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The impact of exhibition service quality on general attendees' satisfaction through distinct mediating roles of perceived value
|
[
"Satisfaction",
"Perceived value",
"Service quality",
"Structural equation modeling",
"Exhibition"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: According to the Association of Korea Exhibition Industry, the number of domestic exhibitions exceeds 550 annually, with an average of 150 exhibitors participating, and the average number of general attendees is approximately 13,000. By type of exhibition, general exhibitions account for more than 45 percent, mixed exhibitions and trade shows account for 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively (GMI, 2015). Interchangeably called consumer shows, trade shows, trade fairs and expositions (Breiter and Milman, 2006), exhibitions are a vital feature of the national and regional business marketplace, delivering various types of values to consumers (Kim, 2007). In Seoul alone, there are more than 200 exhibitions annually. The convention and exhibition (COEX) center holds more than 130 of these events. General attendance on average is increasing by more than 20 percent annually (GMI, 2015). Thus, monitoring the quality of exhibition service is both imperative and inevitable, as the number of exhibitions and general attendees has dramatically increased in the past several decades (Jin and Weber, 2013).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Exhibition service quality\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Survey instrument\n4. Results: The data of this study were coded and screened to check for normal distribution, any missing data and outliers. Most of the survey questionnaires were completely checked by respondents, but a small number of questionnaires were found with missing values. These were utilized to analyze the results of this study after replacing the missing values with the average value rather than dividing them into the questionnaires which were not useful because of the few items that were not checked. In the data normality test, the result indicated that skewness scores ranged between a negative and positive value of 1 while kurtosis scores were all below the recommended threshold of 3.0 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). Thus, there were no significant violations of the normal distribution of the data.\n5. Conclusions and theoretical contributions: The purpose of this study was to propose and empirically test a comprehensive model to examine the effect of exhibition service quality on attendees' satisfaction through perceived value. More specifically, this study aimed to demonstrate the direct and indirect relationships among exhibition service quality, perceived value and satisfaction. Additionally, this study divided the perceived value into three factors to investigate which service quality is associated with which perceived value in regards to satisfying general attendees. The mediating effect of perceived value between service quality and attendees' satisfaction can be clearly judged by the use of the distinct perceived value. SEM was conducted to empirically verify the relationship between service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction. The detailed findings of this study, which present subtle differences in relation to previous studies, are summarized below.\n6. Practical contributions: In the exhibition, service product was significantly associated with social, emotional and economic values, respectively. This implies that general attendees are strongly seeking a variety of opportunities to engage in programs and activities, as opposed to simply purchasing products and services. As social media develops, consumers can access a variety of information and educational materials without actually attending. Social media cannot provide, however, multi-sensory experience through gustation, olfaction, and tactition delivered by experts and consultants in face-to-face encounters where they directly acquire state-of-the-art information and technology. In COSMOBEAUTY Seoul exhibition examined in this study, the demonstrations of cosmetics and beauty products, competitions of professional makeup and hair styling, operations of cutting-edge hair/skin/body care equipment, participation of seminars and forums lectured by senior experts became a great help for general attendees to broaden the latest trends of the cosmetics and beauty industry. Moreover, event programs (e.g. seminars, forums and conferences) lectured by well-known experts of cosmetics, raw materials and packaging, hair and scalp, esthetic and spa, and nail and foot arts in the cosmetic and beauty industry were transformed into highly valuable sources for general attendees to increase social and emotional values. Moreover, these programs were regarded by attendees as priceless relative to the sacrifice of time, money, and effort in participating in the exhibition. These advantages are key factors in attracting general attendees to the exhibition as an optimal business space. Thus, exhibition organizers should seek ways to increase the quality and sophistication of the information and technology offered.\n7. Limitations: Some limitations of this study should be pointed out and modified for future research. First, the exhibition that was used in this study cannot be purely called an exhibition, consumer show, or trade show because a variety of attendees participated in it. Exhibition and trade show are frequently used interchangeably (Breiter and Milman, 2006) even if exhibition has a broader meaning than trade show (Rittichainuwat and Mair, 2012). Due to the ambiguity of exhibitions, trade shows and consumer shows, it would be difficult to generalize the findings of this study in adapting to the overall exhibition industry. Thus, it is necessary to establish a standard to adequately distinguish the types of events available in different geographic regions. This study focused on a specific quality of exhibition services despite the fact that various types of service quality exist in exhibitions. There is also a definite limit to analyzing the relationship between service quality, perceived value and satisfaction through only one exhibition. There are various types of exhibitions such as trade shows for business-oriented attendees, consumer shows for general attendees, and mixed shows for both groups. Therefore, future exhibition studies should be conducted from the perspective of more dimensions of service quality and perceived value in different types of exhibitions to understand general attendees more precisely and meet their needs. In addition, this study clearly shows that study limitations arise in the area where studies were conducted by choosing one of the cosmetic, medical, and health exhibitions that women would prefer. Exhibitions related to the cosmetic and beauty industry could be more favored by female attendees than male attendees. It cannot be overlooked that the results may be gender specific. In this study, there was no gender difference found in the relationships between exhibition service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction. However, it is necessary to examine any limitations of the study that can be caused by gender differences before conducting future research. The author hopes the findings will help develop the exhibition industry and assist PEO to better manage exhibitions.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: In an effort to better understand value-oriented general attendees, the purpose of this paper is to propose and empirically test a comprehensive model to examine the effect of three factors of service quality in exhibitions (i.e. service product, service environment and service delivery) on satisfaction through three factors of perceived value (i.e. emotional value, economic value and social value).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to determine key factors in exhibition service quality, perceived value and satisfaction. A structural equation modeling was conducted to analyze the causal relationships among the factors.\nFindings: The empirical results indicated that service product and service environment were significantly and positively associated with all factors of perceived value, which in turn significantly influenced satisfaction. Service delivery, however, was associated only with emotional value. On the other hand, all three factors of perceived value significantly influenced general attendees' satisfaction. The findings indicated perceived value as an important mediator between exhibition service quality and general attendees' satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: Clearly identifying specific trajectories from service quality to satisfaction through distinct perceived values can be a stepping stone to establishing effective and efficient marketing strategies for general attendees and customizing for their needs. The distinct and clear associations between service quality and perceived value can help exhibition organizers and practitioners understand the process of determining general attendees' overall satisfaction.\n",
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Learning conditions for continuous improvement in a public service organization
|
[
"Organizational change",
"Learning environment",
"Public service organization",
"Workplace development programme"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: New public management (NPM) has become a commonly used improvement approach in the public sector, encouraging administrations to transform into more efficient and more business-like organizations (Hood, 1991). In this article, the focus is on such a transformation effort in a social welfare department in a Swedish municipality, where continuous improvement was introduced in employees' everyday work. Continuous improvement has been considered a suitable method for making production and work processes more efficient and for reducing waste (Womack et al., 1991). This method originates from the philosophy of Lean production (Lean), which in accordance with NPM aims to increase efficiency and control with regard to the processes mentioned. A change effort, such as introducing the Lean principle of continuous improvement into a public service organization, can, however, be challenging.\nConceptual framework: In the analysis, the focus is on the conditions in the social welfare department that enabled or constrained workplace learning while continuous improvement was introduced in employees' everyday work. As such, workplace learning is an integral social and participatory process of everyday work, and a number of conditions shape the workplace environment and its invitational qualities (Billett, 2004; Evans et al., 2006; Fuller and Unwin, 2004; Gustavsson, 2009).\nResearch setting: A case study was conducted in a municipality's social welfare department (approximately 3,000 employees), which comprised over 100 work units in four operations (elderly care, care for the disabled, family support and a social benefits division). The introduction of continuous improvement into employees' everyday work was referred to as the \"Lean investment\". An internal Lean support team with Lean coaches assisted managers throughout the department in introducing continuous improvement in employees' everyday work, and the aforementioned WPDP provided Lean courses for both managers and Lean coaches. The Lean support team decided that implementing continuous improvements was mandatory; therefore, this topic was the focus of unit manager support. Thus, in practice, the \"Lean investment\" meant introducing continuous improvements.\nMethod: The case study includes 22 individual semi-structured interviews (lasting 60-120 min) in the municipality. Table I describes the 20 initial interviews and the interviewees' roles or functions. In addition, two follow-up interviews were conducted five years after the initial interviews.\nFindings: The following section focuses on external and internal conditions that enabled or constrained employee learning while continuous improvement was introduced into their everyday work. The conditions are viewed from the perspectives of top management, the Lean support team leader, internal Lean coaches and unit managers.\nDiscussion: The findings provide an example of how the interplay among various external conditions, including the WPDP, affected the internal organizational conditions in the social welfare department. Unfortunately, most of the conditions worked to restrict the learning environment (Fuller and Unwin, 2004, 2011), and the \"Lean investment\" as a whole seems to have failed because it gradually dissipated.\nConclusions: As previously mentioned, unit managers were the key players in shaping the learning environment for employees, but individuals with other roles in the department, such as the Lean support team and top managers, as well as politicians, were players in shaping the internal organizational conditions that, in turn, shaped the learning environment for unit managers. From the unit managers' perspective, many of the conditions presented here constrained their learning regarding how to introduce and implement continuous improvement into employees' everyday work. The same conditions shaped the employees' learning environments because unit managers were tasked with facilitating employee learning and ultimately their continuous improvement work. From the Lean support team's view, the presented conditions affected their ability to provide support that would enable managers to develop a facilitating role in the \"Lean investment\". From the top management's view, some conditions may have contributed to their decoupling from the practical change effort and certainly to increasing the complexity and contradictoriness of their work. Finally, from the politicians' view, the conditions they created made the social welfare department far from business-like because money was wasted to invest in a Lean venture that was not sustained. Thus, the paradoxical conclusion can be made that the concept of NPM motivated officials of the social welfare department and politicians to take after the private sector and become more business-like by implementing Lean (starting with continuous improvement); some months later, the NPM logic guided new politicians towards splitting the department into two divisions. The latter decision had a devastating effect on the first decision because it made the \"Lean investment\" impossible to sustain.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: This study focuses on a transformation effort in a social welfare department of a Swedish municipality where continuous improvement, which is a Lean principle, was introduced in employees' everyday work via a workplace development programme (WPDP). The aim of this paper is to explore the conditions (internal and external) that enabled or constrained employee learning during the introduction of continuous improvement into employees' everyday work in a WPDP-supported social welfare department.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This case study is based mainly on 22 semi-structured interviews with individuals holding different positions in the department and overarching municipality.\nFindings: The findings show that multiple and emerging conditions, both internal and external, shaped a predominantly restrictive learning environment during the introduction of continuous improvement into the social welfare department. The major conditions identified were related to the initial implementation and top management's steering and monitoring of the \"Lean investment\", activities and support provided by the WPDP, activities and support provided by the internal Lean support team and first-line managers' abilities to facilitate employee learning.\nOriginality/value: Apart from unique empirical material depicting an effort towards change under conditions far from favourable for employee learning, the value of this study lies in the attention given to the external dynamics that drive change in line with the concept of new public management in public service organizations, including a WPDP that supported the social welfare department.\n",
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Optimization of casting process through reliability approach
|
[
"Cost-effectiveness",
"Performance measures",
"Casting process",
"Foundry industry",
"Multi state system"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Nomenclature\n1. Introduction: The quality of production of each and every machine/system very much depends on how the casting of its components or parts has been done. So, in order to maintain the production/output of a system, the casting of its part must be free from all types of casting defects (as much as possible). This paper extends the work done by Kumar et al. (2015) for improving the production as well as the reliability of casting industry.\n2. Casting process: It is the process of making parts/components/machines through the liquid of a material by pouring it (liquid) into a mold cavity of a required shape and then allowing it to solidify. The casting process consists of the following defects.\n3. Assumptions: Initially, the casting process is perfectly reliable.\n4. State transition diagram: Keeping in mind the configuration and functioning of the casting process, a diagram which shows all possible states (good/degraded/failed) for the casting process is developed as shown in Figure 1.\n5. Mathematical formulation and solution: With the use of the Markov birth-death process a state transition diagram is developed (Figure 1), and with the help of this the following set of differential equations were formed:(1)\n6. Numerical computation: 6.1 Availability\n7. Results discussion and conclusion: This paper investigates a casting process in foundry work using the Markov process and supplementary variable technique. For computing the behavior of different reliability aspects on system' performance taking various failures (average) rates as constant and repair as one. The findings are as follows:\n",
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"content": "Purpose: The quality of production is an essential factor for the performance measure of a system; a casting process is the same section. It is a type of metal-forming practice in which the required shape of metal is acquired by pouring molten metal into the mold cavity and allowing it to solidify. Casting is done to provide strength and rigidity to the parts of a system for bearing mechanical impacts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the various aspects which affect the casting process in the foundry industry, in order to optimize the quality of casting, with the assumption that sufficient repair facility is always available.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The considered casting system can have many defects such as the mold shift defect, blowhole defect, defect of shrinkage and porosity, defect of inclusion, defect of cold shut and much more. The studied system can be in three states during the process, namely, good state, failed state and degraded state. The system can repair after minor failures as well as a major failure. The average failure rates of various defects of the system considered as constant and repairs follow the general time distribution. The system is analyzed with the help of the supplementary variable technique and the Laplace transformation for evaluating its various performance measures in order to improve its performance/production.\nFindings: This work provides a strong understanding of the casting industry, that which failure affects the production of casting and how much. For better understanding, the results have been demonstrated with the help of graphs.\nOriginality/value: In the present paper, a mathematical model based on the casting process in manufacturing industry has been developed.\n",
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Students climbing the entrepreneurial ladder: Family social capital and environment-related motives in hospitality and tourism
|
[
"GUESSS",
"Entrepreneurship",
"Entrepreneurial ladder",
"Environmental mission",
"Family embeddedness",
"Family social capital"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Most firms are nowadays committed to reducing their environmental footprint, in efforts to reducing the environmental impact of business activities (Sharma and Sharma, 2011). Empirical evidence has shown how entrepreneurs redesign business models to minimize the firm's ecological footprint along the entire organization's life cycle and value chain (Aragon-Correa, 1998). However, little is known about the role of following an environmental mission in stimulating business opportunities and fostering the engagement of potential entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial process.\nTheoretical background and hypotheses building: This study is set in the literature discussing the first steps to create a business in terms of an entrepreneurial ladder, then introducing the goals, mission and resources as antecedents to engage in entrepreneurship. Based on these theoretical underpinnings, we build the hypotheses to test the mediating effect of following an environmental mission on the relationship between family social capital and engagement in entrepreneurship, following Baron and Kenny's (1986) approach to analyze mediation.\nMethodology: The data\nResults: Means, standard deviations and Pearson correlations appear in Table I. We have checked for non-response bias and common method bias. In particular, we compared early and late respondents' entry through ANOVA; this is a common method to test for non-respondent bias, based on the acknowledgment that late respondents are more similar than early respondents to non-respondents (Oppenheim, 1966). Given that the data collection did not appear as perfectly synchronous in the different countries, this test was made separately for all GUESSS countries. Non-response bias concerns are mitigated because, for every variable and every country, we found no significant differences in the mean scores. To test for a common method bias, we applied Harman's one-factor test (Harman, 1976). An explanatory factor analysis with all our study variables indicated a multiple (eight) factor solution that accounted for nearly 60 per cent of total variance. As the first factor explained just about 20 per cent of total variance (which is below the majority threshold), this test provides a first indication that common method bias might not be a critical concern (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Second, we repeated the confirmatory factor analysis with all our variables, as in Sieger and Monsen (2015), which shows a satisfactory fit. In fact, the one-factor structure yields significantly worse results, thus indicating that our measures are both theoretically and empirically distinct, and that common method bias is not a major issue (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Multicollinearity is also mitigated as a major concern because the variance inflation factors for each of our variables is below 1.77, considerably lower than the critical threshold of 10 (Hair et al., 2006). The nature of our data, which is broad and nested both in countries and universities, induced us to prove the validity of our results in two further ways. First, as with large samples, effect sizes (Laspita et al., 2012) might be more informative than statistical significance, we also calculated our results as odds ratios. Second, given the nested structure of our individual-level observations in the GUESSS sample, we also used multi-level mixed-effects regression models (Autio et al., 2013). In both cases, the main results did not differ.\nDiscussion: This study identifies a positive relationship of family bonding and bridging social capital, as well as following an environmental mission, with engagement in the entrepreneurial process; moreover, the two dimensions of social capital are positively related with following an environmental mission, thus partially supporting the hypothesized mediating effect. These results offer interesting insights into the ongoing debate on mission-driven entrepreneurs, as extant research has not provided a significant agreement on the relationship between environmental goals and engagement in the entrepreneurial process (Kirkwood and Walton, 2010).\nImplications, limitations and conclusion: Considering that the decision to become an entrepreneur can be described in terms of steps on the entrepreneurial \"ladder\" (van der Zwan et al., 2010), this paper has shed new light on the relevant topic of availability of resources provided by the family of the would-be entrepreneur and the interest in following an environmental mission in creating a new venture in the H&T industry. Relying on a rich body of empirical evidence gathered through the GUESSS, this paper has evinced a partial mediating effect of following an environmental mission on the relationship between family bonding and bridging social capital and the decision to become an entrepreneur.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to address the research question of whether family social capital affects the degree of engagement in the entrepreneurial process in the case of hospitality and tourism (H&T) new ventures, and how this relates to environment-related motivations. In particular, drawing on a process-based approach of individuals' engagement in entrepreneurship, this paper provides new insights into the relationship between the perception of support by the family through the provision of bonding and bridging social capital and the decision to engage in the entrepreneurial process. The main contribution consists in the role of \"following an environmental mission\" that emerges as a motivation mediating the relationship between family resource provision and entrepreneurial engagement in the H&T industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: For this exploratory study, we rely on cross-sectional observations from 2,923 individuals gathered through the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students Survey, which collects information on career choices and preferences of university students around the globe. Given our focus on the early engagement process in entrepreneurship and the role of embeddedness in family structures, the use of a sample of young potential entrepreneurs such as students is particularly appropriate.\nFindings: This study suggests that the family acts as a fundamental institution fostering entrepreneurship, both through the provision of bonding and bridging social capital, and the nurturing of attitudes toward the environment. The results indicate that, in the H&T industry, entrepreneurship can be a valuable means to pursue such attitude and is perceived as a way to proactively contribute to undertake responsible environmental activities.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study provides some implications for researchers, educators and policymakers interested in fostering entrepreneurial initiatives in the field, considering the role of a social-oriented mission as a vehicle to encourage profit-oriented entrepreneurial initiatives, and the importance of the family as a resource provider that fosters entrepreneurial engagement. The paper also discusses the strengths and limitations of this unique and broad cross-national sample.\nOriginality/value: Becoming entrepreneurs is depicted as climbing an entrepreneurial \"ladder\", whereby each individual's engagement along this process depends on a number of antecedents. Family bridging and bonding social capital, as well as following an environmental mission, emerge as important factors in the H&T industry, thus extending previous literature on the distinctiveness of this industry.\n",
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Alternative control methods for exploiting subsidiary knowledge within an MNE: quantity versus quality
|
[
"Knowledge transfer",
"Bureaucratic control",
"Social control",
"Subsidiaries",
"Knowledge management",
"Motivation",
