design examining the implications and transition between different phases of the innovation process within the same projects for project managers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Resource integration in liminal periods: transitioning to transformative service
|
[
"Transformative service",
"Resource integration",
"Institutional logics",
"Value creation practices",
"Liminal periods"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Traditional approaches to consumer resource integration have centered primarily on the firm within the market economy (Day, 1994; Hunt and Morgan, 1995). However, recent developments in conceptualizing the before integration of resources held by both the focal firm and the customer, and potentially others, including other organizations, online communities and even other customers is now gaining broader acceptance in the marketing literature (Akaka et al., 2013; Arnould et al., 2006; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Consequently, there is a growing body of literature that explores resource integration with others from the customers' perspective, including, for example, Baron and Harris (2008); Epp and Price (2011); Eichentopf et al. (2011); and McColl-Kennedy et al. (2012, 2015).\nConceptual development: Consumer resource integration\nMethodology: Setting\nFindings: Unpacking the resource integration process during liminal period\nConclusion: Our study provides a solid platform for understanding the process of resource integration during liminal periods. We uncovered a range of contrasting practices that are associated with different institutional logics that operate as contextual guiding principles in resource integration. We conclude this article by outlining our contribution and limitations before suggesting areas for future research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a transformative service logic-based framework designed to help researchers and practitioners better understand resource integration in liminal periods.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using netnography, we show how consumers across four countries integrate resources, adopting different value creation practices following natural disasters.\nFindings: The authors' novel framework extends current conceptualizations of social and economic exchange. Following a natural disaster, a state of 'liminality' occurs when the market economy is temporarily displaced by the moral economy, transitioning to a new transformative service logic.\nResearch limitations/implications: Important implications for theory and practice are discussed.\nOriginality/value: This research proposes an organizing framework comparing the market economy logic and moral economy logic with the new transformative service logic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Ethical leadership: lessons from Moses
|
[
"Judaism",
"Leadership",
"Ethics",
"Management development",
"Spiritual leadership",
"Values",
"Management of creative tensions",
"Moses"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: At the dawn of the twenty-first century, executives and academics are beginning to look to spiritual and religious sources (e.g. Fry, 2003; Marques, 2012; Mendenhall and Marsh, 2010; Phipps, 2012), not only for personal salvation but also in search of a new and higher perspective from which to engage in the global marketplace. The financial crises and subsequent recessions in recent decades have resulted in accusations of unethical conduct among business and its leaders in all corners of the globe, including Madoffian scams and Enronian let downs. As some leaders deny responsibility for the crises, reward themselves with huge bonuses and continue to hold on to their powerful positions, the public has increasingly lost its faith and trust in corporations and their executives. Even business schools have been criticized for focussing their programs on wealth creation with seemingly no ethical platform on which to base decisions, a debate noticeably instigated by commonly cited scholars such as Ghoshal (2005) and Mintzberg (2004). Consequently, many business schools are adding lessons in ethics to their curricula (e.g. Heller and Heller, 2011; Gibson, 2008; Roca, 2008; Weber, 2006).But what does the ethical leader look like? The ethical leader combines practical wisdom with the moral will to do the right thing and has the moral skill to figure out what the right thing is (Schwartz and Sharpe, 2010). \"The right thing,\" bearing in mind the phronesis of Aristotle, is the ability to determine and undertake the best action in a specific situation to serve the common good (Nonaka and Toyama, 2007, p. 378). It is this process of good decision making that is being called for in today's managers (e.g. Gibson, 2008; Mele, 2010; Strait and Wallace, 2008).In this paper we illuminate the intersection between morals and ethical leadership (see Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999; Heifetz, 1994). We do so by providing lessons from Moses, as practiced over 3,000 years ago and interpreted through Judaism and rabbinical literature. Moses was, perhaps, the preemptor of authentic transformational leadership, which is based on morality, ethics and concern for the common good (e.g. Howell and Avolio, 1992). Through an examination of his leadership journey, we propose a model for present-day leadership. Moses was not a religious leader as such, as there was no religion in a modern sense then but an identity and a belief in the one God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Thus, we anchor the model with examples from biblical texts (following recommendations from Buber, 1958, p. 13) and reference it to contemporary leadership thoughts, practical wisdom and spirituality:Moses, however, credited as the only leader who knew God face to face, stands head and shoulders above all others. And there had not risen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face. (Deuteuronomy, XXXIV:10).1.1 A dearth of modern-day ethical leaders\n2. Moses' leadership journey: Moses' leadership journey was by no means straightforward. His well-recounted story saw him born into Hebrew slavery at a time when newborn Hebrew males were cast into the Nile and left to drown. But instead of delivering him to this death, Moses' mother concealed her son. When she could no longer keep him hidden, she set him afloat in the Nile in a small basket made of bulrushes. When Pharaoh's daughter discovered him, she pulled him from the Nile and engaged Moses' mother as a wet nurse. Brought up as an Egyptian prince - a living god - in the palace, Moses was educated and absorbed into Egyptian society and culture. After killing an overseer who was whipping a Hebrew slave, Moses fled to Midian, in the Sinai Desert, where he lived as a shepherd, a role that was an abomination in Egyptian society. In Midian, he was chosen by God to lead a mixed multitude of slaves, predominantly Hebrews, to the Promised Land, forming them into One People, One Community.Moses was shaped by many influences, cultures and lifestyles, and it could be said that this is typical of many Jewish leaders, whose nomadic experiences resulted from being forced to flee their homes. According to Lawrence (1990), an openness to cultures and lifestyles is characteristic of the melting pot in the modern state of Israel, and it may have been the \"difference\" that imbued Moses with empathic characteristics. His experience with diversity may have been the very thing that allowed him to successfully promote a collective unity among the diverse group of people he eventually came to lead.A deeper exploration of Moses' formative experiences highlights further characteristics that led God to choose him to lead the people. Table I presents five episodes in the Moses story that in Jewish wisdom point to why God chose him.The actions described in Table I illustrate the character of the man who displayed a sense of righteousness and justice, a willingness to take responsibility and a commitment to self-sacrifice by casting off his own privileged way of life by killing the overseer and fleeing to Midian to live life as a simple shepherd. They also demonstrate empathy and compassion - for the thirsty kid that ran away from its flock, for his fellow Hebrews and for the daughters of Jethro who wanted to water their flocks. Combined, these actions indicate the type of leader Moses would eventually become. They show that Moses was an \"ish,\" a true man of action where there was no other man of action to be found[1]:In a place where there is no man, strive to be a man. Ethics of our Jewish Fathers (Hertz, 1976).The accidental leader\n3. Lessons from Moses: managing leadership tensions: At a time in history when the dominant leadership model was that of a tyrant or an autocrat, or transactional leadership to put it cynically, Moses' approach to leadership was highly innovative and in fact a forerunner to contemporary contingency leadership models which have gained much attention in recent decades. Similar to his unique ability to integrate the lessons from his Egyptian royal upbringing and his Hebrew slave heritage, he was also able to combine four distinct and disparate leadership roles and balance the inherent tensions between them. While other leaders are able to demonstrate visionary abilities, establish psychological safety, discipline inappropriate conduct or display humility and servitude, seldom are they able to display all of these together as Moses managed to do. As illustrated on the vertical axis of Figure 1, Moses is a leader whose feet are on the ground with his flock, as a shepherd, while his head is open to the future as a true visionary. The horizontal axis illustrates that he was a leader who managed to combine the roles of teacher and servant.These dimensions or styles are shown here as dichotomies because they are often perceived as contrasting behaviors, at least when applied simultaneously. The model of Moses' leadership as depicted in Figure 1 is complementary to existing models on spiritual leadership and authentic leadership. It serves as a map and a sense-making device that can be used in management education and leadership development. It could also be used as a diagnostic tool or a guide for change, to help leaders identify, discuss and manage interrelations and tensions between different aspects and aspirations of their leadership. Not all leaders will possess all four dimensions, as Moses did, and those who do may struggle to find out when to apply which dimension. However, when leading people, we should aspire to manage the creative tensions between the roles of a visionary and a shepherd and between those of a teacher and a servant. Even if that takes a lifetime (or 40 years of wondering), it is a healthy struggle and a true guide for personal development.3.1 Development of leaders\n4. Conclusions: Leadership is said to be one of the oldest preoccupations in the world (Bass, 1990). Moses' leadership, as practiced thousands of years ago, was firmly grounded in practical wisdom, as he attempted to serve a common good, he practiced good ethical decision making (for his people) based on cleverly drafted moral responses to challenges and the capacity to judge (see Mele, 2010; Moberg, 2007; Nonaka and Toyama, 2007). The dimensions in the leadership model (see Figure 1) are fundamental components that allowed Moses to exercise successful leadership in a time and context very different from ours, yet we believe the same dimensions can apply today and lift leadership up to a mensch-worthy sphere that organizations, stakeholders and societies may benefit from. Consequently, we firmly believe that business and management can be inspired by practical wisdom from the Jewish tradition.Moses has been an inspiration to Jews and others for centuries. His model of leadership and the democratic society he shaped were revolutionary in his time. Carrying within himself the tensions between his inherited background and his adopted upbringing, he effectively transcended both, carefully balancing the four leadership styles that characterized him as a leader: visionary, shepherd, teacher and servant. Today it is possible to see some of these aspects in various leaders and leadership models but seldom do we find them coexisting together in one body or mind. This is unfortunate because the organizations and people of today are in need of leaders who can paint a long-term picture (vision), role model how this can be achieved and operationalized (teaching), humbly leveling with customers, suppliers and employees (shepherd), while aiding multiple stakeholders and communities (servant). With this unique combination Moses personified the authentic and ethical leader, exemplified by his actions and interactions with followers, and a practical wisdom that can transcend and provide sustainability to future leaders.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to outline a model of leadership based on the characteristics of the most highly acclaimed leader in Jewish history, Moses. The lessons from his leadership that are applicable to modern corporate leaders are identified and related to management development and education settings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper relies on a direct reading of books 2-5 of the Old Testament (see notes) to propose a model based on Moses' leadership. Using Moses' journey toward and during his leadership, a model for present-day leadership is proposed. Examples are given to anchor this model in biblical texts and reference it to modern leadership thoughts, spirituality and practical wisdom.\nFindings: - While the leadership of Moses is known and widely discussed within Jewish learning, it has not yet found a wider, secular audience. However, Moses' leadership characteristics present an opportunity to reflect on how creative tensions between different leadership traits could be reconciled and an ethical model of leadership could be applied.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This paper does not look beyond books 2-5 of the Old Testament for further supporting evidence of the leadership of Moses. Future research could broaden the model through these sources. Moreover, research could test the four dimensions of leadership proposed in this paper in contemporary contexts, with performance as a dependent variable.\nOriginality/value: - Moses' leadership has been discussed by theologists but this paper suggests drawing on it as part of the ongoing academic discourse on corporate leadership. The biography of Moses sheds a light on the formative experiences of an ethical leader and his actions demonstrate how such a leader can act under challenging circumstances. If further developed, this research promises to be a useful addition to current leadership thinking and management education.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The changing digital content landscape: An evaluation of e-business model development in European online news and music
|
[
"Worldwide web",
"Internet",
"Electronic media",
"Music industry",
"Newspaper publishers",
"Europe"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The digital content market (and, in particular, the online news and music sectors of that market) have changed significantly and fundamentally over the past few years, as more and more new players - many of them originally from other sectors - enter the market space of the original media companies. Although these new entrants, e.g. Internet service or application providers, provide the existing media companies with multiple opportunities to adapt their business to the changing demands of the Internet, they are also competitors who are themselves able to offer music and/or news over the net (see Figure 1). A regional German newspaper, for example, told us: \"We refine our Internet access in general with access to our [news] archive and access to other services that those customers don't have to pay for, e.g. sport results tables\". Some Internet service providers are now beginning to offer their client base very similar offers.The possibilities for linking companies and technologies in a variety of ways, as value webs or cooperative/coopetive networks (see, for example, Scheer and Loos, 2002), have increased significantly over the past few years, providing new value to news and music enthusiasts. Yet despite the plethora of academic discussions about e-business models, few of these authors have based their views on \"hard\" data drawn from the actual stakeholders, focusing instead on conceptual issues. In this paper we attempt to provide this real-world perspective on e-business model development, describing the current state of play in the music and news sectors in ten European countries between May 2003 and August 2004 and focusing on the changes in business models enabled (and indeed initiated) by the worldwide web (see Table I).After initially describing our research design, we report our findings from the project - the preliminary case studies we undertook with a small sample of companies active in the music and news industry and our survey of the online music and online news sectors in Europe. The discussion of findings which follows combines the survey results themselves with literature-based data and analysis and the outcomes of some more detailed case studies, in order to present a richer picture of the European online music and online news industry and their current business models. In the final section of the paper we identify what the future may hold for the development of business models in the online music and online news sector.The online content industry - and especially the online news and music sectors - have evolved from the traditional markets, which are now seen as quite separate industries:Music online\n2. Literature review: The body of literature on business models has grown substantially over the past few years. In terms of Internet content provider business models, there are a variety of different concepts to be found in the more recent literature. Weill and Vitale (2001) consider content providers to be producers of content, whereas Bartussek (2001) sees them as both producers and as intermediaries who must identify and serve customer needs. The intermediary role of content providers is also the focus of Farhoomand and Lovelock (2001) and Wirtz (2001), while Niewiarra (2001) and Rayport (1999) highlight the importance of a network to content producers (for more detail on these perspectives, see Krueger and Swatman, 2004).Online news\n3. Research approach: Integrating several different research methods is a strategy used by many IS researchers (see, for example, Kaplan and Duchon, 1988; Lee, 1991; Gable, 1994), with the sequence and combination of the research methods selected depending on the characteristics of the problem under review.Our initial research design for the online music and news markets initially called for a survey of ten European countries, followed by more in-depth analysis through face-to-face interviews in these same countries, to provide the necessary triangulation. Since the research project was primarily directed towards the European market, the sample - consisting of EC member countries, together with a selected group of accession countries - provides a realistic picture of the present and future of innovative small businesses in this region. Table II contains a summary of the countries sampled by the online questionnaire (the classification of countries into high-, medium- and low-tech is based on the European Commission's own definitions).Before we commenced this survey, however, we decided to gather some expert information on the two sectors from experienced and senior executives working in both the online news and online music sectors. These preliminary case studies were undertaken in the two months before the launch of the survey and proved extremely useful in refining and improving the content of the survey questionnaires. The preliminary case studies meant an amendment of our original two-phase research strategy - which then became a three-phase strategy:1. phase one - preliminary case studies (scene-setting);2. phase two - survey (major data collection - online questionnaires and interviews); and3. phase three - detailed case studies (validation of previous findings).Each phase informed and added to the subsequent phase.Phase one - preliminary case studies\n4. The recording and newspaper industries in the post-web era: As we have already explained, the starting point for the online news and music markets is the \"traditional\" offline market, because the major players in both the traditional and online markets are generally the same organisations or individuals. The online markets have their own stakeholders and dynamics, of course, but these have evolved from the offline markets and their value chains.Online news\n5. New business models - what does the future hold?: It is clear that content providers in both the news and music sectors online are experiencing (and initiating) major changes in their business models. Not all content providers can afford to set up their own technological platform, although joining existing platforms allows companies to profit from these advantages. Becoming content providers in the broader sense - additional services, community creation and convergence, with an innovative approach to advertising revenue - appears the most promising online business model at present, although other categories also offer opportunities for growth (or survival). But businesses must concentrate on their core competency. There are two groups of promising Internet business model:1. Internet business models which integrate the creation, acquisition, value-adding and digital distribution of content with the help of a software platform and thus profit from the network effects; and2. Internet business models which concentrate on their core competence, and find the right partners to support this strategy.Another driving factor for the online content industry is the consumers themselves. It is unlikely that the \"classic\" Internet consumers described by the participants in our online survey (primarily male, middle income, and aged 30-39) are really the prime target (Picard, 1999). New studies reveal that more and more older people are using the Internet in Europe and are a promising target group for online content providers (Nielsen/Net Ratings, 2003) and 69 per cent of European Internet users are taking advantage of their computers' ability to play and save music (Dufft et al., 2005). The youngest generation (Gen Y), in particular, has grown up with the Internet, is used to free content, and is very price-conscious. Why not encourage these users to start accessing paid content? \"We have to teach the customer\" said one of the independent labels. The Internet has made it possible to access - simply, quickly, conveniently and relatively cheaply - information or music and, indeed, content in general. Consumers on the web have more power over their buying decisions than they do in the real world. The next offer is only a click away and could contain almost the same information. Online retailers can develop their offerings (e.g. personalised news services, or creative advertising targeting an individual), develop a competitive pricing strategy, and provide easy access for their consumers, offering an always-accessible web site.Companies need to see that they are moving into a new competitive environment where TV stations are competing with radio stations and with the Internet for customers' attention, as well as for their limited time and money. The varied companies answering our online questionnaire made it clear that they all are involved in the online content business in one way or another - and see themselves as stakeholders in this market. And the offers from all these market players are becoming more and more similar, making competition still more difficult. Convergence in the online content sector is very clear, with former media companies, as well as companies previously offering telecommunications or technology provision, moving into the online content business.These higher levels of competition mean that companies must try to sharpen their own profile by emphasising their core competence(s). Porter and Millar's (1985) competitive strategy types include price leadership, differentiation and niche marketing. All three of these strategies are already in evidence in online news provision: niche markets - whether at the content level, the regional level or the technology level - are an existing alternative for many online news and online music providers. Apple's iTunes has demonstrated the benefits of differentiation and competitors/imitators such as RealNetworks are already making the price leadership issue a major factor.In October, Apple (2005) reported the highest revenue and earnings in the company's history for the fiscal 2005 fourth quarter. The company posted revenue of $3.68 billion ($2.35 billion during the equivalent period in 2004) and a net quarterly profit of $430 million ($106 million during the equivalent period in 2004). The stock market research firm Piper Jaffray is: \"currently modeling for iTunes revenue to account for 3.6% of [total Apple] revenue in calendar 2006 [...] iTunes downloads for calendar 2005 could reach 513 million versus the current estimate of 387 million, and 2006 iTunes downloads could reach 1.0 billion versus the current estimate of 542 million\" (Forbes, 2005).And Apple's iPod is out there to conquer the next content industry - news. With the increasing uptake of podcasting, Apple's position as the trendsetter in online information access can only improve, despite Wikipedia's warning that:\"Podcasting\" is a portmanteau misnomer that combines the words \"broadcasting\" and \"iPod\". The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player [...] [and] podcasting does not involve broadcasting or sending out of an audio, since citizens need to point software to XML-tagged file to pull it down to their computer or portable device (Wikipedia, 2005).The successful future business models in online news and online music will be created by companies which are not looking to the past for their inspiration, hoping that technology-produced change will simply go away. These companies, like Apple and Yahoo!, will be looking to sell across a range of different purchasing patterns, and producing products which are attractive to Gen X and Gen Y purchasers, as well as to the Baby Boomers, whose purchasing power in retirement will be significant. Just as those mobile phone manufacturers who survived the shake-out of the early twenty-first century have realised that accurate market segmentation is just as important in the high-tech retail sector as in the more conventional fast-moving consumer goods sector, so purveyors of digital content will come to identify, target and measure their major market sectors with specialised products and services.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To provide an empirically based analysis and evaluation of the existing and possible future evolution of Internet business models within the digital content market, focusing particularly on the possibilities for cooperation and coopetition within this market-space.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is based on a three-year study of the European online news and online music sectors, comprising a set of preliminary, scene-setting case studies of a number of major players within the European online news and music sectors; a detailed, two-stage survey made up of online questionnaires and face-to-face interviews; and a small number of in-depth case studies.\nFindings: - Provides a discussion of the changes taking place in the online news and music sectors, the evolution of the business models within them, the driving forces we have identified, and finally some predictions about what the future may hold for both these sectors.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research is indicative, rather than general - being centred on European participants in two sectors of the digital content market-space in the period between May 2003 and August 2004.\nPractical implications: - A rich evaluation of these two fast-moving digital content sectors, providing empirically based insights into the ways in which they are evolving and changing and into parallels with other, similar sectors of the digital content market.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is the first major empirical evaluation of the digital content market-space and offers practical assistance, as well as new theoretical insights on e-business model evolution in this area.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Importance of performance information in managerial work
|
[
"Performance management",
"Chief executives",
"Managers",
"Finland",
"Information facilities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Managerial work is supported by information delivered by management information systems. The purpose of these systems is to provide information that is useful in managerial planning, decision-making, and evaluation (Merchant and Otley, 2006). Contingency-based research shows that the usefulness of information differs in firms that are different with respect to contingency factors (Chenhall, 2003). In this line of research, the influence of context variables (environment, technology, organizational structure, size, and strategy) on the design of information systems has been investigated. Thus, contingency research implies that the importance of information is largely determined by context. The argument of the present study is however that context does not sufficiently explain the importance of information for managers.Contingency-based research largely neglects the potential effect of managerial work on the importance of information. Managers are assumed to do their traditional tasks in a similar way. It is expected that the manager plans, makes decisions, and evaluates in a rational and systematic way. Especially, management accounting research has followed these normative assumptions as to the nature of managerial work (Hall, 2006). However, studies of managerial work show that these assumptions are far from the reality (Noordegraaf and Stewart, 2000; Tengblad, 2002). Managerial work includes activities like negotiating, recruiting, training, innovating, and contacting special to individual managers. These tasks are not carried out in an ordered and systematic way. Managerial tasks are characterized by great variety, brevity, fragmentation in time and space, numerous interruptions, and encounters with others. Each task has its own information needs. Thus, it is expected that the importance of information is strongly affected by the nature of managerial job.Traditional management accounting systems fail in providing managers with relevant and useful information (Johnson and Kaplan, 1987). Especially, financial measures are perceived as too limited and narrow for performance measurement (PM). Therefore, firms have implemented integrated performance measurement systems (IPMS) that supplement conventional financial measures with non-financial measures focused on perspectives such as customers, internal processes, and learning and innovation. The purpose of IPMS is to provide a powerful means to managers to translate the vision and strategy into a tool that effectively communicates strategic intent and motivates performance against established strategic goals (Ittner and Larcker, 1998). The founding idea of IPMS is that the performance measures linked to the system provide the management with a quick but comprehensive view of the business (Kaplan and Norton, 1992).The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of managerial job on the importance of PM information. The results are extracted from a survey responded by 76 managers (CEO) in Finnish manufacturing firms. Managerial job is described by three types extracted from the ten Mintzberg (1973) roles by the factor analysis. Four information types are drawn from a set of 27 information items in IPMS presented by Laitinen (2002). The influence of managerial work and contextual variables on the importance and gap of information is analyzed by the regression analysis. The results are important because the choice of performance information is one of the most critical challenges faced by organizations (Ittner and Larcker, 1998). The study will increase understanding in managerial job and its relation to the importance of information. This kind of understanding is essential when developing information systems for managers.\n2 Development of hypotheses: 2.1 Managerial job and information\n3 Empirical sample and statistical methods: 3.1 Sample of firms\n4 Empirical results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics and factorization\n5 Conclusions: 5.1 Managerial roles\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to analyse the connection between managerial job and importance of job-relevant performance information.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Two hypotheses on the relationship of the nature of job to the job-relevant information are tested by survey data gathered in spring 2008. The data include responses from 76 Finnish CEOs in manufacturing industry. Managerial job, information, and information gap types are extracted by the factor analysis. The hypotheses are tested by the regression analysis.\nFindings: - Evidence shows that the type of job strongly influences the importance of different information types in managerial work. However, information gap does not depend on the type of work but on contextual variables.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The results limited by the small sample size and industry. Larger data, advanced statistical methods, and different constructs to measure managerial job and contextual variables should be used in further studies.\nPractical implications: - Contingency factors are important in affecting the nature of managerial job. Managerial job largely determines the importance of information but the gap of information depends on contextual environment. It is important to take account of the nature of managerial job in designing information systems.\nOriginality/value: - This study shows that managerial job mediates the effect of contingency factors on the importance of information. However, these factors have a direct effect on the gap of information.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How to create environmentalists: the best motivators
|
[
"Environmental concern",
"Capital investment behaviour",
"Curtailment behaviour",
"Energy concern motivation",
"Environmental involvement",
"Financial motivations",
"Food-related behaviour",
"Social motivation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Understanding what motivates consumers to engage in more pro-environmental behaviors helps to ensure that individuals contribute to maintaining a sustainable environment. Evidence of the impact of climate change and degradation of natural resources continues to amplify the need for consumers to change their behaviors and businesses to create and offer more sustainable products. Although most consumers report they are concerned about the environment, a body of research suggests this concern only sometimes results in engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. Studies also find a disconnect between an expressed intent to purchase more sustainable products and actual purchase behaviors. Consumers increasingly express interest in purchasing more sustainable products and generally reducing their impact on the Earth's ecosystems. While most Americans understand they need to change their behaviors, behavior change is difficult.\nBackground: Environmental behaviors\nMethod: To answer the research question, a sample of individuals with at least a minimum level of interest in the environment is necessary. Therefore, data were collected at a free half-day community event on the campus of a major urban university in the Southeast USA that focused on sustainability and the environment. The annual event encourages awareness of environmental issues both on and off campus and included more than 40 eco-friendly initiatives from the campus and its community partners. As attendees entered the event area, they were given a two-page questionnaire and asked to complete it during their attendance in return for a t-shirt and a free healthy lunch. A total of 1004 surveys were collected. After accounting for missing data, 591 surveys were utilized for the curtailment and food-related behavior models, and 328 surveys were utilized for the capital investments model. Overall, 35 per cent of respondents were male and 65 per cent were female, while 74 per cent were students, 17 per cent were staff, 4 per cent were faculty and 5 per cent were visitors. Only 13 per cent of the students lived in a dorm. About 37 per cent of respondents were African-American, 11 per cent were Asian, 45 per cent were Caucasian, 3 per cent were Hispanic/Latino, 4 per cent responded as Other and 1 per cent responded as mixed race.\nDiscussion and implications: Interestingly, the results that show financial motivations are not related to curtailment, capital investment or food-related behaviors. Although unexpected, this finding is consistent with Karlin et al. (2012) who finds no significant correlation between financial motivation and curtailment or efficiency (capital investment) behaviors. The work on the energy-efficiency gap provides potential explanations for this finding. The energy-efficiency gap refers to the gap between the actual and optimal energy usage (Jaffe and Stavins, 1994). There are a variety of reasons why this gap exists including:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify how five factors (environmental involvement, environmental concern, financial motivations, social motivations and energy concern motivations) motivate individuals to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (curtailment, capital investment behaviors and food-related behaviors).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey approach is used to collect data, and regression analysis is used to answer the research question.\nFindings: Results show that social motivations are positively associated with all three behaviors such as environmental involvement, Environmental Concern and Energy Concern Motivations are positively associated with some behaviors; and Financial Motivations are not associated with any behaviors examined in this study.\nResearch limitations/implications: These results highlight the widespread impact of social motivations, the more specific impact of environmental involvement, environmental concern and energy concern motivations, and the lack of impact of financial motivations on these three distinct pro-environmental behaviors.\nPractical implications: Given that social motivation is so strong and pervasive across all three categories of pro-environmental behaviors, leadership in encouraging a dialogue/debate around these issues is needed from all stakeholders, including government, industry leaders, think tanks and environmental organizations.\nOriginality/value: This study incorporates multiple factors that have differing impact on three distinct pro-environmental behaviors.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Mediation effects of trust and contracts on knowledge-sharing and product innovation: Evidence from the European machine tool industry
|
[
"Knowledge-sharing",
"Innovation",
"Supply chain",
"Contracts",
"Trust",
"Machine tool industry",
"M11"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A firm's buyers and suppliers are important sources for the identification of strategic challenges and the knowledge required to meet them: in other words, to innovate. Relationships with suppliers, in particular, can have a considerably positive influence on buyers' innovative capacity and their ability to offer high-quality and added-value products down the supply chain (Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000; Bessant, 2004; Wagner, 2006). Collaborative relationships with buyer firms can also be a source of creativity and new ideas, as well as an effective way of ensuring loyalty to the seller. In this connection, there is a need to establish and maintain long-term relationships (Anderson and Narus, 1990; Bidault and Castello, 2009; Gil, 2009; Gronroos, 1983; Jap and Ganesan, 2000; Noordevier et al., 1990) and to find mechanisms for effective diffusion of needs and knowledge among buyers and suppliers.\n2. Conceptual framework and research hypothesis: 2.1 KS routines and innovation\n3. The study: 3.1 Sample selection\n4. Discussion: The results of our study support the view of the majority of works in the relevant literature, stressing the importance of KS between buyers and their suppliers, and the relevant role of trust in order to achieve this.\n5. Conclusions: This study tests, from a double set of machine tools buyers and suppliers, the mediating role of contracts and trust on the generation of product innovation as a consequence of their efforts to share knowledge.\n6. Limitations and implications for future research: A methodological limitation of our study, affecting the scope for generalization, is that the sample from which the data for analysis were collected was drawn from a frame containing only companies in the machine tool and related industries. Said sector is particularly characterized by very long-standing buyer-supplier relationships. They often span the working life of the product or installation between companies consuming or producing complex custom-built products for which servicing becomes vital. The context is distinctive in its constituent web of relationships, in the form of \"weak ties\" (Granovetter, 1973) downwards in the value-adding process, upwards along the supply chain, and horizontally with other companies in the same location (Marshall, 1890). In this context, not only trust but also other elements contributing to the governance of the relationship, such as reputation or word-of-mouth, become very relevant. Future studies should incorporate these effects, comparatively, among different industries.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mediating role of contracts and trust on the generation of product innovations stemming from buyer-supplier knowledge-sharing (KS) among the members of the supply chain. Together with the individual effects of trust and contracts, their joint effect is examined in order to determine whether these are complementary or alternative mechanisms of safeguarding and control.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing on a survey of 202 European machine tool firms acting as buyers and sellers, the authors propose and evaluate a structural equation model.\nFindings: Results confirm that there is a positive relation between contracts and trust with respect to buyer-supplier KS, and of the latter with respect to innovation performance. They also show that firms in which both the levels of trust and contract use are high reinforce their product-innovation capability based on buyer-supplier interaction (complementarity thesis). However, results also show that, contrary to trust, contracts by themselves do not act as a stimulus for product innovation.\nResearch limitations/implications: Establishing contracts seems to be a highly recommended action in a buyer-supplier relationship focused on increasing innovation capacity. This does not go against engendering trust in a relationship. Both trust with a degree of formalization, in different ways, help to increase the effect of sharing valuable knowledge on innovation capacity.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' best knowledge, no prior study has delved into differentiating the use of contracts and trust as mechanisms in mediating the effect originated from knowledge-sharing on product innovation performance with two different samples formed by buying and selling firms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Multi-dimensional scale to measure destination food image: case of Korean food
|
[
"Scale development",
"Affective image",
"Cognitive image",
"Destination food",
"Destination food image",
"Food tourism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recent studies in various fields exploring image have shown that image directly influences product value, quality perception (Kristensen et al., 1999; Martensen et al., 2000; Johnson et al., 2001), customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty (Andreassen and Lindestad, 1998; Kandampully and Suhartanto, 2000; Martensen et al., 2000). The role of destination image has been explored in tourism research, and destination image has been identified as a key component of destination loyalty (Chen and Tsai, 2007; Castro et al., 2007; Chi and Qu, 2008; Prayag, 2009; Wang and Hsu, 2010). Destination image in France, for instance, is associated with food and wines. Food is a significant influence on tourists' choice of destination (Henderson, 2009). Several countries, like France, Singapore (with their Food Capital of Asia slogan), and Hong Kong, have used their traditional foods or food culture as a tourism product, and these countries have established a \"gastronomic tourism destination\" image. Italy has also used their \"Mediterranean style food,\" using the image of a healthy diet to successfully appeal to international tourists (Hjalager and Corigliano, 2000).\n2. Literature review: 2.1. Relationship between food and a tourism destination: Korea\n3. Methodology: In creating our scale, we followed Churchill's (1979) paradigm for scale development with modifications that others have suggested (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994). The procedure in this study followed two steps: item generation and scale purification.\n4. Results: 4.1. Demographics of respondents\n5. Discussion: This study explored components of the image of Korean food to develop a scale for measuring those components. Image measurement items were collected after an extensive review of the literature on both food and image. Also, focus group interviews captured important attributes not found in the literature. In total, 23 items for cognitive image and five items for affective image were finalized in the measurement scale for Korean food image. Underlying dimensions of Korean food image were categorized as \"food safety and quality,\" \"attractiveness of food,\" \"health benefits of food,\" \"food culture,\" and \"unique culinary arts.\" Food in previous food studies was emphasized as complex (Hall and Mitchell, 2000), so the image of destination foods was multi-dimensional, which means food can potentially incorporate different meanings and interpretations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Given the increasing importance of food in tourist activities and destination choice, the purpose of this paper is to reveal a comprehensive measurement scale to evaluate the image of destination food, adopting procedures recommended by previous studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The procedure in this study followed two steps: first, item generation including literature review and focus groups; and second, scale purification. Scale purification included exploratory factor analysis to derive an initial factor structure and reliability assessment and confirmatory factor analysis to test the theoretical factor structure and assess validity.\nFindings: The scale development procedure yielded five dimensions of destination food image: \"food safety and quality,\" \"attractiveness of food,\" \"health benefits of food,\" \"food culture,\" and \"unique culinary arts.\"\nResearch limitations/implications: This study contributes to the food-related tourism literature by measuring destination food image based on scale development processes using both cognitive and affective elements.\nPractical implications: The results help practitioners understand the complex dimensions of destination food image and how destination marketing professionals can use this image to advertise a destination.\nOriginality/value: This study has value in measuring destination food image through scale development processes and integrating both cognitive evaluations and affective evaluations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Interaction over instruction: How do we learn from management training programs?
|
[
"Management development",
"Leadership",
"Learning",
"Competences",
"Canada"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: At the University of Ottawa, senior directors of administrative units such as finance, human resources and material management are being trained to develop their skills of leadership and communication. Thirteen specifically designed training modules were introduced in September 2001 and 36 directors have experienced some or all of the course. Until recently, though, there had been no attempt to test the impact of this management leadership program (MLP) - as with many training programs it was just presumed to be doing good.\nComment: This is a review of \"The impact of a management training program for university administrators\" by Jenepher Lennox Terrion. The article reports findings of interviews with nine managers from the University of Ottawa, who had all undergone training. Terrion is interested in the effectiveness or otherwise of a Management Leadership Program, and concludes that though the training brings clear benefits, these benefits came not from the specific course content but from the opportunity to meet colleagues and engage them in conversation about work related matters.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to compare interaction with instruction within a learning environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The article reports findings of interviews with nine managers from the University of Ottawa, who had all undergone training.\nFindings: - There is interest in the effectiveness or otherwise of a management leadership program, and it is concluded that though the training brings clear benefits, these benefits came not from the specific course content but from the opportunity to meet colleagues and engage them in conversation about work related matters.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides useful information on learning methods.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Multiple identities of a festival: Intended, communicated and perceived brand personality in the social media environment
|
[
"Social media",
"Festivals",
"Content analysis",
"Web 2.0",
"Events",
"Brand personality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The spread of social media has dramatically changed the way customers engage with a brand. Organizations have to rethink the way they interact and communicate with their customers as a consequence of the different roles that customers play in the communication process (Van Dijck, 2009). Therefore, organizations must consider opportunities and risks connected with the use of social media. Scholars have also encouraged more research to understand the role of social media in the context of tourism (Pasanen and Konu, 2016). In particular, festivals represent a promising empirical setting for investigating new media and social media usage (Hudson et al., 2015; MacKay et al., 2017) and the impact on branding strategies. A festival is a \"collective experience\" where an attendee can be highly influenced by other attendees, and social media is an important vehicle of influence (Schivinski et al., 2019) and a perfect environment for translating shared experience in the co-creation of brand personality meanings (Gymothy and Larson, 2015). Brand personality is a set of human-like characteristics that is assigned or embedded within a brand (Aaker, 1997). For a festival, it can be described as the way an organization expresses the event's emotional positioning but also the (human) personality traits that customers perceive an event to possess.\nBrand personality and event branding: Event branding has become an interesting study topic (Park and Park, 2017), but a model for event brand creation is still needed (Parent and Seguin, 2008).\nBrand personality, social media and communication gaps: In marketing practice, many managers carefully define brand personality and often invest extensive resources into brand-related marketing activities to reach consistency between perceived and intended brand personality (Burnett and Hutton, 2007). However, customers' perceptions of brand personality do not necessarily coincide with those intended by the organization. This has been referred to as the case of \"two different faces of brand personality\" (Plummer, 1985, p. 28).\nEvent brand personality communication gaps: Understanding the customers' perspective appears to be even more relevant for events and festivals where their participation in the definition of the brand meanings can only be amplified. This is because when these events are organized to pursue destination marketing goals, they should be demand side driven and managed through a bottom-up approach (Van Niekerk, 2017).\nMethodology: To fill the research gaps that emerged from the literature review, the present study aimed at understanding how festival brand personality is managed in the social media environment by analyzing what was intended by its organizers, how it is communicated and how it is perceived by social media users. More precisely, the first two research questions are as follows:\nResults: The preliminary results provide an overview of the demographic profile of the managers interviewed: they worked at Comicon for at least 4 years up to a maximum of 21; 67 per cent of them were male, and they ranged in age from 28 to 52.\nDiscussion: The results show the existence of multiple identities of the Comicon event, as the intended, communicated and perceived brand personality in social media do not match. Thus, different personality profiles of the Comicon brand emerge along with the consequent risks associated with message inconsistency. However, the results also highlight important opportunities related to the co-creational role played by the social media users and it is discussed below.\nConclusions: Some scholars have recently called for greater research on managing festival brand personality in the social media environment (Moro and Rita, 2018), while another scholar pointed out that \"festival research is often criticized for the lack of rigorous research methods being used and the generalizability of the results\" (Van Niekerk, 2017, p. 843). This paper answers this request and contributes to the literature on event branding in social media by showing a case of a festival's multiple identities.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to understand how festival brand personality is built and managed in the social media environment by explaining the intended (by the organizers) festival brand personality and how this concept is communicated and perceived by social media users.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A multi-method research design was used. Initially, a qualitative analysis based on the free-listing psychological meaning approach was adopted. Then, a content analysis of 23,717 Facebook posts and tweets was performed through NVivo11. Finally, the resulting data were examined through a non-parametric statistical analysis.\nFindings: The results show an \"internal brand personality gap\" (between the intended and communicated brand personality) and an \"external brand personality gap\" (between the communicated and perceived brand personality). The findings also highlight the existence of an \"ultimate brand personality on social media,\" which represents a collective and dynamic construct that is co-created by the organization and its customers through interaction and the key role of the customers' experiences.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings contribute to a theory of event brand personality and its management on social media by showing a case with multiple identities.\nPractical implications: Implications for the organizers of festivals and non-sport events are discussed to reduce internal and external gaps and better understand the \"fit/unfit problem\" when dealing with brand personality on social media.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to a research area that is in its infancy because it is one of the first attempts to analyze festival brand personality and its relationship with social media.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Facebook as a tool for supporting dialogic accounting? Evidence from large philanthropic foundations in the United States
|
[
"Facebook",
"Social media",
"Stakeholder engagement",
"Dialogic accounting",
"Foundations",
"Polylogic accounting"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: According to the extant literature, by 2005 and 2006 strategies related to the internet had shifted from a primary focus on information to a focus on communication and cooperation (Fuchs, 2008). This transformation is often designated as the emergence of \"Internet 2.0\" or \"Web 2.0.\" The advent of Web 2.0 not only reorganized the way in which organizations collected information, but it also redefined stakeholders' expectations. Social media applications, for instance, are creating new opportunities for innovation and improved transparency (Meijer and Thaens, 2010; Bonson and Ratkai, 2013). These new tools of dialogic communication have changed how organizations connect with their stakeholders by allowing them to receive real-time feedback about organizational announcements and engage in conversations (Chua et al., 2012; Manetti et al., 2016).\n2. US Philanthropic foundations: Philanthropic foundations started their activities in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century with the creation of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research and the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1901, the General Education Board in 1902, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905, the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1909, the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911, and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913.\n3. Theoretical framework: The scholarly literature on the third sector suggests that where there are no special relationships with specific categories of stakeholders, pressures on accountability systems are more intense due to several reasons:\n4. Methodology: Our main research motivation is determining whether online interaction through Facebook represents an effective SE mechanism in various philanthropic foundations. We also try to determine whether the use of Facebook represents a system of dialogic accounting and interaction that contributes to the decision-making process and allows organizations to keep in touch with the community, or if it is just another instrument of legitimization. We also want to figure out whether philanthropic foundations employ Facebook as a sort of \"public arena\" that recognizes diverse ideas and points of view in an agonistic perspective, which in turn can have an impact on various management issues.\n5. Results: We determined that 59 of the top 100 US foundations have an active Facebook page that features at least one post in the period of our analysis. Since Facebook is an increasingly common tool of communication among companies and NPOs, we would have expected a higher percentage of users, especially among larger foundations.\n6. Conclusions: The most common use of social media by organizations, politicians, and public relations professionals is unidirectional, oriented to image marketing, and focused on raising money or encouraging sales, rather than producing a dialogue with stakeholders (Kent, 2013). Like other forms of new technology, social media offers a unique opportunity for further development. In spite of the enormous potential of social media, these online tools tend to be used asymmetrically. Although one-way communication is still the most common form of strategy adopted by organizations on social media (Waters and Jamal, 2011; Xifra and Grau, 2010), attempts to develop interactions among corporations and users are becoming increasingly popular (Rybako and Seltzer, 2010). Exploratory studies posit that social media are dialogic, but that the operationalization of dialogue often looks like online advertising and product promotion (Kent, 2013). Nevertheless, in the field of social responsibility, social media are considered as one of the most important tools in promoting SE (Park and Reber, 2008; Porter, 2001; Rybako and Seltzer, 2010; Unerman and Bennett, 2004).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the utilization of the social network, Facebook, as an instrument of stakeholder engagement and dialogic accounting in American charitable foundations, specifically non-profit organizations that are dedicated to philanthropy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research motivation involves whether online interaction through Facebook could represent a channel of dialogic accounting that engages organizational stakeholders. This paper aims to understand if this dialogue is geared to generate a consensus necessary to deliberate over decisions that are shared between all stakeholders, or if a divergent and agonistic perspective, which highlights struggles and differences between actors, prevails. The present study employs a form of content analysis that takes into account the Facebook pages of the 100 largest American philanthropic foundations.\nFindings: The primary goal of the analysis is to examine the discrepancies in terms of how (and how much) large organizations are using Facebook. The study wants to provide more details on which kind of information large organizations are willing to disclose and collect on Facebook, and to evaluate the level and type of interaction between foundations and users.\nResearch limitations/implications: Further research could build on the present study by providing in-depth case studies and extending the analysis to other social media and other types of organizations.\nOriginality/value: Social media represent a powerful mechanism to engage stakeholders in a polylogic conversation. However, the scholarly literature confirms that further studies are necessary to understand how companies and organization can exploit this potential.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Publishing in international journals: De-mystifying the process, reducing risk and improving success
|
[
"Journals",
"Publishing",
"Academic writing",
"Journal articles"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Researchers strive to publish work in quality international journals as the basis for tenure and promotion. Apart from this motivation, academics are also driven by the need for self-actualisation and continually strive to have research recognised within communities of scholars. Publication signifies that someone, apart from the author, deems the work worthwhile; this affirmation of quality and verification becomes part of a body of knowledge accessible to others. Furthermore, universities operating in a fiercely competitive global market place, require its academics to be research active and to publish in journals so as to gain accreditation and funding. A direct result is increased pressure on the academics to publish in prestigious journals and active discouragement towards lower ranking or new journals (Gilmore et al., 2006; Stewart, 2006). The pros and cons of this policy are beyond the scope of this article and could be the basis for an entirely different debate. The article is based on the author's personal experience as reviewer and editor (Figure 1).The article is structured as follows; introduction, initial preparation, targeting the appropriate journal, key tests before releasing the final document, submission and review process, reasons why articles fail, types of feedback and action required.\nInitial preparation: For most authors, writing an article can be a daunting prospect and the road ahead may be difficult and lengthy. It is essential to get the basics right by taking time to prepare the foundations of the article before commencing writing. Such planning will help to improve the chance of success, and in the first instance, answers to basic questions should assist in focusing and scoping the content of the work. This means answering each of these questions in turn:*What is the purpose of the article?*Why is it important?*What is the contribution?*What are the next steps?Each of these questions will be considered in turn:*What is the purpose of the article? Often articles derive from large research projects about which many papers can be written. Understanding and articulating the message that the article is attempting to convey helps to focus content and guide the writing process. This first step should identify the type of dissemination outlet, i.e. practitioner or academic journal. Clear aims and objectives facilitate article classification, i.e. research paper, case study, insight report from industry, etc.*Why is it important? Considering this question will help to identify what is different or significant about the research and will help the author explain its rationale and the gap being addressed. This is very good for positioning the current work within a body of literature as we now start to think about the basic arguments to be developed.*What is the contribution? There has to be a contribution from research and this may cover one or all of the following: theory, practice and/or methodology. Most journal editors will expect both theoretical and practical contributions from the article, unless clearly specified in the guidelines to authors on the journal webpage. The article needs to \"shout out\" the contribution as this is one of the first criteria for selection by the editor. If you do not know, or are not able to incrementally add new knowledge, then it is not worth the time writing the article.*What are the next steps? This question helps clarify how research will progress in the future. Implied future studies promise continuity, allow others to build upon the work and encourage on-going debate within the field.\nTargeting the appropriate journal: Following on from self evaluation, consideration should be given to possible target journals for the article. Inappropriate journal selection is one of the major causes for rejection. To avoid this, scrutinize the journal editorial objectives and guidelines to authors. This document should provide the author with all the information required to format the article in the correct manner, the language within the journal and the style of references, word count, etc. At this point, select the article category as this will determine content, length and how it is structured. It is clearly apparent to editors when guidelines for authors have not been followed. As well as reading articles in the journal, check the journal webpage for any other information that might be useful, for example calls for special issues. It is a complete waste of time if the article is not aimed at the journal's readership or does not fall within the journal's subject area of interest.\nGetting down to writing: Always start writing with a rough title, indeed this is often likely set out in the initial preparation stage. The title should be descriptive, should reflect the content and help to maintain the focus of the article during the writing process. Titles can be tricky and should immediately convey to the reader the topic and scope of the research. As well as enabling editors to quickly judge if the article is appropriate, the title along with key words assist in the selection of appropriate reviewers. Remember that journal editors of quality publications often receive in excess of 600 submissions a year and in many the rejection rate is as high as 90 percent. Give the reader as many as possible up-front signifiers that your article is important and worthy of further consideration. After publication, the title of the article will be the basis for searching and obscure titles do not facilitate wide citation and dissemination.Begin writing using a list of headings and subheadings to break it down further. Begin to fill the spaces with draft sentences that will be edited and re-arranged, once the initial ideas are down on paper. At this stage the writing is not likely to be well ordered, or even grammatically correct. As stated earlier, the article's structure should follow that of the target journal and a generic structure of an empirical paper might be as follows.Introduction\nBefore submitting: get the article right: Even when you think that the work is complete, re-check to ensure that it is appropriate for the target journal. Returning to the \"Guidelines to Authors\", consider the following questions:*Does the article have the characteristics that the readership expects from a contribution to the journal in question? This question calls for checking that you have set out the incremental contribution of your research, rigour of the methods employed and have included practical implications and conclusions.*Is the article \"accessible\" to the reader? This involves careful proof reading, looking at writing coherence and clarity of explanation, checking figures and ensuring that references and notes are in the appropriate format without typographical errors. This is a very critical stage for individuals with English as a second language. It is highly recommended that such persons have the article professionally proof read prior to submission.*Does the article match the editorial aims and is it prepared according to the required format? Here you are checking that the article is written using the correct type, is the correct length, all headings and subheadings are prepared according to instructions and sources, properly cited in the text, and listed.Other aspects that should be applied when making the final preparations for submission are:*Readability. Does it communicate the intended meaning and message?*Originality. What is new and important about the topic or treatment?*Credibility. Are the conclusions valid? Is the methodology robust? Is the argument clear?*Applicability. How do findings apply to the world of managerial practice? Do they provoke further research?*Internationality. Does it take a global, transnational perspective? (The readership of journals is usually international).When you have completed all of these key tests and before submitting, let someone else read the article, give it to a friend or colleague you trust to give honest feedback. Finally, always proof read thoroughly for spelling, grammar and references. If in doubt employ the services of a professional editor. Finally, undertake a final proof read of the article. Seek permission of copyright holders to republish content and also permission from named organizations to publish. If you do not do this, the article will not get published.\nSubmission and review process: The majority of journals now require that articles are submitted online. In this case, before submitting the article, gather together your submission kit which should comprise all manuscript requirements, separate cover sheet with title, author(s) names and affiliations and short biographical notes; the final article without author affiliations, include figures and tables at the end of the article and a cover letter to the editor.Typical review process\nReasons why articles fail: There are many reasons why articles fail, but the most common are set out below, along with recommendations for remedial action:*Subject matter has only marginal relevance to the editorial aim and scope of the journal. In this instance, there is often no alternative but to re-write the article or send it to a journal with a more appropriate fit.*Article is not supported by empirical evidence. This is a common fault where authors have not used research findings to support a critical analysis and evaluation. Authors will be requested to include research findings or a case study analysis.*Theoretical article with no apparent practical application. This is often the case with a very technical submission. Ensure that the theory has been tested by application in a \"real world\" situation.*\"Pure\" case study description. These articles have little, if any, critical analysis within the discussion. Remedial action might include undertaking a deeper analysis of the data and developing \"generic\" recommendations and conclusions.A revision request is always good news as the article is now in the publishing cycle, but it can still be rejected after revision. If the paper is rejected, use the reviewer comments to improve and then resubmit it elsewhere as quickly as possible. The most important thing is not to lose heart and keep trying.\nTypes of feedback from reviewers and requirements: Typical reviewers' comments\nRevising the article: Revising the article in the light of reviewer feedback should be as rigorous as when the article was first written. If resubmitted articles have clearly not take into consideration reviewers' comments then there is a high chance of rejection in the second round. Letters requesting revision will be sent out by the editor and will contain the revision deadline date. Consult with colleagues or co-authors and attend to the points requested. Do not be tempted to add too much that is new and show the addition locations clearly on the resubmitted version.On resubmission, provide a detailed list of revisions and how they address the referees' comments and also justify anything you have not changed. About six weeks to revise an article is normal and it is important to meet the deadlines. If the paper is rejected without clear reason, ask politely why and if you are confident about the work, try to make the paper better and resubmit it somewhere else. Target the new version of the article as closely as you can to another journal:Most importantly Don't give up! At least 50% of papers in business and management do not get published. Almost everybody has a paper rejected sometime. [...] keep trying.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to set out guidelines to de-mystify the publication process and increase opportunities for successful publication.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An introspective method is employed based upon the author's experience as a reviewer and editor.\nFindings: - Findings highlight some of the challenges facing researchers when writing research papers, pitfalls on the path to publication and possible remedial actions.\nPractical implications: - Information gained may go some way to improve writing and increase the possibly of publication in international journals.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is based on personal experience. The more information available to researchers regarding requirements for successful publication as well as greater transparency of the review process will improve writing quality and ultimately progress debate within academic disciplines.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A review of the environmental implications of B2C e-commerce: a logistics perspective