"Human resource management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The knowledge-based view (KBV) identifies the firms' heterogeneous knowledge bases as a significant determinant of the firms' strategic competitive advantage (SCA) (Lippman and Rumelt, 1982; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Drawing from this theory, research has made some enlightening contributions as to the characteristics of knowledge, typically reported as explicit or tacit, and individual or collective, and its transfer throughout the firm, typically through mechanisms of information communication technologies (ICTs) (Alavi and Tiwana, 2006; Zack, 1999) or social systems (Wenger and Snyder, 2000; Newell et al., 2009). Indeed, it is the transfer or sharing of knowledge throughout global subsidiaries that multinational enterprises (MNEs) seek as an avenue to SCA, and, as a result, significant investment has been made in understanding and using control systems to leverage strategic knowledge from one point in the organisation to others (Ferner, 2000; Canonico et al., 2012). This paper, grounded in the KBV, is situated within an MNE using human resource management (HRM) practices to control the leveraging of explicit subsidiary knowledge through the firms' ICT system. That is, the paper considers the outcome of different control mechanisms on knowledge sharing behaviours. The paper identifies knowledge as either new knowledge or incremental to existing knowledge with regard to operating practices and processes.\nUnderstanding knowledge: The KBV of the firm attributes a firm's competitive advantage to its unique knowledge and its ability to embody new knowledge in its products and services (Lippman and Rumelt, 1982; Nonaka, 1991; Conner and Prahalad, 1996; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998; Chakravarthy et al., 2006). Indeed, Kogut and Zander (1992) claim that an MNE arises from its superior efficiency to transfer knowledge across borders. The management of the knowledge therefore has been identified as one of the most important challenges facing today's managers (Drucker, 1993; Simon, 1996; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; van den Hooff and Ridder, 2004).\nLeveraging and transferring knowledge: As depicted above, it is in the best interest of the MNE to exploit the knowledge residing in various parts of the organisation. To achieve this, knowledge must be first leveraged so that individual knowledge can become collective, and then transferred from one part of the organisation and applied in another for it to become organisational.\nMNE control mechanisms: Control in organisations is generally regarded as a management initiative to regulate and coordinate individual resources to ensure conformity to the expectations of the organisation (Child, 1984; Pucik and Katz, 1986). According to Ferner (2000), managers face a strategic choice when considering control methods due to an accumulation of mechanisms that have evolved over time. These range from highly sophisticated to autonomous forms and often fall into one of two categories of control type: \"bureaucratic\" or \"social.\" Ferner (2000), drawing on the work from Child (1984), describes bureaucratic control as centrally defined formal mechanisms emphasising reward. Controls are driven by outputs over either tasks or behaviours and performance. Social control, on the other hand, is described as promoting autonomy once organisation members are committed to the values and goals of the organisation (Ferner, 2000).\nMotivation and control through HRM: Within the past10 years, much focus has shifted to the potential of HRM as a series of practices that may work to positively control organisational knowledge transfer. For example, Minbaeva et al. (2003) considered the motivational effects of bundles of HRM practices on knowledge sharing behaviours, while Lee et al. (2006) considered the effect of individual HRM practice on behaviours. From studies such as these interest has been generated towards specific HRM practices that may prove to elicit knowledge sharing behaviours. A key area of enquiry is the organisation's performance management system and its potential as a formal control mechanism to promote knowledge sharing outcomes (Minbaeva et al., 2003; Currie and Kerrin, 2003; Edvardsson, 2008; Pastor et al., 2010; Fong et al., 2011; Liao, 2011; Liu and Liu, 2011; Blomkvist, 2012).\nMethodology: Design\nBackground to the cases: Case commonalities\nAnalysis and discussion: Each of the two examples above identify with the full knowledge transfer process of sending, receiving and implementing new knowledge channelled through the organisations dedicated ICT system. Knowledge, in this case, can be either new ideas or those incremental to existing knowledge. Structural similarities between the two systems include the use of punitive outcomes relating to job security (although disproportionately) for non-compliance and that each was operationalised through HR practices.\nConclusion and limitations: This paper adopts the KBV of the firm and considers the knowledge transfer process to incorporate all aspects of sending, receiving and applying new or incremental knowledge across subsidiary borders. The above examples identify one organisation's experience shifting from a direct bureaucratic control mechanism to indirect control through social mechanisms to elicit knowledge sharing behaviour from their site managers. This shift took place when the knowledge sharing system lapsed into disuse after association with the bureaucratically controlled mechanism and possibly the opportunity for site managers to exercise individual power against centralised directives.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to expose the power of informal control mechanisms over explicit knowledge transfer through information communication technology (ICT) systems in subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise (MNE).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research used a case study approach consistent with the purpose of exploring control/knowledge transfer relationships. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with managers across 19 sites in an MNE. Analysed data were thematically organised into two case studies for comparison.\nFindings: The results show that when control is exerted from bottom-up, knowledge transfer barriers are overcome, quality of outcomes is increased and new and incremental knowledge innovation is more likely to become organisational.\nPractical implications: The findings signal a caution for managers to assess the suitability of control type on knowledge transfer incentives to leverage quality knowledge outcomes. By using informal methods, subsidiary managers' local autonomy and power to resist centralised management objectives was positively moderated.\nOriginality/value: The paper exposes alternative control methods for exploiting subsidiary knowledge within an MNE. The research is unique in that it identifies a superior role for bottom-up social control to elicit explicit knowledge sharing behaviours through ICT where bureaucratic reward-based control had failed.\n",
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All education for some? International development and shadow education in Cambodia
|
[
"Partnerships",
"Privatization",
"Cambodia",
"Educational development",
"Shadow education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The historical trajectory of the right to education emerged from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and underwent a few transitions in the last half-century. One transition occurred in 1990 when the right to education, which was previously described in various Conventions and Covenants as being both compulsory and fee-free, emerged from the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand, as only compulsory (Bray and Kwo, 2013). The commitment to make basic education fee-free waned as the international community realized some nation-states, particularly developing ones, could not bear the high costs of schooling.\n2. Background: The case of Cambodia highlights the tension among a state's financial constraints, the prevalence of shadow education, and achieving the global goal of universal education. Achieving universal education, although the main pillar of international education development efforts, has a legacy in Cambodia dating as far back as a 1911 decree signed by King Sisowath. During this time, contributions from villagers were instrumental in financing education, often as gifts to teachers in the form of food, money or both (Bray, 1999b). Despite this long history, it was only after independence from France in 1953 that compulsory, universal and fee-free education became a priority of the government. From the post-independence era of the early 1950s until the early and mid-1970s, there was significant progress in the Cambodian education system (Bray, 1999b). During this period, the country experienced an increase in its education budget, which led to a relative increase in teacher salary (Bray, 1999b). Although state schools were prioritized, modernized pagoda schools were also part of the Cambodian education system (Bray, 1999b). Furthermore, villagers provided construction assistance (Bray, 1999b; see also Ayres, 1997, p. 69). Educational reforms in the in the King Norodom Sihanouk era were not limited to development in educational infrastructure; there were also curricular reforms aiming for instilling a \"Khmer character\" (Clayton, 2005; see also Whitaker, 1973, p. 42). Dunnet (1993) argues that \"during the 1960s, Cambodia had one of the highest literacy rates and most progressive education systems in Southeast Asia\" (as cited in Dy, 2004, p. 94). Notwithstanding these noteworthy attempts to improve education in Cambodia, the development efforts by the national and international community in the 1950s and 1960s were, however, quickly erased by the geopolitical and civil unrest that engulfed many countries in Southeast Asia in the 1970s. By the 1990s, after two decades of war, civil conflict and international isolation, Cambodia stabilized politically and economically, and renewed its efforts at educational development, this time in line with the EFA and MDG goals, which were promulgated contemporaneously with the country's so-called re-emergence[3]. This section briefly details the important background of the international education development agenda in Cambodia in two periods, pre-1990 and post-1990.\n3. Findings: The UNESCO reports of 1955 and 2010 are telling documents of Cambodia's continuous development problems. Ten years before 1955, Cambodia was undergoing a transition from French rule as part of the geopolitical consequences of the Second World War. By 1955 in post-colonial Cambodia, enough years had passed since the political upheaval (resulting in a new King, Norodom Sihanouk) to gauge the budding system of education and provide a clear strategy forward, as the report does. Likewise, in 2010, over ten years had passed since the last political unrest (the 1998 elections) reverberated through the country after nearly 30 years of genocide, civil war, and geopolitical neglect (Chandler, 2008). By 2010 in post-UNTAC Cambodia, education reforms had been in effect for nearly 10 years. To a certain degree, each of these time periods represents a transition period in Cambodia's history, away from times of conflict and toward a post-conflict society. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the education problems outlined in 1955 are reiterated in 2010 (see Table I). Issues like few teachers, inadequate funding and limited resources (although updated in technical terms, for example, from \"chalk\" to \"computers\") affected both post-conflict and transitional systems of education. The destruction of an educational system (as in the post-UNTAC era) or the infancy of an educational system (as in the post-French colonial era) required returning to the basic building blocks of an educational system: more students, buildings, books and teachers. What is important, however, is the difference in prescriptions offered to remedy the underdeveloped education system at each period. In the next two sub-sections, a look at the differences in terms of system management and expanding access are explored in more depth. These two differences provide important insight into the phenomenon of shadow education.\n4. Discussion and conclusion: This paper has attempted to show how the emphasis on increasing access to education has been articulated in different ways by UNESCO in two different historical periods. The 1955 UNESCO report recommended the Cambodian government expand access slowly in order to develop a system of education that it can adequately support (both educationally and financially). It called on the \"moral duty of the state\" (p. 31) to ensure high-quality education even if that meant leaving some children out of school while educational structures were built. International partnerships were not prioritized; rather, developing the state's capacity to manage itself was.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare two UNESCO reports on educational development in Cambodia, one from 1955 and the other from 2010, in order to understand how the global education development agenda has impacted shadow education.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study is conducted through a textual comparison of two UNESCO reports written 50 years apart.\nFindings: Although the educational problems facing Cambodia were similar in both reports, the recommendations differed in important ways. The 1955 report advised the country to expand slowly access to education in order to maintain quality, while the 2010 recommended quickly expanding access. A major difference found in the reports regarded the issue of fees in schooling, which did not appear in 1955. School fees in Cambodia are typically extracted through the system of private tutoring, known in the academic literature as shadow education. Such an insight, this paper argues, suggests that the difference in development approach between the two reports is one of the reasons shadow education has flourished in the country.\nOriginality/value: Through a historical comparison of development efforts in one country, it becomes clear that the education development agenda is partly to blame for the rise of shadow education.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Quality improvement in large healthcare organizations: Searching for system-wide and coherent monitoring and follow-up strategies
|
[
"Change management",
"Quality improvement",
"Organizational development",
"Monitoring and follow-up"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Demands for more, better, and safer health care seem to increase indefinitely, and worries that resources do not meet needs are frequently presented (Davies et al., 2013). Consequently, high expectations are linked to quality improvement (QI) and change interventions in health care settings to address these needs and demands. At the same time, achieving successful QI in health care is an on-going struggle (Grol, 2001; Grol et al., 2007). Numerous tools and interventions have been suggested for achieving QI and many trends have come and gone (Chassin and Loeb, 2011; Walshe, 2009). David Kernick (2006) identified a need for new methodologies in health services research in order to better address how complex health care organizations can improve their services, including \"better tools that promote systematic thinking and that are accessible to those who actually deliver health care\" (p. 390).\nMethod: This case study used a longitudinal design (Kohlbacher, 2005; Yin, 2009) and was part of a larger research project that investigated the implementation of DVO in specialized health care from 2008 to 2012. The DVO case has provided an empirical basis for several studies (Hoog, 2014; Nystrom et al., 2012\nResults: The result section begins with a contextual overview and is thereafter structured in line with the three research questions, starting with the main focus areas for M\nDiscussion: Health care systems are struggling to deliver high-quality services in times of scarce resources and growing demands. Hopes are high on QI initiatives, but making QI successful in health care organizations is still challenging. Walshe (2002, p. S46) wrote that \"quality improvement in health care demands leadership, investment, perseverance, and hard work. There are no shortcuts to success.\" This was reflected throughout our study results. Every health care organization has to process issues on what to follow-up and why, as well as how this can be co-ordinated. Thus, M\nConclusions: QI is a multifaceted phenomenon. Perspectives on improving health care range from test and development in small frontline work groups using improvement knowledge (Langley et al., 2009) to general organizational factors for diffusion of innovation (Greenhalgh et al., 2004) or focus on the implementation of evidence-based practice (e.g. Fixsen et al., 2005). Results presented in this paper show the importance of acknowledging the need for a close inter-connection between QI and core organizational activities and processes. Achieving coherence not only between strategic areas as in the balanced scorecard approach (e.g. Norreklit, 2000), but also between different organizational and social systems and organizational QI competence seems important for successful results (e.g. McAlearney et al., 2013; Nystrom, 2009; Hoog et al., 2013). Results also show that the management of strategic and system-wide continuous development needs a reliable, accurate, and updated knowledge base, not only on health outcomes and organizational results, but also on processes, activities, and opinions. The study present obstacles and challenges experienced in a case where such a system-wide intervention is on-going, illuminating the potential of system-wide M\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the obstacles and challenges associated with organizational monitoring and follow-up (M\nDesign/methodology/approach: A longitudinal case study of a large health care organization during a system-wide QI intervention. Content analysis was conducted of repeated interviews with key actors and archival data collected over a period of four years.\nFindings: The demand for improved M\nPractical implications: A model of important aspects of M\nOriginality/value: Most health care systems are flooded with a vast amount of registers, records, and measurements. A key issue is how such data can be processed and refined to reflect the needs and the development process of the health care system and how rich data can be used for improvement purposes. This study presents key organizational actor's view on important factors to consider when building a coherent organizational M\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Only narratives can reflect the experience of objectivity: effective persuasion
|
[
"Meaning",
"Narratives",
"Rhetoric",
"Adjectives",
"Objectivity",
"Organizational closure"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Rhetorical success is measured in terms of influence of a speaker upon listener(s). To win an argument may not be easy. More difficult is to ask for more: listeners support the (new) information by new behavior, for instance in organizations where change is needed. Managers have only their authority given by the organization to manage their employees. People obey their bosses because in the end they have to. To motivate people to a higher degree, the use of rhetoric is advisable. Speakers using rhetoric demonstrate the art of persuasion. Effective persuasion is proven by the changed behavior of listeners. If people show best \"what-they-are\" with what they do or do not do, then successful rhetoric knows how to resonate with the identity of listeners. Persuasion is not needed if speaker and listener(s) already are in agreement. The art of persuasion rests on how it handles (potential) disagreements especially when speaker and listener have access to or possess the same objective knowledge. Why do facts not speak for themselves in many cases? How to overcome that difficulty? Rhetoric can use two types of language: the use of objective or subjective language, academic language or stories and narratives. Are they equally effective to persuade people? The properties of both will be explored.\nPersuading: True cooperation and working together not only connect people on a behavioral level, they also express agreement about goals and meaning. Rhetoric will help in many cases (of potential disagreements) when the use of power to \"persuade\" people is not appropriate or effective. Persuasion anticipates resistance. What can make people disagree with each other? The first obvious reasons are that one knows less than another or forgot relevant facts and has therefore a less profound opinion, making him disagree. To solve disagreement should be relatively easy: just provide the missing information or remind the listener. In principle persuasion should not be necessary as facts should speak for themselves and resolve disagreements. If this is not the case repeating facts or knowledge in order to win the argument may not work and even deepens the differences.\nObjective texts convey knowledge: Objective (academic) language are in a sense \"tools\" and describe the empirical (objective) facts with or without the corresponding relevant (researched or assumed) causal relations. These descriptions are accepted by a (scientific) community as \"objective,\" and it should not matter who the author is. The author represents a \"universal\" individual who did good research. Because of this impersonal nature next to the methodology used, academic texts are regarded as neutral, reliable and trustworthy. The first ideal of scientific knowledge (theories) is universality and generalizability (Feynman, 1965; Dow, 2006, p. 22). Of course this is a model or a \"vision\" of reality. Thus the language used to present the outcome of the research should be at least as \"universal\" and trustworthy as the objective information it conveys. Wittgenstein (1922/2010, 5.473, 3-4.111) even went so far as to claim that the use of language itself would guarantee objectivity. Kant stated that human beings see (perceive) in \"sensibility\" an objective but human version of the \"world,\" which combined with logical thought (understanding) about it, leads to \"objective knowledge\" (Kant, 1929). This \"objective picture\" or knowledge can be expressed and shared with the proper use of language. In academic texts descriptions are objective because the meaning of the researcher(s) or all involved, is missing or once present, has been carefully erased from the text. This makes scientific texts (information) perfectly meaningless by design. The communities of academics however consist of people and as part of a social world they are not meaning free. Science therefore indirectly has its own (meta)rhetoric and tries to persuade its audience sometimes in a less objective way (Grundmann, 2013).\nNarratives: Narratives stand in stark contrast with \"objective (academic) texts\" as the need to exorcize any kind of meaning is fully missing. \"Narrative [...] may be defined as the representation of real or fictive events and situations in a time sequence\" (Prince, 1980, p. 49). Still, it seems \"[...] that there is no consensus amongst narratologists on how to define a narrative, or how to differentiate it from other genres of discourse\" (Rudrum, 2005, p. 203). In the paper narratives are used as defined by Boje (2001), who contrasted them against the notion of \"stories.\" While stories because of their ongoing nature do not need to have a beginning or an end when the story is told, narratives are defined by a beginning, a middle phase and an end. The \"representation\" referred to in \"narratives are representations of [...] events\" is best seen as the linguistic version of movies with color and sound and if relevant with smell and taste and tactile sense. Event descriptions are also similar to the linguistic versions of internal movies, which we normally access as memories. Memories may be regarded as \"the founding fathers\" of personal (internal) narratives and it is common knowledge they play a crucial role in the building up of our identities. All those many narratives together do not lead to a single coherent identity as biographies or journalistic narratives about hero's or famous villains suggest. Identity is not a coherent logical whole, it is dynamic, but fragmented and many narratives are isolated from each other or compete for \"power\" (Bourdieu, 2000).\nIdentification: To identify-with is like placing oneself in the shoes of the other (protagonist) and becoming able to experience his context. If there is a \"full\" identification the reader/listener will not only be in his shoes, but psychologically takes over the role of the protagonist and experiences the meaning and behavior of the protagonist triggered by that context. Through the capable use of narratives the law of un-transferability of meaning is \"bypassed.\" Identification processes bring us more into the un-empirical reality of the other and is also a great \"tool\" to (much) better understand \"those-who-are-not-like-us.\" The presence of a protagonist in narratives is essential and makes narratives very suitable to persuade the listener, much more than only presenting \"objective texts,\" \"facts\" or procedures. This makes narratives powerful rhetorical devices (Rowland, 1987; Cole, 1997; Boje, 2001; Prusak et al., 2012).\n\"Adjectivity\" vs objectivity: Objectively the two boys perceive the same dog, but how do they handle the dog? What determines their behavior? Any knowledge about or the objective (apodictic) description of that dog cannot by itself explain or predict their actual reaction. What the dog personally means to them, the meaning in the boys not within the dog, determines how they will respond. We may intellectually know that our meanings of the world are subjective internal constructs and indirectly expresses our identity (Bannister and Fransella, 1971; Iglesias and Bonet, 2012), but we are unable to experience that knowledge. Meaning, not unlike colors is integrated, intertwined, \"etched\" by projection in the thing perceived. That makes meaning not only detached from the perceiver, but also an external property of the perceived. The boys are only able to experience their own version of the \"objective truth\" of that dog as there is no other version to witness for anyone. Seconds later memories are already forming and translated into internal narratives when reflected. What do these narratives convey?\nKnowing vs realizing: Knowledge \"alone,\" even when accepted or understood, will not automatically guarantee supportive actions. Knowledge \"alone\" can be defined as \"intellectual knowledge.\" If knowledge is to become actionable and change behavior, it has to become meaningful. But to become meaningful implies meaning has crossed its threshold of awareness. For example, there are a lot of people who know smoking is dangerous or flying is safe as they accept that knowledge or even understand it. Nevertheless they continue smoking or avoid flying. The knowledge of dangerous cigarettes (\"intellectual knowledge\") does not influence or motivate smokers to quit smoking, not really. Until a bad morning they cough up things, which should not be there, clearly spoiling the colors of their handkerchief. Now, most of them realize in that moment what they already knew for a long time. This realization (realisieren in German) is the new meaning, but now matching the \"old\" \"intellectual knowledge.\" Knowledge turned to meaning because of the experience. The experience tilted the meaning (far) above its threshold of awareness. This new meaning will replace the previous one (\"smoking is safe enough\") and identity (in that context) is changed with it. The corresponding behavior will follow or develop over time. To realize is different from understanding like meaning is different from knowledge, but to realize is true motivation.\nRespect: If we regard persons' identities as multicolored complex and dynamic dimensions of meaning, what holds those many diverse internal narratives together other then respect? Even identities, who do not respect themselves, have an unshakeable respect for their own narratives guarding the beliefs and values they do not like. This respect is old and tries to keep identity and its narratives whole and protected. Reflecting this respect to others equals respect for others and mirrors the internal condition of human reflection. Respect does not need to be admiration. Respect can be based on admiration or respect can be about respecting the traffic rules. In both cases respect accepts (at least) the existence of what otherwise will be denied.\nConclusion: To persuade people to change behavior is more difficult than to help people understand or accept new ideas. To motivate people for new behavior, it becomes necessary that they not only understand, but also realize the meaning behind the ideas. Persuasion is not necessary when there is no resistance to the new knowledge as is the case under Argyris' single loop learning conditions, but in those cases rhetoric is not needed. The art of rhetoric is to get knowledge and meaning across and anticipates resistance. To get knowledge across is relatively easy compared to meaning as the transfer of meaning is a biological impossibility. To \"bypass\" the law of un-transferability of meaning to help people realize, is to mimic in a way the primary method of how realizing in real life comes into effect: direct experience. Providing experience in language can only be done indirectly with (personal) narratives. Narratives as descriptions, offer knowledge and meaning because of the ability of listeners to identify with the protagonist and his direct experiences of \"the empirical truth.\"\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between objective language and narratives and how differences affect rhetoric.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Conceptual implications are drawn from an analysis and discussion of the literature in the fields of autopoiesis, meanings and narratives.\nFindings: Only narratives convey the experience of objectivity, which makes them more effective to persuade people to change than just providing \"objective\" data and explanatory knowledge.\nOriginality/value: The paper discusses how the projection of meaning is not an experience but knowledge. Meaning is experienced as an empirical property of the perceived.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Objectivistic knowledge artifacts
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Scientific knowledge",
"Artificial intelligence",
"Lessons-learned systems",
"Objectivistic knowledge artifacts",