|
[
"Sustainability",
"Logistics",
"B2C e-commerce"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and scope of the study: In spite of the bursting of the Dotcom bubble in 2000, over the last ten years business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has grown in all of the main western markets. Although its penetration rate - online sales as a percentage of overall retail sales - is still below 15 percent in almost all of the leading countries (Mulpuru, 2013), its absolute value and average growth per year are increasing rapidly. The main contributors to this success include the wide range of products (Park et al., 2012), very competitive prices (Bruce and Daly, 2010), the design of a high-quality customer experience (Brugnoli et al., 2009), the choice of the best logistics strategy (Ghezzi et al., 2012), and the premium service level (primarily in the management of returns) offered by online retailers (Wei and Zhou, 2011). In addition to these elements, which are mainly related to the retailer strategy, there are various systemic factors that are understood to drive the diffusion of e-commerce (Mangiaracina et al., 2012). Examples of these include broadband availability, the definition of a legal framework for consumer protection, the design of a \"secure\" value proposition (Rodiguez-Ardura et al., 2008), trust in online systems (Mouratidis and Cofta, 2010), and the adoption of different payment systems (Mangiaracina and Perego, 2009).\nMethodology: Figure 1 presents the three-step methodology used in the present review. Phase 1 consisted of paper collection and selection, while Phase 2 involved a thorough analysis of the selected literature. Finally, research gaps and potential areas for further investigation were identified (Phase 3).\nSummary of review and discussion: Table I, based on Natarajarathinam et al. (2009), summarizes the key attributes of each paper, and the research method(s) adopted. Aligned with Perego et al. (2011), the papers are listed in chronological order to show the evolution of environmental sustainability issues related to B2C e-commerce over time.\nConclusions and directions for future research: Given the importance of logistics operations in B2C e-commerce supply chains and growing interest in both the academic and practitioners' communities about the related environmental effects, the aim of the study was to provide an up-to-date review of the literature on the topic of B2C e-commerce environmental sustainability from a logistics perspective. The analysis focussed on a set of 56 selected papers published from 2001 to 2014 in 38 peer-reviewed international journals. Previous reviews dealing with e-commerce sustainability were found in the extant literature, although they presented a number of limitations related either to the considered timeframe (i.e. lack of recent contributions) or to content/structure (e.g. lack of a thorough examination of the environmental implications of B2C e-commerce from a logistics perspective). This review was carried out to overcome the above-mentioned limitations, and was organized into three main sub-sections: discussion of the main characteristics (i.e. year of publication, journal title, regions addressed), research method(s), and content of each paper.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Given the importance of logistics operations in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce and growing interest in the related environmental effects, the purpose of this paper is to offer an up-to-date literature review on the topic of B2C e-commerce environmental sustainability, specifically from a logistics perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The analysis focussed on a set of 56 papers published from 2001 to 2014 in 38 peer-reviewed international journals. The papers were analyzed and categorized according to the main features of the paper, the research method(s) adopted and the themes tackled.\nFindings: There is a growing interest in sustainability issues. In the last 14 years, the focus has progressively shifted from the mere identification of the wide-ranging environmental effects of e-commerce to the need for a quantitative evaluation of their impact, although much remains to be done in this regard. Some industries, such as books and grocery, have largely been addressed, however, promising sectors in the e-commerce field, such as clothing and consumer electronics, have only been considered to a certain degree. Moreover, despite the emerging role of multichannel strategies, the environmental implications of the related logistics activities have not yet been studied in detail.\nOriginality/value: B2C e-commerce has grown in popularity, and its environmental implications are currently of key interest. This paper contributes to the understanding of the existing body of knowledge on this topic, presenting an up-to-date classification of articles and highlighting themes for further research activities. From a managerial perspective, this paper helps supply chain managers develop a clear understanding of both the logistics areas with the most impact on environmental sustainability and the KPIs used to quantify the environmental implications of e-commerce logistics operations comprehensively and effectively.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
SME brand identity: its components, and performance effects
|
[
"SMEs",
"Brand identity",
"Financial performance",
"Brand orientation",
"Brand performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The role branding plays in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) differs from the common claim that, \"every organization needs to develop strong brands as an essential part of their business strategy\" (Kay, 2006, p. 742). SME owner-managers instead seem to think that branding is out of their reach (Merrilees, 2007) and also reflect this attitude in their behavior, as they often regard the brand as secondary to short-term sales figures (Krake, 2005). Lack of expertise in brand management and uncertainty about whether it contributes to their business performance may explain the limited efforts of SMEs in branding (Hirvonen and Laukkanen, 2014). Although researchers argue for the need for SMEs to include the brand in strategic planning (Horan et al., 2011; Krake, 2005; Wong and Merrilees, 2005), there is no comprehensive answer to the question of how SMEs can implement such a strategy and whether they should - or even can - use the same branding practices as large firms (Berthon et al., 2008).\nBranding in SMEs: Even though there is variation between SMEs with regard to their emphasis on branding (Krake, 2005), research shows that branding generally plays a limited role in SMEs. SME owner-managers often have a strong product orientation, and they rarely follow textbook branding theories (Krake, 2005; Ojasalo et al., 2008). According to Stokes (2000), marketing in SMEs is entrepreneurial; that is, SMEs concentrate on innovating and developing new products, rather than thinking about marketing issues such as segmentation. SMEs seem to go through various phases of trial and error in their branding, building upon experimentation and intuition rather than following formal strategies (Centeno et al., 2013; Reijonen, 2010; Stokes, 2000). The number of SME branding models is limited, although the literature holds a wide range of general guidelines for firms to benefit from branding. The main concern is whether these guidelines are applicable to SMEs (Hirvonen et al., 2013).\nKey research constructs: Brand identity\nConceptual model and research hypotheses: Brand orientation and brand identity (H1-H3)\nMethodology: Questionnaire and data collection\nResearch findings: Basic model (H1-H9)\nDiscussion and conclusions: Brand identity development in SMEs\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance effects of brand identity in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors examine whether brand identity mediates the relationship between brand orientation and brand performance, and further, whether brand performance leads to better financial performance. The authors also study whether these performance effects are moderated by customer type and industry type. Differing from earlier research, this study analyzes brand identity through its constituent components: brand values, brand vision and brand positioning. The data include altogether 721 effective responses from Finnish SMEs. Structural equation modeling is used for testing the research hypotheses.\nFindings: Brand positioning and brand vision have a direct positive effect on brand performance, which in turn, positively affects financial performance. Brand orientation drives the components of brand identity. Importantly, there is variation in some of the relationships between brand orientation, brand values, brand vision and brand positioning across business-to-business firms and business-to-customer firms, and across firms in service industries and in production industries.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is based on a single-country sample. Including additional factors for the model with the potential to moderate the described relationships is also called for. Future research could also consider new potential brand identity components currently not addressed in the paper.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the literature by increasing the knowledge of SME branding.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Unlocking the potential of IC in Italian cultural ecosystems
|
[
"Cultural networks",
"Financial sustainability",
"Governance systems",
"IC cultural ecosystems"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of intellectual capital (IC) in Italian cultural ecosystems and to formulate hypotheses on how IC potential could be unlocked. Its primary focus is a specific area within northern Italy, the Po Delta region. The research is related to the increased interest not only in the creation of cultural networks but also with regard to the competitive advantage potentially brought about by a suitable IC and knowledge flow management inside those networks.\nTheoretical background: While some scholars argue that the interest in IC has deep historical roots, dating back to the seventeenth century (Pike et al., 2005; Serenko and Bontis, 2013), there is a resounding consensus that modern research on IC started in the 1980s-1990s. Guthrie et al. (2012) describe the evolution of IC research as divided into three stages. The first stage meant to raise awareness of the importance of IC to creating and sustaining competitive advantage and to persuade the academic community that IC was \"something significant that should be measured and reported\" (Petty and Guthrie, 2000, p. 157). This first phase culminated in the ground-breaking search for a more holistic and balanced view of the IC possessed by the company Skandia (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997) and by the studies of Sveiby (1987, 1997), who laid the foundation of accounting practices for the measurement of intangible capital. As underlined by Dumay (2014), issues related to IC were also brought to light by the increased popularity of the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1992). However, this first phase was also characterised by what Dumay calls \"grand theories\" (Dumay, 2012); IC concepts were considered as grand theories, often having not been previously tested, however, their relevance for companies was accepted without being empirically proven.\nIC cultural ecosystems: IC is a key factor for the cultural sector: cultural organisations work in an environment based on IC (Chong, 2002), they value their IC as one of their main resources, and they recognise the importance of managing IC, though often by means of intangible and non-formal tools (Donato, 2008). As a matter of fact, over the last decade research into the cultural sector has paid increasing attention to cultural networks (Taylor, 1995; Jackson and Murphy, 2006; Camarinha-Matos and Macedo, 2010), creating interesting similarities amongst the new trends of IC research. Investigating the potential of IC in cultural networks, therefore, seems consistent with the new phases of IC research that focus on studies of ecosystems of cities, regions and communities.\nResearch method: The aim of the research is to investigate the possibilities of unlocking the potential of IC in Italian cultural ecosystems. In order to pursue this research aim, the study was carried out from a meso perspective that is considered the ideal dimension for a potential cultural ecosystem to take place.\nResults and discussion: The empirical research investigated three main topics: the perceived potential of cultural ecosystems in the area of the Po Delta; the presence of cultural ecosystems in the area and the difficulties that prevented, or that could potentially prevent, the implementation of a cultural ecosystem; the actions to take to overcome those difficulties. As for the first discussion topic, the results allowed an overall analysis, highlighting common viewpoints on the perceived potentialities of cultural ecosystems in the area of the Po Delta. The majority of the interviewees were aware of the potential impact that the creation of a cultural ecosystem could have; only a cultural manager, while recognising the possibilities of such an ecosystem, expressed doubts surrounding the real chance of making it work, arguing that implementing such a system would imply \"a huge change of mind-set and compromises that many cultural managers are not ready to agree to\". The majority of the sample highlighted the positive spillover effects that a cultural ecosystem with a joint management of knowledge, human resources and relational capital could generate in the local economy. Participants were also aware of the possibility to create synergies otherwise difficult to implement between culture and other sectors (e.g. tourism, IT, etc.). Managing IC as an ecosystem instead of managing it as a single institution was considered key to innovation, better communication within society and as a way of improving citizens' involvement and community engagement, not only increasing relational capital among the subjects of the ecosystem but also creating social capital in the whole area.\nConclusions: The aim of this paper was to explore the consistency of ecosystem perspectives in the cultural sector and to analyse the potential of IC in Italian cultural ecosystems, by means of an empirical investigation on a particular region in Northern Italy, the Po River Delta. The theoretical framework highlighted how the recent developments of the research on IC are increasingly focused on broader perspectives exploring IC of nations, regions and communities. The theoretical background also highlighted the high importance of IC for the cultural field, a sector based mainly on intangibles and on the values created for the community. Furthermore, the analysis underlined the growing attention paid to cultural networks, especially at the meso level, often envisaged as a means to foster the competitive advantage of the territory, and overcome the broad challenges that the cultural sector is currently facing. Working on a meso level means implementing a logic of cooperation between different public institutions, private subjects and various stakeholders of the area that progressively evolves into the creation of cultural ecosystems. The current financial problems of the cultural sector seem to have increased the pace of the implementation of this approach and, as has emerged from the empirical analysis, the key actors of the cultural sector are increasingly feeling the need for ecosystem perspectives.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the consistence of an ecosystem framework within the cultural sector and investigate the potential role of intellectual capital (IC) in cultural ecosystems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper presents the results of an empirical research carried out within a specific Italian area, the Po Delta. It was based on sound theoretical analysis and group interviews focusing on three main discussion topics.\nFindings: The research validated the consistence of ecosystem frameworks in relation to the cultural sector and the key role played by IC in their design, creation and implementation. It also highlighted the idea that this perspective is part of a broader rethinking process of the cultural field.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research was carried out within a specific geographical area. The results, however, indicate the need for further research on the potential of IC in cultural ecosystems, in light of both a comparative and international perspective.\nPractical implications: The research highlights the emergence of new frameworks and highlights the role of IC in new governance models in the cultural sector.\nSocial implications: The analysis underlines the need for new governance systems based on a bottom-up approach, multi-level and multi-stakeholder frameworks, and potentially bringing important societal changes.\nOriginality/value: The concept of IC ecosystems remains a relatively unexplored field within the cultural sector. This paper could make a valuable contribution to the debate on new governance systems in this field.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
University-industry linkage and technology transfer management: A quantitative study of an entrepreneurial university
|
[
"Technology transfer",
"Exploratory factor analysis",
"Entrepreneurial university",
"University",
"Industry linkage"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The study of linkage and technology transfer has been covered by adopting different perspectives about the relevant role of universities in accomplishing a successful process of university-industry linkage. According to Leih and Teece (2016), research universities are big businesses that need to be managed as enterprises with a high level of creativity. They should also be prepared to help not only the government and industry, but also the development of new enterprises.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 University-industry linkage and technology transfer\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) method\n4. Results: According to Montoya (2007), a factor analysis needs to fulfill a series of conditions so that the feasibility of continuing the analysis can be considered. Frias-Navarro and Pascual (2012) recommended using a minimum of three indicators to determine if the correlations matrix is appropriate to apply the factor analysis; among them, are the Bartlett's test, the determinant of the correlations matrix, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index, the anti-image correlation matrix and the MSA index. This study uses the following indicators: Bartlett's test, the determinant of the correlations matrix, the KMO index and the anti-image correlation matrix.\n5. Discussion: According to the data obtained, the EFA has allowed for the analysis of the existing relationships within a group of proposed variables, in a questionnaire applied to full time professors and researchers of a public university in Mexico. Our evidence shows that the structure of principal components asserts a close connection with the literature review. Therefore, we found that the six factors are related, as follows:\n6. Conclusion: In the last decades, the mission of universities has evolved significantly, from being an institution with the main purpose of teaching, to incorporating research activities and then conceiving them as a way to provide useful research results to industry, government and society, encouraging economic development and growth. In this sense, universities can be seen as a source of innovation with high potential to promote positive technological change. Therefore, professors and researchers play an important role in the university's goal to be entrepreneurial. Additionally, it is imperative that the management of factors related to linkage and technology achieve successful results.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the variables that play a relevant role in the management of university-industry linkage and technology transfer in the context of a public university in Mexico.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study is quantitative, and the method is based on an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), to identify the group of variables that relates to university-industry technology transfer, by applying a questionnaire to full time professors and researchers.\nFindings: The EFA allowed for the analysis of the relationships within a group of variables, and found that the structure of the principal components presents a close connection to the literature review. The first, second and third factors, named institutional support in the linkage and technology transfer activities, research results management, and university linkage activities planning, respectively, explain the original problem in a greater percentage. Additionally, it is suggested to include other variables, to increase the explained variance percentage of the components.\nSocial implications: The study of university-industry linkage and technology transfer allows for improvement in the institutional management of these activities, their entrepreneurship, and consequently, their use by companies, government and society.\nOriginality/value: This study focuses on analyzing a group of variables in a questionnaire, in order to identify those that are related to the university-industry technology transfer management, in the context of a public university in Mexico.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Maximising the effectiveness of talent pools: a review of case study literature
|
[
"Talent pools",
"Human resource strategies",
"Psychological contract",
"Succession",
"High potentials",
"Leadership development",
"Career development"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the last decade talent management has grown in popularity in organizations and despite the recession, strategies for identifying and developing talented employees remain firmly on the agenda for most organizations (Yapp, 2008; CIPD, 2009). Definitions of talent vary widely, from being focused on particular people, to a set of characteristics, or to statements of need. Companies also vary in terms of whether they view talent as the performance and potential that exists in every employee, or whether it is a more exclusively focused on scarce resources and more senior positions. McCartney and Garrow (2006, p. 6) define this type of talent as \"employees who have a disproportionate impact on the bottom line, or who have the potential to do so\". The identification of talent in this case is driven by capability or skills gaps in the organization and identifying critical segments of the workforce, which are essential to the business.Talent seems to have become one of the \"in\" words on the business agenda, which many attribute to Mckinsey et al.'s research summarised in the book The War for Talent (Michaels et al., 2001) and more recently, the Corporate Leadership Council (2005) research, which found that talent management directly contributes to increased organizational effectiveness and profitability, leading to as much as a 15.4 per cent advantage in shareholder return.Talent management (defined by the CIPD (2009), as \"the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement/ retention and deployment of those individuals who are of particular value to an organization, either in view of their 'high potential' for the future or because they are fulfilling business/operation-critical roles\") has evolved considerably over time. In the 1980s there was a strong organizational control over careers, with planned succession and high-flyer schemes for high potential graduates. Talent management came into being as a process focused on attracting scarce resources in a competitive labour market and the focus was predominantly on the selection and assessment of new talent. In the 1990s, high performers and MBA graduates were in high demand by organizations and attracting talent was a key issue for organizations. However, the high cost of this approach and high failure rate of external recruits led to a shift in approach towards self-development career strategies. Here the control lay with the individual to manage and progress their careers and push their own talent to the fore, with general developmental support from the organization. Current trends in talent management suggest a move back to a more planned approach to career development; with case study research indicating companies are taking back control over the careers of high potential employees and once again assessing and developing smaller groups in line with the business strategy (Yarnall, 2008).These trends in talent management often encompass selecting and developing discrete pools of talent from people within the organization. Yet many companies establish talent pools without necessarily thinking through the implications either for the people in the pool itself, or for the rest of the organization. This paper draws on case study research to explore this tendency to select and develop pools of talent - groups of people deemed to have high potential that are seen as a valuable resource for future senior roles. Garrow and Hirsh (2008) have usefully categorised the different types of talent pools which exist in organizations. Aside from the whole organization approaches, these include leadership pipelines (such as those at Panasonic and Lloyds), specific professional groups, such as accountants or engineers, and critical role approaches.One of the key drivers for establishing talent pools is the need to improve succession-planning processes by moving away from rigid replacement strategies, towards creating a pipeline for future roles (Byham et al., 2002). Other frequently cited benefits include focusing training and development resources more clearly on existing gaps; reducing turnover and retention of top talent; encouraging movement across the business and reducing the failure rates of new hires (McCartney and Garrow, 2006; Ruppe, 2006; Nottingham Business School, 2007; Pepe, 2007). From an individual perspective potential advantages include increased commitment, greater cross-organizational support, and tailoring of growth opportunities (Byham et al., 2002).Whilst it could be argued, particularly in the current economic climate, that talent can be bought in when it is required from the external market, apart from being far more expensive, finding the right skills and cultural fit to ensure success is not that easy. Findings by the Corporate Leadership Council (2003) and Accenture (2006) indicate that 40 per cent of external recruits at a senior level are deemed to fail in their first 18 months by not performing at the expected level.With such strong business drivers, it is not surprising that the trend towards establishing talent pools is growing, with the CIPD (2006) citing developing high potential managers as the main objective for 67 per cent of companies undertaking talent management in the UK. Yet many companies are establishing talent pools without necessarily thinking through the implications either for the people in the pool itself or for the rest of the organization. Indeed, it is not clear from the existing literature whether establishing separate talent groups is always a sensible strategy for organizations, despite the fact that many companies are adopting this approach. Graduate fast-track schemes came under fire back in the 1990s (Larsen, 1997) for failing to develop organizational learning and King (2004) warns against the mixed messages about career development that can come from fast-track programmes. Interestingly, in Germany and Japan, career development for the whole workforce is a much stronger message than in the UK and the USA (Hay Group, 2003; CIPD, 2006).This paper reviews the literature and existing case study research on talent pools in order to highlight the different aspects that need to be considered. The aim is to help practitioners maximise the effectiveness of any talent pools they set up, by suggesting strategies to help overcome some of the possible risks and consequences. More specifically, the research seeks to answer the question: \"If talent is singled out as a separate group of individuals in organizations, what are some of the critical decisions that need to be thought through to help maximise effectiveness?\".\nMethodology: In order to determine the pros and cons of singling out talent, a comprehensive review of the literature on talent pools was coupled with an analysis of case study research. For the purposes of this research, the author excluded the whole organization approaches to developing talent and focused only on talent pools; defined here as selected groups of high potential individuals who tended to receive accelerated development through stretching roles and project assignments, as well as receiving more training and having access to a mentor or coach. The research was not restricted to a particular geographical region or company size. However, the search revealed a bias towards organizations with over 5,000 employees, possibly due to more structured approaches to talent management only coming into play in organizations of this size.As well as being labelled talent pools, these groups of individuals are also sometimes referred to as \"acceleration pools\" and \"high potential (HIPO) groups\". The literature search used all three terms commonly used to describe talent pools in order to ensure that relevant case study research was not omitted due to differing terminology.In addition to individual articles highlighting company examples of talent pools (such as Pepe (2007) and Ruppe (2006)), collective case study research (including: Income Data Services, 2010; Yarnall, 2008; McCartney and Garrow, 2006; King, 2004; Hirsh and Jackson, 2004; Nottingham Business School, 2007) meant that over 50 examples of company approaches to identifying and developing talent were examined. Table I highlights the larger case study companies and shows the distribution between the private and public sector.In the analysis of the literature and case studies, the author picked out aspects which appeared to impact the effectiveness of talent pools at particular points in time; from the initial establishment of pool members through to the ongoing maintenance of an established talent pool. These aspects were then grouped into aspects in the process of setting up and maintaining a talent pool, which appeared critical to their success or failure. For practitioners, these critical aspects are significant decision points in the process where key stakeholders need to actively think through their strategy in order to minimise possible damaging consequences.Where there are case studies that illustrate best practice in a particular aspect of talent pool development, these have been briefly summarised in the findings section.