"Scientific knowledge artifacts"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Knowledge and its artifacts are of interest to both social and computer sciences. Cabitza and Locoro (2014) propose a conceptual framework for both perspectives, which they refer to as situativity and objectivity. Cabitza and Locoro (2014), along with many others (e.g. Simone, 2015; Cabitza et al., 2013), described the socially situated stance in detail. Further description of the objectivity stance is still needed, particularly given the increasing ubiquity of computational representations of socially motivated knowledge cycles. In the field of science alone, where human activities are considered a bottleneck to scientific progress (Gil et al., 2014), entire scientific steps including hypotheses generation are being automated (Bohannon, 2017). This reality makes it urgent that both situativity and objectivity stances coexist to design systems that guarantee that humans are kept in the loop and can understand what the automated methods implement and the results they obtain.\n2. The objectivity stance: This section proposes substantiation for the objectivity dimension by tracing the path taken by the field of AI to computationally represent concepts and algorithms for the purpose of performing knowledge tasks. Given that KAs per se are data structures consisting of information fields, understanding the underlying principles of reasoning and representations for reasoning will help us design artifacts that can be understood by humans and easily manipulated by AI methodologies. It is necessary, however, that prior to this, we make explicit the working definition of knowledge that has motivated such a path. The conceptualization of knowledge adopted is crucial because it drives the underlying strategy for managing it, which can in turn influence the perception of the role of computational systems designed for it (e.g. Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Cabitza and Locoro, 2014). The role of computer systems determines the goals of KAs and consequently how to evaluate them. We complement the underlying foundations of SKAs and include guidance from the KM literature for repository-based systems. We conclude this section by presenting the objectivistic design principles and quality metrics for objectivistic KAs.\n3. Objectivistic KAs: The spur of KM systems in the last few decades of the twentieth century led various organizations to capture KAs such as alerts and lessons-learned in textual databases (Weber et al., 2001). Some of these repositories retain thousands of artifacts, making the use of computational solutions indispensable to facilitate their effective retrieval, capture, and reuse.\n4. SKAs: We now describe the process of developing objectivistic KAs for scientific knowledge. We rely on the principles from Section 2 and the generalized KA from Section 3. We introduce this section by describing the user community that adopted SKAs. We also describe the expected value of adopting these artifacts in the context of the project where they were implemented.\n5. Usage and analysis: This section describes the usage and analysis of SKAs in the KR Version 2 launched in 2008; hence, the data described here are indicated to be from 2008 to 2012. The SKAs entered in Version 1 were transferred into Version 2.\n6. Discussion and conclusions: 6.1 Discussion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: By establishing a conceptual path through the field of artificial intelligence for objectivistic knowledge artifacts (KAs), the purpose of this paper is to propose an extension to their design principles. The author uses these principles to deploy KAs for knowledge acquired in scientific processes, to determine whether these principles steer the design of KAs that are amenable for both human and computational manipulation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Adopting the design principles mentioned above, the author describes the deployment of KAs in collaboration with a group of scientists to represent knowledge gained in scientific processes. The author then analyzes the resulting usage data.\nFindings: Usage data reveal that human scientists could enter scientific KAs within the proposed structure. The scientists were able to create associations among them, search and retrieve KAs, and reuse them in drafts of reports to funding agencies. These results were observed when scientists were motivated by imminent incentives.\nResearch limitations/implications: Previous work has shown that objectivistic KAs are suitable for representing knowledge in computational processes. The data analyzed in this work show that they are suitable for representing knowledge in processes conducted by humans. The need for imminent incentives to motivate humans to contribute KAs suggests a limitation, which may be attributed to the exclusively objectivistic perspective in their design. The author hence discusses the adoption of situativity principles for a more beneficial implementation of KAs.\nOriginality/value: The suitability for interaction with both human and computational processes makes objectivistic KAs candidates for use as metadata to intersect humans and computers, particularly for scientific processes. The author found no previous work implementing objectivistic KAs for scientific knowledge.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
New individual and organizational strategies for the reduction of discrimination: PROFESSIONAL INSIGHTS
|
[
"Discrimination",
"Bias",
"Work psychology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The reduction of overtly negative attitudes and behaviors toward stigmatized individuals over the past 50 years has been documented through empirical and anecdotal reports (Dovidio and Gaertner, 2000; Schuman et al., 1997). However, both researchers and practitioners attest to the continued emergence of subtler forms of discrimination as well as to the accumulation of negative consequences for targets and their employers (King et al., 2006; Martell et al., 1996; Valian, 1998). The pernicious nature of contemporary discrimination and its consequences make it essential to identify and evaluate strategies that individuals and organizations may carry out to reduce occurrences of inequity (Dipboye and Collela, 2005).\nConclusions and implications: In order to maximize the impact of this symposium, Kecia Thomas, Professor at the University of Georgia and an expert in workplace diversity, discussed themes that emerged across papers as well as directions that should be taken in the future. Thomas noted the diverging (individual and organizational) approaches to addressing discrimination and urged researchers to further both streams of research, but to pay particular attention to breaking down the systems of privilege that legitimize discrimination. Consonant with this, Thomas encouraged researchers to shift the focus from individual to organizational strategies of reducing discrimination in an effort to remove the burden from the victim.In summary, by considering subtle forms of discrimination and individual actions (Singletary and Hebl, 2007), the effect of elaboration on bias in evaluating letters of recommendation (Elder et al., 2007), global organizational policies regarding diversity in conjunction with specific HR practices (Madera et al., 2007) and relational demography at the level of the organization and the community in which it is embedded (Avery et al., 2007), these studies offer insight into methods by which contemporary forms of discrimination may be successfully eliminated. Central to this symposium was not only the identification of discrimination, but also the clarification of strategies or methods to reduce such discrimination. The pernicious nature of contemporary discrimination and its consequences necessitate the identification and evaluation of strategies that individuals and organizations can enact to reduce occurrences of inequity. This set of studies provides researchers and practitioners with empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of various strategies for the reduction of discrimination. However, more research is needed to support and further develop these various strategies in an effort to eliminate systems that foster status differences.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this report is to highlight an important set of papers that address strategies for reducing discrimination that were presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)'s annual conference.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper summarizes four papers from the SIOP conference that dealt explicitly with methods that individuals and organizations can take to avoid or reduce prejudice and discrimination.\nFindings: - Each paper provided empirical evidence of the existence of discrimination, as well as unique strategies for its reduction.\nPractical implications: - This report underscores the need for individuals and organizations, as well as researchers and practitioners, to work toward breaking down systems of privilege that legitimize discrimination.\nOriginality/value: - The 2007 SIOP conference overall, and this set of presentations in particular, contributed critical new evidence that should guide research and practice regarding the equitable management of diversity in organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Smile for a while: the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer affect and satisfaction
|
[
"Affect",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Emotional contagion",
"Feelings-as-information",
"Field study",
"Smiling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The face is believed to be the primary non-verbal channel for the communication of emotions (Small and Verrochi, 2009), with smiling being the most direct sign of positive emotions (Ekman, 1992). Smiling is a universal display (Darwin, 1872/1965; Ekman and Friesen, 1969; Lau, 1982) and is cross-culturally understood as a sign of happiness and joy (Ekman, 1992). Therefore, there is a very strong agreement (typically above 90 percent) between people from western and eastern cultures, independent of their age and gender, in determining whether an individual is happy or not, solely by looking at the individual's face (e.g. Ekman and Friesen, 1971; Ekman et al., 1987). Research also shows that all positive emotions share one single facial expression: a particular type of smile (Ekman, 1993). Thus, unlike many other expressions, smiling represents one of our few basic emotions (Ekman, 1992) and is collectively understood as a sign of friendliness, generosity, and other altruistic behaviors (Brown et al., 2003; Gabriel et al., 2015; Grandey and Gabriel, 2015; Lau, 1982; Mehu et al., 2008).\nTheoretical framework: Emotional contagion theory\nHypothesis development: A few studies (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006; Shaw Brown and Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994) have failed to establish a relationship between employee-displayed smiling and customer satisfaction. However, there is both direct (Soderlund and Rosengren, 2008) and indirect evidence (Barger and Grandey, 2006; Gabriel et al., 2015; Keh et al., 2013; Musgrove, 2011; Trougakos et al., 2011; Tsai and Huang, 2002) that employee-displayed smiling should positively influence customers' levels of satisfaction. A non-experimental field study by Barger and Grandey (2006) found that employee-displayed smiling (both in isolation and together with other positive employee-displayed behaviors) was positively associated with customers' encounter satisfaction in food and coffee services. A more recent field study by Gabriel et al. (2015) found that a combined index of employee positive emotional displays (including smiling) was positively related to customers' encounter satisfaction and to their ratings of employee friendliness in counter-only stores such as coffee and sandwich shops. Using a similar index of employee-displayed positive emotions, Keh et al. (2013) found that the extent to which employees displayed such positive emotions was positively associated with customer satisfaction, both in a scenario-based experiment on university students and in a subsequent field study on grocery shoppers. Mirroring these findings, Soderlund and Rosengren (2008) found that service workers' smiles had a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction in a scenario-based experiment with pictures of smiling (vs non-smiling) service workers at a travel agency. A bit later, Trougakos et al. (2011) conducted an experimental study in which undergraduate business students were trained to act as poll workers and survey other students about one of two campus organizations. The poll workers in one condition were instructed to act positively, whereas those in the other condition were instructed to act as neutral as possible. Respondents surveyed by the positive poll workers reported more favorable attitudes toward the campus organization, and this was partly measured by their overall satisfaction. Based on these studies, the author hypothesizes:\nMethodology: Participants\nResults: A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on customer satisfaction revealed a statistically significant effect of employee condition; F(1, 200)=7.21, p=0.008, r=0.19[2]. In support of H1, customers in the smiling employee condition (M=3.12; SD=0.87) reported higher levels of satisfaction than customers in the non-smiling employee condition (M=2.73; SD=1.16).\nDiscussion: The present field study has shown that employee-displayed smiling during brief service encounters has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. This effect is mediated by customers' levels of pleasure and, to a weaker extent, by dominance. By showing this, the current study conceptually corroborates previous related research (Gabriel et al., 2015; Keh et al., 2013; Kim and Yoon, 2012; Mattila and Enz, 2002; Musgrove, 2011; Pugh, 2001; Soderlund and Rosengren, 2008; Trougakos et al., 2011; Tsai and Huang, 2002). However, it also contradicts a number of studies (Barger and Grandey, 2006; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006; Shaw Brown and Sulzer-Azaroff, 1994), in which employee-displayed smiling was not found to influence customers' affective states and/or satisfaction. The findings of the present study have several important implications for both theory and practice.\nConclusion: To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is the first experimental evidence from actual field settings for a smiling-induced emotional contagion effect. The present research therefore makes a significant contribution to emotional contagion theory as well as other affect-based theories in psychology, marketing, and service research. Furthermore, in addition to the experimental demonstration that pleasure is the main driver for the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customer satisfaction (shown for the first time under ecologically valid conditions), the current work reveals that customers' feelings of dominance act as an additional mediator for the smiling-satisfaction link. This has never been reported before in the literature on smiling. Taken together, these findings contribute to the growing stream of transformative service research focusing on how well-being can be achieved in service settings to improve happiness, joy, and emotional health in customers and employees (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015; Anderson et al., 2013; Ostrom et al., 2015).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of employee-displayed smiling on customers' affective states (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) and satisfaction. Building on the stimulus-organism-response framework and theories of emotional contagion and feelings-as-information, the main hypothesis was that a smiling (vs non-smiling) employee significantly increases customer satisfaction through the mediating influence of pleasure.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study used a quasi-experimental two-group between-subjects design. A total of 210 customers at a large retail bank had a brief service encounter at the store entrance with a smiling (vs non-smiling) bank teller. Customers then went into the bank to do what they came to do. Before leaving the bank, customers completed a survey that included demographic information, affect (pleasure, arousal, and dominance), and measures of customer satisfaction.\nFindings: A smiling (vs non-smiling) employee had a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. This effect was mediated by pleasure, but also, to a weaker extent, by dominance. These results contradict previous claims that smiling-induced emotional contagion does not remain throughout the completion of a service encounter.\nPractical implications: Managers should encourage, and potentially train, employees to act in ways associated with positive emotions. Managers could also hire employees based on how good they are at acting and expressing themselves in a genuinely positive manner and create a pleasant store atmosphere so that the feelings and behaviors displayed by frontline employees are genuine rather than inauthentic.\nOriginality/value: This is the first experimental field study to examine the isolated effect that employee-displayed smiling has on customers' affective states and satisfaction. The results provide more direct evidence for the psychological processes justified by emotional contagion and feelings-as-information theories. Furthermore, the finding that dominance mediates the smiling-satisfaction link has never been shown before.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Managers, balance, and fulfilling lives
|
[
"Men",
"Quality of life",
"Personal needs",
"Managers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The 2000 Gender in Management: An International Journal paper \"Do managerial men benefit from organizational values supporting work-personal life balance?\" followed from some of my earlier work, informed some of my later work, and both this paper and my research and writing were influenced by trends in the wider society at the time. I believe the 2000 paper reflected and fit the times.\nMy previous research: Research does not exist in a vacuum. In addition it is possible to see threads over time in most researcher's interests. In some cases the research questions pursued by academics may also reflect issues in their personal lives, although it is not easy to determine these associations.I had been active in studying the work and career experiences of managerial and professional women for some time (Burke and Weir, 1977a; Burke, 1999), and involved in consulting projects with a few large organizations on initiatives for supporting the advancement of managerial and professional women (Burke, 1997; Burke and Black, 1996). Two projects involved understanding why capable women were leaving the public accounting profession and why talented women were not advancing their careers in a large bank. In both cases, work-family balance and workplace flexibility emerged as important concerns. In the public accounting firm, the notion of \"face time\" was salient; managers and professionals would remain in their offices until the managing partner left for the day and then they went home, even though they could have left earlier.Previous research and writing on these issues indicated that efforts to address work-family or work-personal life balance were important in both enhancing individual satisfaction as well as job performance (Burke and Greenglass, 1987; Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000; Powell, 1999).In addition, about this time I had also been writing on the lives of managerial and professional men in the workplace (Burke and Weir, 1977b; Burke and Nelson, 1998), and \"career success and personal failure\" experiences of men at work (Burke and Weir, 1980a, b; Burke and Deszca, 1982), a concept first proposed by Korman and Korman (1980). Work-personal life balance or integration concerns emerged later in men's lives (Burke and Nelson, 1998; Korman and Korman, 1980), so the experiences of men were ever present in my awareness. These issues were also reflected in my roles as partner, father, son, brother, professor/teacher, researcher, academic colleague, friend, and citizen. I lived them every day.\nThe 2000 paper: We included a measure of organizational values, supportive of work-personal life balance developed by Kofodimos (1993), in a study of males and female MBA graduates of a single large Canadian university, holding managerial and professional jobs. Joan has used this measure in career workshops so it had a practical bent. Analyses of the female sample indicated that women reporting values more supportive of work-personal life balance were more satisfied, and psychologically healthier (i.e. less stressed, fewer psychosomatic symptoms, and more life satisfaction). We believed that men indicating values more supportive of work-personal life balance would report similar results. We found that men benefited from organizational values supporting work-personal life balance as well, but to a slighter smaller degree than did their female colleagues. We suggested several possible explanations for the benefits reported by our male sample and we probably should have made a larger point of the fact that men, on average, did not find their organizational values particularly supportive of work personal life balance. However, if this research was undertaken today we believe that more men would find their organizational values a bit more supportive than they were a decade ago.\nOn-going research: Several research themes have appeared in my work since the 2000 paper. First, in any project in which women and men take part, I will always undertake analyses in each sample separately as well as comparing women and men on central study variables. I have always found that though women and men differ considerably on personal demographic and work situation variables (e.g. age, marital and parental status, income, organizational level). Some of these papers have appeared in Gender in Management: An International Journal. Second, I have examined the influence of Time Affluence and Material Affluence (Kasser and Sheldon, 2009) on satisfactions and psychological well-being of women and men holding various jobs (e.g. in manufacturing and hotel managers) in different countries (e.g. China, Egypt, Turkey). Third, I have looked at the antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict among women and men in different sectors and in different countries. Fourth, I have examined the value of particular recovery experiences after work (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2007) on the well-being of male and female mangers and professionals in various sectors and countries. Fifth, I have been involved in several research and editing projects examining the effects of long work hours, work intensity and work addiction on the work, career, family, and well-being experiences of women and men (Burke, 2006; Burke and Cooper, 2009). A common theme in this stream of research and writing is excessive work investment, its consequences, and efforts to minimize potential negative consequences. In sum, how to best achieve personal-work life balance and fulfilling lives both at home and at work.\nSmall changes and small gains: I see this body of work reflecting broader societal questions and changes. I have considered the status of women at work in several countries with my friend and colleague Marilyn Davidson (Davidson and Burke, 2004; Davidson and Burke, 2010). Although the percentage of women in the workforce varies across these countries, this percentage has generally increased in almost all countries. In fact, women will comprise half the US workforce in 2010 (Shriver, 2009); about 40 percent of working wives will be earning more income than their husbands; almost 70 percent of mothers will be co-bread winners in their families; and less than 30 percent of children will have stay-at-home mothers. This high and increasing percentages of women in the workforce will require changes in women, men, and societal institutions. The roles and responsibilities of men will necessarily change. Men will, of necessity, have more challenging \"negotiations\" with their spouses/partners and men will be required to undertake more family and home responsibilities. This trend is already starting to be seen (O'Toole and Lawler, 2006) and, as a consequence, men will be more interested in workplaces that demonstrate values supportive of personal life and work integration or balance. Samples in North America show that women and men are equally interested in more flexible work hours and more paid (or unpaid) time off. The UK has passed legislation indicating that workers now have a right to negotiate flexibility with their employers, while Germany has legislated six weeks of vacation time, and Scandinavia is on the forefront of gender role equality.\nOrganizational initiatives: In addition to initiatives undertaken by individuals and their families, there is some evidence that organizations are more interested in making changes in their workplaces that support work-personal live balance among both male and female employees. Munck (2001) has shown that the efforts of the Hilton hotel chain to reduce the hours worked by hotel staff was not only possible but did not affect levels of job performance. An increasing number of organizations are making use of flexible working hours, maternity and paternity leaves, reduced work load arrangements, e.g. where managers and professionals work three or four days a week, and job sharing (Jones et al., 2006).\nBut only slow progress: In the decade since this paper was published we have seen only slow and uneven progress (Davidson and Burke, 2010). Gains have been made in the developed world but little seems to have changed in the developing world. In addition, the economic meltdown of 2008 has taken the spotlight off supporting work-personal life balance and instead turned it on to organizational survival. Individuals are being required to, or sometimes choosing, to have less balance in their lives as job security became frayed. Hopefully this will be only a short-term trend and I intend to continue emphasizing the relationship of individual and family health and organizational health.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflection on the author's earlier paper published in Gender in Management: An International Journal (formerly Women in Management Review) in 2000 titled \"Do managerial men benefit from organizational values supporting work-personal life balance?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is examined in the context of the author's research and writing program.\nFindings: - The 2000 paper built on the author's previous research and writing and informed their current research activities. In addition, the 2000 paper seemed to reflect emerging interest in work-personal life balance or integration, as well as the experience of men at work, that was emerging at this time.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Greater attention to the work and life experiences of men at work is warranted.\nPractical implications: - The paper finds that men benefit from organizational values supporting work-personal balance as do other studies involving managerial and professional women. These collective findings suggest that organizations would benefit by supporting both male and female managers and professionals in their efforts to lead more complete lives as employees and family members.\nOriginality/value: - The paper indicates that a greater understanding of men's lives would benefit not only men but also women and employing organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Korean EFL students' argumentative writing in L1 and L2: A comparative move analysis study
|
[
"Intercultural rhetoric",
"EFL",
"Move analysis",
"Korean rhetoric",
"Argumentative writing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Constructing a persuasive argument is considered crucial to a successful college career (Wingate, 2012; Wu, 2006). One compositional element that contributes to the success of an argument is a text's organizational pattern. It has been widely noted that organizational patterns vary across cultures, reflecting the variety of thinking patterns that are accepted and favored throughout the world (Kaplan, 1966). One of the major claims of Kaplan's (1966) work, which has been controversial (Casanave, 2004), is that English users prefer a direct approach in textual organization whereas circular and zigzag patterns are favored in oriental and semitic languages[1]. The difference in culture - which is said to account for the large gap in rhetorical traditions - has been believed to be the source of the struggle English as a foreign language (EFL) writers have in familiarizing themselves with the organizational pattern of the target discourse. As a consequence, finding similarities and differences across languages and, more specifically, rhetorical patterns, has become a topic of contrastive rhetoric (CR) (Connor, 2002).\nLiterature review: Kaplan's (1966) graphic model of discourse flow, which is still widely used in EFL writing classrooms, has shaped a perception of linearity characterizing native English writers' discourse vis-a-vis nonlinearity for nonnative-like patterns. His early work successfully incorporated a discussion of culture, discourse and linguistic relativity into rhetorical studies, and became a basis of a new research area, the so-called CR.\nMethods: Participants\nFindings: Macro- and micro-level analyses of the introductions\nDiscussions and implications: The analysis of the students' essays revealed conflicting aspects of their writing practice. At the macro level, the students' Korean writing did not fit the gi(ki)-seung(seung)-jeon(jeon)-gyeol(kyul) model of traditional Korean rhetoric, the main deviation from the structure being that the students often presented their main claims at the beginning of their essays. However, at the micro level, indirect body paragraphs were found to be significantly more numerous in the Korea essays than they were in the English essays. Measured against the identifiable structural patterns in the English essays, most of which were organized in a direct way, such findings are worthy of further inquiry.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This comparative study aims to investigate the rhetorical organization of Korean and English argumentative texts. In previous studies, the rhetorical organization of such texts has been categorized as either direct or indirect depending on the placement of the thesis statement (Chien, 2011). The present study attempts to document more specific rhetorical patterns using Swales (1990) concept of moves and steps.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Ten Korean EFL students with similar L1 and L2 literacy backgrounds were selected, and, adopting a within-subject design, the students wrote two argumentative essays, one in Korean and one in English, in response to two different topics. The students' essays were analyzed at both the macro and micro levels. The focus of the macro-level analysis was on the placement of the thesis statement and of topic sentences in each of the body paragraphs. Once the macro-level analysis was done, the essays were analyzed at the micro level using Swales (1990) move analysis.\nFindings: The findings suggest that both texts were organized in a similar way at the macro level, constituting a typical paper structure (i.e. introduction, body and conclusion). However, a difference appears at the micro level: the students used a variety of steps to create a move when writing in Korean, whereas little variation was found in the English texts. An analysis of the data suggests the possibility that the standardized moves and steps in the English texts may be due not to culture-specific rhetoric, but to a lack of practice with rhetorical thinking in English.\nOriginality/value: In previous studies, the rhetorical organization of texts has been categorized as either direct or indirect depending on the placement of the thesis statement. The present study uses the framework of move analysis to describe more specific organizational patterns of Korean and English writing to determine the extent to which Korean and English writing is similar in the genre of argumentative writing. Another significance of the study lies in the choice of Korean writing as a reference point for comparison with English writing. It has been widely noted that there is a dearth of research of Korean students' writing in contrastive rhetoric. To the best of the author's knowledge, most of the contrastive rhetoric studies were conducted with Chinese or Japanese student writers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
French supervisory board gender composition and quota threat: changes from 2008 to 2010
|
[
"Institutional theory",
"France",
"Women directors",
"Boards of directors",
"Quotas"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Across many countries, there has been much research interest in the issue of accession of women to large company boards (Huse, 2008; Terjesen et al., 2009). Norway was the first to introduce in 2003 a quota for at least 40 per cent representation of either gender on corporate boards (Hoel, 2008). Spain followed in 2007 with the passing of the Equality Law to increase the proportion of female directors to 40 per cent by 2015 (Mateos de Cabo et al., 2011). In early 2011, with French CAC40[1] company boards having only 12 per cent female representation (EC database, 2012), France introduced a 40 per cent quota mandate.\nThe threat of female board quotas: The debate around female board quotas widened significantly across the European Union (EU) over the period from 2008, as Vice President Viviane Reding (Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship) proposed a Directive requiring that by 2020, at least 40 per cent of the EU company boards directors would be of the under-represented gender, most frequently female. However, this would only apply to the larger listed companies, around 5,000 across the EU (Bodoni, 2013). The 2012 quota directive was delayed to 2013, but member countries, such as the UK, started to enhance their efforts to achieve the directive targets.\nThe French board context: There has been no regular academic review of the progress of women to French corporate boards as happens in the USA (via Catalyst's studies of women in the Fortune 500), the UK (via the annual Cranfield \"Female FTSE\" Reports) and several other countries. Consultancies (Heidrick\nInstitutional pressures and organizational legitimacy: What kind of pressures are there for firms to appoint more women to French boards, and how might these be manifested? Organizational legitimacy is a key asset, and the larger the firm, the more important it becomes to be seen as legitimate (Suchman, 1995). Institutional theory, which focuses on the reproduction or imitation of organizational structures and routines, suggests that organizations are likely to conform to institutional expectations to maintain stability and legitimacy, resulting in isomorphism, similarity to others. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) propose three kinds of institutional pressures. Coercive pressures arise from the wider societal norms regarding acceptable behavior for organizations; from other external institutions on which the organization is dependent for resources; and from regulatory bodies that provide access to legitimacy. Mimetic pressures lead organizations to copy successful competitors to reduce uncertainty in their environment. Normative pressures arise from professional norms within organizations. First, managers share common education and training and work to fulfill similar professional expectations. Second, their practice is reinforced by socializing and networking within and across their organization and industry, sharing experiences of what structures are needed and how to be successful. These institutional forces result in isomorphism and organizational homogeneity in particular fields, such as multi-nationals or commerce.\nMethodology: Sampling\nResults: We proposed in H1 that there would be an increase in the pace of change over the period of 2008-2010, evidenced by an increase in the proportion of new female appointments to SBF120 supervisory boards compared to new male appointments. EU data shown in Table I above had already revealed only a 2 per cent point rise in the proportion of female directors of CAC 40 firms (EC, 2012) during the three years 2005-2007.\nDiscussion: The aim of this study was to explore how the gender composition of SBF120 supervisory boards would change over the three-year run-up to the quota legislation which would be passed in 2011. The recent advance made by women on SBF120 French boards well ahead of the quota deadline is remarkable, given the low proportion of women directors in 2008 in France compared to some other European countries, and a lack of immediacy in the public debate in 2008 on this topic. Furthermore, their progress has overcome hurdles, such as the male-dominated habitus in French managerial cadres (Bourdieu, 1998) described earlier. According to institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Judge and Zeithaml, 1992), organizations experience internal normative pressures to maintain existing structures and processes, such as board composition. There was earlier a strong tendency for male bias, as in-group preferences led to appointment of directors in the mould of existing board members, from the same very male-dominated networks (Westphal and Zajac, 1995). Now French boards have woken up to the looming coercive pressure of the quota and changed the gender proportions of SBF120 French company boards well ahead of the first stage deadline of 2014.\nConclusions: The contribution of this paper is to reveal in detail the changes between 2008 and 2010 in board demography of SBF120 French firms. From our census of SBF120 firms and its two subsets (CAC40 and SBF80), we show that significant changes have occurred in the composition of French boards between 2008 and 2010. We also highlight the characteristics of the new cohort of directors appointed in the past two years, establishing that the women in that group are different to the men in terms of younger age, gaining appointments to larger boards and international diversity. We identified significant between cohort differences in age for both men and women, and for female cohorts, in nationality. We have considered why such changes have occurred ahead of the quota law, drawing on institutional theory (coercive, mimetic and normative forces) to discuss our results. We provide a benchmark for regular update studies of the whole SBF120 in the future as the quota deadline draws closer, with the intermediate quota level of 20 per cent by 2014.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how an environmental threat (possible quotas for female supervisory directors) might change supervisory board gender composition in SBF120 French company boards between 2008 and 2010.\nDesign/methodology/approach: From a census of supervisory board membership of SBF120 companies in France in January 2008 and December 2010, data were obtained to test hypotheses relating to changes in gender composition of boards and demographic differences between new and earlier director appointees. The authors drew on institutional theory to inform the discussion of this paper's findings.\nFindings: The authors reveal significant increases over 2008-2010 in SBF120 board female representation and significant cohort differences between recent and earlier appointees. Newer female appointees differed from male peers and from earlier appointed females and males, bringing youth and international experience. New females were more likely to gain CAC40 seats than their male peers. There was an increase in boards with multiple female directors.\nResearch limitations/implications: Actual motivations for increase in female appointments are unknown, but institutional theory provides possible explanations, as suggestion of coercive forces loomed. Chairmen of larger firms may have made strategic choices to attract younger and English-speaking foreign women, before the rush. Limitations include the descriptive nature of the paper, but it sets a benchmark for later studies to monitor progress in depth.\nPractical implications: The talent pool for female directors has widened to include foreign English-speaking women, bringing a range of new insights and experience of international governance practice to traditional French boardrooms. However, this could be seen as further discriminatory practice that requires female appointees to bring more human and social capital than that required of their male peers.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper charting the changes in supervisory board composition during the three-year period of environmental unrest as quotas were proposed and legislated in France and comparing new and existing cohort French director demographics.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Benefits of corporate social responsibility
|
[
"CSR",
"Value"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Marketers have emphasized how their product benefits consumers beyond its functionality. One method of doing this is through corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is acts that benefit society beyond the legal requirement (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). This strategy has led companies to fully integrate their positioning strategy around CSR, as evident in the claim by Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes that he is not a CEO of a company but CEO of a movement to improve the lives of children (Mustafa, 2007). Marketing around a brand's societal benefits has paid off, with 55 per cent of consumers willing to pay more for products and services from socially responsible companies (Nielsen, 2014).\nConceptual background: A full review of the literature on the benefits derived from purchases is beyond the scope of this paper. Interested readers may wish to look at Sanchez-Fernandez and Iniesta-Bonillo (2007) and Gallarza et al. (2011) for a fuller perspective. The focus of this review is on papers related to understanding differences in the conceptualization of benefits among scholars and providing an understanding of Holbrook's categories of benefits and their relevance to this study.\nMethodology: The quantitative study executed for this research begins by identifying reliable measures for the spiritual, status, aesthetic and efficiency benefits. An experiment implementing the presence and absence of CSR is conducted to determine how CSR relates to the various benefits. The benefit constructs are examined as mediators between CSR and consumer outcomes. Finally, we compare spiritual benefit to the other benefits to determine the magnitude of its effect on an outcome of CSR and as an antecedent to consumer outcomes.\nResults: The hypothesized paths in the model were tested in MPlus 7 using structural equation modeling with 5,000 bootstraps. Fit indexes (kh2 = 1582.27; kh2/df = 3; RMSEA = 0.07; CFI = 0.92) indicate that the model has an acceptable fit.\nDiscussion: The examination of antecedents to spiritual benefit is rare in the literature (Peloza and Shang, 2011, Gallarza et al., 2011). By examining how spiritual benefits are affected by CSR, this study not only fills this gap but also demonstrates the importance of spiritual benefits in predicting consumer outcomes. Furthermore, it has been shown qualitatively and conceptually that CSR impacts benefits (Green and Peloza, 2011, Peloza and Shang, 2011); the findings of this research prove this relationship by demonstrating that CSR does have an effect on spiritual benefits and comparing that effect on spiritual benefits to other types of benefits.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine how consumers benefit from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and whether spiritual benefits are a stronger outcome of CSR.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Items for values are developed and tested prior to their inclusion in an experiment that manipulates the presence and absence of CSR. A structural equation model is used to test the mediation effect of perceived value on the relationship between CSR and consumer outcomes. A chi-square test is used to compare the magnitude of the significant effects.\nFindings: CSR influences spiritual, status, efficiency and aesthetic benefits equally. Spiritual benefits is a stronger predictor of attitude and personal satisfaction than efficiency and status benefits.\nOriginality/value: Conceptual and qualitative findings in the literature demonstrate that CSR is associated with spiritual benefits. This study quantitatively tests not only how CSR influences various benefits but also how those effects compare to the relationship between CSR and spiritual benefits. The examination of the effect of CSR benefits on consumer outcomes reveals that the types of benefits do not have identical effects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Cognitive needs and use of social media: a comparative study of gratifications sought and gratification obtained
|
[
"World Wide Web",
"Social media",
"Information professionals",
"Uses and gratifications",
"Gratifications obtained",
"Gratifications sought"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Cognitive needs are related to knowledge, acquiring information, comprehension, etc.(Al-Ghamdi and Carlin, 2005; Leung, 2009; Stefanone et al., 2019; Wang and Tchernev, 2012). Uses and gratification theory believes that the selection of media and specified content to gratify a specified need is purely a discretion of user and the user is independent in choice. As per this theory, active users can evaluate and examine different kinds of media to select the content and media for gratifications of their cognitive need. Gratification sought and gratification obtained are two distinct components of the uses and gratification theory. Gratification sought has been identified as corresponding needs for the use of social media, whereas gratification obtained has been considered as the actual outcome or gained gratifications (Bae, 2018; Billings et al., 2017; Gan et al., 2017; Hwang and Lombard, 2005; Ishii et al., 2017; Johnson, 2014; Karimi et al., 2014; LaRose and Eastin, 2004; Oladosu et al., 2017; Palmgreen et al., 1980; Sohn et al., 2018; Stefanone et al., 2019; Wang and Zhu, 2012; Wang and Tchernev, 2012; Zhang, 2013).\n2. Problem statement: In this era of information technology, when information expulsion is at its peak and electronic gadgets like tabs, smart phones and other portable media devices are commonly being used, it is difficult for information professionals to stick on traditional sources of information and communication. Use of social media for education, social relations, communication, electronic evidences, proofs, statements and resources is widely acceptable practice.\n3. Research question: RQ1. What are the major gratifications sought from social media for cognitive needs among information professionals?RQ2. What are the major gratifications obtained from social media for cognitive needs among information professionals?RQ3. Do the information professionals obtain gratifications as sought from social media for cognitive needs?RQ4. What is the relationship between gratifications sought and gratifications obtained from social media for cognitive needs among information professionals?\n4. Objectives: The objectives of the study are to:\n5. Rationale and significance of the study: Globalization of world culture, rapid increase in information and communication technologies and variety of social media sites with availability of smartphones plus internet connectivity are plying an important role to bring revolutionary changes in uses and gratifications of the society (Criado et al., 2017; English and Walinga, 2012; Shirky, 2011; Stark and Nissenbaum, 2016). Use of social media is as higher as it can revolutionize the practice and theory of different fields. Use of social media for gratification of cognitive needs and gratification obtained has been studies in this research. This study not only measured the level of gratifications sought from social media but also examined the actual outcome or received gratification for cognitive needs among information professionals.\n6. Conceptual framework of the study: Katz et al. (1974) introduce the idea of active audience in media and communication. They were of their view that audience is independent in selection of their media choice, and they devised a theory called \"uses and gratification theory\". This study has been conducted on same conceptual framework and considered the audience as an active, independent and worthy element of information and communication process. Uses and gratifications theory is user-centered approach and believes that individuals use specific media for their specific need and choice. This theory contradicts with influence of media and does not believe in media hegemony and believes that no media can influence the audience media and content selection where the audience is active and have option for selection, evaluation and examination of their media selection as per their desires and needs. Uses and gratifications is a user-centered approach, and unlike to other theories of media effect, user and gratification focuses on \"what do people do with media\"? Uses and gratification is unique in its assumption and elucidates how people use media. Uses and gratifications is an appropriate theoretical approach for this investigation which has often been used to understand the uses of new media by individuals. This study has examined how people (information professionals) use media (social media) for their needs (personal and professional) and gratifications (satisfactions). Uses and gratifications approach emphasizes on what people do with media. Furthermore, the use and gratifications approach is especially well suited for studying the media selection by the user, internet and social media. The present study measured the use of media (for the purpose of this study media is specified to social media) by a group of individuals (the information professionals) recording to their needs, uses and gratifications form an empirical view, using the uses and gratifications perspective. User and gratifications has grown its application to the social media overtime. As the internet becomes more available and popular, multiple social media sites have developed. User and gratifications approach has provided a theoretical basis for studying the social media. Consequently, uses and gratification theory is the best theoretical framework for the proposed work. It is worth mentioning that this approach contradicts with other theories related to uses and effect as well, like Magic bullet or Hypodermic needle theories which strongly personify the media message with a bullet fired from media gun into the head of viewer. Another relevant theory could be cultivation which primarily examines the long-term effects of television which is not our interested area. Similarly, theory could be social learning which believes in social context and observation or direct instruction, but it does not rely on independence of choice of media by user. Same is the case of mass society theory which believes in supremacies of big companies and media.\n7. Research design: Literature review, nature and extent of this study reflected that quantitative research design was most suitable for this study and same was adopted. Keeping in view the method adopted in previous relevant studies/literature review, nature of this study, usability, suitability and cost effectiveness of the survey method, the survey method was used to collect data from the participants. The self-administered questionnaire was developed for this purpose. For this study, the purposive sampling technique has been adopted. Selection of sample among information professional was on the criterion of necessarily frequent user of media. Quantum of sample, i.e. 700 information professionals with specified characteristics, was decided, as Israel (1992) formulated a simple equation to determine the sample size.\n8. Instrument development: The outcomes of a survey mainly depend on the tools used for data collection. Therefore, it is essential to be very keen and cautious for serious considerations of selection or development of instrument for data collection. A good tool for data collection is the foundation of a best outcome. Review of available literature, nature and objective of the study referred the researcher to develop a customized tool for an empirical investigation of the trust on social media among information professional. For this purpose, a literature and knowledge-based tool consisting of a self-administered questionnaire was developed and same was circulated among experts of the field for their perusal, recommendations and remarks. In the light of feedback collected from these experts, instrument was modified according. After incorporation of due modification, the instrument was placed before renowned experts of the filed to ensure validity of the questionnaire. After achievement of required validity, a pilot study was launched to further examine the reliability of the tool used for this study.\n9. Reliability of the instrument: Reliability of an instrument reflects its stability and consistency within a given context. If an instrument is producing the same results in similar environment that means the instrument is reliable. To ensure the reliability of instruments used in this study, a pilot study was conducted to ensure reliability of the instrument. Reliability analysis test was performed using SPSS. All the sub scales were tested and the following values for reliability analysis were found. Cronbach's alpha of subscales is presented in Table I.\n10. Piloting of the instrument: Reliability and validity of the instrument were further tested in a pilot study conducted in July 2017. van Teijlingen and Hundley (2001) refer pilot study as a minute version of full-size study along with pre-testing of a particular research instrument such as a questionnaire. Pilot study accomplishes a range of significant functions and can provide treasured insight for other researchers. Arain et al. (2010) believe that pilot studies are the small studies that help to design further confirmatory studies .The questionnaire was piloted with 50 information professionals to recognize the clearness of the questionnaire's contents. The questionnaire devised for this study was circulated among the respondents after validating due reliability of the instrument. It was clarified to the participants of the pilot study that they will not be considered to be the part of actual study. Maximum time required to fill the questionnaire in all respect was extended to all participants. They were allowed to return this survey along with their comments and feedback. As suggested and analyzed from pilot study, misty and unclear questions were identified and properly modified.\n11. Data analyses: This study was designed to identify the major gratifications sought and obtained from social media for cognitive needs among information professionals. Cognitive needs are related to knowledge, acquiring information, comprehension, etc., and corresponding statements of the questionnaire have been grouped into one unit for the purpose of analysis of gratifications sought from social media among information professionals. Furthermore, the level of achieved satisfaction also needed to be examined along with the relationship of gratification sought and obtained from social media for cognitive needs. Data collected with the help of tool devised for this study was statistically analyzed using SPSS version 21 and various tests including independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA along with descriptive analysis were performed to draw the results and conclusion. Data analysis, findings/results relating to gratification sought and gratification obtained for cognitive needs are presented next.\n12. Discussions: Core objective of this study was to examine cognitive needs related to social media and compare the cognitive gratifications sought from social media with cognitive gratification obtained from social media among information professionals. Results of the data analysis affirms that the gratifications obtained from social media among information professionals relevant to cognitive needs which refers as acquiring information, knowledge, comprehension etc. are different than gratification sought. Information professionals are not getting the same as desired form social media in relevance to their cognitive needs. Significant difference has been recorded on the bases of gender among information professional in respect of cognitive gratifications sought and obtained among information professionals. Previously, a lot of research work has been done in relevance with cognitive needs, cognitive development, social cognitive in the light of uses and gratification theory and gratifications has been discussed individually (Al-Ghamdi and Carlin, 2005; Hu and Ha, 2015; Nekmat et al., 2019; Sohn et al., 2018; Stefanone et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2012). Gratification sought and gratification obtained in the light of uses and gratification theory has also been discussed in various studies (Bae, 2018; Ballard, 2011; Johnson and Shoemaker, 2014; Karimi et al., 2014; Stanley and Shepard, 2015) but this study established the fact that there is significant difference based on gender in respect of gratification sought and gratification obtained for cognitive needs from social media among information professionals. This has also been evident in the results that gratifications obtained from social media for cognitive needs are not the same as gratification sought from social media. This study recommends further studies on gratification sought and obtained for affective, personal integrative, social integrative and stress related needs from social media based on gender in the light of uses and gratification theory to strength or contrary the findings of this study.\n13. Conclusion: This study was concluded with the identification of major gratifications sought and major gratifications obtained from social media for cognitive needs among information professionals. It has been evident in the analysis that gratifications sought for cognitive needs from social media are significantly different from gratifications obtained from social media among information profession. The result of the study further elaborated that information professional are not obtaining gratifications as sought from social media for their cognitive needs. Comparative analysis of gratifications sought and obtained reflected significant difference between gratification sought and obtained from social media for cognitive needs among information professionals. A significant difference based on gender between gratification sought and gratifications obtained among information professional has also been recorded. These findings are in conflict with the assumptions of usage and gratification theory that users are self-sufficient and empowered enough to select and consume media as per their choice. Uses and gratification believe that users consume media of their choice and fulfill their need as per their own convenience, selection and choice. This study was limited to information professionals. This study encourages researchers from other professions to further investigate different types of needs in the light of uses and gratification theory for further clarification of the phenomenon.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to compare the gratification sought and gratification obtained for cognitive needs from social media among information professionals in the limelight of uses and gratification theory. Cognitive needs are related to knowledge, acquiring information, comprehension etc., and gratification sought and gratification obtained are two distinct components of the uses and gratification theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: For this quantitative research study, a self-administered survey questionnaire was used to collect data from the participants of the study. Sample of this study was 700 information professionals who are necessarily users of social media.\nFindings: Finding of this study depicted that gratification obtained and gratification sought from social media for cognitive needs are different from each other, and information professionals need to revisit their social media use for cognitive needs.\nResearch limitations/implications: The present study is limited to gratification sought and gratification obtained for cognitive needs among information professionals.\nPractical implications: This study has determined that information professionals need to revisit their social media use for cognitive needs, as the obtained gratifications are different from gratification sought from social media.\nSocial implications: Social media provides versatility of information in different forms and large numbers of information professionals are the users of social media around globe. Perceived use of social media for cognitive needs has been resulted into destructed gratifications. This study has brought the actual outcome of the use of social media to the audience so that they may rectify their social media use.\nOriginality/value: This study is a significant contribution for information professionals to review the gratifications sought and obtained from social media for cognitive needs. It has been established in this study that gratifications sought are significantly different from gratifications obtained from social media among information professionals.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Are the sustainable development goals being implemented in the Portuguese higher education formative offer?