\nFindings: The case studies were found to vary considerably in how comprehensively they described the different aspects of setting up and developing a talent pool. Most of the case studies focused on a particular element of the process - for example, BP provides an interesting case study on varying career paths for different business needs and Bristol Myers Squibb focuses on the process of reviewing talent. Interestingly, the focus was more often on how the talent was selected for the pool (Virgin Atlantic and the Legal Services commission provide interesting and contrasting examples of this), rather than how the individuals were developed and managed once they were within the pool (although Rolls Royce provides a good illustration of movement into and out of talent pools). None of the case studies focused on measuring the impact or success of instigating talent pools to any great extent.Taken together, the research analysis identified a number of factors that warrant careful consideration when companies are seeking to pursue a talent pool approach. Interestingly, only two of these occur in the establishment of the talent pool. However, the literature suggests that determining the criteria for the pool and selecting the participants is an aspect of the process that is already given a lot of thought by practitioners and so it is perhaps not surprising that there were far more critical aspects that occurred during the maintenance of the pool. The seven factors considered to be most critical to success are depicted in Figure 1 and explored in further detail below. In addition to expanding on these aspects, the text which follows highlights in italics the factors that are particularly significant within each aspect.Whilst this is depicted as a linear process, often some of these considerations will come to the fore at different times, depending on the organizational context. Ensuring senior commitment for example, will be critical to explore at the start of the process, but is depicted during the maintenance phase (once the pool is up and running) as it is here that the case studies suggest issues may arise with a decline in commitment. Consequently, the issues highlighted should not be thought of as a comprehensive check list, as they focus on the aspects that are often omitted, or cause difficulties, rather than the more straightforward actions which take place in setting up and developing a talent pool.The establishment phase\nRecommendations: The research findings are derived from examining the approach taken in a diverse range of organizations and as such, not all the examples of best practice will be generalisable across different companies. However, there are some actions that all practitioners could take to help address some of the critical issues that are either omitted, or poorly addressed when establishing and developing a talent pool.Recommendations for practitioners for the establishment phase\nConclusions: The case study literature backs up the premise made by Ruppe (2006), Pepe (2007) and others that there are strong drivers for establishing talent pools. Companies frequently used the pools to focus training and development resources more clearly on existing gaps and encourage a greater focus on business competencies. The literature indicates that talent pools are viewed as a useful approach for many companies, particularly when companies adopt an approach to pool membership that goes beyond developing generalist leaders. However, there was a notable lack of case study research focused on measuring the impact or success of instigating talent pools and their true value remains a critical question requiring further analysis. The anecdotal evidence from the case studies suggests that the value of talent pools increases when the communication of messages (such as what is meant by the word talent and what the impact is on the remaining workforce) is well handled, but again this requires further analysis to be substantiated. The benefits of reducing the failure rate of new hires and the retention of top talent cited by McCartney and Garrow (2006) and the Nottingham Business School (2007) also require empirical investigation.The significance of this research stems from the fact that it draws attention to the potentially significant consequences for organizations if talent pools are not established and maintained effectively. Many of these issues, such as ensuring appropriate segmentation and responding to changing individual circumstances, can be addressed through careful planning, communication and stakeholder management. However, some of the issues that emerged as critical for organizations, such as the reduction in stretching development roles given the pressures of a recession, are harder to address and will require more creative solutions. Byham's (2002) suggestion that individuals in talent pools gain from greater cross-organizational support, and tailoring of growth opportunities is certainly questionable, given the lack of evidence for maintaining development once pool members are selected and given some initial leadership training.While the research highlighted a number of critical aspects in both the establishment of the pool and its ongoing maintenance, taken together both phases are transcended by the need for an equal focus on both people and roles. The recommendations for practice indicate that practitioners need to achieve a balance between focusing on the future role requirements (how best to segment the pool and adapt to changing business needs and opportunities) and the people requirements (how best to nominate and select the pool and respond to changing individual needs and capabilities). Practitioners also need to ensure that there is continued commitment at a senior level for the talent agenda and one of the key enablers for this is to ensure that success is defined and measured. Whilst some useful metrics have been suggested in the literature, there was little evidence of companies actively applying these measures.A number of the issues raised by the case studies also call into question the ability of companies to achieve long-term sustainability in their talent pools without a greater focus on work-life balance and clearer measures of success. In the short term, the focus for talent pools in a recession may well be to focus on retention and mobilising talent across the organization, which will require companies to re-analyse both their role requirements and people's needs and opportunities. However, the research indicates that longer term, there could be issues arising from the inability of many organizations to incorporate work-life balance and diversity issues into their pools. While some organizations, such as Rolls Royce and the Legal Services Commission, were exploring the effects of diversity, there was no evidence of organizations establishing talent pools with a strong culture of work-life balance, where achieving a healthy work-life balance was not covertly penalised. The evidence from this review suggests that taking this approach would not only attract greater interest from talented individuals, but also lead to more sustained performance increases for organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential implications of selecting and developing discrete pools of talent within organizations and to answer the question \"If talent is singled out as a separate group of high-potential individuals in organizations, what measures could be put in place to help ensure their effectiveness?\"\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper reviews the literature on talent pools and examines existing case study research, drawing on an analysis of over 50 companies. This analysis was used to draw out aspects which impact the effectiveness of talent pools at particular points in time; from the initial establishment of pool members through to the ongoing maintenance of an established talent pool.\nFindings: - Findings indicate that during the establishment phase, ensuring appropriate segmentation of the pool and limiting bias in the nomination process were particularly significant. The ongoing maintenance of a successful talent pool was also found to be a challenge from both an organizational and an individual perspective. Specific factors that were identified were dealing with changing business needs; changing individual circumstances; providing development opportunities; maintaining senior commitment; and defining success measures.\nPractical implications: - The research identifies a number of critical factors that practitioners may need to address in the process of establishing and maintaining talent pools, such as pool segmentation, work-life balance and the impact on the psychological contract.\nOriginality/value: - The ongoing maintenance of talent pools is rarely discussed in the literature and the recommendations for practice will be relevant for all human resource and organizational development practitioners.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Emotional intelligence, management of subordinate's emotions, and leadership effectiveness
|
[
"Leadership",
"Affect",
"Emotional intelligence",
"Emotion",
"Leadership effectiveness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Research in leadership has a long history in the study of leadership effectiveness (leader's success in mobilizing and motivating followers for collective ends) from a cognitive perspective. Increasingly, however, leadership researchers are recognizing that effective leadership may also have a strong emotional component. Effective leadership may in important part rely on leader's ability to proactively and reactively manage follower emotions (Humphrey, 2008; van Knippenberg and Van Kleef, 2016). In the long tradition of studying personality and individual differences as a core determinant of effective leadership (e.g. Judge et al., 2002, 2004; van Knippenberg, in press), this has led to the emergence of a focus on emotional intelligence (EI) -- the ability to recognize, understand and manage own and others' moods and emotions (Salovey and Mayer, 1990) -- as an individual difference predictor of leadership effectiveness (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Walter et al., 2011).\nTheory and hypotheses: Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness\nMethod: Participants\nData analysis: We used regression analysis to test H1. Leadership effectiveness was regressed on EI in an analysis with gender (dummy-coded), age, cognitive ability and the Big Five personality variables as controls added to the regression analysis.\nResults: Pearson correlation coefficients were computed among study variables. The results of the correlational analyses, means and standard deviations are shown in Table I.\nDiscussion: The relationship between EI and leadership effectiveness is important, but surprisingly understudied from the perspective that EI should be conceptualized and operationalized as an ability and studied with appropriate ability (cognitive intelligence) and personality (Big Five factors) controls. Moreover, the mediating process model of the EI-leadership effectiveness relationship was distinctly underdeveloped and an empirical investigation of mediation for this relationship was lacking. In this study, we addressed these issues. We found that EI is positively related to leadership effectiveness when controlling for cognitive intelligence and Big Five personality traits, and we established the appropriateness of responses to follower emotions as a mediator in this relationship. These findings offer a good basis for the further investigation of the relationship between EI and leadership effectiveness.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address two of the major questions in the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and leadership effectiveness: does EI conceptualized and assessed as an ability influence leadership effectiveness when controlling for cognitive intelligence and Big Five personality traits? And, what are mediating processes in this relationship?\nDesign/methodology/approach: Ability test data for EI for 84 leaders in an assessment center were used to predict unobtrusive observations of leader responses to subordinate's emotions in a role play, and expert ratings of leadership effectiveness, controlling for cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits.\nFindings: EI predicted the appropriateness of leader responses to subordinate's emotions, and these responses mediated the relationships of EI and leadership effectiveness, controlling for cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits.\nResearch limitations/implications: The assessment center context represents a relatively artificial environment and follow-up research in field settings would be particularly valuable.\nPractical implications: EI can be assessed as a selection tool for leadership positions. Leadership development programs can also focus on developing the skills associated with EI.\nOriginality/value: The study provides stronger evidence for the relationship between EI and leadership effectiveness than previous research, bolstering the confidence in conclusions regarding this relationship. The study also contributes to the development of process models of the influence of EI on leadership effectiveness by providing evidence regarding mediation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Risk paths in BIM adoption: empirical study of China
|
[
"Design",
"Risk management",
"Building information modelling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Building information modeling (BIM) has been transforming the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry in many countries (Azhar, 2011) and thus received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners. Application areas of BIM include, but are not limited to site analysis, design option analysis, 3D presentation, design coordination, cost estimating, energy simulation, clash detection, construction system design, schedule simulation, quantity takeoff, site resource management, building performance prediction and offsite fabrication (Azhar, 2011; Bynum et al., 2013; Cao et al., 2014; Ding et al., 2015; Eastman et al., 2011; Monteiro et al., 2014). Previous studies have identified a number of benefits that may be produced by BIM adoption. For example, McGraw Hill Construction (2014) revealed that the most significant short-term benefits of BIM adoption in Australia and New Zealand were: reduced errors and omissions, enhancement of organization's image as an industry leader, reduced rework and the most significant long-term benefits were maintained repeat business, reduced project duration and reduced construction cost. In terms of time saving, Autodesk (2008) found that Revit(r) Architecture software saved 91 percent of the time on checking and coordination and 50 percent on design development, compared with traditional Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools. Sacks and Barak (2008) indicated that the productivity improvement ranged between 15 and 41 percent of the time for producing drawings. Additionally, Wang et al. (2013) believed that BIM can enhance the quality of documentation and constructability.\n2. Risk identification: Risk identification is a critical phase in a project risk management process (Low et al., 2009). A simple but valid method is to develop a risk checklist (Fang et al., 2004). Through a literature review, a checklist of the risks associated with BIM adoption in the AEC industry was developed. Content analysis has been widely adopted to determine the major facets of data, by counting the frequency that a topic is mentioned or an activity occurs (Fellows and Liu, 2008). In this study, the risks identified in each literature were marked down and then similar risks were assembled. The frequency of each risk in the literature was also counted. Table I shows that the 16 risks identified from 22 previous studies, with their frequency of appearance in the literature. A total of 16 risks were grouped into nine risk categories, some of which comprise only one risk.\n3. Research method: A questionnaire survey was performed to collect the likelihood of occurrence (LO) and magnitude of impact (MI) of the risks associated with BIM adoption in the Chinese AEC industry. The literature review supported the development of the questionnaire. In the pilot study, preliminary questionnaires were presented to five professionals to solicit their comments, which were helpful for the revision and finalization of the questionnaire. In the final questionnaire, the research objectives and contact details were presented in the introduction part, followed by the questions meant to profile the respondents and their organizations. Then, the respondents were asked to assess the LO and MI of each risk, respectively.\n4. Results and discussions: 4.1 Data analysis results\n5. Conclusions and recommendations: The objective of this study is to model the risk paths in BIM adoption in the Chinese AEC industry. Through a literature review, a checklist consisting of 16 risks associated with BIM adoption was developed. These risks were further categorized into nine categories. A networking of 22 hypothetical risk paths was constructed based on the literature review and pilot study. To achieve the objective, a questionnaire survey was performed with 95 professionals in the Chinese AEC industry. The PLS-SEM technique was used to model these risk paths. The results implied that the risk categorization was confirmed and that 15 hypothetical risk paths were statistically significant and supported. These 15 significant risk paths were further connected, thereby forming 13 chains of risk paths, 10 out of which consisted of two or more risk paths. \"Inadequate relevant knowledge and expertise\" was the primary root risk category of all the 13 chains of risk paths, and \"technological issues\" and \"data ownership issues\" was the secondary root risk category of five and four chains, respectively. Hence, these three risk categories had significant effect on all the other categories. Additionally, \"technological issues,\" poor information sharing and collaboration\" and \"liability for data input\" had direct effect on the \"cost overrun with BIM,\" while all the other risks indirectly influence cost via these three risk categories.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to model the paths of risks associated with building information modeling (BIM) adoption in the Chinese architecture, engineering and construction industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 16 risks were identified from the literature review and grouped into nine categories. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey with 95 professionals in China. The partial least square structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: The results suggested the risk categorization was confirmed, and that 15 hypothetical risk paths were statistically significant, which formed 13 chains of risk paths. \"Inadequate relevant knowledge and expertise\" was the primary root risk category of all the 13 chains of risk paths. Additionally, \"technological issues,\" \"poor information sharing and collaboration,\" and \"liability for data input\" had direct effect on the \"cost overrun with BIM,\" while all the other risks indirectly influence cost via these three risk categories.\nResearch limitations/implications: Most of the respondents were designers because few clients and contractors have adopted BIM. In addition, the impact and likelihood of risks were accessed by respondents' judgment based on their experience, which is a common problem of risk management research. As this study focuses on the Chinese architecture, engineering and construction industry, there would be geographical limitation on the findings.\nPractical implications: This study provides practitioners with a clear understanding of the risks associated with BIM adoption and enables practitioners to take measures to mitigate the root risks and assure the potential benefits of BIM.\nOriginality/value: Although there have been studies on the risks associated with BIM adoption, most of them lacked empirical evidence and failed to examine the interactions between risks. This study is different from these prior studies, because it focuses on the interrelationships between risks and identifies the risk paths and root risks using the empirical data. Therefore, this study expands the literature relating to both BIM and risk management. Also, this study enables practitioners to take measures to mitigate the root risks and assure the potential benefits produced by BIM, thereby contributing to the practice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Justifying the need for a data security management plan for the UAE
|
[
"Data security",
"Risk management",
"Information organizations",
"United Arab Emirates"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: By the end of 1990s, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) witnessed the invasion of information technology (IT) to the local market. Prior to this, organizations and individuals in the UAE depended on paper for almost all their operations. Banks reports, audits works, and correspondences were conducted on paper. Moreover, like all the countries in the region, the UAE dependency on paper changed dramatically in the 1990s when computers became indispensable for individuals and business operations. The recent boom has had a vast impact on projects pertaining to tourism, real estate, trading, and manufacturing companies focusing on the UAE for its Middle East operations. The new age of computerization has quickly attracted the UAE Government and citizens to computer usage and internet for their operations. The UAE computer-users are exposed to incidents where data were not saved or protected from different data hazards.The developments recently taking place in the UAE have placed the country among the most growing economies in Asia, and perhaps throughout the world. This development is driven by the robust industrial, trade, and agricultural growth as well as oil revenues that have led to a total improvement in the UAE IT infrastructure which has become a major target of the UAE Federal Government. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are now among the world's most growing cities. Recently, computers have been used in all conceivable areas of the work environment. \"The size of the UAE's information technology and communications market amounted to $2bn in 2007, an increase of 10.1%\" (AMEInfo, 2008). \"The telecoms market is on course to record a compounded annual growth rate of 8.5 per cent to reach Dh27.27 billion from Dh21.68 billion in 2007. By 2009, it is expected to reach Dh29.72 billion\" (Issac, 2008).In order to maintain business continuity and secure national and international investments, data security awareness represented by data recovery plan (DRP) must be put in place in order to protect it from human-made and natural hazards. Environmental hazards expected in the UAE such as overheat, floods, or earthquakes raise the need to adopt data security plans (DSPs) to safeguard the huge information, and to guarantee a safe-working environment. Man-made hazards are also expected since data is targeted by hackers, intruders, viruses, worms, or system failures.Recent statistics have shown that more than 70 percent of all IT security fraud is internal. \"No matter how advanced our systems are, we are always vulnerable\" Khalfan Al Mazrouei, IT manager of Abu Dhabi Security Market said (Qadir, 2006). He continued that IT security is essential to the UAE financial markets as the financial sector in particular has always been a target for fraud worldwide. The internet has given investors an efficient access to financial markets where investors can operate with wider and multi-environments; however, it has opened up new opportunities for intruders like hackers to exploit the resources of organizations. VeriSign (2008) asserts that one of the priorities of any organization is to secure its sensitive data. As organizations fear of losing their reputation in the market and/or bankruptcy resulting from the loss of their highly sensitive data, they should look for solutions to protect their data or at least mitigate the losses of any disaster that may occur. Organizations should have a readily available plan to identify all threats and vulnerabilities, and set strict rules and procedures to be enforced so as to help prevent the probability of their occurrence. Moreover, Peltier et al. (2003, p. 5) address users that protection safeguards are viewed as undermining the business objectives of the organization by imposing ineffective rules and procedures. Carefully chosen security systems can protect data from being hacked, lost, or destroyed and they exist in order to ensure the protection of the important assets and support the overall business objectives of the organization. Building a security system begins with developing an important security program that adheres to the principles of the business in an organization.Disasters that affected the Middle East region have recently been one of the topics discussed at a conference held in Abu Dhabi, capital of UAE. Topics such as preparedness of organizations to deal with future disasters, and what sort of plans the country has in place to safeguard all data if a disaster strikes, etc. were discussed. The co-operation between organizations to initiate a national disaster plan in the country was also one of the issues discussed. \"We have the capacity, technology, resources and manpower, but what we don't have yet is the coordination between the different departments and relief agencies\" Dr Jamal Alhosani, director of information and communication at the National Crisis and Emergency Management Authority said (Youssef, 2008).\n2 Common hazards in the UAE: Data security awareness requires conducting studies about potential hazards in the UAE as a basis for data protection and that must be the organization's responsibility. The UAE is prone to many types of hazards. Some of these hazards are natural and some are man-made. Natural disasters include earthquakes, flooding, and over-heating, which remain the main natural hazards throughout its history.According to information obtained by the authors from the Dubai Police Headquarters, the number of cases investigated by the Electronic Criminal Investigation Department in 2008 was 222 cases, including 87 fraud and financial crimes, 38 hacking and 92 defamation and extortion crimes, in addition to five cases related to fraudulent fictitious web sites. Electronic Investigation Team stated that fraudulent electronic cases were taking new forms with growing rates on international levels due to the possibility of committing such crimes at a distance, which required more efforts to catch the culprits and collect evidences against them. Penetration of customer accounts, through internet, fake cards, or online fraud, either by copying such web sites or through fictitious job opportunities, are among the new forms of crimes. Forms of such crimes:* A gang was arrested for stealing the data of 16,975 credit cards and laying hold of $62 m. This is one of the electronic theft cases handled in Dubai. The gang members used modern electronic technology in their criminal activities by stealing the data of the credit cards and illegally using the same in drawing funds from the accounts of the cardholders through online governmental and quasi-governmental services web site and purchases from the shops. The gang had established an online web site through which it offered fictitious services and products. Through this web site they managed to steal the credit cards secret numbers, which the victims used to access the web sites and then used the same to penetrate the clients balances and steal millions of US dollars.* Megaweb solutions Co. in Dubai, specializing in online web sites design and web site space officially declared bankruptcy in 2007 by its owner as the result of the internet hacking to which the company was exposed and incurred more than six million Dirhams in losses. The police indicated that the case would be easier if all the servers in which the data saved were available within the state or any friendly country, because tracking the culprits under this situation requires to address the competent authorities in the USA and Canada, due to the servers available over there.* Fraud on fictitious web sites, such as the case of a person, who was trying to buy a car through an electronic web site from one of the major car companies and paid 150,000 Dirhams using his own credit card. However, he never received any reply from the company. Later, he discovered that the said web site was fictitious and had nothing to do with the automobile company.* A higher secondary school student, who enjoyed high skills in computers and studied in one of the schools in Dubai was caught after penetrating into the PC's of some of his teachers through hacking. He managed to obtain access to the school examinations and disclosed to his colleagues by establishing and innovating a software used in espionage and data theft.The rates of such crimes have remarkably increased in most countries owing to the new electronic crimes in the UAE or elsewhere are classified as invisible crime, representing great challenges to the governments in the protection of their assets and sectors from the electronic crimes.Another main type of hazards is man-made hazards. These are usually caused by negligence or carelessness of employees within the organizations. These hazards might be deliberately or un-deliberately caused by some of the employees of the organization. Deliberate disasters, such as terrorist attacks, arson, and theft of confidential business information, are those intentionally made by people causing loss of information in an organization. Disgruntled employees could potentially undertake deliberate actions of hacking information from computers, aiding theft of physical equipment, or setting up fire to office premises. These types of actions occur all over the world and are not specific to the UAE. Symantec (2006) reports that the current internet threat atmosphere is on a high alert by an enhance in information leakage, data theft, and the creation of malevolent software written with the aim of stealing secret data that can be used for monetary benefits and revealing information to competing organizations. Another report by Maktoob Business (2007) also states that the UAE has got the latest IT infrastructure, but unfortunately, it is ranked 46 among the 180 countries in the world targeted by frequent online fraudsters activities.\n3 Role of risk management: Not only are the business operations of organizations of great importance to their employees and staff, but they are also important to customers and partners. The users anticipate an incessant data availability, confidentiality, and authorised access to organizational information (McAnally et al., 2000).The risk managers of big organizations have the major responsibility of protecting information, and maintaining competitive advantages to business through data security policies. \"This responsibility also maintains, secures the continuity of businesses, and safeguards their commercial image\" (British Standards Institution, 1999). It is essential that organizations must ensure that all their data are accurate, available, secure, and confidential, and its integrity is maintained. A well-defined data security process in an organization enables it to have defined guidelines and procedures that ensure that the data are safe. Also, the data security process assures the organization that its risks are minimized at acceptable and controlled levels. This control process ensures that the risks are at low probabilities and at acceptable levels for the management of the organization (Glenn, 2002). Thus, the primary goals of data security in an organization are to prioritize its assets, conduct its risk analysis on all assets, and form its data security team. \"Today DRP is seen as the active component of business continuity plan which focuses mainly on the recovery of the IT department and all related functions\" (Hassim, 2000).The main responsibility of the data risk management team is to prepare a DRP that operates as an integrated process that develops policies, measures procedures to ensure businesses, and the disaster preparedness of an organization. These preparedness and processes define the capability of the business firms to perform their tasks in during disasters and respond spontaneously to data hazards.In adopting the DRP of the organization, the means and procedures for data security should adhere to international standards on data security such as BS7799 (British Standards Institution, 1999) and control objectives for information and related technology/Information Security Audit and Control Association. Thereby, it is essential to ensure that the developed DSPs are consistent, comprehensive, and following international standards. Furthermore, a variety of data methodologies tend to combine the processes of identifying recovery strategies and gradually implementing them in organizations (British Standards Institution, 1999).Data recovery is a process of planning, documenting, and identifying activities and procedures that enable employees and the entire business to respond immediately to hazards that may cause apparent damage to IT resources. The main authority or responsibility of implementing the data security in the organization rests on the data security manager. The role of the data risk manager in an organization is to steer all employees and the data security management team towards reducing the hazard and to be committed to decision making, strategic planning and evaluation of data risks and hazards. The DSP is developed and enhanced by the data security team in the organization and all employees of the organization are instructed to conduct specific tasks when hazards occur. It is very critical that the role of each team, committee, or employee must be specific within the plan, and limited to data risk management practices in accordance with hazardous behaviour. A communication policy is one of the major components of a DRP as it ensures that staff are familiar with DRP procedures and continually kept informed of the situation, so that they may take the necessary actions (Link Associates International, 2005).Training is an essential part of data recovery planning processes to ensure that employees are self-confident. It should also increase data security awareness and adherence to the correct procedures and processes when employees are carrying out their specific tasks. Training increases the employees' insight pertaining to data security procedures as well as their business competence and capabilities.A robust DSP is vital for any organization in order to achieve its objectives, business performance, and mission. It should identify the most cost effective ways of performing certain functions, procedures and should show the best way to present data security procedures when crisis occurs.\n4 Data collection and analysis via questionnaire: 4.1 Introduction\n5 Conclusions: Managing data security in the UAE in this rapidly changing IT environment is a huge challenge. This dynamic, interconnected workspace requires timely and reliable information in order to permit appropriate and effective decisions lest there will failures. Hence, the data security management team of an organization has to find efficient and effective strategies to guarantee that they fully understand the information and data security risks affecting their operations, and implement controls to minimize these risks. The security of data and information assets is indispensable to ascertain and sustain confidence in the customers of the organization. This process has to maintain conformity with the legal requirements, and to shield the reputation of the organization. Such procedure must be supported by operational and technical security standards to conduct active monitoring and assessments of their security program. Any DSP can only be effective if supported by the top management of the organization.\n6 Future work: Future work will focus on developing a data security management plan for UAE organizations, a plan that may also be applied elsewhere.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - As the United Arab Emirates (UAE) organizations are embarking onto the intensive technology world where the exchange of information is increasingly taking place through electronic means and data are stored electronically, this paper attempts to investigate the need to develop a UAE data security strategy and a detailed framework that can ensure the safety of data and can also cope with all types of disasters expected in the country. The paper also reviews and analyses the types of hazards in the UAE.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In order to obtain a global view on how organizations in the UAE are managing the security of their electronic information, a questionnaire has been designed and distributed with the aim of obtaining a clear understanding of their data security procedures, practices, and policies.\nFindings: - The research has shown that organizations from the outset should have a set-plan, which has to be periodically analyzed, reviewed, and modified to keep abreast of the technological advancements and risks in order to protect electronic data.\nOriginality/value: - An extensive review of the literature has shown that no comprehensive research work has investigated data security management in the UAE. This makes the current study of particular importance in contributing to knowledge but also original in the context of the UAE where very little work has been undertaken on the subject.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Devil continues to wear "counterfeit" Prada: a tale of two cities
|
[
"China",
"Luxury brands",
"Counterfeiting",
"Taiwan",
"Consumers",
"Attitudes"
] |
[
{
"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: Counterfeiting has become a worldwide epidemic (Bian and Moutinho, 2011). The trade of counterfeit products accounts for 10 per cent of world trade and is found in all product categories ranging from pharmaceuticals to industrial parts (Wertheimer et al., 2003; Gentry et al., 2006; Wiedmann et al., 2012). Based on the report from International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (IACC, 2008), counterfeiting has risen by more than 10,000 per cent, which has caused severe problems for manufacturers, brand managers and the government. It has also been reported that there are 3 million consumers of counterfeit products every year (Howie, 2010), and estimates suggest that the counterfeit trade will account for 7 per cent of the world trade (Wang and Song, 2013). In addition, rampant copying is observed to be common in the luxury brand industry (Nia and Zaichkowsky, 2000; Wilcox et al., 2009). This could be a result of the profitability of the luxury brand industry. Based on the reports by wealth health organization (WTO), counterfeit goods account for $500 billion a year of consumer spending (Ledbury Research, 2014), therefore making it a lucrative industry and a major object of counterfeiting (Casabona, 2009).\nMethodology: Data collection\nFindings and discussion: China Chinese samples\nDiscussion: Based on the findings of this study, there are interesting implications for formulating anti-counterfeiting strategies for China Chinese and Taiwan Chinese consumers. The results have also highlighted differences between these two groups of consumers when it comes to the consumption behaviour of non-deceptive counterfeits of luxury brands. Even though they share similar cultural roots, it can be observed that their consumer behaviour is dissimilar. Hence, it is important for luxury brand companies to design targeted strategies towards consumers from these two countries. The results further emphasize that even when countries are not geographically distant, or that they are from similar heritage and they can be vastly different in their attitudes towards counterfeiting. Furthermore, it can be suggested that the counterfeiting problem may not only be applicable to China Chinese, but rather Chinese consumers as a whole. It is important that luxury brand managers, academics and policy makers understand that price may not be the only factor that influences consumers towards purchasing counterfeits of luxury brands (Bian and Veloutsou, 2007; Bian and Moutinho, 2011; Poddar et al., 2012).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the influence of social and personality factors on attitudes towards counterfeiting of luxury brands and purchase intention between China Chinese and Taiwan Chinese consumers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data collection was conducted using a mall intercept approach in downtown Shanghai and Taipei. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and back-translated from English to Chinese and distributed. Structural equation modelling in LISREL was used to analyze the data.\nFindings: It was found that collectivism has a positive relationship with attitudes towards counterfeiting of luxury brands for the China Chinese but not for the Taiwan Chinese. Personal gratification was found to have a negative relationship with attitudes towards counterfeiting of luxury brands for the Taiwan Chinese consumers. Integrity and status consumption were found to have a positive relationship with attitudes towards counterfeiting of luxury brands for both the China Chinese and Taiwan Chinese consumers.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings are limited to comparison between China Chinese from Shanghai and Taiwan Chinese from Taipei; therefore, the results may not be generalizable across all Chinese consumers or international consumers. In addition, only luxury brands were examined in this paper. Future studies would need to address other contexts or specific product categories.\nPractical implications: This paper presents findings from two Chinese cities. The consumers may be from the same region; however, it is found from the study that they pose different attitudes and purchase intentions towards counterfeits of luxury brands. Therefore, the insights from this paper provide a deeper understanding into the differences between Chinese consumers and implications for practitioners, academics and policy makers.\nOriginality/value: Majority of the cross-national studies are often compared between the so-called Western or Eastern countries. This paper examined counterfeiting from China (which is deemed as one of the largest manufacturers of counterfeits) and Taiwan (which was one of the largest counterfeiters decades ago). This provides insights into the development and differences between regional consumers and their attitudes towards counterfeits of luxury brands.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Intellectual capital management and power mobilisation in a seaport
|
[
"Intellectual capital management",
"Collaboration",
"Conflict",
"Power",
"Seaport",
"Meta-organization"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Academic discussion has been stressing the strategic importance of leveraging and managing intellectual capital (IC) for improving organisational performance (Schiuma and Lerro, 2008). IC management refers to different activities in identifying, measuring, controlling and developing intangible resources in a business, and organisations that manage their IC are better able to create value and respond to unanticipated economic and market changes (Kujansivu, 2008).\n2. IC management in a meta-organisational setting: Nowadays, the most important assets of many organisations tend to be intangible, and IC should be regarded as a distinctive element for an organisation to create value (Roos et al., 2005). Managers have been faced with new demands that underline the importance of IC management, which can be defined as \"the deployment and management of intellectual capital resources and their transformations (into other intellectual capital resources or into traditional economic resources) to maximise the present value of the organization's value creation in the eyes of its stakeholders\" (Roos et al., 2005, p. 42).\n3. Managing CIC through collaboration and power: Competitiveness at meso units (such as seaports) may depend on the individual organisations' capacity to transfer, create and use knowledge, i.e. IC (Poyhonen and Smedlund, 2004; Tan et al., 2008). By operating in a meta-organisational culture that transcends the firm's cultures, a seaport's members should be able to exchange knowledge in an easier fashion (Rao, 1996), improving their own efficiency and also the performance of the whole seaport (Lee and Song, 2010). However, according to Appuhami and Bhuyan (2015, p. 348), \"despite the fact that, as a strategic resource, IC increases performance and creates value for organizations, there are nevertheless problems with managing and controlling IC\". In a seaport, network performance (including IC creation) may be limited due to a mix of shared and also firm-level goals, values and experiences (Ketchen and Hult, 2007). Although working together in a cooperative manner can lead maritime operators to a maximisation of the value of the system (Lee and Song, 2010), both the seaport and its individual members pursue their own goals (de Langen, 2004). These actors also have different levels of power (de Langen, 2006), and according to their degree of power, they may support (or hinder) the meta-organisation's strategy (Ackermann and Eden, 2011). Furthermore, a seaport can be considered as a network, in which a public organisation - a coordinator - not always has the power to impose actions on other members (Marques et al., 2011). Interests and power are crucial variables to explain IC creation and deterioration in meta-organisations, and as long as the authors are aware, there is no literature referring the development of a management model that integrates both levels of analysis (micro and meso) to assess how CIC is managed in a meta-organisation such as a seaport. Despite many IC definitions and models have been proposed, the power dimension has been neglected. For example, Gordon and Grant (2004) found that, during the period 1986-2004, only four papers have considered the relationship between knowledge management and power as problematic. Masino (2007) suggests that this lack of attention is due to the intangible assets discourse being predominantly based on a functionalist approach, where \"designing tools that allow to visualize, report and measure intangible assets, will help managers to better manage their firms\" (p. 216). This lack of interest may be related to power being regarded as always justified because it serves the general goal of efficiency and effectiveness.\n4. The case study - the Seaport of Aveiro: The Seaport of Aveiro is a fully state-owned organisation regulated by a public body and managed by a PA, which is a corporation with exclusively public capitals, aiming to provide customer satisfaction, as well as wealth creation for the whole seaport (which includes the different port actors) and the region: at stake is the landlord form of management, which is the most common in the EU. With the exception of the largest UK ports, port management in EU continues to be controlled by the public sector, with the landlord management form being the dominant one.\n5. Discussion: The case study allowed to confirm that it is through movements into the various dimensions of power that the network coordinator - the APA - seeks to manage CIC in the Seaport of Aveiro (see Figure 1). Efforts were made to promote initiatives aimed at the direct creation of CIC: organisations such as the APA can serve the network they coordinate either through the roles they elect to play on it or by providing infrastructure or resources to support others in playing roles within the network. Good examples of this are the provision of training, implementation of a new IT system or the establishment and fostering of good relationships with relevant external stakeholders. Mostly, these implied the mobilisation of resources.\n6. Concluding remarks and future development of the research: Managing IC in a meta-organisation such as a seaport is a complex task when compared to individual organisations. It is the goal of this paper to provide evidence about how a port coordinator manages the seaport's CIC in a setting which is characterised by the coexistence of several actors possessing different levels of power and following their own interests. Actors may manifest non-collaborative or even conflictive behaviours not only between them, but also towards the network coordinator. From a supply chain perspective, conflicts can have several consequences such as labour disputes, port stoppages or IT systems breakdowns, for example (Blackhurst et al., 2008).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the management of collective intellectual capital (CIC) occurs in a seaport through the actions of the network coordinator.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A case study was conducted in a seaport, focusing on the actions taken by a network coordinator - a port authority - to develop the seaport's CIC. The seaport is conceptualised as a meta-organisation, composed by interdependent actors which may possess different interests and different levels of power.\nFindings: Evidence suggests that the mobilisation of different dimensions of power, in both coercive and non-coercive ways, is needed to promote a higher level of collaboration. Indeed, by mobilising non-coercive dimensions of power, the network coordinator can foster a sense of community within the meta-organisation, grounded in a trust-based collective culture that can potentiate collaboration, and thus allow the attainment of a more \"sustainable\" type of CIC.\nResearch limitations/implications: Despite the validity of the interpretations provided by the case study, generalisation of this study should only be conducted in a theoretically framed manner.\nPractical implications: The findings can provide network coordinators with a better understanding of the consequences of using different dimensions of power to leverage its intangible assets and enhance the meta-organisation's performance.\nOriginality/value: The paper focus on the IC management of a specific type of meso-level unit, which possess some particular characteristics of its own: a seaport. Also, the paper aims to fill a gap in literature regarding the management of different dimensions of power and its effects over IC creation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Dynamic relationships and technological innovation in hot and cold issue markets
|
[
"Issues",
"Returns",
"Innovation",
"Mathematical modelling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Both the volume and average initial returns of initial public offerings (IPOs) fluctuate over time. Cycles in the IPO market have attracted the interest of numerous academics. Extremes in the cycles are often referred to as hot and cold issue markets. A hot issue market is generally associated with a period in which the average initial return of new equity issues is abnormally high, while cold issue markets are associated with low under-pricing. What factors cause these cycles in the IPO market is still largely unknown.While the extant finance literature provides numerous theories that partially explain the fluctuations of IPO volume and under-pricing over time, few of them have explored the dynamic interrelationship between the two variables. We fill this gap by examining the endogeneity of IPO volume and initial returns in a simultaneous equations framework. By using two-stage and three-stage least squares estimation, we uncover dynamic interrelationships between IPO volume and initial returns that the existing literature has not captured. In addition, we add to the extant literature by examining whether hot issue markets are driven by technological innovations in certain industries. Chemmanur and Fulghieri (1999) and Hoffmann-Burchardi (2001) suggest that hot issue markets are the result of positive productivity shocks and positive surprises about industry prospects in a small number of related industries. Our paper is the first to use a fixed effects model to examine the cross-sectional effects in IPO issuing activity. Our findings indicate that hot issue markets are not driven by increased issuing activity in a small number of industries, but that they occur across a broad range of industries at the same time.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review the literature relating to IPO under-pricing, IPO volume and the technological innovations hypothesis. In Section 3, we describe our data and provide summary statistics for our sample. In Section 4, we model IPO volume and initial returns in a simultaneous equations framework. Section 5 tests the technological innovations hypothesis. Section 6 provides concluding remarks.\n2. Literature review: 2.1. Cycles in IPO volume and initial returns\n3. Data: Data on IPOs were obtained from the Securities Data Company (SDC) New Issues database (see Appendix). The database includes 10,184 offerings on US exchanges over the period 1972-2001. While the SDC database also provides information on non-US IPOs, we decided to concentrate our analysis on the US market for several reasons. First, the US accounts for the largest proportion of worldwide IPO activity during our sample period and has been affected by few regulatory or political changes in the past 30 years. Second, data for non-US IPOs is generally more difficult to obtain and the inclusion of more than one country introduces potential cross-country biases that a single-country study is exempt from. We exclude offerings from closed-end mutual funds, American Depository Receipts (ADRs), Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), unit offerings and mutual-to-stock conversions. We also require price data for the firms to be available in the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) database during the first 45 trading days after the IPO. This yields a sample of 8,160 observations. Taking into account that new issues of penny stocks are part of the IPO market, we do not exclude new issues in which the offer price is below $5.00 as Loughran and Ritter (2002) and Lowry (2003) did. Loughran and Ritter (2002) suggested eliminating penny stocks in IPO studies, since stocks with an offer price below $5.00 per share are subject to the provisions of the US Securities Enforcement Remedies and Penny Stock Reform Act of 1990, aimed at reducing fraud and abuse in the penny stock market. We include penny stocks in our study in order to observe dynamic changes in the IPO market from a whole market perspective. In a robustness test, we will discuss interrelationships in the IPO market without the influence of penny stocks.Table I provides summary statistics for our IPO sample and reports IPO volume, average initial returns and aggregate gross proceeds of new issues per year. Table I clearly shows the cyclical patterns of both IPO volume and initial returns. During our 30-year sample period, 8,160 companies went public. Their average initial return was approximately 17.19 percent, with total gross proceeds of $349.24 billion. Yearly IPO volume during our sample period ranges from a low of four IPOs in 1974/1975 to a high of 715 in 1996. Although we can observe a general upward trend in IPO volume over time, there have been intermittent troughs, particularly in 1974/1975, 1988-1990 and in 2001. On the other hand, we can observe a particularly strong IPO market in the years 1983, 1993-1996 and 1999. A similar pattern can be observed in initial returns. IPOs in 1974 had the lowest first day returns (0.68 percent), while the average first day returns during the 1999/2000 internet bubble were 67.3 percent and 53.9 percent, respectively.Table II provides a univariate comparison of firm-specific data for high-tech firms versus non-high-tech firms, and of venture capital backed firms versus non-venture capital backed firms[1]. Venture-backed IPOs are identified through venture capitalist information contained in the SDC database. We observe that, on average, high-tech IPOs are significantly more under-priced and have a higher post-IPO standard deviation of returns than low-tech IPOs. Assuming that high-tech firms have a higher level of ex ante uncertainty than firms in traditional industries, our results are consistent with Rock (1986). Rock (1986) attributed the large under-pricing returns of high-tech firms to the increased level of information asymmetry among informed and uninformed investors. Megginson and Weiss (1991) argued that new issues backed by venture capitalist have higher proceeds and lower initial returns after controlling for risk. While our proceeds variable is somewhat inconclusive, our univariate under-pricing results suggest that in contrast to Megginson and Weiss (1991), venture capital backed issues were significantly more under-priced than non-venture capital backed IPOs during our sample period[2]. Yet, this is not surprising, as we also find that venture capital backed IPOs have a higher standard deviation in post-IPO returns, suggesting that they are riskier issues[3].Table III provides summary statistics for key variables used in our research. For each variable we report the number of observations as well as the mean, median, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum. We define IPO volume as the number of IPOs per quarter. Following Lowry (2003), we deflate the number of IPOs per quarter by the number of public firms at the end of the previous quarter in order to avoid problems related to non-stationarity and series correlation. We calculate the initial return during a quarter as the equally weighted mean IPO underpricing of firms that went public during that quarter[4]. Proceeds, obtained from SDC, are converted to year 2000 dollars based on CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and are averaged across all firms that went public in a given quarter. Following Alti (2006), we expect IPOs issued during periods of high IPO volume to have higher proceeds as issuers take advantage of windows of opportunity; that is, they issue more equity to benefit from the temporarily low cost of capital during those periods. On the other hand, Habib and Ljungqvist (1998) observe a negative relationship between proceeds and initial returns. We use two proxies for the degree of asymmetric information. One is the post-IPO standard deviation of a firm's return, and the other is prior market volatility. Following Rock (1986) and McGuinness (1992), we use the standard deviation of IPO returns during the first 30 trading days, averaged quarterly. The post-IPO standard deviation captures the degree of asymmetric information from the viewpoint of investors. If investors think that the degree of asymmetric information is high, then issuers have to underprice their IPOs sufficiently enough to attract investors. Thus, we hypothesize that initial returns are positively related to post-IPO standard deviation. On the other hand, prior market volatility is used to capture the degree of asymmetric information from the viewpoint of issuers. Prior market volatility is the annualized standard deviation of returns on the CRSP equally weighted market index during the three months prior to the firm's IPO.We also investigate the influence of prior stock market returns on the IPO market, as in Benveniste et al. (2003). Prior market returns are the annualized returns during the three months prior to the firm's IPO using the equally weighted portfolio of all NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ stocks as provided by CRSP. Following Pastor and Veronesi (2003), we use prior market returns as a proxy for the equity premium. To proxy for capital demand, we use the quarterly US Gross Domestic Product (GDP), obtained from the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis (see www.bea.doc.gov). To adjust for inflation, we convert all GDP data to year 2000 dollars based on CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The risk-free rate is the annualized nominal yield on a three-month T-Bill during a quarter, obtained from the Federal Reserve website (see www.federalreserve.gov). The consumer sentiment index is constructed by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. The index serves as a proxy for consumer sentiment during a given quarter. To examine whether the IPO market is influenced by productivity boosts that affect the overall economy we also include a variable that captures changes in productivity. Productivity shocks are measured as the percentage change in non-farm business output per hour during the prior four quarters, based on productivity data available through the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see www.bls.gov). Finally, we construct a high-tech ratio, defined as the number of high-tech IPOs divided by the total number of IPOs during a quarter, and a venture capital backed ratio, defined as the number of venture capital backed IPOs to the total number of IPOs during a quarter. Both variables allow us to control for any effects that a concentration of high-tech IPOs or venture capital backed IPOs may have on IPO volume and initial returns in a given quarter.\n4. Simultaneous equations approach: 4.1. Methodology\n5. Technological innovations: One hypothesis related to the IPO volume puzzle is that technological innovation leads to a hot issue market. With data from 1977 to 1982, Ritter (1984) found that the hot issue market during that period is driven exclusively by natural resource issues and does not carry over to other industries. Hoffmann-Burchardi (2001) argued that the IPO clustering and high under-pricing phenomena in a hot issue market result from the same underlying fact, i.e. a positive surprise about industry prospects. Helwege and Liang (2004) find that both hot and cold market IPOs are largely concentrated in the same narrow set of industries and that hot markets for many industries occur at the same time.We partition our aggregate data set by industry in order to capture patterns in new issue activity on an industrial level. Following Helwege and Liang (2004), we categorize new issues into 11 major industries based on their truncated two-digit SIC code. These are the top 11 industries in terms of IPO activity, and account for about 65 percent of total IPO volume. Table VII provides summary statistics for our IPO sample, categorized by industry. The business services sector (SIC 73), which includes software and internet companies, has both the highest average initial return and the most IPOs during our 30-year sample period. On average, there are about 11.53 new issues per quarter in the business services industry, which is more than twice the volume of any other industry. In total, the business services industry alone accounts for more than 16 percent of all offerings during the last 30 years.5.1 Cross-industry correlation of issue activity\n6. Conclusions: We study the dynamic relationship between IPO volume and initial returns over the period from 1972 to 2001. By taking the endogenous interrelationship between IPO volume and initial returns into account, and applying a three-stage least squares regression model, we find that higher IPO volume in the concurrent quarter leads to higher initial returns. At the same time, we observe a negative relationship between initial returns and lagged IPO volume. In other words, the under-pricing of a new issue is affected not only by the concurrent number of new issues but also by the number of new issues in prior periods. On the other hand, we find no support for the hypothesis that higher initial returns cause increased IPO volume. Our findings shed light on the dynamic relationships in the IPO market and help explain the occurrence of hot and cold issue markets. We find that measures of ex ante uncertainty are positively related to initial returns. This is supportive of the hypothesis that under-pricing is positively related to the degree of asymmetric information. We also find a significant positive relationship between prior market returns and IPO volume, which is consistent with the hypothesis that IPO waves are preceded by favorable market conditions (Pastor and Veronesi, 2003).Lowry (2003) argues that firms' capital demands and investor sentiment are important determinants of IPO volume. Our findings for the two hypotheses are mixed. In our 3SLS model, we do not find support for the theories, i.e. there is no support for Lowry's hypotheses when considering aggregate level data, particularly after controlling for changes in economy-wide productivity levels. However, in our fixed-effects model, which is based on industry level data, we find that GDP and the index of consumer sentiment are significantly positively related to the aggregate number of new issues. Hence, we argue that business conditions and investor sentiment have more importance on issue activity on an industrial level.In addition to exploring the hot and cold issue market puzzle and the interrelationship between IPO volume and initial returns, we examine the technological innovations hypothesis that suggests that hot issue markets are driven by a small number of industries that have benefited from technological innovations or positive productivity shocks. We analyze the correlation matrix of the 11 most active IPO industries, and find mixed evidence for the hypothesis that hot and cold IPO markets are concentrated in specific industries. Furthermore, we employ a fixed-effects model in our analysis and find that the number of new issues in the 11 most active IPO industries is significantly positively related to aggregate IPO volume in the rest of the market. This provides empirical evidence against the technological innovations hypothesis and suggests that aggregate hot issue markets occur across a broad range of industries at the same time.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The puzzle of hot and cold issue markets has attracted substantial interest in the academic community. The behavior of IPO volume and initial returns over time is well documented. Few studies, however, investigate the dynamic interrelationship between these two variables. This paper aims to fill this gap. In addition, the technological innovations hypothesis of hot issue markets is tested. Welch and Hoffmann-Burchardi suggest that the clustering of new issues is caused by IPO volume spikes in industries that have recently experienced technological innovations or favorable productivity shocks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper employs a sample of 8,160 initial public offerings filed in the USA between January 1972 and December 2001. A simultaneous equation approach is used to examine the endogenous relationship between IPO volume and initial returns. In addition, the paper analyzes the industry correlation matrix of new issue activity and estimates a fixed-effects model based on industry-level data to examine the impact of technological innovations on new issue activity.\nFindings: - It is found that higher IPO volume causes higher initial returns, but not vice versa. In addition, evidence is found against the technological innovations hypothesis. The findings suggest that economy-wide rather than industry-specific factors are responsible for the observed variations in IPO volume.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As with any empirical study, the results may be sample-specific.\nOriginality/value: - The paper extends the prior literature on the relationship between IPO volume and initial returns by applying two-stage and three-stage least squares models that go beyond prior methodological approaches used in the extant literature. In addition, the paper provides some of the first empirical evidence on the effect of technological innovations and productivity shocks on IPO activity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
(Re)conceptualizing digital literacies before and after the election of Trump
|
[
"Literacy",
"Literacy teaching",
"New literacies",
"English language arts",
"Critical literacy",
"Digital literacy",
"Digital literacies",
"Critical digital literacies",
"Populism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: November 9, 2016 began a new reality for American politics, one with Donald Trump as President-elect of the USA. Just a day earlier, the November 8 reality was that the interrelated rhetorics of nativism, nationalism, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and anti-immigration would likely not end in Trump's election, although the electoral vote would be close (FiveThirtyEight, 2016). By November 9, it was clear that populism had once again taken hold in the USA. While populism has been a recurrent modality of US politics (Formisano, 2008), the 2016 election cycle demonstrated the power of digital media in its propagation. The online presence of white supremacist groups such as the alt-right, the proliferation of fake news stories from various anonymous sources, the seemingly endless string of leaked emails from WikiLeaks, the quick and systematic spin through social media and Donald Trump's infamous Twitter account all played prominent roles in shaping the outcome of the election. As someone who studies literacies, the upshot for me was that I needed to reassess my approach to, and understanding of, digital literacies.\nBefore: My approach to digital literacies at the time\nAfter: What my approach was missing\nConclusion: Above, I have outlined my thinking about digital literacies before and after the election of Trump. While I still see the disciplinary/digital parallel and the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies as highly relevant, I supplement these ideas with a more overt treatment of political power in digital environments. For example, my previous treatment of Web 2.0 technologies tended to foreground the social practices of individuals within \"interest-driven networks\" (Ito et al., 2008) rather unpacking why governments and other well-resourced groups would want to shape such networks - and what methods they might use to do so. Informing this new direction in my teaching is software studies (Berry, 2011; Kitchin and Dodge, 2011; Manovich, 2013), critical software studies (Lynch, 2015a, 2015b) and critical digital literacies (Avila and Pandya, 2013).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: As part of a larger global phenomenon, the election of Donald Trump in the USA represents a crucial moment for the (re)conceptualization of digital literacies. The purpose of this paper is to build theory with respect to what this moment means for English education.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This teacher reflection focuses on what digital literacies meant for my teaching before and after the 2016 election. Using a before-and-after format, I argue that the before conceptualization of digital literacies, while still relevant and useful for introducing many important ideas to English educators, was missing a direct treatment of political power. The after conceptualization takes up this topic.\nFindings: Themes taken up in the before section involve a parallel between digital literacies and disciplinary literacies and a distinction between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 interfaces. Themes in the after section address the propensity for governments and other well-resourced groups to occupy Web 2.0 environments for their own ends. Methods for accomplishing these ends involve restricting, surveilling and targeting flows of information and enacting three populist practices via internet trolling: aggregating the unmet demands of disparate groups, establishing popular subjectivity and dichotomizing the social space through the persistent construction of the enemy.\nResearch limitations/implications: A critically conscious approach to digital literacies must consider the ways in which political entities occupy digital environments.\nPractical implications: Further research should be done in English education classrooms to understand the ways in which individual online meaning making becomes entangled within a nexus of political activity. Further research should investigate how online meaning making intersects with political power.\nOriginality/value: The role of political entities is often downplayed or ignored in discussions of digital literacies. In an age of alternative facts, fake news and echo chambers, it is important to foreground the interplay between the social, the political and the digital in contemporary meaning making. This contribution offers concepts that can be taken up and expanded, as well as a set of questions for English educators to use in framing a critically conscious conversation about digital literacies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Challenges to the Omohundro-Bostrom framework for AI motivations
|
[
"Artificial intelligence",
"Instrumental goals",
"Omohundro-Bostrom theory",