|
[
"Education for sustainable development",
"Higher education",
"Sustainable development goals",
"Sustainability curriculum",
"Portuguese higher education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nAcronyms: DESD\nIntroduction: The 57th session of the United Nations General Assembly in December 2002 adopted Resolution 57/254 announcing the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UN-DESD) for the period between 2005 and 2014. This resolution aimed to highlight education's critical role in bringing about a more sustainable world (Wals, 2014).\nLiterature review: The 2030 Agenda for sustainable development\nMethod: The implementation of SDGs in all undergraduate and master's courses in Portuguese public HEIs (polytechnics and universities) is measured by means of a content analysis of the course designations and objectives. The information was accessed on the HEIs websites. The study examined the undergraduate and master's courses of the 33 Portuguese public HEIs, 19 of which are polytechnics and 14 universities. All the 957 undergraduate and 1,599 master's courses in the websites were listed and the course designations and objectives analysed.\nResults: This analysis confirmed that 198 courses respond to at least one SDG. Most courses address only one SDG (n: 136), 49 courses address two SDGs, ten courses address three SDGs and one addresses four SDGs. The following SDGs were represented in the largest number of courses in different institutions (Table III): SDG 15 - life on land (n: 37), SDG 7 - affordable and clean energy (n: 36) and SDG 6 - clean water and sanitation (n: 25). The least represented SDGs are SDG 1 - no poverty, and 17 - partnerships for the goals. It should be noted that 7.7 per cent of courses addressed at least one SDG, and each HEI has on average six courses (198 courses in 33 HEI) that are explicitly related with SDGs.\nDiscussion: The analysis of the public formative offer in Portugal shows that undergraduate and postgraduate degrees address the following SDGs most frequently: SDG 15 - life on land (examples of courses: Bachelor's in Environmental Sciences, Bachelor's in Organic Farming, bachelor in Forestry and Natural Resources Engineering, bachelor and master in Environment Engineering, Master's in Forest Resources) and SDG 7 - affordable and clean energy (examples of courses: Bachelor's in Environmental Sciences, Bachelor's in Renewable Energy Engineering, Master's in Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and Master's in Sustainable Energies). Both highlight the current concerns about the environment for the future of humanity. The focus on these SGDs may reflect the increasing awareness of resource depletion and the need for both preservation of life and the development of sustainable solutions in the area of energy.\nConclusion: This study provides a critical analysis of the inclusion of SDG in Portuguese HEIs. HEIs' integration of ESD varies considerably and some institutions are already addressing more of the SDGs to develop a culture for SD. The results show that in Portugal, 198 courses directly and explicitly address at least one SDG; on average, each HEI has six courses that explicitly address at least one SDG; universities have more courses in SDG areas than polytechnics; more master's degrees embrace the SDGs than undergraduate degrees; most of the courses addressing SDGs are from the social sciences and humanities areas and from natural and environmental sciences; the SDGs addressed by the most undergraduate and master courses are SDG 15 - life on land, and SDG 7 - affordable and clean energy.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The study aims to examine the vertical integration of the sustainable development goals (SGDs) in Portuguese public higher education institutions, namely, at the level of undergraduate and master's degrees, and the extent to which Portuguese higher education institutions (HEI) are preparing for the United Nations' call to promote SDGs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A content analysis of the designations and objectives of the 2,556 undergraduate and master's degrees (in 33 Portuguese public higher education institutions) was done to determine whether they promote at least one SDG.\nFindings: The results show that 198 courses directly address at least one SDG; on average, each higher education institution (HEI) has six courses that explicitly address at least one SDG; universities have more courses in SDG areas than in polytechnics; more master's degrees embrace SDGs than undergraduate degrees; and most of the courses addressing SDGs are from the social sciences and humanities areas and from natural and environmental sciences.\nOriginality/value: This paper serves to raise the awareness of Portuguese HEIs of their role and responsibility in furthering SGDs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Target experiences of workplace bullying on online labour markets: Uncovering the nuances of resilience
|
[
"Cyberbullying",
"Digital workplaces",
"Resilience",
"Quasi-perpetrators",
"Racism",
"Online labour markets",
"Quasi-perpetrators",
"Crowdsourcing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Workplace bullying, also termed workplace emotional abuse and workplace harassment, encompasses subtle and/or obvious negative behaviours embodying aggression, hostility, intimidation and harm, generally characterized by persistence, displayed by an individual and/or group to another individual and/or group at work, privately and/or publicly, in real and/or virtual forms, in the context of an existing or evolving unequal power relationship (D'Cruz, 2015). Person-related bullying comprises making insulting remarks, excessive teasing, spreading gossip or rumours, persistent criticism, threats and intimidation. Work-related bullying includes giving unreasonable deadlines or unmanageable workloads, excessive monitoring of work and assigning meaningless tasks or even no tasks (Einarsen and Hoel, 2001). Bullying, which sometimes co-exists with category-based harassment (D'Cruz and Noronha, 2013) and could be predatory or conflict related (Einarsen et al., 2011), is described as unethical behaviour that violates universal social rules of acceptability (Ramsay et al., 2011).\nResilience and workplace bullying: Though literature on target outcomes in workplace bullying emphasizes adverse impact (Hogh et al., 2011), there are a few emergent findings to the contrary, highlighting the relevance of resilience. Van Heugten (2012) found bullied targets reporting greater resilience in the aftermath of their difficult experiences. Acquiring control over the stressful situation and accessing and receiving support from bystanders and managers enhanced target resilience. D'Cruz and Noronha (2012) reported that bullied targets described how the experience had contributed to their personal growth. Relying on their resilience, targets were able to find various strategies such as better preparedness, versatile coping, social support, deep-seated personal values, reaffirmed authenticity and long-term orientation to survive the bullying experience and strive towards well-being. Targets reported emerging stronger from the stressful experience. Is resilience also true of targets of workplace bullying on OLMs?\nOLMs as the study context: the case of Upwork: We conducted the inquiry on Upwork, a skilled OLM formed in May 2015 as the merger of Elance-oDesk. Following the creation of Upwork, the oDesk platform remained the foundation, retaining the best of both legacies and adding new innovations. Upwork has 12 million registered freelancers and five million registered clients, with three billion jobs posted annually and more than US$1 billion worth of work done annually (Upwork, 2017).\nMethod: In the course of a larger qualitative inquiry[1] of Indian freelancers' subjective experiences of work on OLMs, featuring Upwork, 13 out of 24 participants described being targets of bullying, including racial harassment, displayed by clients and fellow freelancers. We explored this aspect through van Manen's (1998) hermeneutic phenomenology which purports to grasp the essential structure of the meaning of participants' experiences as they are lived.\nFindings: A total of 13 participants reported being bullied by clients and freelancers in about 10 per cent of their interactions over the platform. Sociodemographically, this included six women and seven men, aged between 23 and 38 years, coming from nine Indian cities. Participants, who were graduates (six) or post-graduates (seven), working full time (eight) or part time (five) on the platform, undertook tasks such as data entry, research assistance, content writing, marketing and public relations, business analytics and IT (information technology) applications. Full-timers' average monthly earnings ranged from Rs10,000-Rs400,000. Eight participants worked independently, interfacing with clients only, with the rest combining independent and team work in varying proportions. Participants were happy with their earnings from the platform and wished to continue being a part of it.\nDiscussion: The paper presents the first empirical inquiry on bullying in digital workplaces where abuse occurs exclusively in virtual forms. It extends our understanding of workplace bullying, particularly workplace cyberbullying, which has so far been studied in conventional workplaces. Moreover, in evidencing target resilience, the paper not only reinforces emergent findings that target outcomes are not completely adverse but also illuminates the nuances of resilience, deepening our grasp of and aiding the theorization of the concept.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report a study of bullying on online labour markets (OLMs), highlighting how abuse unfolds in digital workplaces and depicting the trajectory of target resilience.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Adopting van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenology, targets' lived experiences of bullying on OLMs was explored. Data gathered from Indian freelancers located on Upwork via conversational telephonic interviews were subjected to sententious and selective thematic analyses.\nFindings: The core theme of \"pursuing long-term and holistic well-being\" showed how targets tapped into yet augmented their resilience while navigating the features of OLMs as they coped with their experiences of bullying. The interface between targets' internal and external resources, including platform support, vis-a-vis the concreteness and permanence of the site as targets asserted agency, sought control and realized positive outcomes while preserving their reputation, relationality, success and continuity was captured. It may be noted that bullying in digital workplaces is exclusively virtual in form.\nResearch limitations/implications: Alongside theoretical generalizability, statistical generalizability of the findings should be established.\nPractical implications: Recommendations for action for platforms and targets are forwarded. In particular, the critical role of formal workplace support in influencing employee resilience is emphasized.\nOriginality/value: The paper makes several pioneering contributions. First, it reports the first empirical inquiry examining bullying in digital workplaces. Moreover, OLM research on abuse and harassment has not been undertaken so far. Second, it furthers theorization of resilience, especially with regard to workplace antecedents. Apart from identifying the new organizational antecedent of formal workplace support, it uncovers the complexities of resilience. Third, it extends knowledge on workplace cyberbullying, positive outcomes of workplace bullying and OLMs in India.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
It's the system that matters
|
[
"Performance measurement (quality)",
"Performance management",
"Workplace",
"Working practices"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The most important asset of an organization is not its people, nor its technology or even its managers. When the Department of Labor, Office of the American Workplace surveyed the effectiveness of \"high performance work practices,\" some of the most convincing research highlighted the importance of work systems. A detailed study of the steel industry found that they were much more productive when there was a work system that included components like problem-solving teams, gain sharing, training and employment security. Using work systems that included these components ran as scheduled 98 percent of the time (US Department of Labor, Office of the American Workplace, 1993, pp. i-ii).\nUnifying everyone's efforts: American Express made significant strides toward creating such a system when they adopted a system focusing on \"customer-based transactions.\" They identified key customer transactions and then built a delivery system to support them. One of these networks is based on a service \"billing\" while another linkage might be creating \"new accounts.\" Once they identified their key customer transactions they proceeded to identify all of the key functions that were needed to deliver quality service to those customers. They wanted to create a logical system of information flowing from one internal supplier to internal customer rather than the haphazard approach common in many organizations.Using individual customer transactions creates a unifying force because it makes it easy to see where you fit in and your impact on decisions. Using the customer as a unifying force is only possible because American Express measures 100 customer transaction-related measures. For example, they expect results to be greater than 97 percent of the established standard. Individuals and departments know at a glance how they are doing and where they fit in - and perhaps most importantly why they are important. Knowing where you are going and who you are does not occur unless you address the issues of rewards for performance so they set up systems for rewarding people that exceed customer expectations.Motorola provides another example of how to use a systematic approach. In Motorola's case, their unifying factor is not individual customer transactions, but rather the use of a common measurement system. Functional areas and departments measure performance based on \"defects per unit.\" Their Six Sigma objective is to \"do it right the first time\" without defects or errors. Statistically speaking, they expect to have less than four defects or defectives occurring in one million opportunities. Only four typos (or any other errors) in one million opportunities is pretty good quality in anyone's book!Everyone at Motorola knows that his or her objective is to eliminate variability. They also know it is only possible to produce at this level if they uniformly produce their products and deliver their services. Motorola makes a major commitment to training with about 2.4 percent of their budget going to help train their people in methods to eliminate variability.One company that has taken the concept of a unifying factor farther than most is Springfield Re-manufacturing Corporation (SRC). The corporation employs about 600 people and rebuilds gasoline and diesel engines probably better than anyone in the world. It is their unqualified success and their management practice that made them a feature of the PBS series \"Growing A Business.\" They have also been on the cover of INC Magazine and featured on a segment of CBS News Nightly News. Their system for unifying their people's efforts involves using the income statement and balance sheets. Their focus is to make money or more correctly \"generate wealth\".SRC, believes their employees need to know how to make money so they teach them how to do it. They teach even the lowest level person about financial ratios, about how to read income statements and balance sheets and, most importantly, what they mean. Such training would be meaningless if they did not give those same employees some control over those financial numbers. Jack Stack, their CEO, often says, \"There's not a financial number we don't share with our people.\" Stack knows their income statement can be a unifying factor, and it can also create a lot of trust between management and employees.In order to show everyone where you are going and who you are, you have to show people not only where they fit in and just as importantly show them how their action affects their business and the bottom line. Each supervisor, department, and individual has a single line on those income statements. They know what they contribute to the bottom line. If the financial ratio's improved the income statement or balance sheet, you are OK. SRC insures employees get the message by tying financial rewards to the financial health of the company. Individuals can receive a 10 percent bonus if they meet key financial goals, which incidentally are jointly set.They conduct a weekly financial review meeting every Tuesday. Initially at the start of the week, these meetings are held between top management and mid-level personnel. Discussion revolves around variances on each line item of their projected monthly income statements. Any negative variance between projected and actual expenditures is the source of extended discussions. Later in the week members of this group then meet with their respective departments and go through similar discussions with their personnel. Eventually every employee in the organization is informed and knows what is going on.Research shows that management tends to use a piecemeal approach, even to the most innovative approaches. Maximizing competitiveness requires that we create a system of work that helps people clearly understand \"who we are\" and \"where we are headed.\"With American Express, they were able to get everyone focused on customer satisfaction by: showing their people why it was important and how to do it; measuring things that directly related to how well they were satisfying them; and rewarding employees for performance in relationship to those standards.Motorola chose to focus their people on quality rather than customer satisfaction by also approaching it in a systematic way. Appropriate rewards should be given to insure their people know who they were supposed to be focus and where we are headed. There is no one best unifying factor, it is just important to integrate all the components so it is clear we know who we are and where we are going.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to highlight the importance of creating an effective work system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper shows the benefits of systematically incorporating good work practices.\nFindings: - The paper illustrated that a systematic work system can unify work efforts. Several different work systems are described within the text.\nPractical implications: - The paper describes what is needed so everyone is knows \"Who we are\" and \"Where we are going\".\nOriginality/value: - This paper makes the case that it is more important to create a systematic approach to work than it is to implement any particular high performance work practice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An outcomes evaluation of a leadership development initiative
|
[
"Performance",
"Leadership development",
"Outcomes",
"Organizational effectiveness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Leadership development and, more specifically, leadership development evaluation, have received increasing attention in recent years. The research reported here contributes to this growing literature by demonstrating the use of evaluation methods which are not yet common in leadership development programs and which offer promise for advancing knowledge in this area.\nLeadership development: McCauley (2008) noted a distinction (earlier conceptualized by Day, 2001) between leader development and the more commonly used term, leadership development, with the former focussing on the development of individual leaders and the latter \"encompassing the development of collective leadership beliefs and practices in addition to individual development\" (McCauley, 2008, p. 6). While the program described below mainly addresses individual leader development, it also is intended to impact the performance and cultures of the eight participating organizations, to enhance leadership development in the larger sense. Therefore, the term leadership development is appropriate here.\nLeadership development evaluation: In spite of a growing number of published reports, much remains to be learned about the effectiveness of leadership development programs. Many methods have been used to evaluate leadership development in many contexts, from businesses to social change.\nMethodology: Common elements of leadership development are formal development programs, multi-source feedback, developmental, executive coaching, action learning, and mentoring (McCauley, 2008). All of these except assessment centers and mentoring have been included in the program described here.\nResults: Table I provides a description of the sample at the 12-month follow up (age was collected at pre-test only). Over the first seven annual iterations of the program, a total of 191 participants completed the program, for an average of 27 participants per annual program. In Year 1, directors nominated for the program their managers at or near the top levels of management; and in subsequent years, they have nominated a larger proportion of managers from lower levels. Nevertheless, the average years of management experience of each cohort has remained stable, clustering around ten years. There have not been notable trends in variations regarding the other demographic characteristics of participants over the years.\nConclusions and implications: This evaluation of a leadership development program over a period of seven years for a diverse group of human service managers showed significant improvements in their job performance and feelings of self-efficacy.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the impact of a leadership development initiative in eight organizations and to demonstrate the use of promising evaluation methods.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used multiple methods including surveys with quantitative and qualitative data from participants and their supervisors.\nFindings: Program participants and their supervisors reported improved on-the-job performance of participants. There were statistically significant increases in participant self-efficacy over time.\nResearch limitations/implications: In this time series design, some changes may be due to factors besides the program. Limitations in self-report data, common in studies such as this, were partially mediated by the use of supervisor ratings. Future research could include more objective measures of performance.\nPractical implications: Because this evaluation reported on-the-job performance improvements for participants in a leadership development program, other organizations can adapt the program model and expect similar performance improvements. This study also advances leadership development evaluation methods by addressing on-the-job performance to a much greater extent than in past studies.\nSocial implications: This study of a program training leaders in human service organizations can help similar organizations better train their leaders with expectations of improving the quality of life for clients such as families experiencing poverty, unemployment, and child abuse or neglect.\nOriginality/value: This evaluation makes a unique contribution in terms of measurement of on-the-job performance of program participants in a time series design which includes ratings of supervisors and self-ratings, benefiting organizations designing such programs and evaluations of them.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Development of the Persian patient satisfaction questionnaire
|
[
"Reliability",
"Patient satisfaction",
"Questionnaire",
"Validity",
"Communication skills"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Patients and physicians' feelings, perceptions and experiences are communicated to each other through many types of skills (Kurtz, 2002). As one of the basic medical competencies of five-star doctors, i.e., those who lead teams to provide care, make decisions and serve as community leaders (Boelen, 1992), effective communication leads to increased patient satisfaction and compliance (Deveugele et al., 2005). Moreover, it improves physicians' professional performance and patients' health outcomes (Ha and Longnecker, 2010; Stewart, 1995; Bull et al., 2002).\nResearch question and method: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences to examine the psychometric characteristics of the section of the PVPSQ that evaluates doctors' communication skills.\nFindings: Participants' sociodemographic characteristics\nDiscussion: This study tested the PVPSQ and found that it exhibited acceptable psychometric characteristics. Based on those properties, it can be concluded that the PVPSQ is able to measure residents' communication skills in Persian-speaking countries. The questionnaire items qualified adequately to represent the content measured (Waltz et al., 2010). All items validated were considered essential in the questionnaire and demonstrated an acceptable level of statistical significance (p<0.05) (Devon et al., 2007). Patients perceived the items in a way similar to the researchers' expectations.\nConclusions and recommendations: The results showed that the PVPSQ demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity, and allowed the subjects to respond to the items within a short time as well. Therefore, both researchers at Iranian universities of medical sciences and researchers in other Persian-speaking countries can use this questionnaire to obtain reliable assessments of residents/physicians' communication skills from the patients' perspective.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the patient satisfaction questionnaire (PVPSQ). The study addressed the communication skills section of the PSQ specifically.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 to determine the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ). In total, 538 patients (ten in pilot, 488 in tests, 40 in retest), 14 experts and 198 residents participated. The items' impact score, content validity index, and content validity ratio were calculated. Construct validity and reliability of the scale were examined with exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach's a, and the Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively.\nFindings: The questionnaire demonstrated a content validity index=0.94, content validity ratio=0.84, impact score=4.61, Cronbach's a=0.93 and ICC=0.513 (p<0.00). A single factor was found in the eigenvalue distribution of the PSQ that predicted approximately 93 percent of the variance.\nPractical implications: The results of this study will permit researchers in all Persian-speaking countries to use a valid and reliable Persian version of the PSQ to evaluate patients' satisfaction with residents' communication skills.\nOriginality/value: There were a few Persian questionnaires to assess patient satisfaction with physicians' communication skills, but their psychometric properties had not been reported until the time of this study. By using the PVPSQ, both researchers at Iranian universities of medical sciences and researchers in other Persian-speaking countries can assess residents' communication skills from the patient's perspective more reliably.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Directors' pay regulation: "one goal two approaches"
|
[
"Corporate governance",
"Remuneration committee",
"Directors’ remuneration",
"Shareholder vote",
"Directors’ remuneration disclosure"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Executive remuneration emerged as a controversial issue during the early 1990s. Executives of privatised utility companies received pay increases which were condemned by the public and the media as having no corresponding link to the performance of the company. The criticism of executive pay by the public and the media came under headlines such as \"Fat Cats in the Dock\" (Economist, 1995), \"Executive Gluttony under Attack\" (Cohen, 1994) and \"Derailing the Gravy Train\" (Sunday Times, 1995). More than two decades later, executive pay continues to be a prominent issue of corporate governance in the UK. Firstly, there is continued concern that executives are receiving excessive pay packages with no corresponding link to company performance (BBC News, 2012). Secondly, executive pay seems to be increasing even when company performance[1] is falling. Thirdly, directors' pay (banker's bonuses) was considered as partly responsible for the financial crisis in 2008 (Gregg et al., 2012; Villiers, 2010), and finally, the pay gap between executives and average employee of the company continues to widen (BBC News, 2013). The increase and criticisms on directors' pay attracted the interest of policymakers with corporate governance mechanisms making recommendations on directors' pay setting process and the s439A Companies Act (2006) highlighting shareholder responsibility to monitor directors' pay.\nCorporate governance and the determination of directors' remuneration: Corporate governance is the system by which companies are directed and controlled (Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance, 1992, para 2.5) to enhance transparency and accountability in the company's dealing. The recommendations made by Corporate Governance Codes on directors' remuneration are aimed at the pay setting stage. The aim is to ensure that there is transparency at the pay setting stage which should translate to what will be perceived as fair. The evolution of these mechanisms will now be considered.\nThe Companies Act 2006 and the determination of directors' remuneration: The Companies Act (2006) adopts a \"corrective\" measure towards directors' remuneration. This is because it does not make provisions on how pay should be set, but on what the shareholders should do, if they think that directors' pay is excessive. This clearly shows the stand point of the Companies Act as not wanting to get involve in directors pay, as it is considered as a matter for the company's management. The question is \"if directors\" pay was a matter for the management, why did the Companies Act get involved. To answer this question, the next section will consider the evolution of the role of law in directors' pay.\nRecommendations and conclusion: Corporate governance mechanisms has adopted a better approach to regulating directors' pay which should be encouraged. Directors' remuneration can only be successfully regulated if the pay setting process is right. Although there are grey areas that corporate governance has not addressed yet, its challenge is on the lack of enforcement. The Companies Act (2006) position on directors' pay could be considered as a house whose foundation is built on sand which cannot withstand the storm when it hit. Although the shareholders' votes are intended to indirectly influence the pay setting process, shareholders have not been using the powers to influence pay setting process. The basic provisions needed to get the right pay package such as who should set pay, are missing in the Companies Act (2006); therefore, as a strict matter of law, directors' still set their own pay in which there is a potential for conflict of interest. There is a need for corporate governance mechanisms to address the grey areas and more recommendations to strengthen enforcement. The Companies Act (2006) may insert a provision on the enforcement of corporate governance mechanisms, or provisions on basic rules on the determination of directors' pay. It is difficult from the current stage of the two regulatory forms to adequately curb excessive directors' pay in the UK.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the two different approaches adopted in the UK to regulate directors' remuneration. The paper also aims to explore the two approaches to understand which one better regulates directors' pay and why. It provides an account of the two approaches' evolution, effectiveness and challenges towards the regulation of directors' remuneration. The paper will also make some recommendations on both approaches and the way forward to better regulate directors' remuneration.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper reviews various corporate governance codes, its recommendations on directors' remuneration, its effectiveness and the challenges it face in regulating directors' remuneration. The paper also reviews provisions of the Companies Act 2006 on directors' remuneration, its effectiveness and challenges faced.\nFindings: The paper finds that corporate governance adopts a better approach to regulating directors' pay than the Companies Act 2006 because it targets the pay setting process. However, the existence of grey areas and lack of enforcement procedure poses a challenge on its effectiveness. The Companies Act 2006 is unable to regulate directors' pay adequately because it adopts a corrective approach and it considers directors' remuneration as a management responsibility.\nOriginality/value: The paper offers an up-to-date assessment of the two approaches to regulating directors' pay in the UK. It highlights the challenges faced by both approaches and which approach could regulate directors pay better and its challenges. The paper further makes recommendations on how the regulation of directors' remuneration can be effective in the UK.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Measuring internal service quality: comparing the gap-based and perceptions-only approaches
|
[
"Customer services quality",
"Service quality assurance",
"Quality assessment",
"SERVQUAL",