"Superintelligence"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Any serious discussion of the long-term future of humanity needs to take into account the possible influence of radical new technologies, or risk turning out irrelevant and missing all the action due to implicit and unwarranted assumptions about technological status quo. Many of these technologies have a double-edged character: along with their enormous potential comes equally enormous risks including the extinction of humanity. Because of this, technology futurology overlaps to large extent with the study of existential risk. A case in point is artificial intelligence (AI). In overviews of the existential risks facing humanity in the coming century or so, the possibility of an AI catastrophe tends increasingly to be judged as one of the main risks (Bostrom and Cirkovic, 2008; Pamlin and Armstrong, 2015; Haggstrom, 2016a).\n2. The Omohundro-Bostrom framework: A core feature of the Omohudro-Bostrom framework is to distinguish between final goals and those that are merely instrumental. An agent's final goal is what the agent values as an end in itself, and not merely as a means towards achieving something else. An instrumental goal, in contrast, is one that is set up as a stepping stone towards another goal.\n3. First challenge: there are exceptions to the orthogonality thesis: For OT to mean much in practice when applied to a given final goal, we need the combination of high intelligence and that final goal to be stable over time at least to some extent. The instrumental goal of goal integrity helps in this respect. However, in connection with stating OT, Bostrom (2012) points out that \"an intelligent agent with the urgent desire to be stupid might not remain intelligent for very long\". This seems right: Suppose a superintelligent machine has the final goal of having cognitive skills not exceeding that of a typical twentieth century human in any area. Such a machine would likely find a way to downgrade its intelligence level quickly. Hence that final goal appears incompatible (other than for a short instant) with superhuman levels of intelligence[1].\n4. Second challenge: what if scientific advances dissolve the AI's goals?: Tegmark (2014) offers a troubling scenario:\n5. Third challenge: what if an objectively true morality exists?: Let us now return to the naively dismissive response to apocalyptic AI scenarios mentioned in Section 2, namely, the idea that any sufficiently intelligent agent will automatically understand that ecosystem preservation is more important than paperclip production. I will give Hall (2016) the dubious honour of exemplifying this discourse, with the following passage that takes aim at Bostrom (2014):\n6. Fourth challenge: human values are a mess: If we believe that the Omohundro-Bostrom framework captures something important about the goal structure of an intelligent agent, then we should also expect its neat dichotomy of final vs instrumental goals to be observable in such agents. The most intelligent agent we know of is homo sapiens. How does the final vs instrumental goals dichotomy fare when we look at the goals held by a member of homo sapiens such as myself?\n7. Concluding remarks: Sections 3-6 offered challenges to Omohundro-Bostrom theory from four different directions. Each of them contains suggestions that the OT and/or the ICT might either be false or have a severely limited range of applicability. None of these suggestions are shootdowns in the way that counterexamples to conjectures in mathematics are, but they do serve to underline the tentative nature of Omohundro-Bostrom theory, and the need for epistemic humility as regards predictions derived from that theory. Putting the theory - or whatever variation or limitation of it that turns out warranted - on more rigorous foundations is an important task for improving the reliability of AI futurology. Until that is accomplished, future scenarios derived using Omohundro-Bostrom theory should not be viewed as definite predictions, and we should also be careful about taking them to indicate what is likely to happen, but we can still maintain that they are plausible enough to warrant serious attention.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the futurology of a possible artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough, by reexamining the Omohundro-Bostrom theory for instrumental vs final AI goals. Does that theory, along with its predictions for what a superintelligent AI would be motivated to do, hold water?\nDesign/methodology/approach: The standard tools of systematic reasoning and analytic philosophy are used to probe possible weaknesses of Omohundro-Bostrom theory from four different directions: self-referential contradictions, Tegmark's physics challenge, moral realism and the messy case of human motivations.\nFindings: The two cornerstones of Omohundro-Bostrom theory - the orthogonality thesis and the instrumental convergence thesis - are both open to various criticisms that question their validity and scope. These criticisms are however far from conclusive: while they do suggest that a reasonable amount of caution and epistemic humility is attached to predictions derived from the theory, further work will be needed to clarify its scope and to put it on more rigorous foundations.\nOriginality/value: The practical value of being able to predict AI goals and motivations under various circumstances cannot be overstated: the future of humanity may depend on it. Currently, the only framework available for making such predictions is Omohundro-Bostrom theory, and the value of the present paper is to demonstrate its tentative nature and the need for further scrutiny.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Evaluation of civil protection programmes, with a case study from Mexico
|
[
"Mexico",
"Assessment",
"Civil protection",
"Disaster response",
"Emergency preparedness",
"Indicators"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Emergency preparedness is a relatively new field and one that has developed rapidly in recent years. Climatic extremes, counter-terrorism and emerging risks such as avian influenza will ensure that it continues to grow strongly in the future. However, growth tends to be uneven according to the degree of awareness, commitment and funding manifested by national, regional and local administrations and other elements of the public, private and voluntary sectors. Commonly, the civil protection[1] landscape is a mosaic in which many different organisations are involved, but their level of development varies from place to place and service to service. It varies according to local experience of hazards, availability of expertise, specific political factors and many other considerations.\nSome observations on the literature: Assessment is well-developed in many fields of science and management (Berlak, 1992; Birkmann, 2013). However, the problem of how to apply it to civil protection systems in general is still an open one. Most of the literature that is pertinent to this topic concerns particular cases, places or sectors, such as chemical response, humanitarian relief and risk assessment. Emergency planning methodologies have been subject to assessment and consequent proposals for standards, for example by Perry and Lindell (2003) and Alexander (2005). Abrahamsson et al. (2010) used a systems approach to evaluating emergency response, so that they could map dependencies between its various components. Their paper concentrates more on evaluating performance than does the present endeavour, which is more concerned with the evaluation of development. The same is true of the scenario-based evaluation of emergency response performance by Borell and Eriksson (2008).\nThe local level in disasters: Regardless of their size, emergencies are essentially local problems (Aloyo, 2006). Even major international disasters must be managed on the ground at the local level. Regional, national and international resources should be designed to support and harmonise local initiatives. Hence, it is appropriate here to concentrate on the local authority level of civil emergency preparedness, for without local action there is no road to efficiency in general crisis management, nor is there likely to be adequate involvement of the local population and officialdom. Local people are both beneficiaries and stakeholders in civil protection. They offer detailed knowledge of local problems and resources and have a direct interest in protecting local communities.\nThe configuration of civil protection services: Historically, in many parts of the world, the transition from civil defence to civil protection has involved the demilitarisation and decentralisation of emergency response (Lettieri et al., 2009). The advancement of this process is practically a measure of the evolution of emergency management in any particular milieu. Different countries have different configurations of the various components in relation to both the extent to which military forces are utilised and which service is the \"lead agency\" (Drabek, 1985). For example, in the UK, the lead agency is the police, probably because disasters are considered to be, first and foremost, a public order problem (Arbuthnot, 2008). In Italy it is the National Fire Brigades Service, because the primary requirement is considered to be technical rescue (OECD, 2010), whereas in Iran, where mass casualties in major earthquakes are greatly feared, it is the national Red Crescent Society (Jahangiri et al., 2011).\nIndicators: In developing indicators of the effectiveness and efficiency of civil protection services it is important to find the right balance between uniqueness and generality. Every service to be evaluated will justifiably have elements that are not reproduced elsewhere, for it must respond to particular local circumstances. However, there are processes of development that should be common to all services. A well-developed civil protection organisation will be capable, flexible and autonomous with respect to a wide variety of contingencies, including both well-known local hazards and totally unexpected events. For the former it will have plans based on carefully worked-out scenarios, while for the latter it will have well-conceived generic procedures (Alexander, 2009).\nTeziutlan: a Mexican case study: Disaster response and prevention have evolved steadily over the last 30 years in Mexico. To begin with, a national civil protection system (Sistema Nacional de Proteccion Civil, SINAPROC) was created in 1986 in the wake of the 1985 earthquake that killed almost 10,000 people. Two years later, SINAPROC's executive co-ordination was established in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, with links to the Ministry of Finance (World Bank, 2012a). In 1996, financial provisions were made through the creation of the Natural Disaster Fund (Fondo de Desastres Naturales, FONDEN). Ten years later, legislation was passed to ensure that FONDEN is given at least 0.4 per cent of the Federal budget (World Bank, 2012b). Reorientation of the focus towards prevention activities led to the establishment in 2003 of the Natural Disaster Prevention Fund (Fondo para la Prevencion de Desastres Naturales). In 1989 the National Disaster Prevention Centre was established to provide research, training and technical support. The first legal framework was passed in 2000, and it stressed the need for a strong, decentralised response to disasters. In June 2012, the Government passed the General Civil Protection Act, which specifies the nature of co-ordination between federal, state and local government disaster response agencies (OCDE, 2013). Despite these very positive developments, disaster losses in Mexico are increasing steadily.\nEvaluation of the Teziutlan civil protection system: The evaluation reported here is intended only for illustrative purposes. It implies no judgement of the work of the excellent people who strive daily to improve the civil protection system in Teziutlan. After investigation of the development and present state of the town's civil protection system, I suggest the following responses to the initial questions posed above:\nEmergent civil protection systems: I believe that Teziutlan is a good example of the kind of emergent local civil protection system that can be found in many countries of the world that are engaged upon developing their capacities in this field, albeit slowly, arduously and with many setbacks. Civil protection tends to evolve in response to particular large emergencies. For example, in Iran it developed rapidly at all levels after the 1990 Manjil and 2003 Bam earthquakes (Parsizadeh and Izadkhah, 2005). However, development tends to fall off between disasters, as the imperative to force the pace is no longer present. Hence, the system is threatened by the ever-present risk of recession, contraction and retrenchment. The last of these tends to reflect fiscal austerity and the consequent tightening of budgets, which can destroy programmes, even if they are exemplary. Risks are easily undervalued, in part because they are poorly known and understood, and in part because if nothing happens for a number of years they have low political salience. In many countries, the field of civil protection is characterised by national leadership that is remote, intermittent and of brief duration, or so it is perceived at the local level. As noted above, almost all civil protection systems tend to be mosaics of different degrees of development among the tiers of government and different jurisdictions. In Mexico, this engenders a lack of integration between the components of the system, which stems in part from historical reasons and in part because the system is still poorly articulated.\nA model of an emergent civil protection system: One by-product of this analysis is that it offers the opportunity to propose a model for how a civil protection system develops during its emergent stage. A scheme of this kind could be useful for characterising stage of development and forecasting future growth and needs. One needs to adopt an ergodic approach, in which different examples represent different stages in a single process of evolution, albeit one that is multidimensional enough to be complex. There will be thresholds, or tipping points, at which the system reaches a new state of development by accumulating sufficient resources, expertise and organisation. There is also a context, in which local organisation, for example, is set in the context of regional and national developments, both in terms of the articulation of the system at these levels, and the flows of resources.\nConclusions: Whatever methodology is used to evaluate the quality of civil protection services, it should be used in a positive way that avoids recriminations. The aim should be to highlight opportunities for improvement, not to imply negligence or deficiency. Even the very best services did not come into being overnight. Hence, steady development is a praiseworthy rather than detrimental process, especially when it is intelligently guided. Moreover, although there tends to be a sudden leap in preparedness after disaster has occurred - the so-called \"window of opportunity\" effect - the slow, painstaking preparations conducted in \"times of peace\" that have little immediate impact nevertheless will come to fruition when the next major emergency occurs (Figures 4 and 5).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for assessing and characterising the state of development of a civil protection (emergency preparedness) system, with particular attention to the local level, where such systems are rooted.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Groups of indicators are suggested as a means of evaluating each component of the system. The paper proposes a means of using these to identify which parts of the system are most in need of development and additional resources, something that will also depend on local hazards, vulnerabilities and priorities. In order to illustrate the methodology, an example is presented from the town Teziutlan in the central Mexican state of Puebla.\nFindings: The civil protection system of Teziutlan is in the midst of a long, difficult and uneven phase of growth, in which there are both encouraging developments and seriously neglected elements. Analysis of Teziutlan using the indicators listed in the preceding methodological section enables a model to be proposed for the emergence of a system of emergency preparedness and response at the local level.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper proposes a simple methodology and uses one very modest example to illustrate it. However, civil protection systems at many scales and in many countries would benefit from evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses.\nPractical implications: It is hoped that this will be of use to those who wish to evaluate the development of local and regional civil protection elsewhere in the world.\nSocial implications: Improvement of response capabilities is crucial to the development of a better civil protection system and the protection of the population against disaster.\nOriginality/value: Although assessment is widely used in science, technology and business, it has rarely been applied systematically to emergency management and civil protection systems.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The relationships among work values, burnout, and organizational citizenship behaviors: A study from hotel front-line service employees in Taiwan
|
[
"Work values",
"Burnout",
"Organizational citizenship behaviors",
"Extrarole behaviour",
"Hotels",
"Employees",
"Taiwan",
"Stress"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organizations have contractual arrangements and formal reward systems that are designed to ensure that employees engage in behaviors that promote the effective functioning of the organizations. While organizational systems that define the role of each employee are an important element of organizational design, they are insufficient to guarantee the success of an organization (Steffen, 2008). One aspect of interpersonal work relationships related to taking initiative on the job is the concept of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), which refer to informal, prosocial behaviors that employees engage in voluntarily helping others in work (Ensher et al., 2001). Organ (1988) has pointed out the significance of OCBs for organizational efficiency, effectiveness, innovation, and adaptability within diverse organizations.Work values refer to enduring perspectives that guide individuals to evaluate what is fundamentally right or wrong in the work environment (Judge and Bretz, 1992). There have been many studies on the construct of work values and how they affect job behaviors (Chen and Choi, 2008). Work values are important to a business being effective in a dynamic environment, because of their potential relationship with other work issues. Of particular interest has been how work values are perceived by workers in the hospitality industry (Wong and Chung, 2003).Hospitality front-line employees frequently encounter demanding and difficult customers, resulting in burnout being a major contributor to this high turnover rate at all levels of related organizations, which has been formally defined as \"prolonged responses to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job\" (Maslach, 1998, p. 68). The consequences of burnout that have considerable empirical support include adverse physical symptoms, psychological disorders, diminished job performance, desire to leave a job (Kuruuzum et al., 2008), and OCBs (Emmerik et al., 2005).Previous research has successfully identified many antecedents and consequences of OCBs as well as moderators of these relationships (see Podsakoff et al., 2000, for a review). Podsakoff et al. (2000) stated that dispositional variables are key antecedents of OCBs, and Matic (2008) considered that work values represent an individual dispositional variable that affects job behaviors. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the possible relationship between work values and OCBs. Our keyword search (using \"values\" and \"OCBs\") of the last 15 years of publications in many research databases produced only ten studies on this issue, of which only three studies used work values as the construct of values. These three studies used different sets of work values to examine the impact of work values on OCBs. Although there is no single established classification of work values, many empirical studies and theories have used intrinsic and extrinsic work values as the components of work values (Hirschi, 2010). Therefore, we believe that examining the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic work values will complement previous research and will increase our understanding of the determinants of OCBs.OCBs represent one of the most widely studied topics in organizational behavior research in recent years is OCBs (Chahal and Mehta, 2010), and thousands of academic studies on burnout have been published (Schaufeli et al., 2008). Since burnout negatively impacts task performance (Halbesleben and Buckley, 2004), the author suspects there is a relationship between burnout and contextual performance (i.e. OCBs). However, there has been little interest in the relationship between burnout and OCBs (Emmerik et al., 2005). Only a few literatures has demonstrated the link between burnout and OCBs (e.g. Chiu and Tsai, 2006; Emmerik et al., 2005; Yucel, 2008), and some results of these studies are mixed. For example, Emmerik et al. (2005) posited that emotional exhaustion had not any effect on OCBs, while Chiu and Tsai (2006) proved that emotional exhaustion exerted a negative effect on OCBs. Therefore, a further study is needed to clarify the ambiguous relationship between burnout and OCBs.It is possible that both work values and burnout exert significant and simultaneous effects on OCBs, and thus, for those employees with the same level of work values may observe different OCBs due to their different levels of burnout. In other words, burnout may moderate the relationships between work values and OCBs. To the author's knowledge, Yucel (2008) is the only published article to examine among work values, burnout, and OCBs. However, he did not test the moderating effects of burnout. Accordingly, the objectives of this research were threefold:1. to identify the established causal relationship between work values and OCBs by using a widely accepted construct of work values;2. to clarify the mixed causal relationship between burnout and OCBs; and3. to analyze statistically the moderating impact of burnout on the relationship between work values and OCBs.\nLiterature review: Organizational citizenship behaviors\nHypotheses: Work values and organizational citizenship behaviors\nMethodology: Sample selection and data collection\nAnalysis and results: Results of hypotheses testing\nDiscussion: Individual depositional characteristics as well as work-specific variables should be taken into consideration when studying OCBs. The findings of this study suggest that both work values and burnout are important factors to consider when promoting OCBs. In addition, it was also found that burnout and its three dimensions are moderators that can decrease the predictions and explanations of the theoretical relationship between work values and OCBs.Relationship between work values and OCBs\nConclusions: The current study makes three significant contributions to knowledge and practice in this field. First, there is only sparse literature concerning the relationships between work values and OCBs, and the present article significantly enriches our understanding of this issue. Furthermore, the external validity of data in the literature may be limited by the constructs of work values being too narrow to be generalized to other areas. The widely accepted construct of work values used in the present article has a higher external validity. Second, this study helps to resolve the ambiguity regarding the relationships between burnout and OCBs in the literature. Previous studies examining the relationships between burnout and OCBs have produced variable results, while those of the present study confirm that burnout and its dimensions have negative impacts on OCBs for hotel front-line service employees in Taiwan, both theoretically and statistically. Finally, the findings of the present study suggest not only that both work values and burnout are important factors influencing OCBs, but also that their interaction effect is a key factor influencing OCBs. This suggestion has several managerial implications for the promotion of OCBs, as explained below.Managerial implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this research is to identify that both work values and burnout are important predictors for promoting organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Moreover, this research also seeks to investigate the moderating impact of burnout on the relationships between work values and OCBs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 310 employee-supervisor dyads of hotel front-line service employees in Taiwan were selected as the research participants. The employees were asked to provide information on the items about work values and burnout, and their supervisors were asked to complete items concerning the OCBs of their subordinates. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to investigate measurement reliability and validity. All hypothesized relationships and moderating effects were tested using hierarchical regression equations.\nFindings: - It was found that both work values and burnout are important factors to consider for promoting OCBs. In addition, the study also proves that burnout as a moderator can decrease the predictions of the relationship between work values and OCBs.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study is limited to the context culture and data collection process.\nPractical implications: - This research argues that an employee having higher work values may extend his/her upward striving from in-role behavior to extra-role behavior. However, a diminished sense of personal accomplishment signifies that this job may no longer offer a personal interest to the point that an employee is unwilling to display OCBs.\nOriginality/value: - Findings of the present study suggest that not only both work values and burnout are important factors in influencing OCBs, but also their interaction effect is a key factor in influencing OCBs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
How can teleworking be pro-poor?
|
[
"Teleworking",
"Africa",
"Communication technologies",
"Poverty",
"Economic growth",
"Quality of life"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Poverty is a condition in which a person or community lacks the fundamentals for a minimum standard of well-being, and life. These fundamentals may be material resources, e.g. food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or they may be social resources, e.g. access to information, education, health care, social status, political power, or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society. Poverty to a degree stems from the lack of strong scientific, technological and knowledge bases (Sharma, 2007). The great quantity of natural resources on a poor area has been of limited value to the poor people because they do not have the tools with which to turn their resources into consumable wealth (African National Congress, 2004). Makinda (2007, p. 973) notes:In order to fight poverty, policy makers need to build the political and legal frameworks that encourage the absorption and application of scientific innovations.Such a scientific innovation is teleworking (or telecommuting), which means working at a distance using telecommunications technology (Gurstein, 2001). Montreuil and Lippel (2003) define telework as they are stressing the fact that in order to be able to talk about telework it is essential that it is located away from the place where the rest of employees work. Conversely, Atkyns et al. (2002) think that we can only speak of telework, when there is a data transmission connection between the remote unit and the unit of the company. Telework is flexible because employers and telecommuters can determine when teleworking happens, what work will be done during teleworking, and where it happens. Telecommuters work away from their usual work base and carry out various activities such as data input, checking of documents, analysis of reports, customer service, sales, planning and word processing. Various jobs proper for telework are data entry and typing, secretariat work, telephone operators/counselors, accounts, management, sales and marketing, translation, writing and editing/journalism, research, graphic design, web site management, etc. It has long been recognized that teleworking might have a central role in development (Nilles, 1998). Telework increases productivity, efficiency, and global competitiveness and creates value-added employment opportunities. It leads to sustainable development as it brings works to remote areas, and generates jobs for women, poor and disabled people. Finally, telework lessens rural-urban migration (Simpson et al., 2003).The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to the gap in academic literature about telework and poverty. To the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical research focusing on poor teleworkers to guide the formulation of hypotheses. Therefore, we base our study on proper literature review and propose a telework taxonomy for poor as well as three research questions that trigger future empirical research on poor teleworkers. The paper explores the literature to examine if teleworking can be pro-poor1. In particular, it aims to answer the following questions:1. How can teleworking be pro-poor? What kind of teleworking is proper for poor teleworkers? That is to say what tasks and types of telework are proper for poor teleworkers? Can poor people become knowledge workers who will create, manage, transform, and/or disseminate information and how this will be achieved?2. Under which conditions can teleworking be pro-poor? The potential benefits of access to the poor can only be realized if that access is present. Historically this has not been the case with access focused on an urban elite. The poor people have limited resources to afford teleworking services.3. Where can teleworking be pro-poor? Which must be the economic and organizational aspects of the teleworking centres for the poor?The paper is structured as follows. The second section discusses how poverty can be fought in the digital era, while the third section explains the methodology of the study. The fourth section proposes a telework taxonomy for poor and describes telecentres as well as the conditions for implementing telework. The fifth section presents a well-known conceptual framework for modeling the implementation process of teleworking. This framework can be adapted for serving the various types of poor teleworkers of the proposed telework taxonomy. Such adaptations can lead to new specific conceptual frameworks for each type of poor teleworkers. Finally, the paper ends with a conclusion of the study and offers directions for further work.\n2. Fighting poverty in the digital era: 2.1 Educating and training out of poverty\n3. Scope of study and research methodology: The scope of this study is to propose a telework taxonomy for poor and research questions that will trigger future empirical research on poor teleworkers. As there is no empirical research focusing on poor teleworkers to guide the formulation of hypotheses, we based our study on appropriate literature. To discover the journal articles that analyze telework with a potential for poor, we used the three keywords: \"telework\", \"telecommuting\", and \"virtual office\" with a combination of keywords that refer to employee's perspective and organizational issues. Such employees' perspective issues are balance family responsibility and work, productivity, impact on job satisfaction, communication, quality of working life, and employees' attitude towards telecommunication. We focused on articles published between 1998 and 2007 and restricted our research to the ABI Inform and EBSCO Host - Business Source Elite Databases. We also included European journals from Emerald database in our base. Next, we limited our review to refereed journals and decided to handpick some articles from the non-peer reviewed list that added important insights to the research (e.g. Simpson et al., 2003; Golden, 2007). Lastly, we reviewed the retrieved articles and excluded the articles that are not related to the management discipline. The number of articles went to 50 papers (see Table I). The articles reviewed were classified according to their orientation (i.e. descriptive, conceptual, empirical, and case study articles):1. A descriptive article (D) overviews the practice of teleworking and its benefits and drawbacks.2. A conceptual article (CA) presents propositions, a theoretical framework and a model for implementing teleworking.3. An empirical article (E) presents results from surveying and analyzing a large number of companies.4. A case study (C) article analyzes the implementation of telecommuting to a particular company.Teleworking is strongly associated with workforce, organizational, technological, and environmental issues (Siha and Monroe, 2006). These issues are relevant to four management disciplines as follows: human resource management (workforce issues), organization behavior and strategy (organizational issues), management of technology (technological issues), and social responsibilities and ethics (environmental issues).\n4. Teleworking for poor: Why would we think that telework might have an impact on income and economic growth? Nilles (1998) suggests that telework can improve the organizational efficiency of firms and the efficiency of working between firms and individuals. Teleworking can make a substantial contribution to sustainable growth by:* Assisting economic development, for example, through increasing staff productivity and enabling better utilization of office space.* Assisting the social objectives of sustainable development by, for example, reducing the stress often associated with travel and balancing work with family life, or by providing work opportunities to those who might otherwise be excluded, such as the disabled or people looking after children or elderly relatives.* Reducing ecological impacts, for example, by avoiding the need for travel to work locations or meetings.Adopting telework for poor implies changes in the financial costs of organizations, and the disposal income of individuals, influences overall expenditure and saving patterns and therefore the broader economy. The potential benefits of teleworking can be classified into:* Benefits for teleworkers: improved productivity, improved skills and concentration, fewer distractions and interruptions, more comfortable environment, more personal and family time, reduction in travel time, saving money. Bailey and Kurland (2002) found answers for questions like why individuals telework and what happen when they do. They further concluded that work/life balance is indeed a benefit of telework but that the effect is primarily a benefit for \"dual-career\" families.* Benefits for the community: less traffic and less pollution, flexibility in choosing where we live and work, more job opportunities, more efficient use of public resources (Ruppel and Howard, 1998b).* Benefits for the organization: improved productivity, less absenteeism, more self-reliant and happier staff, easier recruitment of staff, staff retention, savings in office space and cost (Morgan, 2004).Morgan (2004) explores the teleworking means of flexible working and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of teleworking. Similarly, Siha and Monroe (2006) explore the literature to identify the substantive work and examine the failure and success factors. Pulido and Lopez (2005) analyse telework in the companies, which belong to the information technology sector. They analyse the tasks carried out through telework, the form is which they are carried out, both the individual tasks and the shared ones, the methods used for exchanging results, the changes brought about by telework in the realization of those tasks and the coordination and assignment problems involved in telework. Illegems et al. (2001) report the empirical findings of a survey conducted among firms in Brussels, the Belgian and EU capital. They identified the drivers and constraints relevant to the implementation of teleworking in the Brussels business environment. Kowalski and Swanson (2005) provide a framework of critical success factors for practitioners and employees looking to develop new or enhance existing telework programs. Such critical factors at the organizational, managerial, and employee level include support, communication, and trust that are instrumental in developing telework programs. Finally, Perez et al. (2005) analyse the differences between teleworking adopters and non-adopters regarding the use of ICTs.4.1 Proposed telework taxonomy for the poor\n5. The teleworking framework for the poor: Bernardino et al. (1993) have proposed a conceptual framework for modelling the implementation process of teleworking. This framework includes all the elements that may influence the two-tiered individual's decision process to telework. This conceptual framework can be adapted for serving the various types of poor teleworkers of the proposed telework taxonomy. It is worth noticing that such adaptations can lead to new specific conceptual frameworks for each type of poor teleworkers of the proposed telework taxonomy. Hereafter, we aim to consider this framework from poor's viewpoint. Adopting telework is an individual's decision, which is made in complex environment. From the firm's viewpoint, teleworking will be only be offered as an option to the individual worker, if a minimum set of technological, institutional, and organizational requirements is fulfilled. If this minimum level is respected, then the individual poor worker will only consider teleworking if he/she is dissatisfied with one or mode aspects of non-telework life, or if a number of drivers to adopt the practice are present. Therefore, the ultimate choice to telework or not is potentially influenced by a variety of drivers and constraints. In the following, we describe the different components of the basic conceptual framework under the prism of the poverty.5.1 The environment for the poor\n6. Conclusion and future work: This paper has placed poverty at the centre of its inquiry into telework. Since teleworking rollout might be a (sometime) causal factor behind economic growth, it might be safe to conclude that \"teleworking rollout is good for the poor\". However, the strength of that relationship will be greatly influenced by the direction of the teleworking rollout - does it provide access to all, or only to the rich? The potential benefits of access to the poor (for teleworking) can only be realized if that access is present. Historically this has not been the case with access focused on an urban elite. The poor have limited resources to pay for teleworking, and they are shut out wholly of teleworking facilities. Thus, while teleworking might offer great opportunities for the poor in rural areas to expand earnings potentials, its relative scarcity among these same groups suggests the possibility of greater inequality.The decision of poor people of whether or not to telework is influenced by a variety of technological, institutional, and organizational elements. In this paper, we gained a number of insights (shown in the following) into the organizational drivers of - and barriers to - the implementation of teleworking for the poor:* The diversity of poor teleworkers, based on the proposed telework taxonomy, should be acknowledged and integrated into future empirical research.