"Procurement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The management of internal service quality (ISQ) can be traced back to Ishikawa's concept of the voice of the customer (1985) and has been an emerging theme in the service operations and marketing literature over the past two decades (George, 1990; Davis, 1991; Stauss, 1995; Ahmed and Rafiq, 2000). ISQ is defined as the perceived quality of service provided by distinctive organisational units or the people working in these, to other units or employees within the organisation (Stauss, 1995). Internal services create a network of functional units which are linked together with the aim of delivering service to external customers (Marshall et al., 1998). As such, delivering service quality to external customers hinges on delivering service quality across internal supply networks.Johnston (1999, 2005) argues that many of the contributions to the literature on ISQ emanate from services marketing, and that there is a need for the operations management discipline to contribute to the development of frameworks and tools for improving the management of internal customer relationships and networks. Within this research agenda, the measurement of ISQ is key, as it provides a basis for continuous improvement (Koska, 1992; Reynoso and Moores, 1995; Young and Varble, 1997; Frost and Kumar, 2000), and helps to enrich traditional cost-based approaches of supplier performance assessment (Large and Konig, 2009).Within the external service literature, SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988) has been at the centre of the debate as to how service quality should be modelled and operationalised into effective measurement systems (Buttle, 1996; Silvestro, 2005). Much of this discussion has focused on whether the construct should be based on the gap between expectations and perceptions, or whether perceptions-only measures of service quality might be more reliable and effective. More recently, these issues have been debated with respect to ISQ, with questions raised over the transferability of external service quality measures to internal services (Reynoso and Moores, 1995; Frost and Kumar, 2000). There remains a need to compare and evaluate gap-based and perceptions-only measures of perceived quality in this context.This paper reports the findings of a study which tests the two approaches both in terms of their theoretical underpinnings and also in the light of practical considerations regarding the design of measurement systems. The paper takes an operations management rather than a marketing perspective, in that the measurement instruments are evaluated as tools for identifying operational improvement priorities with a view to improving process design and delivery. The internal service context used in this study is the provision of e-procurement software, training, and user support. Analysis is based on survey data from 274 internal customers of e-procurement services provided by the procurement departments in four organisations. The alternative measures are evaluated in terms of reliability, content validity, construct validity, and predictive validity, as well as practical considerations concerning implementation.We begin by reviewing the debate surrounding alternative approaches to measuring ISQ. This gives rise to research questions which call for an evaluation of gap-based and perceptions-only measures in internal service contexts. The methodology for our study is then described in detail, followed by analysis of the two alternative measures of ISQ. The Discussion section examines our research questions in light of our analysis, presents limitations, and identifies opportunities for further work. Finally, conclusions are drawn based on this study.\nLiterature review: The notion of internal customers originates from total quality management's (TQM) next-operation-as-customer perspective (Ishikawa, 1985; Deming, 1986; Juran, 1989; Ratcliffe-Smith and Brooks, 1993), in which organisations can be viewed as a network of functional units, linked together with the aim of delivering service to external customers (Marshall et al., 1998). Each unit receives inputs, transforms them, and delivers the output to the next operation in the chain - their internal customer. Each link in the chain represents an interaction between internal service providers and internal customers (Finn et al., 1996). Whilst, the internal customer concept found in TQM literature shares some similarities with internal marketing, the key difference is that internal marketing largely focuses on how the company serves its internal customers (Marshall et al., 1998). In contrast, the next-operation-as-customer perspective adopted in this study usually views the service provider as an organisational unit or even an individual (Heskett et al., 1994).Measuring ISQ\nResearch objectives: Within the ISQ literature, there remains a need to assess the psychometric and practical value of scales based on the gap-approach as opposed to the perceptions-only approach. Therefore, the main research objective of this study is to compare two internal service scales in terms of reliability, validity, and pragmatic aspects of survey administration. The study focuses on the following questions:* How reliable and valid is a gap-based measure of ISQ?* How reliable and valid is a perceptions-only measure of ISQ?* What are the benefits and limitations of each approach?\nResearch design: This study adopted a survey design to evaluate the relative merits of the gap-based and perceptions-only approaches to ISQ measurement. The internal service context used was the provision of e-procurement by the purchasing departments in four UK organisations. The e-procurement system was purchased from an external software supplier, and then customised by the purchasing departments for internal application. This software supported purchase ordering, authorisation, receipting, invoicing, payment, and reporting. The purchasing departments were responsible for training internal customers across their organisations in the use of the software, as well as providing ongoing user support.The four organisations covered a broad range of procurement activity, ranging from the procurement of high-value, bespoke services to the purchase of low-value, high-volume commodities. They also varied in terms of size, budget, number of suppliers, number of internal customers, and level of e-procurement integration (Table II). The internal customers in the study manifested the characteristics which typically distinguish internal customers from external customers as discussed earlier. They were locked into the service and were expected to use it regardless of their satisfaction. They had relatively little face-to-face contact with the purchasing department and tangible elements of the service (other than characteristics relating to the software) were of low priority. Finally, they were experienced, professional users of the service and their expectations would have been shaped by past experience as well as credence properties. Therefore, the context selected was considered to be appropriate for testing the two ISQ measurement approaches.Questionnaire design\nData analysis: Gap-measure of ISQ\nDiscussion: On the basis of our analysis, we can now reflect on the research questions posed earlier.How reliable and valid is a gap-based measure of ISQ?\nConclusion: To conclude, this study has compared the gap-based and perceptions-only measures of ISQ. Both approaches can be justified theoretically, and testing has established that both can be operationalised in ways which are reliable and valid. The study, combined with the contributions from the literature, has generated some understanding of the specific conditions in which the two approaches might be appropriate. The debate as to which approach is better is therefore superseded by what is perhaps a more productive perspective: one which aims to develop a better understanding of the factors that influence appropriate selection of ISQ measures.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to build upon the debate in the service quality literature regarding both the theoretical and practical effectiveness of expectations data in the measurement of internal service quality (ISQ). Gap-based and perceptions-only approaches to measuring ISQ are tested and their respective benefits and limitations evaluated.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The internal service context used in this study is the provision of e-procurement software, training, and user support in four organisations. The two approaches are evaluated in terms of reliability and validity, as well as pragmatic aspects of survey administration.\nFindings: - The various tests carried out indicate that both the gap-measure and perceptions-only measure are reliable and valid, the latter being the marginally higher performer. Both approaches were found to have benefits and limitations, and so the empirical study, combined with contributions from the literature, generates some understanding of the internal service context in which the two approaches might be appropriate.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The survey was based on an internal e-procurement service; as such, the variables and dimensions selected to measure ISQ in this context inevitably limit the scope of the research.\nPractical implications: - For operations managers, the paper clarifies the basis on which they might choose between the two approaches to ISQ measurement.\nOriginality/value: - This study is the first to directly test and compare the relative merits of these two approaches to ISQ measurement. The paper also offers insights as to the operational contexts in which each approach might be appropriate.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Price, brand cues, and banking customer value
|
[
"Investments",
"Prices",
"Brands",
"Customer services quality",
"Consumer risk",
"Taiwan"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This study explores how price and brand cues influence customer value in Taiwan's banking sector. Athanassopoulos (2000) has defined customer value as a function of consumers' perceptions of service quality. By contrast, Day and Crask (2000) and Huber and Herrmann (2000) have proposed including perceived risks associated with service when assessing customer value. No work has yet discovered the internal relationship between service quality, perceived risk and customer value in Taiwan. Correspondingly, this study explores the relationships among banking service quality, perceived risk and customer value in the Taiwanese banking industry.The concept of value has recently been connected to quality and price (Zeithaml, 1988), and to all aspects of the shopping experience (Bolton and Drew, 1991). Indeed, in today's competitive environment, value-added products and services have become critical to the success of many organizations, where value is considered to guide customers' retention decisions (Gassenheimer et al., 1998; Dube and Shoemaker, 2000).If buyers lack full information regarding product or service attributes, they base their choices on the informational cues available to them (Dodds et al., 1991; Bloom and Reve, 1990; Monroe and Krishnan, 1985). Nisbett and Ross (1980) have contended that each individual is an active interpreter making intelligent guesses about events which cannot be judged directly, and drawing inferences concerning associations and causal relations. Service quality is defined as any stimulus conveying service information (Mehrotra and Palmer, 1985). Steenkamp (1990) observed that customers use tangible cues (such as appearance of personnel and physical facilities) and intangible cues (such as attitudes of personnel) to choose between service retailers. Lovelock (1991) maintained that all aspects of a marketing system, ranging from service personnel to service facilities and equipment, denote cues from which customers infer service quality. The service literature thus infers that the effect of quality (both tangible and intangible) on the information of quality judgments is well acknowledged, that making services tangible facilitates service quality assessments, and that quality is extremely important in making purchase decisions before consumption. Consumers with no experience of a banking service provider use available cues to measure service quality.After Taiwan's government passed the \"Commercial Bank Establishment Principle\" in 1991, banks in Taiwan were formally deregulated and thus obtained financial freedom. The number of banks in Taiwan has increased from 18 to 50 over the last ten years. In today's competitive environment, banks pursue non-pricing marketing as a fundamental strategy, raising their service quality and lowering the risk perceived by consumers in order to increase customer value.The first banking electronic data interchange (EDI) paying system was introduced in 1997 and represented a new generation of internet banking services. Synthetic electronic banking services began in 1998, enabling funds to be transferred between accounts over the internet. However, information technology may decrease transparency during trading and raise consumers' perceived risk of banking services. Risk has risen significantly with the advent of online service providers. Customers must divulge personal and/or financial information to use these services, yet a web site does not give tangible quality cues, and customers frequently do not know whether the service provider is \"big or small, new or established, legitimate or illegitimate\" (Hagel and Singer, 1999). In particular, increased information asymmetry in e-business results in perceived risk being considered as a possible deterrent in the consumption of banking services. Therefore, trading uncertainties may cause perceived customer value in banking services to fall.In this work we chose to investigate banking services for the following reasons. First, new technology enables bankers to apply convenient trading processes (e.g. e-business) to stimulate consumer value, but these new processes may raise the perceived quality, risk and value. Second, ever-increasing competition within banking services implies that consumer value plays a significant role in marketing management of both costs and banking products, since it is frequently assessed to determine overall consumer satisfaction. Hence, this investigation has three goals:1. to analyze the major factors influencing banking service quality and risk perceived by customers;2. to examine the overall relationships among price, brand cues, service quality, perceived risk and customer value; and3. to investigate the path of price and brand to influence customer value.The present study investigates the effects of price and brand cues on service quality and perceived risk of consumers, and whether customer value is indirectly affected by the two cues through service quality and perceived cues. Five hypotheses are presented after a review of the literature. Data were collected using a questionnaire which was modified in the pretest stage. We assessed the quality of our measurement efforts by investigating reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and construct validity. We then compare our hypothesized model with a rival model based on the overall fit, parsimony, and percentage of each model's parameters that are statistically significant. Finally, we examine the relationship between price and brand cues and service quality and perceived risk, respectively. Managerial implications and future directions for research are also provided.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: 2.1 Price and brand cues\n3. Measurements: First, the research focus and scope were identified, and relevant studies collected for review. Second, an appropriate questionnaire was developed, and discussions were held with managers and experts who were familiar with banking. Reference was made to definitions of and research into variables of price and brand cues, service quality, perceived risk and customer value. Finally, a survey was conducted using the questionnaire, which was modified in the pretest stage.3.1 Price and brand cues\n4. Empirical results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Conclusions: The purpose of this work is to propose a structure among price and brand cues, service quality, perceived risk and customer value in the banking industry. The relationships between price and brand cues, and between service quality and perceived risk, are also explored. This investigation concentrates on the factors impacting service quality and perceived risk from the price and brand cues perceived by consumers. With banking services becoming increasingly competitive and involved in cues, the value perceived by consumers may be improved by investigating the relationships between cues and customer value through service quality and perceived risk.This work tested direct and indirect relationships among price and brand cues, and two evaluative variables (service quality and perceived risk), as well as customer value. The design also enabled analysis of the relative differential effects of price and brand on three dependent variables. Monroe and Krishnan (1985) demonstrated that the relative effect of price on service quality was larger with brand information than without it.Additionally, this study reports some significant findings, including the empirical confirmation that price and brand cues can impact customer value mainly by lowering the perceived risk, rather than by increasing service quality, especially in terms of price. Table IV presents three ways in which price can influence customer value: service quality (0.097=0.14x0.69), perceived risk (0.202=-0.63x-0.32) and both variables (0.008=0.14x-0.17x-0.32). Thus, the price cue impacted customer value mainly through perceived risk. The brand cue can also influence customer value in three ways:1. service quality (0.159=0.23x0.69);2. perceived risk (0.115=-0.36x-0.32); and3. both variables (0.013=0.23x-0.17x-0.32).Thus, brand cues affected customer value through service quality. The reason for these findings may be that price cues affect customer choice through the customer's perception of the risk of the service. Each dimension of perceived risk may indicate that the customer expects a future cost, which influences the perceived customer value (Sweeney et al., 1999). Hence, a lower risk can yield a lower future cost, which leads to higher customer value. However, customer value is also identified as a function of consumers' service quality perceptions (Athanassopoulos, 2000; Chenet et al., 1999), which are mainly impacted by brand cues.This study discovers the structural relationships among price and brand cues, service quality and perceived risk. Bank managers can hone the relevant cues to raise service quality or lower consumers' perceived risk. Most bank customers are concerned about their financial risk, and their anxiety is significantly affected by perceptions of reliability and service quality. Managers can raise employee specialization, bank deposit security (functional brand) and the detail of account data. They can develop a transparent transactional system to increase symbolic brand cues. Managers can also provide information related to finances (such as interest rates) and be friendly to customers to increase the service empathy. In particular, when new information technology (such as electronic banking) is introduced, customers must be educated about it to reduce any concern about the new technology.Finally, customers tend to employ many cues to assess the overall quality of products and services. Consumers often base their overall perception on a few attributes or features (Hartline and Jones, 1996). If managers can determine the crucial cues by which customers assess product/service quality, they can optimize investments in either intrinsic cues (product improvements) or extrinsic cues (marketing), according to the relative significance of such cues to the customers. These cues, which directly or indirectly raise customer value through service quality or perceived risk, may become a significant basis upon which managers make service-marketing decisions.For future research, beside price and brand cues, the inference of the influence of other external cues on perception of quality and risk is that, with extrinsic information, consumers would rely on tangible cues for their judgments of \"intangible\" services. Therefore, external cues may increase service quality or decrease perceived risk, or both at the same time.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this work is to elucidate how price, brand cues and customer value are related, and to explore the influence of price and brand cues through service quality and perceived risk on customer value, focusing specifically on Taiwan.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Samples were collected using a questionnaire which assessed the quality of our measurement efforts by investigating reliability and validity. We then compared our hypothesized model with a rival model based on the overall fit, parsimony, and percentage of model parameters that were statistically significant.\nFindings: - Service quality is found to be positively affected by brand cues, whereas perceived risks are negatively influenced by price cues. Exactly how customer value is affected by the service quality and perceived risk is considered. Brand cues notably indirectly affect customer value through service quality, whereas price cues notably indirectly affect customer value through perceived risk.\nResearch limitations/implications: - For future research, how other external cues may influence perception of quality and risk with extrinsic information should be discussed.\nPractical implications: - In practice, bank managers can hone the relevant cues and optimize investments to raise service quality or lower consumers' perceived risk.\nOriginality/value: - This study provides a new perspective of the \"structural\" relationships among price and brand cues, service quality and perceived risk.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The gendered international school: barriers to women managers' progression
|
[
"Barriers",
"Education",
"Women managers",
"Gender studies",
"International schools",
"Liberal feminism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper examines an area of gendered leadership that has received little critical academic scrutiny, despite the exponential growth in the number of male leaders/managers within this profession over the last decade especially. The field of enquiry is international schools, with the study drawing on qualitative research undertaken into a single international school in Seoul, South Korea.\n2. The case study context: There are currently five international schools in Seoul that can be described as \"international\" in that they follow an exclusive international (western) curriculum. Such schools are often labelled as foreign schools as they have strict admissions policies for Korean nationals. There are a further four international schools on the Korean peninsula. These schools serve families coming from a population of over 1.5 million foreign residents in South Korea (Ministry of Security and Public Administration, 2014). Other schools are self-labelled as \"International\" but are filled with Korean nationals due to the improved \"growing prosperity of local families in emerging markets\" (The PIE News, 2013).\n3. Theoretical positioning: This research has its roots in liberal feminism, which itself has foundations in equal human rights and as such, garners support from across the social spectrum. Indeed one could argue that liberal feminist principles now permeate much of western society in so much as it is generally recognised that \"in modern society [...] everyone should have a fair chance, irrespective of gender, race and so on\" (Billing and Alvesson, 1989, p. 68). Friedan (1963), a pioneer of liberal feminism, argued that \"women suffer under a pervasive system of delusions and false values under which they were urged to find personal fulfilment, even identity, vicariously through the husbands\" (Appelrouth and Edles, 2007, p. 317). While Friedan's thesis was presented over 50 years ago, as our research demonstrates, her analysis remains highly pertinent to many women in organisations to this day, and especially so in international schools.\n4. Methodology: The empirical basis for the paper is drawn from qualitative research undertaken in the case study school described above. Over a period of three months, 11 women managers were interviewed and this paper provides some of the narratives and responses elicited from these interviews.\n5. Research findings: This section contains the presentation and analysis of the data gathered. It is structured into the themes of culture and barriers, organisational behaviour and barriers and removing the barriers, relating to the aims and main questions of the research:\n6. Key themes emerging: In summary, the 11 women interviewed offered a range of answers to:\n7. Conclusion: This case study aimed to determine if women can identify the barriers to their promotion in an international school and to identify the practical measures women could take to overcome these barriers within themselves and their organisation.\n8. Recommendations: 8.1. How can international schools learn from these findings?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers women identify to their promotion in international schools and also the ways in which women can overcome these barriers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The field of enquiry is international schools, with the study drawing on qualitative research. The researchers interviewed 11 women from a leading international school in Seoul, South Korea.\nFindings: The women interviewed provided rich qualitative data and identified a number of barriers relating to culture, including gender stereotyping and self-confidence issues, and organisational behaviour, including the lack of a work-life balance and the patriarchal and hierarchical structures in place. The suggested ways in which women could overcome the barriers included building self-confidence and seeking mentoring.\nPractical implications: The women also developed a list of factors that any woman would need to contemplate if she is thinking about applying to be a senior manager, including qualifications, communication skills and acknowledging, tolerating and overcoming gender unfairness, in that men do not need to think about the same issues when seeking leadership positions.\nOriginality/value: This paper examines an area of gendered leadership that has received little critical academic scrutiny, international schools and is particularly valuable to women working in these schools. However, its scope extends to all international school leaders who seek to improve the effectiveness of their organisations by employing and promoting the best leaders available.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An analysis of business' acceptance of internet banking: an integration of e-trust to the TAM
|
[
"Trust",
"Business",
"Internet banking",
"TAM"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The development of internet usage and the huge funding initiatives in electronic banking have drawn the attention of researchers towards internet banking adoption. In the past, the conventional focus of internet banking research has been on technological development, but now, this is shifting to user-focused research. Although important amounts have been spent on building internet banking systems, reports show that potential users may not use them, despite their availability (Reid and Levy, 2008; Wang et al., 2003). An understanding of aspects that induce people to use the internet for banking purposes is always a matter of concern for the performance of financial services in terms of return on investments (Barbole et al., 2013; Agarwal et al., 2009; Gerrard and Cunningham, 2003; Sathye, 1999).\nTheoretical background: Technology acceptance model\nResearch design and method: Measures of the constructs\nData analysis and results: Measurement model\nDiscussion: This study focused on the extended TAM to explain business' intentions to use internet banking. Using the TAM as a theoretical framework, this study introduced trust-related dimensions (integrity, credibility, benevolence and orientation to resolve problems) as external variables to the original variables of the TAM (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioural intention and attitude) to deepen business' internet banking adoption behaviour.\nConclusion: This research studied the integration of e-trust to the TAM, by observing its impact on business' use of internet banking in Tunisia. Many studies (Barbole et al., 2013; Reid and Levy, 2008; Cazier et al., 2006; Lai and Li, 2005; Gefen et al., 2003; Wang et al., 2003) inferred that understanding information system use in online environments is an important concern and suggested additional user-oriented research in internet banking services. Also, identifying a specific business users' cluster that have specific needs helps the bank in understanding what features should be focused on to reach this cluster and improves its operational efficiency.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this research is to provide insights into the determinants of businesses' internet banking acceptance. It attempts to address a research need for extending the technology acceptance model (TAM) by adding contextual variables. As trust has never failed to be a significant predictor in e-commerce research, this study proposes to integrate trust into the TAM to get a better understanding of business e-banking adoption.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A research model reflecting the effect of e-trust dimensions on TAM constructs is proposed. Based on relevant literature, a questionnaire was designed and administrated to 102 business managers through a Web survey. A structural modelling analysis was applied.\nFindings: The results confirm the dimensions and relations of the TAM. Moreover, two main trust dimensions - integrity and credibility - positively influence perceived usefulness and exert both a direct and an indirect positive effect on attitude towards business' internet banking adoption and behavioural intention.\nPractical implications: The managerial implications of the study are that Tunisian banks should consider influencing internet banking behaviour not only by developing ease of use and usefulness beliefs, but also by promoting professional credibility and integrity. They should, also, try to attract business users by focusing on and communicating the integrity and the credibility of the bank and highlight the ways in which these concerns have been ensured.\nOriginality/value: This study supplies the valuable integration of trust to the TAM. It reveals that extended TAM could be used to provide a solid theoretical foundation of business' acceptance of internet banking. In this study, trust construct is measured through a multidimensional scale including four dimensions (benevolence, credibility, integrity and orientation to resolve problems). Moreover, this study focused on an emergent country, Tunisia, whereas most studies in the literature concentrate on research cases of developed countries.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An empirical investigation of the impact of management accounting on structural capital and business performance
|
[
"Management accounting",
"Structural capital",
"Intellectual capital",
"Business performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In this paper, intellectual capital (IC) is deemed to consist of a firm's unique collection of human capital (i.e. employees), structural capital (i.e. systems and procedures) and relational capital (i.e. external relationships). Despite the continuing debate surrounding the importance of IC to organisational competitiveness, the potential contribution of management accounting (MA) in this regard has yet to be fully established despite the fact that much of the original IC literature emerged from an accounting perspective (Bontis, 2002). Theoretically, MA ought to have a prominent role to play in IC measurement and management, as without it, firms' primary competitive resource (i.e. their knowledge), may never realise its full potential (Mouritsen, 2009).\n2. Literature review: It is generally assumed that the vast majority of organisational knowledge originates from a firm's employees and constitutes their primary value-creating resource (Blanco et al., 2002; Kelley and Caplan, 1993; Rogers, 2001). However, as legal ownership of such organisational knowledge cannot be easily determined; the challenge for firms' is to embed it within their very fabric, so as to allow it to become of sustained value and therefore potentially capable of influencing future organisational performance (Bontis and Fitz-enz, 2002; Bontis et al., 2000; Bontis, 1998; Cabrita and Bontis, 2008; Do Rosario Cabrita and Landeiro Vaz, 2006; Garcia-Ayuso, 2003; Grant, 1997; Ordonez de Pablos, 2002; Wang and Chang, 2005).\n3. Research methodology: The emergence and indeed the on-going prominence of the Irish indigenous information and communications technology (ICT) sector has contributed significantly towards Ireland's elevation to a knowledge-based economy and therefore provides an ideal platform within which to conduct research of this nature. Firms in this sector are typically involved in activities such as software design and development, web design, network security implementation, hardware assembly and other-related functions. By their very nature, these firms are required to invest heavily in research and development, so as to ensure a future stream of marketable products and/or services. Such investments may be indicative of the creation of significant levels of IC and therefore provides a potentially significant role for the application of MA within such a setting.\n4. Results: This study included four IC-based constructs (i.e. human capital, structural capital, relational capital and business performance) each of whom consisted of various items/statements. For each item/statement, respondents to the survey instrument were requested to assess each one using a seven-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree; 7=strongly agree). As all of these constructs had been subject to statistical validation in prior studies (see, e.g. Bontis and Fitz-enz, 2002; Bontis, 2002), the use of the 0.70 loading threshold to test for the reliability of each individual item/statement was deemed appropriate in this instance.\n5. Discussion: The recent findings of Novas et al. (2012), who reported that within their sample of Portugese firms' MA systems were found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on their structural capital, is not supported here. Results from Figure 1 (traditional MA systems) and Figure 2 (advanced MA systems), although positive, are not statistically significant. Concerning MA information (see Figures 3 and 4), the results from this study also confirm that the relationship between MA information for both decision making and planning/control purposes and structural capital although positive are not statistically significant. Collectively, these results reject the contention (Booth, 1998; Lynn, 1999; Roberts, 2003) that MA is most appropriately situated as an element of a firm's structural capital within the Irish ICT sector.\n6. Conclusion: The results obtained from this study do not support the proposition that MA is most appropriately situated as an element of structural capital in Irish indigenous ICT firms. However, the results do support a modest and statistically significant relationship between these firms use of advanced MA systems and their subsequent business performance. The findings also generally support previous research concerning the relationships between the three elements of IC (i.e. human capital, structural capital and relational capital) and business performance.\nAcknowledgements: Funding for the research underpinning this paper has been facilitated by a research grant from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of his research colleagues; Nick Bontis, David O'Donnell, Philip O'Regan and Tom Kennedy towards this paper. Also, the author would like to thank participants at the following three conferences/workshops for their helpful comments and suggestions; the 9th Interdisciplinary Workshop on Intangibles, Intellectual Capital and Extra-Financial Information, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, September, 2013; the 2nd Irish Management Accounting Research Network (IMARN) Workshop, Dublin, Ireland, October, 2013 and the Management Accounting Research Group (MARG) Conference, Aston Business School, Birmingham, England, November, 2013. The author is very grateful to Dr Wynne Chin for providing a copy of the software application PLS-Graph Version 3.0 which was used in the data analysis phase of the research. The financial support provided by the College of Business and Law, University College Cork (UCC), Ireland is also gratefully acknowledged by the author. Finally, the author would like to sincerely thank the reviewers and editor of the Journal of Intellectual Capital for their very constructive suggestions which have helped to improve this paper.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a series of conceptual models that investigates the impact of management accounting (MA) (systems and information) on firms' structural capital and business performance. It also replicates previous research in this area which focused on the interplay between the three primary elements of intellectual capital (IC) (i.e. human capital, structural capital and relational capital) and business performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey instrument was used to collect the data required to conduct the study. All respondents who participated occupied the role of chief financial officer or equivalent and were employed by firms competing within the indigenous Irish information and communications technology sector. Consistent with prior quantitative IC-based research, a form of structural equation modelling called partial least squares was used to test the data collected.\nFindings: The findings reject the suggestion that MA is most appropriately situated as an element of firms' structural capital. The findings support a plausible and statistically significant relationship between advanced MA systems and business performance. The findings also generally support previous research on the relationship between the three elements of IC and business performance.\nOriginality/value: Although much has been written about the potential role for MA in the IC area, little empirical evidence has yet emerged. This exploratory research begins to address this deficiency by developing and testing a series of MA-related constructs within the IC research domain.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Customers' valuation of time and convenience in e-fulfillment
|
[
"Choice-based conjoint analysis",
"E-fulfillment",
"Latent class segmentation",
"Omni-channel retailing",
"Value of convenience",
"Value of time"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: E-commerce has experienced tremendous growth over the past two decades. Total US B2C e-commerce sales were estimated at $390.8 billion in 2016, which was a 14.9 percent increase from 2015. Overall, e-commerce sales represented 8.0 percent of the US retail sector, whose total sales increased at a significantly lower annual growth rate of 2.9 percent (US Census Bureau, 2017). This increase in e-commerce can largely be attributed to the increased overall use of the internet, but also to convincing consumer benefits: It addresses both, consumers' hedonic motivation to engage into the interactive online shopping experience, such as shopping via smartphone and an interesting product description and commentary, as well as their utilitarian incentives to search for low prices, to access an extensive product range, and to profit from the convenience of shopping at home 24/7 (Liang and Huang, 1998; Childers et al., 2001; Hofacker, 2001; Farag et al., 2007).\nA consumer-oriented view of e-fulfillment in the literature: Consumer decision making is a process of information processing, in which the variables used may differ among individuals (Howard and Sheth, 1969; Bettman, 1979). An extensive body of literature has been published broaching the issue of consumers' choice between traditional \"brick-and-mortar\" and online sales channels (e.g. Dholakia et al., 2005; Kollmann et al., 2012). Focusing on consumers who have committed to purchase an item online, the internet has drastically changed the available amount, type and format of information influencing the purchase decision (Alba et al., 1997). Referring to this, Bridges and Florsheim (2008) found that utilitarian flow elements lead to increases in online purchases, while hedonic elements seem to be unrelated to the online buying decision. Accordingly, when making their final choice between the offerings of different omni-channel retailers, next to price, service attributes such as information and user interface quality, individual involvement in online shopping, trust and security perceptions, timely availability, associated convenience as well as payment and return options significantly influence the consumer decision process (Bellman et al., 1999; Childers et al., 2001; Anderson and Srinivasan, 2003; Park and Kim, 2003; Darley et al., 2010; Xing et al., 2010). Concentrating on the decisive utilitarian motives of online shopping, consumers integrate all information available into overall preferences by assigning individual weights and scale values (utilities) to the omni-channel retailers' offered prices and service attributes, ultimately buying from the omni-channel retailer that renders them the highest utility in the purchase process (Degeratu et al., 2000; Balasubramanian et al., 2005). Prior literature has identified different consumer typologies based upon consumer segments' motivations for shopping online and consumer preference in SCM (Rohm and Swaminathan, 2004; Bask et al., 2013). In accordance with the motivation of this study, our research is focused on three cohesive streams of the literature: lead times in e-fulfillment, delivery convenience in e-fulfillment, and pricing of different e-fulfilment options.\nMethodology: Conjoint analysis\nEmpirical results: The analysis follows the standard conjoint experimental design (Hair et al., 2009). First, we report the descriptive statistics on the sample's characteristics. Next, we estimate the attributes' pat-worths and the aggregate attribute importance using the choice simulation. Finally, we test for the heterogeneity of consumer groups in a latent class segmentation.\nConclusion: Our results indicate that on average, lead time is a critical factor for consumers when selecting an omni-channel retailer, while convenience is of minor importance. However, the empirical findings suggest that there are distinct types of consumers who place differing importance on the considered attributes. According to their attribute preferences, we identified these segments as budgeters, lead time shoppers, convenience shoppers, and balanced buyers. We next discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our results and provide directions for further research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to derive monetary benchmarks and managerial implications for omni-channel retailers' B2C e-fulfillment strategies by investigating the trade-offs between lead time, delivery convenience and total price including shipment in the context of online electronics retailing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a choice-based conjoint analysis among 550 US online shoppers, the monetary values of lead time and convenience were calculated in a log-log regression model. In addition, latent class segmentation was applied to identify consumer segments according to their differing e-fulfillment preferences.\nFindings: From a consumer perspective, the analysis suggests that price is the most important criteria in omni-channel retailer selection, followed by lead time and convenience. The value of time is, on average, $3.61 per day. Regarding convenience, the results indicate that delivery to the home is highly preferred over pick-up options. The value of the consumer's travel time was estimated at $10.62 per hour. The latent class segmentation identified four segment groups with different preferences.\nResearch limitations/implications: To validate the findings, future research could analyze real data from omni-channel retailers' customers' buying behavior. It should also be interesting to extend the research to other price ranges, market segments and e-fulfillment factors, such as return options, shop ratings and membership programs aiming for further generalization.\nPractical implications: The findings guide omni-channel retailers to focus on efficient B2C e-fulfillment strategies. Considerable competitive advantages may be gained by reducing lead times and offering convenient delivery in line with the lead time valuation of the identified customer segment.\nOriginality/value: This study fills gaps in the academic research of consumer behavior in retailer selection, which has primarily concentrated on the choice between \"brick-and-mortar\" and online sales channels. It paves the way for a more service-oriented perspective in omni-channel retailing research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Towards building internal social network architecture that drives innovation: a social exchange theory perspective
|
[
"Social capital",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Innovation",
"Social exchange theory",
"Organizational capability",
"Network architecture"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Organizations increasingly operates across multiple national borders. Thus, the geographic spread, local embeddedness and multicultural context (Edwards et al., 2013; Meyer et al., 2011) can be both a source of advantage and restrain for the knowledge sharing and management in distributed organizations (Baudry and Chassagnon, 2012). Similarly, recent research has emphasized that in the era of social media, social networking and new information and communication tools present both practical and conceptual milieu for knowledge flow and empowerment of individuals in a geographically dispersed organizations (Palacios-Marques et al., 2015a, 2015b; van Knippenberg et al., 2015; Parke et al., 2014; Neal, 2014; De Clercq et al., 2013; Colquitt et al., 2012). This paper provides a social networking architecture and social capital perspective on the management of organizational capabilities in geographically dispersed organizations. More specifically, we use the social exchange theory (SET) as the theoretical background for the discussion of how the human resource management (HRM) function could utilize a supportive social network architecture to facilitated knowledge exchange and build efficient relationship exchanges and interactions between various entities in the organization.\n2. Literature background and theory: 2.1 Strategic international human resource management\n3. Discussion and conclusion: The extant study sets out to elucidate the role of SIHRM in internal social networking within geographically dispersed organizations. Our primary focus has been to explore and expand theoretical understanding and to contribute to the SET on how social networks and social capital could be harnessed for supporting organizational capabilities and exchange relationships - including knowledge sharing between various entities (cf. Collins and Clark, 2003; Reagans and Zuckerman, 2001).\n4. Implications and direction for future research: 4.1 Practical implications\n5. Study limitation: A general limitation and perhaps also a strength of this type of conceptual paper is that it is a synthesis (thematic discursive analysis) of existing theory and published research. Thus, there are no primary empirical content. However, the issue of empirical evidence is nevertheless mediated by the fact that the discussions and argumentation process generate key propositions which could be validated in subsequent research endeavors. Also, like in all scientific research efforts, the selection of relevant literature is often restricted specifically to the topic of the study. In the case of the current study, we strived to ensure rigor through a robust and comprehensive literature review which was organized thematically according to all the key words in the main and sub-topics covered in Section 2.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to contribute toward the extension and further development of the social exchange theory. It provides conceptual insights on social networks in geographically dispersed organizations, and how intra-organizational social interactions influence organizational behavior, employees relationship exchange inclination and innovation drive.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A thematic literature review method was used to conduct an extensive review of relevant literature.\nFindings: Guided by the tenets of the social exchange theory, the authors' analysis and discussions elucidate how intra-organizational social network architecture can be developed, supported and utilized to drive innovations in geographically dispersed organizations.\nResearch limitations/implications: A general limitation and perhaps also a strength of this type of conceptual paper is that it is a synthesis (thematic discursive analysis) of existing theory and published research. Thus, there are no primary empirical content. However, the issue of empirical evidence is nevertheless mediated by the fact that the discussions and argumentation process generate key propositions which could be validated in subsequent research endeavors. Also, the selection of relevant literature is restricted specifically to the topic of the study. The authors strived to ensure rigor through a robust and comprehensive literature review which was organized thematically according to all the key words in the main and sub-topics covered in Section 2.\nPractical implications: The insights presented suggest that management should pay serious attention to organizational design - that is, not only from the conventional contractual obligations point of view, but rather, the increasing importance of social capital should also be given some priority when thinking of resilient ways to encourage collaborations and efficient knowledge management. In other words, intra-organizational social network architecture should be considered as organizational capability and utilized as a toolset for the SIHRM to harness knowledge flow and unleash innovation.\nSocial implications: As both bonding and bridging ties are not only critical for success of project teams but also intensify knowledge symmetry across different units of the organization, they are a major conduit for sustainable open innovation culture within organization. To develop competitive capabilities throughout the organization, it is important for the SIHRM to be involved in global networking, and as a network leader, the human resource management function must have an awareness of leading trends and developments in social networking. The ability to mobilize the appropriate resources and a sense of timing and context in implementing such architecture within the geographically spread organization is crucial.\nOriginality/value: The novel contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the study provides an implementable framework which scholars and practitioners could use to develop and test the actualization of an intra-organizational social network architecture in a geographically dispersed organization. Second, the study has provided some key propositions and a well-grounded direction for further research to inspire further development/extension of the social exchange theory.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Executive capability for innovation: the Irish seaports sector
|
[
"Innovation",
"Competitiveness",
"Human resource development",
"Dynamic managerial capabilities",
"Executive capability",
"Irish seaports"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground and context: Irish seaports acting as hubs for wider economic development are at the forefront of national economic recovery (Marine Institute, 2015). In 2014, Ireland's largest port, Dublin port, handled 31 million tonnes of cargo through over 7,000 ship arrivals (Dublin Port, 2014). Seaports are engines of economic activity facilitating the flow of goods which is essential to the operation of a small open economy (IMDO, 2015). Moreover, through engagement with tourism policymakers, seaports have developed new port facilities and organisational networks capable of transforming sectors of the tourism industry (Competition Authority, 2013). For example, 1.7 million passengers travelled through Dublin port in 2014 alongside 140,000 cruise ship visitors (Dublin Port, 2014). However, despite these developments, Robinson (2006, p. 40) cautions that seaports exhibit \"progressive strategy decay\" because of failure to redefine their competitive position. Specifically, seaports are argued to lag necessary innovation at a strategic level. The lag is because of failure to respond to changes in their environment and more particularly a reluctance to embrace more sustainable business models and improved integration into intermodal supply chains (Maitra et al., 2013; Batista, 2012; Wiegmans et al., 2008; Notteboom, 2006; Baird, 2002). In an Irish context, looking at future strategic challenges in the seaports and logistics sector, the need for enhanced executive capability becomes evident, and noted in recent reports is the requirement for a stronger cultivation of innovation within the sector (Expert group on future skills needs, 2015; Hiney, 2014; Department of Tourism and Transport, 2013). Similarly, Verhoeven (2010), in a European context, contends that port authorities are entering a period of deep change, requiring management, not simply to become more entrepreneurial but to consider the very nature of entrepreneurial capability within the industry and how this might be institutionalised and sustained in seaport firms. Innovation is argued to provide seaports with a mechanism to improve existing strategic and operational capabilities leading to enhanced competitiveness (Rodrigue and Notteboom, 2015). Deeper and wider enhancements in competitiveness are argued to be enabled through the development of executive capabilities for innovation acting as potential levers of radical organisational transformation (Meersman et al., 2016; Cariou et al., 2015). It is with the nature of executive capability for innovation in the seaport context that the research focus of the present paper is concerned.\nHuman resource development and the management of innovation: Arguments are made in the general management literature for the importance of management in supporting the development of innovation (Anderson et al., 2014; Damanpour, 2014; Hacklin and Wallin, 2013). However, the role played by human resource development (HRD) has been up until more recently less explored. Sheehan et al. (2014) question as to if and how HRD develops innovation. They contend that aside from academic concerns, the question is important given the investment made in human resources from a financial perspective. Concurring, Jackson et al. (2014) critique strategic human resource management as failing to engage with the changed environment of organisational life, where stakeholder power and economic recession are posited to have fundamentally altered the bedrock on which existing strategic human resource management is founded. Within the changed environment, they posit the increased importance of the management of innovation as a fundamental HRD topic.\nResearch theme and focus: The nature of the critical review of literature reported is exploratory in focus and the research question is as follows:\nSupply chain innovation in the seaport context - Irish and international perspectives: Mangan et al. (2008) while arguing the importance of supply chain innovation go further than simply deterministically positing the importance of structures for innovation and specifically highlight the role of port executives in defining and developing supply chain innovation. Robinson (2006) argues that supply chain innovation is primarily driven by short-term and inadequate efforts to cope with environmental change and instead argues the importance of improved executive capability in considering and defining \"new white spaces\" within which to contemplate supply chain innovation. The emergence of such white spaces is argued to be contextualised in interaction between port executives, policymakers, stakeholders and often to be stimulated by regulatory pressures. In regard to the latter, Acciaro et al. (2014) demonstrate how new environmental regulations can provide the strategic impetus for improving sea port competitive advantage. For example, west coast US ports, through early embracing of environmental regulations, developed innovation in energy savings and became a preferred service provider for large companies based on lowering carbon footprint (Hall et al., 2013).\nExecutive capability development in the seaport context: Within the seaport sector, the importance of innovation is highlighted as a mechanism through which executives are enabled to rethink the basis of the competitive advantage of the firm (Bird et al., 2006). Robinson (2006), taking the theoretical lens of value migration, argues that innovation emerges, as seaport executives redefine their business models. From the perspective of executive capability development, such business model redefinition requires sensing capabilities which detect environmental change, executive capabilities rooted in both an understanding of the existing nature of the firm's value generation mechanisms and new possibilities for value generation. Pallis et al. (2011) argue that executive capability in the seaport industry is contextualised by a number of unique aspects including a strong public sector context, a relationship management capability and increased privatisation pressures. The public sector context offers both opportunities and barriers to executive capability development. Opportunities exist as executives possess, often at tacit level, an understanding of regulatory processes and exist as members of strategically influential networks. Relationship management capability at executive level builds on the public sector context, and where the capability is well developed, executives are capable of seamless interaction within knowledge based networks. The result of such interaction is deep insight into industry change and strategic risk reduction through realistic evaluation of possibilities for port-level strategic change (Bennett and Gabriel, 2001). Benefits of relationship management are apparent, as Robinson (2006, p. 42), while acknowledging the importance of strategic cognition in the executive capability of seaport managers, cautions the slow emergence of new business models combined with time lags in the commercialisation of new models leads to \"progressive strategy decay\".\nDynamic capabilities theory: Dynamic capabilities theory is used to develop a framework of executive capability for innovation. Rothaermel and Hess (2007) argue that dynamic capabilities theory enables the study of how executives manage innovation through helping to understand how executives develop and shape organisational-level dynamic capabilities which facilitate the emergence of innovation. Helfat and Martin (2015) posit the importance of dynamic managerial capabilities which liberate innovation, as embedded sources of organisational competitive advantage. Basile and Faraci (2015) argue the pivotal importance of dynamic managerial capabilities as a mediating mechanism between managerial models of innovation and innovation as manifest at organisational level. In the present paper, dynamic capabilities are considered as deeply embedded learning mechanisms in the fabric of the firm enabling the firm to cope, proactively, with environmental change (Winter, 2003). Specifically, the argument builds on Helfat and Martin (2015) who posit that dynamic managerial capabilities serve as a foundation for developing innovation. In contemplating the nature of executive capability for innovation in context, the work of Lawson and Samson (2001) is developed. The development considers how executive capability might influence each of the seven aspects of innovation capability in the Lawson and Samson (2001) model. While the seven aspects of innovation capability are framed by Lawson and Samson (2001) at organisational level, the present paper seeks to develop individual executive capabilities in the light of each of the seven. In contemplating the nature of supply chain innovation in the seaport context, the innovation framework of Tidd et al. (2005) is contextualised. Tidd et al. (2005) posit that firms inhabit an \"innovation space\" visualised as a circle. Opposite poles on the circle are represented by process versus product/service innovation and second by paradigm versus position. Process innovation involves a change in the processes underlying service delivery. Service innovation involves a change in the service delivered. Paradigm innovation involves a radical change in the way business is done and involves substantial organisational change. Position innovation involves change in the markets served and mechanisms of market service. The framework helps develop supply chain innovation as something wider than simple process innovation. Furthermore the framework contemplates new organisational perspectives on innovation and how the perspectives can be shaped by executive capability.\nTowards a framework for examining executive capability for innovation in the seaport context: Executive capability in shaping vision enables the surfacing, mapping and contemplating future innovation scenarios. For example, scenarios associated with the area of green energy supply chain innovation though often operationally unattractive are surfaced through executive capability manifest as strategic creativity and strategic critique. The unique position of the executive, in terms of holding power and in being charged with leadership of the seaport, gives credibility to the vision. Contemplation in the light of the Tidd et al.'s (2005) framework crystallises vision developed supply chain innovation as of position altering or even paradigm altering nature.\nResearch contribution and future research: The paper aimed to answer RQ1. The approach was based on a critical literature review funnelled by specific use of dynamic capabilities theory (Lawson and Samson, 2001) and building on the work of Tidd et al. (2005) in respect to framing supply chain innovation. From a human resource development perspective, the paper builds on arguments that through taking an executive capability approach to the management of innovation new insight can be gained into the embedded role of the executive in shaping innovation (Shipton et al., 2017; Wright and McMahan, 2011). Furthermore, the contextual nature of the research builds on research recommendations arguing the benefit of evaluating the role of the manager in shaping innovation in a specific industry context (Martens, 2013).\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to develop a framework of executive capability for innovation in the Irish seaport context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses an approach based on a critical review of literature. The paper takes the form of a critical review of academic literature, focussed by dynamic managerial capabilities theory. Specifically, the work of Lawson and Samson (2001) is drawn on to frame executive capability for innovation.\nFindings: The framework proposes that the executive capability for innovation in the Irish seaport sector emerges as a dynamic managerial capability. The framework is dynamic in nature with environmental feedback loops inhibiting and enabling executive capability development. Supply chain innovation emerges from the framework based on an interpretation of executive capability emerging from Lawson and Samson (2001).\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper is entirely conceptual in nature. Future empirical research taking a qualitative approach is necessary. Further, an alternative theoretical perspective to that of dynamic managerial capabilities would offer new conceptual insight.\nPractical implications: The paper contributes to executive practice through providing a framework of executive capability for innovation facilitating dialogue between executive practitioners and academic theory. Policymakers are challenged to contemplate the framework as a means of transforming competitiveness in an industry identified as foundational to Irish economic development.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to an emerging area of interest in the academic literature in the area of executive capability for innovation. Specifically, the paper argues the unique contextual nature of executive capability for innovation in the context of the seaport industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Forecasting sales in industrial services: Modeling business potential with installed base information
|
[
"Profitability",
"Servitization",
"Customer lifetime value",
"Industrial services",
"Sales forecast",
"Installed base"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Industrial services are those required by manufactured products mainly in the business-to-business (B2B) context (Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003). They ensure effective, uninterrupted, and durable use of industrial equipment. Installation, training, repair, maintenance, and spare parts are examples of these services. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) seek to servitize, that is, to expand their business to industrial services, in order to differentiate themselves from competitors and compensate for declining sales volumes and profit margins (Wise and Baumgartner, 2000). In this context, the installed base (or the fleet) of equipment in use by customers is a central concept. The installed base includes all the pieces of equipment sold by the OEM to its customers that will be served by the OEM and other service providers during the equipment's lifecycle (Dekker et al., 2013; Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Examining the business potential of industrial services\n3. The forecasting model for industrial services: The study introduces a forecasting model for product-related industrial services to be used by OEMs. In this context, the installed base is a prerequisite for the demand and sales of industrial services, and significant fluctuations in customers' annual volume and purchase frequency are typical. The number, type, intended use, and age of the fleet determine the overall demand for services. The installed base of some customers covers hundreds of pieces of equipment, whereas many customers have only one piece of equipment. In addition, an OEM's share of the total demand varies from customer to customer even if their fleet sizes are the same. Some customers maintain their fleets annually with proactive service activities, while others respond only to cases of failure. Some customers maintain their fleets by themselves or use competitors. Some customers order once every five years, while others make dozens of orders each year. Further, the number of customers is small, typically a few hundred.\n4. Method and data: The study is a constructive research (Kasanen et al., 1993) with theoretical implications intended for the servitization and CLV literature. It presents a case study that uses real-life quantitative empirical data and methods to create a model that forecasts sales for product-related industrial services.\n5. Results of the forecasting model: 5.1 The yearly volume model\n6. Discussion and conclusions: 6.1 Synthesis, evaluation, and implications of the findings\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how installed base information could help servitizing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) forecast and support their industrial service sales, and thus increase OEMs' understanding regarding the dynamics of their customers lifetime values (CLVs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: This work constitutes a constructive research aiming to arrive at a practically relevant, yet scientific model. It involves a case study that employs statistical methods to analyze real-life quantitative data about sales and the global installed base.\nFindings: The study introduces a forecasting model for industrial service sales, which considers the characteristics of the installed base and predicts the number of active customers and their yearly volume. The forecasting model performs well compared to other approaches (Croston's method) suitable for similar data. However, reliable results require comprehensive, up-to-date information about the installed base.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study contributes to the servitization literature by introducing a new method for utilizing installed base information and, thus, a novel approach for improving business profitability.\nPractical implications: OEMs can use the forecasting model to predict the demand for - and measure the performance of - their industrial services. To-the-point predictions can help OEMs organize field services and service production effectively and identify potential customers, thus managing their CLV accordingly. At the same time, the findings imply new requirements for managing the installed base information among the OEMs, to understand and realize the industrial service business potential. However, the results have their limitations concerning the design and use of the statistical model in comparison with alternative approaches.\nOriginality/value: The study presents a unique method for employing installed base information to manage the CLV and supplement the servitization literature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Exploring loyal qualities: assessing survey-based loyalty measures