* Recognizing the heterogeneity of telework and poor teleworkers provides a basis for developing a deeper understanding of telework from a range of micro and macro perspectives - from the personal characteristics needed to be a successful poor teleworker, to the ways in which telework can be viewed as a strategic element in the human resource management plans.* The conceptual framework, proposed by Bernardino et al. (1993), for modeling the implementation process of teleworking, can be adapted for serving the various types of poor teleworkers of the proposed telework taxonomy for poor. Such adaptations can lead to new conceptual frameworks for each type of poor teleworkers.* Technological infrastructure in poor communities would need to be improved to facilitate greater access to telework.* The state should ensure that rural and poor areas benefit from teleworking as part of the sustainable human development process.* Limited access to appropriate telecommunications and other infrastructure, such as banking services, are key constraints for poor teleworkers.* Knowledge sharing in telework must often be accomplished while taking into account the planning and formality necessary to accommodate interactions with others over geographical distances (Allen and Renn, 2003; Golden, 2007).Telework can provide employment for the disabled, poor, people in remote locations and other disadvantaged groups. As other opportunities may be limited, this can prevent them from falling below the poverty line. However, the small percentage of the population teleworking limits the overall impact.Poor need an active policy stance covering use, training, and teleworking development aimed specifically at the poor. If not, it is possible that teleworking will also be a force for income divergence. The most helpful policy tool to encourage teleworking is likely to be the distribution of information on \"best practices\". Given the barriers mentioned previously, it is likely that such a program would be both complex and very expensive. Depending on one's view of the benefits of teleworking for the poor (including teleworkers, community, and organization) in poor countries, this program could be the interruption from more important priorities or a critical step towards equality of opportunity.In the near future, we will explore the empirical validation of the proposed telework taxonomy for poor. Future empirical research should examine (by guiding the formulation of hypotheses) whether there are statistically significant differences among fixed-site poor teleworkers, poor flexiworkers, and poor mobile teleworkers of LDCs and HDCs in terms of individual worker characteristics (i.e. educational attainment, patterns of occupational classification, age, gender), organizational context (i.e. in terms of their organizations: size, complexity, innovativeness, extent of paperless information, provision of networked electronic resources), technological context, and work environment impacts (i.e. computer-based monitoring, influence over their job, job satisfaction, productivity, or job-related stress).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to examine evidence in order to discover if teleworking has a pro-poor growth impact - reducing inequality. For this reason, the paper seeks to propose a telework taxonomy for the poor and research questions that trigger future empirical research on poor teleworkers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper's approach is a literature review. The focused literature includes articles that analyze telework issues with a potential for the poor. Such issues are mainly workforce and organizational issues.\nFindings: - There is some evidence that provision of teleworking infrastructure has a dramatic effect on the income and quality of life of the rural poor. Special knowledge management tasks and types of telework can be proper for poor people. Economic and organizational aspects of telecentres for poor workers must be analyzed in depth.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper provides a foundation for future research directions in the teleworking domain for the poor. For instance, the discussed implementation aspects of teleworking and the proposed telework taxonomy for the poor as well as the proposed research questions could be used to explore effective penetration of teleworking in poor countries. New conceptual frameworks for implementing telework for the poor can be generated.\nPractical implications: - An overview is provided of which issues/prerequisites are being considered most broadly and which might provide the most potential for policy makers/managers fighting poverty by using telework.\nOriginality/value: - The paper contributes to the teleworking literature by analyzing how telework can be pro-poor. It provides a useful overview of the topic. It proposes a telework taxonomy for the poor and three research questions that trigger future empirical research on poor teleworkers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The relationship between network capabilities and innovation performance: Evidence from Chinese high-tech industry
|
[
"Innovation",
"Resource-based view",
"Innovation",
"Network capabilities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A firm situated within a network can acquire complimentary assets and resources from its network partners (Dyer and Singh, 1998; Kale et al., 2000; Levin and Cross, 2004). In particular, the knowledge sharing and learning routines between network partners can contribute to the firm's ability to innovate (Tsai, 2001; Cooke, 2006). Previous research in strategic management theory has introduced the concept of network resources (Dyer and Singh, 1998; Gulati, 1999; Gulati et al., 2000), which can be described as the source of a firm's competitive advantage (Barney, 1992; Madhok and Tallman, 1998). However, competitive advantages cannot be generated by resources alone. They are contingent on the ways through which resources are effectively exploited and deployed, and these require specific capabilities (Grant, 1991; Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). Consequently, it is believed that firms situated within innovation networks require specific capabilities to better exploit network resources for enhancing and improving their innovation performance.\n2. Theory and hypotheses: 2.1 Network capabilities\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. Results: 4.1 Scale assessment and preliminary analyses\n5. Discussions and conclusion: In an innovation network, a firm's network capabilities serve as enablers of value appropriation from a network. The empirical results of this study show that each type of network capability has a positive impact on a firm's innovation performance. Previous studies, drawing from both social network theory and strategic management theory, have argued that interconnected firms are superior to independent firms. By integrating these two theoretical areas, and identifying the precise source of a networked firm's competitive advantage, the concept of network resources (Dyer and Singh, 1998; Gulati, 1999; Gulati et al., 2000) corroborates this argument. Moreover, the results of the current study further extend this insight by suggesting that network capability enables firms to generate rents that are latent within network resources. The finding of this study is consistent with that of Ritter (1999) and Ritter et al. (2002), which suggested that possessing network management capabilities improves a firm's innovation performance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Innovation networks provide an efficient mechanism for organizations to realize their potential for knowledge learning and innovation improvement. Firms situated within innovation networks require specific abilities to acquire the knowledge and the complementary assets that facilitate their innovation performance. Motivated by recent research studies in the area of social network and RBV, the purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the precise manner in which network capability affects a firm's innovation performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the data obtained from Chinese high-tech firms, the hypotheses are tested by using hierarchical multiple regressions.\nFindings: This study identifies two types of network capabilities: network structural capability and network relational capability. The findings suggest that network structural capability has a greater positive impact on innovation performance than network relational capability does within an exploration-orientated network. However, network relational capability is more positively associated with innovation performance within an exploitation-orientated network.\nPractical implications: A firm can enhance the value of its ego network by shaping and adjusting network configurations, rather than by passively reaping the benefits from existing relationships or ties with partners.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to strategic management theory and social network theory by illustrating how a networked firm can enable network value and appropriate this value according to its strategic purposes and by suggesting that a firm can improve its ego network's value through exerting its network capabilities to shape and adjust network configurations. This paper also advances the contingent approach within social network research by offering a new complementary perspective and new evidence from a Chinese context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: The mediating effect of empathy and service climate
|
[
"Servant leadership",
"Empathy",
"Service climate",
"Organizational citizenship behavior",
"Hospitality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: There is currently great interest in leadership as a process of social influence because its effectiveness is critical for economic, political and organizational success. In linking leadership to effectiveness, leadership has been linked to ethics, giving rise to different leadership concepts such as servant leadership (Brownell, 2010). This concept, coined by Greenleaf (1977), emphasizes service to others, especially fulfillment of followers' needs, as a critical element to create more human organizations and, in turn, induce the best from followers, and thus, build successful organizations. This leadership approach is a growing area in recent management research; yet has received little in-depth study in the hospitality industry (Wu et al., 2013). Thus, scholars continue to call for further research on this leadership approach and its positive outcomes in the hospitality industry (Chon and Zoltan, 2019), a call to which this paper aims to respond.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: 2.1 Servant leadership and employee organizational citizenship behavior\n3. Methodology: To test these relationships, a survey instrument was designed to gather data in the hospitality industry located in historic cities in Spain. These cities are home to a type of tourism (i.e. cultural tourism) that is unique in the Spanish tourism landscape for the high-quality service it is expected to offer (Richards, 2007). Cultural tourism, typical of historic cities, attracts tourists who are cultured and expect to receive a plus in the service received (McKercher and Du Cros, 2002). Thus, given the need to offer a high-quality service, the hotel industry in historic cities is likely to benefit from having servant leaders in managerial roles. In addition, because Spain is a society where power distance is relatively high, employees may willingly accept the presence of autocratic supervisors (Hofstede Center, 1967, 2010), so Spain appears to be an interesting cultural context to analyze the workplace outcomes of a different leadership style such as servant leadership.\n4. Results: Table II shows composite reliability (rc) and Cronbach's alpha values above the 0.70 cut-offs (Hair et al., 2006) and reflects that the average variance extracted (AVE) for each construct exceeds the 0.50 threshold, thus supporting convergent validity (Hair et al., 2006). Table II also shows the correlations between the variables (individual and group level) and the intraclass correlation index (ICC) of individual-level variables (employee empathy, employee OCB). The ICCs of individual-level variables (empathy = 0.215; OCB = 0.276) indicate that high percentages of the total variance of these variables is caused by between-group variability, thus confirming that group-level predictors (supervisor servant leadership, group service climate) may explain such variability.\n5. Discussion and conclusions: 5.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to process underlying the relationship between supervisor servant leadership and employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in hotels. Specifically, it analyzes the mediating role of empathy - individual level - and service climate - group level - in the relationship between supervisor servant leadership and employee OCB.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis uses original data on hotels located in historic cities in Spain. A survey provided a sample of 343 work-group-level (supervisors) and 835 individual-level (employee) from a sample of 171 hotels.\nFindings: The most interesting finding is the indirect effect of supervisor servant leadership on employee OCB through the mediating role of both employee empathy - individual level - and group service climate - group level.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that hotel supervisors should adopt servant leadership to enhance OCB in their workgroups. This paper also provides insights into other ways to increase employee OCB, namely, through human resources initiatives that enhance employee empathy and shape a service climate within groups.\nOriginality/value: This paper is one of the few that analyzes the relationships between supervisor servant leadership, employee empathy, group service climate and employee OCB in a unifying cross-level model. It is also the first to analyze employee empathy as a positive outcome of supervisor servant leadership, as well as a mechanism to explain the relationship between servant leadership and employee OCB. Finally, it is one of the few studies that analyzes all these relationships in conjunction within the hospitality industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Teaching sustainable and integrated resource management using an interactive nexus model
|
[
"Environmental modelling",
"Interactive teaching",
"Resource interconnectivity",
"Teaching system dynamics",
"Water",
"Energy and land nexus"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The discourse in sustainable development covers increasingly complex themes. The most prominent example in recent years is the increased awareness of the importance of the interconnections among major resource systems, all of which are complex in their own right. The Water, Energy and Food nexus (also called the Water, Energy and Land (WEL) Nexus, or simply the Nexus) represents a way of thinking about these connections and their feedback loops.\n2. Background to the Foreseer model: The Foreseer project started as an analysis of global energy systems (Cullen and Allwood, 2010) and expanded to include water (Curmi et al., 2013a), land and greenhouse gas emissions (Bajzelj et al., 2013). Its website implementation (Allwood et al., 2012), however, focuses on the connections between water, energy and land systems. For example, agricultural activity is an integral part of the land system and is also linked to corresponding demands in the water and energy systems, for irrigation water and for the energy needed in mechanisation and fertiliser production. These connections are treated in the whole resource context - for example, Foreseer is not only concerned with the water footprint of a particular technology, but the complete picture of the water system. This includes the source of water, the stages it goes through before reaching its use and the alternative uses and trade-offs.\n3. Methodology: To be used in teaching, the Foreseer user interface was set at a level of complexity that was deemed appropriate for student interaction over a limited time period. Four scenarios were designed to be run by students in their own time and at their own pace. The scenarios were designed to explore the problem of unsustainable groundwater use in California, the factors contributing to this and the opportunities for mitigation. This theme emerged as critical through our implementation of Foreseer to California (Curmi et al., 2013b). The four scenarios explored the impacts of:\n4. Results: Student performance (success rate) was assessed by analysing the questionnaire responses in relation to our own knowledge of the expected answers when specific requirements were set in the scenarios. While this is interesting for several reasons discussed here, the real results of this exercise were the learning outcomes for both the students and the researchers. These can only partially be measured by the success rate. Our assessment of learning outcomes is, therefore, rather preliminary, based on anecdotal evidence from both groups.\n5. Conclusions: bridging the gap between research and teaching: This exercise presented a valuable opportunity for an exchange of knowledge and experience between researchers and students. It may not always be possible to integrate research and teaching activities in a university, particularly in an interactive and participatory manner. One barrier to such exchanges may often be that the research deemed appropriate for scientific purposes is highly specialised and narrow. The Foreseer model, by contrast, is highly inter-disciplinary and, therefore, complex in a different sense; however, it was considered suitable for introduction to students who appear to have been well able to cope with its form of complexity. In our case study, researchers were motivated to contribute to the curriculum so as to gain a \"user study\", and because the visual and cognitive aspects of the model are very important, the opinion of the students was very helpful. In the end, therefore, this exercise proved to be a very helpful way to connect the two main dimensions of higher education, research and teaching and to the benefit of both.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to enhance and complement teaching about resource system feedbacks and environmental modelling. Students were given an interactive exercise based on a research model (ForeseerTM), developed by an inter-disciplinary research team, that explores the interconnectivity of water, energy and land resources. Two groups of students were involved, one of undergraduates and the other of graduates.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The Foreseer model represents physical flows of the three resources (water, energy and land) using an interactive visual interface. The exercise was set up by giving students short instructions about how to use the tool to create four scenarios, and an online questionnaire was used to capture their understanding and their ability to extract information from the model.\nFindings: The exercise proved to be a helpful way to connect research and teaching in higher education, to the benefit of both. For students, it was an interactive and engaging way to learn about these complex sustainability issues. At the same time, it provided tangible feedback to researchers working on the model about the clarity of its user interface and its pedagogic value.\nOriginality/value: This exercise represents a novel use of a resource model as a teaching tool in the study of the water, energy and land nexus, and is relevant to sustainability educators as an example of a model-centred learning approach on this topic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analysis of hotels' environmentally sustainable policies and practices: Sustainability and corporate social responsibility in hospitality and tourism
|
[
"Hotels",
"Sustainability",
"Environment",
"Hotel websites",
"Policies and practices"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The consequences of climate change and environmental degradation have created an imperative for industries to adopt and implement environmentally sustainable policies and practices (ESPPs). ESPPs are the basic principles, guidelines and practices formulated to assist an organisation in pursuit of its environmental management goals (Kraft, 2017). Policy is a statement of intent and purpose and is used to articulate the vision and objectives of the business (Wildavsky, 2017). It clarifies the actions that an organisation intends to undertake and guides the practices and decision-making for all dimensions of business operations, including ESPPs (Weimer and Vining, 2017). Policy communicates the desired corporate direction, providing guidance and a point of reference to managers and their organisations (Birkland, 2015). Policy statements relating to ESPPs are, therefore, indicative of the relative importance placed on environmental protection by companies. Practices, on the other hand, are acts of undertaking activities to implement policy or the intentions declared in the policy (Carroll and Shabana, 2010).\nLiterature review: The contribution of the travel and tourism industry to global GDP (9.6 per cent) and employment (>272 million jobs) attests to its significant impact on economic and social settings worldwide (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2015). The World Travel and Tourism Council (2017) forecasts that over the next 10 years travel and tourism will contribute US$11tn to global GDP and support 347 million jobs worldwide. In Australia, around $8bn of revenue is generated yearly by the hotel sector (Cloutman, 2018).\nMethodology: This study sought to examine the extent of reporting of ESPPs on hotel websites as a measure of potential adoption of these policies and practices by hotels. Informed by stakeholder theory (Freeman and Reed, 1983) and relevant literature (Hsieh, 2012), the extent to which hotels disseminate environmental information on hotel websites to stakeholders is considered a useful data source in relation to their ESPP actions and commitment.\nFindings: The findings of the content analysis of Melbourne hotel websites are presented in Tables I-VI. Table I details the summary of star categories of the hotels and the breakdown of these into chain-affiliated and independent hotels. Table II contains the sustainability information showcased on the individual hotel's own website, while Table III illustrates the sustainability information of all chain-affiliated hotels only on their corporate website. Table IV outlines the sustainability information of all non-chain affiliated independent hotels on their own websites and Table V displays combined information on the chain-affiliated hotel's corporate website and non-chain affiliated hotel's own website. Finally, Table VI contains detailed information on the various focus areas of environmental sustainability.\nDiscussion: The findings suggest that the majority of hotels sampled in Melbourne, Australia, continue to use their websites primarily to communicate their role as accommodation providers and to market their businesses. Of these 220 hotels, only 26 per cent included any environmental-related information on their websites (Table V). As a marketing tool, hotel websites have tremendous potential to effectively communicate products and services and to nurture customer relationships (Li et al., 2015). Of the hotels that did include environmental-related information on their websites, the majority were 4 or 5 star establishments, suggesting that reporting of ESPPs is currently mainly confined to high-end hotels. This tentative association (that the larger and more highly rated operators have an apparent greater interest in sustainability) is entirely consistent with the limited previous research (Hsieh, 2012).\nConclusion: The purpose of this study has been to analyse the ESPPs of 220 Melbourne hotels as disclosed on their websites, thereby discerning the extent to which hotels disseminate their ESPPs to stakeholders using their websites and their major focus areas in relation to ESPPs. The research revealed that the major focus areas of environmental sustainability for the hotel properties sampled were waste management, water conservation, energy efficiency, environmental education for guests and employees and sustainable sourcing.\nTheoretical implications: By extending the examination of hotel ESPPs beyond large chain-affiliated hotels as the focus of previous studies (Hsieh, 2012), the current study has identified the extent to which ESPPs are adopted across the hotel sector, contextualised to the study location of Melbourne, Australia. This adoption was not homogenous and varied based on chain affiliated or independent hotel, corporate or individual property and star rating, suggestive of sector-wide variance in the levels of commitment to the implementation of ESPPs.\nPractical implications: This preliminary study further demonstrates that web-based environmental reporting by hotels is a challenge for many and there is a particular need for small and independent hotels to embrace environmental sustainability to keep pace with their larger counterparts. The implications of not doing so lie in the fact that over coming years, guests will likely become more conscious of and educated about the environment, and may base their decisions to stay at a hotel centred on its environmental sustainability policy along with other factors they consider when booking. Once hotels understand the benefits of ESPPs, including increased long-term profits (Doppelt, 2017) and the positive image creation that can come from being viewed as being a responsible business in the minds of the stakeholders, ESPPs will be implemented by many more hotels (Carroll and Shabana, 2010). Hotels that fail to heed this message risk losing market share and reputational damage.\nLimitations and future research: There were several limitations of this study. A major limitation is that the hotel websites researched may not display all of their ESPPs. In the process of collecting data for this study, information on environmental sustainability on hotel websites was not easily accessible and was often difficult to find. It was usually located via a link on the bottom of the homepage. It raises questions as to whether potential customers and stakeholders are taking the time and effort to find this obscured information - potentially not. Some stakeholders may interpret the hidden nature of the information as conflicting with the vision and values of the hotels regarding environmental sustainability. Further research that tracks through website visitation statistics on how consumers engage with this material would also make for a worthwhile study.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to present the findings of an analysis of the environmentally sustainable policies and practices (ESPPs) used by independent and chain-affiliated hotels. The study aimed to ascertain the engagement of hotels with ESPPs and provide tentative evidence of their commitment towards meeting the expectations of environmentally conscious stakeholders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used secondary data and content analysis to examine the ESPPs of a sample of 220 hotels in Melbourne, Australia. A systematic review was conducted of hotel websites to reveal, in a tabulated way, the range of reporting of environmental material provided by various rated hotels.\nFindings: This analysis suggests that environmentally friendly business practices are prominently displayed by the hotels sampled; however, independent non-chain affiliated hotels are yet to adopt ESPPs in any visible way.\nOriginality/value: This study was broadly informed by stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) and aimed to ascertain the engagement of hotels with ESPPs. While previous studies have focussed on chain hotels, this research involved a greater range of hotels of different profiles to highlight the mix of ESPPs across the hotel sector. Rather than merely examining the corporate websites of hotel companies, the research additionally examined ESPPs at the individual hotel property level, as this is where policies are implemented into practice. The extant literature to date has not studied the extent to which ESPPs are adopted by independent and chain-affiliated hotels at this level, and it is this research gap that the study addresses.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A model to align strategy formulation and implementation in higher education institutions in Brazil
|
[
"Scenarios",
"Strategic alignment",
"Strategy formulation",
"Implementation of strategy",
"Set theory"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Background: The paper attempts two tasks. First, to make a non-specific (generic) contribution to the formulation of strategy and its implementation in Brazil's higher education institutions (HEIs). Second, to demonstrate the use of set theory as a tool for scenario building as a part of strategy formulation and implementation. The paper attacks these two tasks through five parts, through the evolution of a non-specific qualitative (generic) model illustrated through 17 factors (elements) implicated generally neither exclusively nor specifically in strategy formulation and implementation. The five parts are:\n2. Part 1 historical review: 2.1 Introduction\n3. Part 2 scenarios and sets: 3.1 Origins\n4. Part 3 how the study was done: 4.1 Research design\n5. Phase I construction of Venn diagram: In Step 1 the 17 obstacles (elements) were derived and formulated from the learning program referred to in the introduction and are listed in Table II: their derivation is shown in Table I (obstacles to effective strategy implementation).\n6. Phase II - how the Venn diagram was confirmed: In Step 4 a questionnaire seeking confirmation of the Venn diagram was circulated to a group of knowledgeable respondents in Brazil and abroad.\n7. Phase III construction of scenarios: Step 7 is where the scenarios are written using the outcomes of Steps 1-6. As a reminder, these steps included the identification and description of 17 elements relevant to strategy formulation and implementation in Brazil's HEIs Each element was described and their descriptions were tested, through an opinion survey, based on a group of local and international respondents. Subsequently, the elements were grouped into four intersecting sets, embedded in a defined entire set. As indicated earlier in Part 2 decisions regarding the number of scenarios to present and their time horizons are fundamental to their use to promote discussion of future events and coping strategies. The positioning of the scenario content in relation to existing \"world views\" that characterize the \"region of indifference\" is important as shown in Figure 1. There is no implication of good or bad about positions on either side of the region of indifference, but there are simply different stories to be told. Combining these needs two scenarios, called reality and expectation, avoid the \"region of indifference\" and are located according to the indications set out in Figure 1. Each scenario is written for three time steps (notionally 2015-2018, 2019-2022 and 2023-2026) with the scenario content setting out the state at the end of each interval.\n8. Phase IV construction of the proposed model: The purpose of the proposed model is to offer guidance for the preparation of scenarios specifically for Brazil's HEIs with respect to the formulation and implementation of the strategy: the latter is a severe task as already referred to earlier (Part 1). In this sense, the model is generic and not specific. Storylines about a future situation is a form of a play: scenarios are the skeletons of a play, an imagination of a complicated or complex future situation. They need to cope with the roles of individual actors, coherent groups of actors and the roles of individual actors within the coherent groups as they form and reform over the life of a situation. The guidance proposed here is in the form of a \"model\" (models come in many different forms of which a play is one) that is no more than a first step into embodying the roles of actors. In the present instance the model only partially represents the dynamism involved in the situations posed by the formulation and implementation of strategy as its structure is fixed but its behavior is not, as evidenced by the reality and expectation scenarios. With these points in mind formulation of the model proceeds as follows for the present situation of an HEI in Brazil.\n9. Outcome: Both the objectives of the study have, in specific and general ways, been met. The two objectives are interlocked in as much as to make a contribution to the formulation of strategy and its implementation in Brazil's HEIs depended on the use of scenarios. The scenarios themselves demonstrated the use of simple set theory as a tool for scenario building as a consequence of the use of a model derived from a Venn diagram. Two models were created and used in the study. The first was autopoietic being concerned with 17 elements relating to the alignment of strategy formulation and implementation as a closed system within Brazil's HEIs. In the second and partial model, the autopoietic model was buried within notions of the socio-economic and political background in Brazil that influence HEIs. The focus of the study was on the first model: the second was an unintended outgrowth of the study that gives rise to the need for further research.\n10. Epilogue: As suggested earlier storylines about future situations are a form of theatre in which a scenario provides the skeleton of the play, an imagination of a complicated or complex future situation. Scenarios need to cope with the roles of individual actors, coherent groups of actors and the roles of individual actors within the coherent groups as they form and reform over the life of the situation. As for playwrights, there are many and often idiosyncratic ways of writing storylines. However, there are also strong similarities so that claims for one approach rather than another become ever more ephemeral particularly to their likely veracity or occurrence. All scenarios need two functions above all others: the ability to shift opinion relating to power to shape the future and to shape the future of power. To achieve this, scenario writers need an appreciation of situations in breadth and depth, with a focus on learning (how to learn), thinking (how to think) and numeracy [Number, Units, Spread, Assessment and Pedigree (NUSAP) (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990)], with emphasis more on ignorance than knowledge. Throughout it needs to be remembered that it is the audience's response to the scenarios that confirm (or otherwise) their effectiveness in shifting opinions and their representation in formulating strategy. These were some of the lessons that came out of the study.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create ways of improving the alignment of strategy formulation and implementation in Brazil's higher education institutions (HEIs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Evolution of scenarios and models through a 12-step process to assist strategy formulation and implementation for managerial/social activity in Brazil's HEIs. Simple set theory was used as a backbone to assist scenario building. Two models were created. First, focused on an autopoietic model relating to Brazil's HEIs. The second embedded the autopoietic model in a limited number of forces in Brazil that influence the HEIs but lie beyond their control. The process was corroborated by survey methods using respondents from Brazil and elsewhere.\nFindings: In total, 22 respondents from within and outside Brazil confirmed the content of the scenarios while a small sample from within Brazil's HEIs confirmed their usefulness in assisting strategy formulation and implementation.\nPractical implications: Further experience in using the autopoietic model is needed to widen its corroboration beyond experience in this study.\nOriginality/value: Confirmation of a 12-step scenario-based process for strategy formulation and implementation and corroboration of its usefulness through a limited sample of respondents.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Information asymmetry and dividend policy of Sarbanes-Oxley Act
|
[
"Information shocks",
"Information asymmetry",
"Dividend policy",
"Corporate financial decisions",
"Sarbanes-Oxley act"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The agency problem between corporate insiders (i.e. managers) and outside shareholders over dividend policy is triggered by the presence of asymmetric information between both parties (See the survey of Allen and Michaely, 2003). Managers might take decisions that do not maximize shareholder's wealth to benefit themselves privately, especially when outside shareholders do not have complete information about the managers' behavior (La Porta et al., 2000). Accordingly, when information asymmetry is high and outside shareholders cannot monitor managerial decisions, dividend payments are expected to decrease (Koo et al., 2017). Another explanation to the relationship between information asymmetry and dividend policy is the pecking order theory, that was developed by Myers and Majluf (1984) who theorize that, under high levels of asymmetric information, managers will have to finance their investments at a high cost (i.e. shareholders offer low prices for issued equity and creditors require high interest rates for issued debt). Therefore, to avoid costly financing, managers prefer to retain cash inside the firm instead of paying dividends. Concurrently, prior studies have shown that, if managers increase dividend payments, then investors are pacified, and accordingly, the level of information asymmetry falls significantly (DeAngelo et al., 2008). Therefore, a reverse causal relationship exists between information asymmetry and dividend policy, which creates an empirical challenge to researchers. We endeavor to overcome this econometric challenge by employing an information shock to the US capital market as a source of an exogenous variation in the level of information asymmetry to study the potential effect that this variation has on the dividend policy.In principal, information asymmetry arises when insider managers know more about the fundamental value of the firm and its investing activities than outside investors do (Miller and Rock, 1985). A main recurring challenge in empirically studying information asymmetry is the endogeneity concern stemming from unobservable managerial intentions and decisions which affect corporate financial decision making, including the dividend policy (Easterbrook, 1984). Thus, studying the relationship between information asymmetry and dividend policy is also prone to omitted variable bias because managerial intentions affect both variables. Researchers have tried to control for managerial intentions through including variables that proxy for corporate governance and financial reporting quality; however, such controls do not completely capture managerial intentions especially when cross-sectional heterogeneity is high. Moreover, some studies find that investors demand less dividend payments when information asymmetry is low because they are more assured about the wealth they invested in the firm (Hail et al., 2014). As such, the relationship between information asymmetry and dividend policy stays ambiguous and is worth to be tested empirically in different contexts.In this paper, we try to overcome the above-mentioned empirical challenges, by studying how the dividend policy reacts to changes in information asymmetry in a roughly exogenous research setting. Specifically, we employ a difference-in-differences research design that examines the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act, which was enacted in the US in 2002, on the level of information asymmetry. The SOX act was designed to diminish the existing information gap between managers and shareholders. The act mandated chief officers (CEOs and CFOs in specific) to approve and sign the annual reports disclosed by their companies and imposed severe penalties and sanctions on managers in case these reports do not fairly represent the firm's financial position. Moreover, all public companies were required to have an audit committee that is comprised of independent directors as a part of the board of directors. Finally, the SOX act created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to oversee, regulate, inspect, and discipline auditing firms in their financial monitoring role. As a result, corporate governance and financial disclosure have improved significantly following the SOX act (Coates, 2007).We first hypothesize that the benefits that SOX brings to the corporate environment, specifically the improved corporate governance and financial disclosure, are expected to mitigate the level of information asymmetry between corporate insiders and outside shareholders (DeAngelo et al., 2008). When information asymmetry is mitigated, the agency theory predicts that the managerial discretion over corporate financial decisions will decrease. Therefore, managers will pay the generated profits as dividends rather that expropriating them by investing in projects that do not maximize shareholders value. In addition, the pecking order theory posits that lower information asymmetry facilitates external financing, which assures managers of the ease of raising funds at a relatively low cost to finance ongoing and potential investments. Thus, managers will pay more dividends rather than retaining earnings inside the firm. As such, our second hypothesis predicts that the dividend payments will increase following the enactment of the SOX act among US firms.To examine the change in the variables of interest, we employ a difference-in-differences research design in which the treatment group is US publicly traded firms that were exposed to the policy while the control group is a set of public firms listed in the UK The reasoning behind selecting the UK as a control group is that the capital markets in both countries are similar to a great extent (La Porta et al., 1998). Specifically, both countries have similar institutional settings, investor's protection, and enforcement of laws, which makes the selection of the UK as a control group a plausible decision (Ferreira de Mendonca et al., 2012; Leuz and Wysocki, 2016).Using a sample of US and UK public firms between 1997 and 2007, we show that the level of information asymmetry declined significantly in the US following the SOX enactment as compared to the reduction in the level of information asymmetry among UK firms. More importantly, we find that dividend payments increased after 2002 among US firms as compared to UK firms. To gain further confidence in our results, and to attribute the increase in dividend payments to the reduction in asymmetric information, we perform a subsample analysis in which we show that firms with higher information asymmetry ex ante witness a greater reduction in their asymmetric information, and accordingly, increase their dividend payments more following SOX. Our results are robust to falsification tests that examine whether similar changes took place prior to the SOX enactment (i.e. testing for a common trend). Moreover, we examine whether the effect of the SOX act kicked off immediately post-2002. The results show an immediate reduction in information asymmetry and increase in dividend payments following the act. Overall, our findings contribute to the financial economics literature by showing how a lower level of information asymmetry protects outside shareholders by enhancing their monitoring ability and increasing their dividend payments.The next section reviews the literature on information asymmetry, dividend policy as well as the evaluation of the SOX act. Section 3 develops the hypotheses to be tested. Section 4 discusses the research methodology. Section 5 explains the sample selection and presents descriptive statistics. Section 6 shows the results and section 7 concludes.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Information asymmetry in corporations\n3. Hypotheses development: 3.1 The Sarbanes-Oxley act and information asymmetry\n4. Research methodology: As mentioned earlier, to identify the treatment effect of the SOX act on the level of information asymmetry, and accordingly, on dividend payments, we utilize a difference-in-differences methodology (Bargeron et al., 2010; Chemin and Sayour, 2016; Kang and Kim, 2010; Sayour, 2019). In doing so, we assign all US public firms that were exposed to the SOX act to the treatment group and all publicly listed UK firms to the control group. The similarity between both capital markets in terms of their institutional settings and enforcement of laws makes UK firms a suitable control group for US firms (Ball et al., 2000). We exclude the year 2002 from the analysis as it is a transitory year (Hong et al., 2014), especially that the SOX act was enacted in August 2002 and more than 90% of US firms report their financial statements by the end of the calendar year. As such, we expect to find a change in information asymmetry and dividend payments among the US firms following the SOX act, compared to the change in the same variables among UK firms. 4.1 Modelling information asymmetry\n5. Sample and descriptive statistics: 5.1 Sample selection\n6. Results: In each of the main regression analyses in Tables 4 and 5, we first run the corresponding equation using the control and treatment groups separately, and then we run the difference-in-differences regression. Then, in Table 6, we run a subsample analysis using US firms to examine whether firms with higher information asymmetry ex ante benefited more following the SOX act. Finally, in Tables 7 and 8, we run two robustness tests that examine (1) whether the observed change in the dependent variables had begun before the enactment of the SOX act and (2) whether the change in the dependent variables kicked off immediately after SOX. 6.1 Information asymmetry around SOX\n7. Conclusions: In this paper, we use the enactment of the SOX act in the US in 2002 as an exogenous variation in the level of information asymmetry among US public firms to examine an endogeneity-free relationship between dividend policy and information asymmetry. The agency theory and the pecking order theory predict that the conflicts over the dividend policy exacerbate when information asymmetry increases (Jensen, 1986; Myers and Majluf, 1984). As such, to the extent that the SOX act is supposed to enhance the information environment of firms and improve their corporate governance, we expect a reduction in the level of asymmetric information between managers and shareholders. A reduction in information asymmetry is supposed to enhance the monitoring capabilities of investors (agency theory) and facilitate external financing of investments by managers (pecking order theory), and accordingly, we expect managers to retain less cash inside their firms and increase dividend payments.We test these hypotheses using a difference-in-differences methodology where the US firms form the treatment group while the UK firms form the control group. We select the UK as the control group because SOX only affected the US capital market and due to the similarity of other factors that might affect the relationship between dividends and information asymmetry between both countries. The results show that, following the enactment of SOX, the level of asymmetric information decreased significantly, and this was accompanied with an increase in dividend payments among US firms relative to UK firms. Furthermore, we perform a subsample analysis in which we find that firms with higher information asymmetry in the pre-SOX period witness a greater reduction in the level of asymmetric information, and accordingly, increase their dividend payments more post-SOX. This finding makes us more confident in attributing the increase in dividend payments to the reduction in information asymmetry. Finally, we also provide evidence that the common time trend assumption holds in our dataset for the dependent variables prior to SOX. We also show that the SOX act influenced the dependent variables immediately after its enactment. It is worth mentioning that our methodology has some room for development. Despite that our difference-in-differences methodology mitigates bias concerns, future research can still employ alternative methods, such as the Improved Augmented Regression Method (Kim, 2014; Tsagkanos, 2017), to test whether the efficiency of the coefficient estimates can be improved further in a time-series modelling context given the small number of years in our sample.This paper contributes to the longstanding literature of financial economics that tackles the relationship between information asymmetry and dividend policy while utilizing an exogenous variation in the level of asymmetric information. The main conclusion of this study is that lower levels of asymmetric information reduce the tension between managers and investors and resolve conflicts over financing decisions. Our results might be of interest to policy makers who strive to minimize costs of financial transactions in capital markets and protect shareholders.Lastly, in our paper, we are interested not only in testing the relationship between information asymmetry and dividends around the SOX implementation, but also in providing an empirical evaluation of the effects of the SOX policy on information asymmetry and dividends. Future research might consider studying the long run relationship between information asymmetry and dividends which is of high interest to policy makers, investors, and academics. In addition, in our paper, we do not model nonlinearities. An interesting extension would be to try to allow for nonlinearities using a threshold cointegration as in Tsagkanos et al. (2019) and Tsagkanos and Siriopoulos (2015).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The literature of financial economics documents a causal relationship between the level of information asymmetry in the firm and its dividend policy. Nevertheless, this relationship suffers endogeneity problems arising from reverse causality and omitted variable bias. The purpose of this study is to examine how the dividend policy reacts to changes in asymmetric information in an exogenous research setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To overcome endogeneity concerns, the authors employ the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the US in 2002 as a source of an exogenous variation in the level of information asymmetry to study the potential effect that this variation might have on the dividend policy. In doing so, we utilize a difference-in-differences research design, in which the treatment group is US publicly traded firms that were exposed to the policy and the control group is publicly traded companies in the UK where SOX was not enacted. Both countries have similar institutional settings and enforcement of laws, which makes them comparable in this research context.\nFindings: The authors' findings show that, compared to UK companies, US firms increase their dividend payments following a reduction in asymmetric information as a result of the SOX enactment.\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to the literature of financial economics by showing that policy makers can mitigate agency conflicts and protect shareholders by improving the corporate information environment and reducing asymmetric information.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An optimal sampling method for web accessibility quantitative metric and its online extension
|
[
"Worldwide web",
"Quality assessment",
"Disabilities",
"Sampling method",
"Web accessibility evaluation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: With the onset of the World Wide Web, many new technologies have been developed to present information in various new ways, such as online shopping (Jyh-Shen et al., 2017; Mingyao et al., 2016) and online gaming (Devika and Sreejesh, 2017). These constantly emerging technologies also pose ongoing challenges for people with disability (Hackett and Parmanto, 2005). To help these people to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the webpages, Web Accessibility Initiative of W3C highlighted the importance of web accessibility in their guidelines, such as, WCAG2.0 (Abou-Zahra, 2007). These guidelines aim to improve the design of web content to make it accessible for disabled users either directly or through the use of assistant devices, such as screen readers (Hanson and Richards, 2013).\n2. Related work: In this part, we briefly review the related works about quantitative accessibility metrics and web page sampling methods for web accessibility evaluation.\n3. OPS-WAQM and its online extension: The objective of sampling methods in web accessibility evaluation is to reduce the evaluation cost because directly running evaluation on all pages in a website is prohibitively expensive. Existing web accessibility evaluations mainly employ general-purpose sampling methods such as ad hoc, uniform random, random walk and stratified sampling, etc. These sampling methods are metric independent. However, existing studies have already shown that the accuracy of sampling method depends heavily on the metric. To minimize the sampling error and obtain high sampling quality for web accessibility evaluation, we present a metric-dependent sampling method OPS-WAQM and its online extension in this section.\n4. Experiment: In this section, we evaluate the performance of our sampling method and its online extension on real web accessibility evaluation data sets. We perform the following two experiments: the sampling error experiment to compare the performance of our OPS-WAQM sampling method with multiple existing sampling methods; the online sampling experiment to show how the sampling errors will change as the number of crawled pages increases in the accessibility evaluation. We will start with data sets description.\n5. Conclusion and future works: In this paper, we propose a metric-specific sampling method for WAQM. As the accuracy of sampling methods depends heavily on the evaluation metrics, it is important to develop different sampling methods for different evaluation metrics. We exploit this insight in our minimal sampling error model for WAQM and use a greedy algorithm to approximately solve the optimization problem. Furthermore, to support quick accessibility evaluation, we also provide an online sampling extension for our OPS-WAQM method. The online extension sampling method may not only enable accessibility report on-the-go, but also reduce the huge I/O and storage costs. The experimental results on real world data sets show the effectiveness of our OPS-WAQM sampling method and its online extension.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: As existing studies show the accuracy of sampling methods depends heavily on the evaluation metric in web accessibility evaluation, the purpose of this paper is to propose a sampling method OPS-WAQM optimized for Web Accessibility Quantitative Metric (WAQM). Furthermore, to support quick accessibility evaluation or real-time website accessibility monitoring, the authors also provide online extension for the sampling method.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In the OPS-WAQM method, the authors propose a minimal sampling error model for WAQM and use a greedy algorithm to approximately solve the optimization problem to determine the sample numbers in different layers. To make OPS-WAQM online, the authors apply the sampling in crawling strategy.\nFindings: The sampling method OPS-WAQM and its online extension can both achieve good sampling quality by choosing the optimal sample numbers in different layers. Moreover, the online extension can also support quick accessibility evaluation by sampling and evaluating the pages in crawling.\nOriginality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, the sampling method OPS-WAQM in this paper is the first attempt to optimize for a specific evaluation metric. Meanwhile, the online extension not only greatly reduces the serious I/O issues in existing web accessibility evaluation, but also supports quick web accessibility evaluation by sampling in crawling.\n",
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Automated versus manual audit in the emergency department
|
[
"Data analysis",
"Auditing",
"Accident and emergency",
"Australia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Implementing clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) at Tamworth Rural Referral Hospital Emergency Department (ED) has been an effective means of increasing evidence-based practice (Doherty et al., 2007a,b; Doherty, 2007; Stevens, 2007). Paediatric CPGs (NSW Health, 2007) were developed by the Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC) during the statewide Children's Emergency Care Project (CECP). These CPGs were implemented in the ED and a concurrent strategy was developing an automated data collection form, TELEform(tm), to be completed by the attending medical officer, upon the patient's discharge from the department. The CPG and data collection form were designed to be incorporated into the patient's clinical record.TELEform(tm), an automated forms processing (AFP) tool, is an alternative method of collecting data that allows treating clinicians to enter data on a particular clinical indicator (CI) in real time. The TELEform(tm) software allows users to create forms for collecting data that can be automatically read using a fax machine or scanner. Data fields may include hand-written or typed text, or multiple choice question \"bubble\" fields. Once data are entered, clerical staff can fax the AFP data to a computer that automatically collates information and can make it available for other applications. This system may reduce the time required for auditing and theoretically may reduce recording errors, although there has been minimal research into AFP's role in medical data collection. The list below summarizes medical uses, AFP technology advantages and disadvantages (Davidson et al., 1996, Puskar et al., 1996, Shiffman et al., 1997, Shaw et al., 1999, O'Rourke et al., 1999, Zehnder et al., 2004, Jinks et al., 2003, Smyth et al., 1997, Hammer et al., 1993, Nies and Hain, 2000, Hardin et al., 2005):1. Uses:* Basic data entry for research, including multi-site projects, epidemiological studies and mail out of surveys.* Distance mental health screening.* Generation of computer-based patient records.* Introduction of bar-code readers for use in a microbiology lab.* Hospital infection surveillance programs.2. Advantages:* In house form design, can be tailored to the specific needs of the clinical setting, and easily revised.* Large amounts of data can be entered quickly, potentially saving time and cost.* Reduction in data collection error rates.* Ease of export to databases and statistical programs.* Facilitation of data collection from multiple sites and remote sites.* Minimal training required to attain proficiency.3. Disadvantages:* High set-up and training costs.* Initial form design is difficult and time consuming.* TELEform(tm) cannot deal with unconventional question formats.* Technical issues such as software upgrades, hardware failure, security of information over a shared network and compatibility with statistical programs.* Pre-scan checking is time consuming.* Administrative tasks such as unstapling (prior to scanning) and restapling remain time consuming.Published studies (Doherty et al., 2007a,b) on the effect of our CPG implementation relied on clinical record manual audit. There are a number of problems with manual auditing post discharge including time requirements, error rate, inter and intra-rater reliability, medical documentation quality and lost data. Most studies on implementing clinical guidelines rely on manual audit to determine CI compliance rates. If AFP is to be used by health service staff as part of their quality improvement programs then it is important to establish how AFP data correlates with manual audit data. It cannot be assumed that this new data collection system accurately reflects data collected by manual audit. To our knowledge, there has never been a direct comparison of compliance with CIs using both methods in the ED setting. The aim of this study, therefore, was to determine if ED clinical indicator data, collected by AFP, is similar to data collected by traditional manual audit.\nMethods: All paediatric patients (<16 years) presenting to and discharged from Tamworth Rural Referral Hospital between August 1st and 31st 2006 inclusive, with one of five illnesses for which CPGs are used, were included in the study. The illnesses were gastroenteritis, asthma, head injury, bronchiolitis and croup. Tamworth Hospital is a 234 bed hospital and the major rural referral unit in New England area of New South Wales Australia. The ED is a mixed adult/paediatric department with an annual census of about 38,000 patients of which 10,000 are children. The admission rate is 18 percent. It has a specialist emergency physician on-site 8-16 h per day. Junior medical officers, registrars and locums who rotate through the department provide additional medical staffing. Nurses are all dedicated to the ED but there are no allied health services. CIs were developed for each of these illnesses and a total of 16 CIs were created across the five conditions (Table I).The ED information system (EDIS), an electronic database, was searched using ICD 9 diagnoses to identify paediatric patients. Selected patients' notes were manually audited to monitor compliance with the CIs for their presentation. Two data extractors agreed processes and kappa analysis was performed to determine inter-rater reliability. The manual data extractors also documented if the CPG had been incorporated into the medical record. After the collection period, AFP data from August 1st to 31st 2006, for the same 16 CIs, were accessed from the AFP database. Thus, two different data collection methods for the same patient population were compared. All data were subject to kh2 testing (Epi-info 3.3.2) and the kappa analysis was performed using SPSS version 14 for windows. The CECP was a quality improvement exercise and had statewide ethics approval. Our study, comparing two different data collection methods, was performed under the auspices and within the time frame of that project. Hence, no individual institutional ethics approval was sought.\nResults: Manual audit identified 127 presentations of the five illnesses for the month and AFP data identified 24 patients. The AFP data identified 18.9 percent of the total presentations compared to manual audit. Of the 127 patients identified in the manual audit, 66 (52 percent) had the CPG completed and incorporated into the clinical record. The numbers of patients identified by each data collection method, for each illness, are shown in Table II.The CI compliance rates, determined by manual data collection, were compared between those patients with the CPG completed and in the clinical record (n=66) and those patients for whom it was not (n=61). Compliance rates for each illness and combined are shown in Figure 1. In total, manual audit was completed for 347 CIs. When the CPG was completed and in the clinical record, overall compliance was 92.5 percent (173/187). When the CPG was not completed and within the medical record overall compliance was 51.3 percent (82/160). These values reached statistical significance (kh2=75.35, p<0.001).Figure 2 shows CI compliance rates, determined by manual data collection (n=347), irrespective of CPG use, compared to compliance using AFP data (n=64). Overall, compliance was 73.5 percent (255/347) using manual audit data and 90.6 percent (58/64) using AFP data. These values reached statistical significance (kh2=8.74, p=0.003).Fifteen records were chosen to test manual audit inter-rater variability. The calculated kappa co-efficient for 34 variables was 0.77 indicating substantial agreement (Viera and Garrett, 2005).\nDiscussion: Few studies directly compare data collected by manual and AFP methods. One, Jorgensen and Karlsmose (1998), examined the processing of 401 questionnaires by four groups:1. manual data entry by a commercial data entry provider (single entry);2. manual data entry by a skilled secretary at the department performing double entry (entry on two separate occasions in SPSS data entry);3. AFP using TELEform(tm) version 5.3 with the default form confidence level of 80 percent; and4. AFP using TELEform(tm) version 5.3 with the maximum form confidence level of 99 percent.The error rate for different form processing methods depended on the type of entry field. Data fields, such as ours, that required a cross in a box were much less error-prone than those requiring handwritten text. Overall, double-manual data processing was found to be the least error prone but AFP was comparable. Double-manual data processing was found to take 2.64 times longer and was 2.77 times more expensive than AFP (80 percent confidence). Another study (Smyth et al., 1997) found that AFP was slightly more accurate, far less time consuming and 95 percent cheaper than manual form processing, although in this instance a different software package, Formic(tm), was used.Our data identified a number of important issues worthy of discussion. Less than one in five patients with conditions suited to CPGs had AFP data available despite 52 percent of patients having the CPG and corresponding AFP incorporated into their clinical records. This low rate of AFP data availability meant that if AFP data alone was used to determine compliance then information would have been absent for 81 percent of patients. For both asthma and bronchiolitis only one data set was reported on AFP for the month and yet there were 18 and 21 cases from manual audit, respectively.Non-compliance with AFP may be multifactorial. There may be clinician disinterest in manually completing data collection, time pressures or lack of awareness about the forms and/or their purpose. The forms are rigidly formatted and may not allow clinicians to relay other issues related to guideline variance. Individual clinicians may also reject the guidelines as a clinical tool and with it the AFP. After the clinical consultation is over, the CPG and the AFP form part of the written clinical record along with the EDIS generated triage sheet and medical/nursing notes. The completed AFP sheets need to be unstapled from the notes and faxed by the clerical staff to a remote site computer where data are uploaded. Failure at any process stage may lead to data not entering the system.AFP data overestimated our department's performance by 17 percent giving us a 90.6 percent compliance rate across the five conditions and 16 CIs compared to the 73.5 percent manual audit rate. This difference reached statistical significance. Coupled with the low rate of data available from the AFP audit, we cannot from this study, view AFP data to be sufficiently similar to manual audit data to reflect overall ED performance for these CIs. Our AFP data were not representative of overall department performance and may reflect data from clinicians who are sufficiently motivated to not only comply with the guidelines but also to complete the data collection form, resulting in a biased subset.The manual audit data revealed that in only 52 percent of cases was the CPG able to be located in the clinical record. Getting CPGs incorporated into the clinical record is a challenge not easily overcome in a busy ED with a high junior medical staff turnover, a heavy reliance on locum staff and the lack of electronic reminder systems. This 52 percent figure led to further departmental initiatives to maintain guideline awareness. The overall compliance from manual audit, across five conditions and 16 CIs is not too dissimilar to findings in some of our previous work (Doherty et al., 2007a,b). Following an evidence-based paediatric guideline implementation we had a compliance rate of 79 percent for seven asthma CIs at 12 months post implementation. This audit period occurred ten months after that study. Similarly, for adult asthma we reported a 78 percent compliance rate across seven CIs for asthma. Data also reinforce the value of the CPG being available in a readily packaged form \"at the bedside\" for clinician use. When the CPG was incorporated into the clinical record, overall compliance was 92.5 percent, when it was not compliance fell to 51.3 percent.\nLimitations: Our study has a number of limitations. First, it reports data from one hospital only. There was no comparing manual and AFP data for individual cases; hence there was no attempt to determine if AFP data accurately reflected the clinical record. There is no gold standard in auditing and the limitations of retrospective manual auditing were noted earlier. Further, the manual audit relied on identifying cases based on ICD 9 codes entered into EDIS and may have missed patients. Nonetheless, manual audit is the most commonly used means of auditing and it is important to establish the relationship between new forms of audit to the traditionally used method. Inpatients were not included as it adds another layer of complexity. Once admitted, the CPG part of the clinical record follows the patient. The ward clerical staff are responsible for faxing completed AFP data sets. Additionally, the patient's clinical notes do not return to the ED but go to the medical records department making them less accessible for this study.\nConclusions and recommendations: Our study shows that data collected by AFP differs significantly from data collected by manual audit. The AFP data represented less than 20 percent of the target patient population and over-estimated departmental compliance with CIs by 18 percent. Theoretical advantages of AFP data collection will only be realised when systems are in place that facilitate much higher AFP data set completion rates.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to compare data collected by automated form processing with manual data collection for clinical indicators (CIs) in paediatric emergency medicine.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Paediatric patients presenting with croup, asthma, bronchiolitis, head injury and gastroenteritis in August 2006 were identified by ICD 9 coding and a traditional manual audit was performed by two data collectors. Data were collected on a total of 16 CIs for these five illnesses. Manual audit data were then compared to information collected for this same patient population using TELEform(tm), an automated forms processing (AFP) system that had been employed for over two years.\nFindings: - Teleform(tm) data were only available for 24 patients compared to information for 127 patients identified by ICD 9 coding and manual audit. Teleform(tm) data overestimated compliance with clinical guidelines by 17 percent giving an overall departmental agreement with CIs of 90.6 percent compared to 73.5 percent in the manual audit. Additionally, manual audit demonstrated that when the clinical guideline was incorporated into the clinical record, compliance was 92.5 percent compared to 51.3 percent when it was not.\nOriginality/value: - This single center study demonstrates that data collected by AFP such as TELEform(tm), overestimate emergency department performance regarding CIs compliance. Departments that use automated data collection tools need to establish relationships between such data and data collected via more traditional auditing methods.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
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