|
[
"Customer loyalty",
"Customer retention",
"Attitude surveys",
"Service industries",
"Australia"
] |
[
{
"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: It is commonly accepted in the marketing discipline that it is far cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to attract a new customer (Reichheld, 1993; 1996) and that loyalty can be linked to company growth (Reichheld, 2003). Given the importance of loyalty to marketers there is a large body of literature concerned with loyalty, a concept, which has also been referred to as retention (Rust and Zahorik, 1993; Narayandas, 1999; Eriksson and Vaghult, 2000) and commitment (Beatty and Kahle, 1988; Ulrich, 1989; van Birgelen et al., 1997).The marketing literature is concerned with both the conceptual definition and measurement of loyalty. The loyalty literature contains a multitude of measures. There have been few attempts to consolidate the plethora of survey based loyalty measures. In 2001, Rundle-Thiele and Maio Mackay analysed nine loyalty measures at the aggregate or brand level (Rundle-Thiele and Maio Mackay, 2001). There has been no attempt to analyse survey-based measures at the individual or customer level.An important rationale for the present study is to deepen our understanding of loyalty by exploring loyal qualities across two different service contexts to enable generalisation across service markets. Services and retailing are important contexts because services are the largest sector of most Western economies. For example, services now account for more than 75 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Australia according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (www.abs.gov.au). Australian service industries are part of the world business community. The trend in Australia towards successful accreditation from international bodies including ISO9000 (www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.openerpage) highlights the relevance and similarity of Australian services to international standards thus the findings from this study are globally applicable.This paper focuses on exploring a broad range of loyalty measures (detailed in Table I in the next section of this paper) that have been used previously in the literature in two contexts, both of which can be classified as services.\nLiterature review: Since loyalty was first defined there has been a great deal of debate about the construct. The crux of these discussions largely centres on: identifying whether loyalty is a behavioural or attitudinal phenomenon; defining attitudinal and behavioural representations of loyalty; and discriminating between additional dimensions of loyalty and understanding the interrelationships between them.Traditional views\nMethodology: Factor analysis methods generally attempt to determine which sets of observed (measured) variables sharing common variance-covariance characteristics define constructs (Schumacker and Lomax, 1996). The technique of exploratory factor analysis will be used in the present study to explore the dimensions of loyalty. The most distinctive feature of exploratory factor analysis is that a detailed model relating loyalty to the measures is not specified in advance and the number of loyalty dimensions is not determined before the analysis (Bollen, 1989). When defining a new concept exploratory factor analysis should be used to assess the dimensionality of the construct and to assess the appropriateness of the selected measures (Hair et al., 1998). Such endeavours are not truly confirmatory and as a result exploratory factor analysis is more relevant to this research. Therefore, exploratory factor analysis will be used in this research to explore the dimensionality of the loyalty construct using existing loyalty measures.Mailing lists for 2,500 members of wine clubs and 2,500 insurance customers were purchased. Funding constraints did not permit data collection in other product categories nor did it permit selection outside of the service markets analysed and this provides an opportunity for future research. An additional list comprising 1,000 names was provided for the wine retail study by a sponsoring organisation. A total of 3,500 wine retail questionnaires were mailed. Questionnaires were mailed to 2,500 respondents in the insurance context. Questionnaires were accompanied with a reply-paid envelope and mailed to respondents in each context. The initial section sought to determine whether respondents had purchased in the category of interest in the past 12 months. Respondents who had purchased from the category of interest in the past 12 months were asked to proceed with the questionnaire. Following the initial section, respondents completed questions relating to loyalty followed by demographic questions.The optimal response rate for a consumer mail survey is between 20 per cent and 40 per cent (Green et al., 1988). Of the surveys returned 726 wine retail customers met the pre-qualifying criteria, which represents an optimal effective response rate of 21 per cent. In the insurance context 314 customers met the pre-qualifying criteria, which represented a less than optimal effective response rate of 13 per cent[1]. The technique of comparing early and late respondents was used to examine non-response bias for both the wine retail and insurance samples. Comparing waves of early and late respondents on a range of demographic characteristics (see Armstrong and Overton, 1977 for a discussion of this technique) revealed no significant differences (p > 0.05) for both the wine retail and insurance surveys, suggesting that non-response bias may not be a problem. For the purposes of data analysis any survey that did not have all items completed were removed. A total of 670 cases were analysed.\nResults and discussion: Exploratory factor analysis was performed on the combined insurance and wine retail samples to obtain the highest respondent per measure ratio to minimise the chances of over-fitting the data. The number of respondents analysed was 670, which exceeds the acceptable 10 respondents to 1 measure (Hair et al., 1998).According to Hair et al. (1998) using the latent root criterion, which is commonly referred to as the eigenvalue, for establishing the cut-off number of dimensions is most appropriate when there are 20 to 50 measures. Six possible dimensions of loyalty had an eigenvalue greater than 1 and these six dimensions explained 59.37 per cent of the total variance for the loyalty construct.The results of the exploratory factor analysis will be presented in two tables. The first table, Table II reports which factors each loyalty measure has loaded on. The second table, Table III summarises how much of the variance is explained by each factor and the eigenvalues used to identify the number of loyalty factors in the EFA. Definitions of the dimensions are also reported in Table III because EFA is most efficient when the factors can represent conceptually defined definitions (Hair et al., 1998)The EFA results support that there are six types of loyalty. The loyal qualities identified in the EFA are attitudinal loyalty, behavioural intentions, resistance to competing offers, propensity to be loyal, complaining behaviour and behavioural loyalty. Considering loyalty as more than one thing is important for marketers.Marketers seeking to maintain or improve customer loyalty should use more than one loyalty measure to benchmark and monitor the different types of loyalty. Considering loyalty as more than one thing can provide guidance for marketers seeking to develop marketing programs to build loyalty. For example, a problem would exist if a marketer found that propensity to be loyal was high but the remaining types of loyalty were low. This would indicate that improvements in marketing programs were required in order to build loyalty to the service.Pure measures\nConclusions and future directions: This research took a step back from loyalty theory to re-define the concept of loyalty. An exploratory perspective using two service markets was taken to examine a broad range of survey-based loyalty measures that had been used in the literature.Exploratory results suggest there may be at least six types of loyalty, many of which have been used previously in academic research. The use of multiple dimensions in loyalty assessment will improve the explanatory potential for both marketing managers and academics. There is value in considering the types of loyalty and in specifying these types. In other words, loyalty is more than one or two combined things.Loyalty is more than attitudinal and behavioural loyalty\nManagerial implications: There are important managerial implications arising from this research and each implication will be discussed in turn for the reader. First, loyalty should be considered as more than one thing. Second, this research has provided a step towards consolidating a wide range of survey-based loyalty measures that exist in the academic literature, helping to simplify loyalty measurement for marketers. Marketers will be able to better understand what type of loyalty a measure captures and which survey measures may be better measures.Simplifying loyalty measurement\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper sets out to provide a step towards simplifying and shortening loyalty surveys for marketers and to summarise and to categorise more than 30 survey-based loyalty measures administered in previous academic surveys.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This research took a step back from theory to re-define the concept of loyalty. An exploratory perspective using two service markets was taken to examine a broad range of survey-based loyalty measures.\nFindings: - The results of this research provide support for the more recent view that there are different ways in which customers can be loyal. The results of this research suggest that attitudinal loyalty could be the most important dimension for marketers to monitor. The exploratory method selected in this research suggests that dimensions of loyalty may include propensity to be loyal, behavioural intentions, complaining behaviour, resistance to competing offers, attitudinal loyalty and behavioural loyalty.\nPractical implications: - There are important managerial implications arising from this research. First, loyalty should be considered as more than one thing. Second, this research has provided a step towards consolidating a wide range of survey-based loyalty measures that exist in the academic literature, helping to simplify loyalty measurement for marketers. This research paper provides a guide of the better survey-based measures by identifying \"pure\" measures of loyalty for marketers. Marketers will be able to better understand what type of loyalty a measure captures.\nOriginality/value: - Valuable for marketers who can be helped to simplify and shorten their surveys by better understanding what type of loyalty a survey measure captures and which measures may be most appropriate for their needs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Information security behaviour of smartphone users: An empirical study on the students of university of Dhaka, Bangladesh
|
[
"Bangladesh",
"Academic libraries",
"Students",
"Information behaviour",
"Information security",
"Smartphones"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The smartphone is considered a very useful instrument for communication in this digital age. Apart from mere call or text facilities, smartphones offer a wide range of computing capabilities and connectivity options through usage of various forms of mobile applications. The usage of these applications has a great impact on the behaviour of smartphone users (Alfawareh and Jusoh, 2014). Currently, students use smartphone applications for a diverse range of academic purposes (Woodcock et al., 2012), using various social networking sites, online shopping and banking, accessing email and many more. Because of the dramatic increase in number of smartphones, providing information security has become a great challenge for information security specialists and researchers (Esmaeili, 2014). Furthermore, ensuring overall smartphone network security is largely dependent upon individual information security behaviours of the users. This paper aims to conduct an empirical study on the information security behaviours of the students of University of Dhaka, Bangladesh in the proper use of smartphones, to protect the information security of the students. This study focuses on information security behaviour in the context of smartphones because Bangladesh is well-known as one of the largest and fastest growing mobile phone market of the world. Furthermore, the smartphone sales in the capital city of Dhaka are much higher compared to the global average sales of smartphones which represent at least 20 per cent of the total mobile handset sales of the country (Rahman, 2015). It is believed that the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh is the largest students assembly in the country in terms of using smartphones (Hossain and Ahmed, 2016) where over 31,955 students are studying (UGC, 2016). Besides, the uses of smartphones are also likely to be increasing in other sub-continent countries, and perhaps more widely. The objectives of this study are summed up in the following four research questions:\nLiterature review: In the process of searching and collecting relevant literature, a range of databases was explored, namely, Web of Science, Emerald Insight and ProQuest; also Web resources, relevant blog posts and online newspapers were analysed. Smartphones are used for range of activities such as making phone calls, taking photos, text messaging, browsing internet, updating social media statuses, banking, sending/receiving emails and many more. Such diverse usage of smartphones may not only cause unintentional leak of personal information but also can threaten the users with criminal blackmail attempts out of their embarrassments (Muslukhov et al., 2013). Another concerning factor is their tendency to download apps provided by the third parties without carrying out proper scrutiny (Mylonas et al., 2013). Another security issue can be raised because of the loss or theft of smartphones, in which case the personal information of the users can be acquired by the third parties (Imgraben et al., 2014). It is generally recognized that adopting appropriate security technologies has a great role to play in ensuring information security of the smartphone user (Ng et al., 2009; Esmaeili, 2014). However, the security technology alone cannot protect the information of the users completely (Imgraben et al., 2014). Moreover, it is well established that the information security behaviour of the individual users has a direct effect on security aspects of smartphone (Rhee et al., 2009).\nMethodology: This exploratory research followed the survey method where a structured questionnaire was developed to conduct the online survey. The questionnaire was pilot-tested before going for the actual survey, by sending the link of the online questionnaire to 20 students through personal email, with the aim of redesigning the final survey if necessary. Google Forms was used to collect the responses from the students. A range of platforms and modes was used during online survey to reach the maximum number of respondents, including personal email and social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Among these social networking sites, the researcher gave the priority to Facebook, as it is the most popular social networking site in Bangladesh (Islam and Mostofa, 2015). In total, 356 respondents participated in the survey initially, but subsequently eight of the participants discontinued the survey after answering the questions in the demographic information section, as they do not use smartphones. Therefore, the sample size for the subsequent sections was 348.\nAnalysis of the study: The findings of this study are described in the following according to the research questions.\nComparison of student's information security behaviours: The results of chi-square tests comparing the student's attitudes by gender suggested that there were significant differences in two out of six cases (Table VI). As the p-values for two items were less than the significance level of 0.05, the null hypothesis was rejected, and it was concluded that there were significant differences among the student's attitudes or behaviours by gender in terms of configuring automatic locking and using remote management apps. However, the percentages of \"never\" in the use of remote management apps for both the male (38.6 per cent) and female (32.4 per cent) students were also alarming.\nFindings and discussions: The study shows that among the participants, the majority of students belonged to the age group of 18-24 where there were more male participants than the female. Notably, such ratio is also apparent in the UGC report where the total number of students in the University of Dhaka is recorded with 31,955 where the male and female students' proportion are 20,681 and 11,274, respectively. Meanwhile, 25,564 of students belong to the undergraduate programme who falls under the age group of 18 to 24 (UGC, 2016). The study population is therefore reasonably representative of the student body. Furthermore, other studies have suggested that demographic factors do not have any great influence on smart phone use and security concerns (Aharony, 2017; Johnson and Radhakrishnan, 2017).\nRecommendations: Based on the data analysis, findings and suggestions from the students, a detailed set of measures can be identified to reduce the information security risks. The major recommendations are as follows:\nConclusion: Smartphones provide a range of new facilities for the users, at the same time, the use of smartphone also increases the risk of information security breaches. Therefore, it is important to understand the information security behaviours to design the solutions and increase awareness among the users. Information security awareness may contribute in changing information behaviours of the smartphone users which will help to minimizing the information security risks as well in the use of smartphone. However, the outcome of this study will contribute with some important information which will be useful in gaining better understanding about information security behaviours in the use of smartphones. Such understanding may help to develop suitable strategies and policies as well as introduction of necessary training programmes for the improvement of information security in the use of smartphones. Specially, the university library would be well-placed to take some initiatives to make students aware about security issues through advices, seminars, workshops and lectures besides other information issues. This fits well with the trend for university libraries to encourage use of smartphones for accessing library services among other academic purposes, both in the developing world (Elahi et al., 2018; Sharma and Madhusudhan, 2016) as well as in Europe and North America (Abbas et al., 2017). It also fits well with the mission of university libraries to improve the information and digital literacy capabilities of their students, with privacy and security being increasingly important issues (Wissinger, 2017; and CILIP, 2018). Besides, students' views regarding which methods or approach would be helpful for them can be taken into consideration in providing appropriate awareness programme by the university libraries. Further studies can be carried out with larger sample size by including students from other universities, as well as exploring other dimensions of smartphone information security behaviours of students.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand the information security behaviour of the students of the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh in the use of smartphones. Bangladesh is well-known as one of the largest and fastest growing mobile phone market of the world, and the University of Dhaka is also the largest student's assembly in the country in terms of using smartphones. Besides, the rising use of smartphones is also likely to be typical of other sub-continent countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To gain an understanding of the information security behaviours of the students of University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, a quantitative survey method was deployed in revealing the approaches of the students towards avoidance of various security risks. A total of 356 students participated in the study, although eight of the participants did not carry out the full survey because they do not use smartphones. The collected data were analysed with suitable statistical methods.\nFindings: The findings of the study reveal that students of University of Dhaka possess a moderately secure behaviour in terms of avoiding harmful behaviours, using useful phone settings and add-on utilities and disaster recovery. This study also shows that the students do not behave securely in all aspects of using different security features in the same way, and it also varies somewhat according to gender, and between faculties and institutions. The university library is recommended as the focus for instruction and guidance on the best practice in smartphone use by students.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study does not include any other universities of Bangladesh except University of Dhaka due to the shortage of time. A further study can be conducted to gain an understanding in a greater extent by including students of the other universities and perhaps also other countries.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper in Bangladesh related to the study of information security behaviour regarding the use of smartphone among the student of University of Dhaka. This study will help to raise information security awareness among the students and encourage the authorities to adopt appropriate strategies and policies to resolve information security risks in the use of smartphones. Specially, the university library can take some initiatives in this case, such as providing advice, seminars, workshops and lectures to make the students aware about security issues.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
External knowledge sharing and radical innovation: the downsides of uncontrolled openness
|
[
"Knowledge sharing",
"Radical innovation",
"Incremental innovation",
"Inter-firm collaboration",
"Knowledge leakage"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Firms share knowledge with external partners for various important reasons and with several strategic purposes in mind. Sharing knowledge externally helps firms scan the competitive landscape in which they operate, develop new ideas and capabilities, and eventually pursue incremental and/or radical innovations (Alexy et al., 2013; Foss et al., 2010). As knowledge exchange between partners tends to be reciprocal, external knowledge sharing helps to bring about benefits for innovation within and beyond the partnership context (Tranekjer and Knudsen, 2012; see also Serenko and Bontis, 2016). Indeed, research has shown that sharing knowledge externally can be beneficial for firms' innovation performance (Lazzarotti et al., 2011; Lin, 2007; Ritala et al., 2015), and is a necessary condition for open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006).\n2. Background and hypotheses: 2.1 Appropriability of radical innovation, knowledge sharing and knowledge leakage\n3. Data and methods: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4. Results: We utilized PLS-SEM technique, using SmartPLS version 3.0 to analyze the results. Similar to any SEM method, PLS helps to analyze structural measurement models and related parts and also provides factor loadings similar to principal component analysis (Sosik et al., 2009). Thus, PLS allows us to examine both the validity of the research model and to analyze the empirical model in terms of hypothesized relationships and their significance. PLS has several particular benefits over other potential structural modeling methods (Hair et al., 2013). First, it allows for examining variables with non-normal distributions, such as in the case of our innovation performance measures. Second, PLS works well for path model estimations also for sufficiently small sample sizes relative to the research model complexity (in this case, n = 150).\n5. Discussion and implications: Sharing knowledge with external partners is a key issue in collaborative innovation and a necessary process for firms pursuing to reap the benefits of innovation (Trott and Hartmann, 2009; Tranekjer and Knudsen, 2012; West and Bogers, 2014). However, several studies have shown that excessive knowledge exchange may be unproductive or lead to negative consequences because of knowledge redundancy, spillovers or other \"dark sides\" of innovation (Frishammar et al., 2015; Hoecht and Trott, 1999, 2006; Norman, 2004; Trott and Hartmann, 2009). The risks are especially pronounced regarding radical innovation outcomes, as a firm's proprietary knowledge related to radical innovation tends to lose its value if it is diffused too widely (Li et al., 2008). While this intuition is well-grounded, we identified a clear research gap in the current literature regarding the lack of empirical evidence on the linkages between inter-firm knowledge sharing, leakage and radical innovation outcomes.\n6. Concluding remarks: In this study, we examined how sharing of business-critical knowledge with external collaboration partners affects a firm's radical innovation performance. We started with the assumption that there is a \"dark side of openness\" when it comes to external collaboration. This is related to the possibility of business-critical knowledge leaking outside firm boundaries, risking the novelty value of radical innovations. Using the data set of 150 CEOs from Finnish technology industries, we found that the aforementioned risk indeed exists. Uncontrolled sharing of knowledge among external collaboration partners leads to higher possibility of accidental knowledge leakage, which is negatively associated with the firm's radical innovation performance. Knowledge leakage did not similarly hurt incremental innovation performance, which further suggests that the risks of leakage relate most often to radical innovation. Based on the study, we can conclude that managers and experts should think carefully what type of knowledge is shared in external collaborations, with whom it is shared and who is sharing it. Collaborative innovation is an increasing trend across industries, and researchers and practitioners are well advised to recognize not only the benefits of external knowledge sharing but also its downsides.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Inter-firm collaborative innovation typically requires knowledge sharing among individuals employed by collaborating firms. However, it is also associated with considerable risks, especially if the knowledge sharing process is not handled using proper judgment. Such risks have been acknowledged in the literature, but the underlying empirical evidence remains unclear. This study aims to examine how sharing of business-critical knowledge with external collaboration partners affects firm's innovation performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors develop a mediating model and hypotheses predicting that the uncontrolled sharing of knowledge leads to accidental knowledge leakage, which, in turn, hinders particularly firm's radical innovation performance. The authors test the model by using a survey of 150 technology-intensive firms in Finland and a partial least squares structural equation model. The mediating model is tested with incremental and radical innovation performance, and the authors control for firm size, age, R&D intensity and industry.\nFindings: The authors find strong support for the model in that uncontrolled external knowledge sharing leads to accidental knowledge leaking and to lower radical innovation performance. The same results are not found for incremental innovation, implying that uncontrolled knowledge leakage is especially detrimental to radical innovation.\nOriginality/value: These findings help in better understanding some of the downsides of too much openness and lack of judgment about knowledge sharing beyond the boundaries of the firm. Thus, firms pursuing radical innovation should carefully guide their employees with regard to what knowledge they share, to what extent they share it and with whom they share it.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Corporate universities: graduating with honours? A snapshot of the European experience
|
[
"Corporate universities",
"Human resource management",
"Lifelong learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future (Alison Lurie).\nPros and cons: There was much enthusiasm at the advent of ECUANET in October 2005, as its remit covered seven partners in five countries with 20 case studies, with EU funding to the tune of almost $400 million matched by partners and partner companies. The following comments were made in response to invitations to become partners in the project, showing how eager individuals and bodies were to see what they could learn:* There is a new need for innovation in lifelong learning.* Knowledge innovation gives a competitive edge.* Strategic learning and knowledge reuse provide top management with the best vision for the future.* Connections are becoming clearer between education investment and earning opportunities.* The value of knowledge innovation is being realized by public and private sectors alike.However, along with the clarity of vision and appreciation of corporate universities, there was also a confusion and opacity to exactly how they should operate, as well as concerns over ECUANET itself:* The term \"corporate university\" is not universally recognized or utilized.* There is a negative outlook on the subject in Europe as something that has failed.* It does not feel European, as it is perceived to have been imported from the USA.* High costs are assumed in a corporate university project.* There was a knowledge gap in terms of what corporate universities actually did and what they could achieve.Consolidating these two views on corporate learning would be vital to assessing the impact and future path of corporate universities in Europe.\nTheory into practice: Another key aspect of the ECUANET project was assessing the results of the study, especially in the context of so many partners, cultures and views at play. As befitting a project looking at workplace learning, using theory into practice was seen as an appropriate response, and three theories were employed:1. Roger's innovation adoption curve;2. Somekh's model of innovation; and3. Tuckman's stages of innovation.The theories can be summarized thus:* Roger's model has a five dimension evolutionary development, placing people into groups such as \"early adopters\" or \"laggards\" with regard to innovation* Somekh's model has six steps regarding the innovation transition, from \"orientation\" to \"creative integration\"* Tuckman's model also has stages, but looks at team development rather than the individual, and recommends four phases from \"group forming\" through \"norming\" to \"performing\".All three theories exhibit the importance of flexibility and adaptation at the heart of the assessment of innovation, whilst also taking into account time aspects, and more specifically the role of early adoption of innovation. It appears that substantial competitive advantage can be achieved by those corporations that understand the speed of change in the education marketplace and adopt the use of innovation while allowing for as much flexibility as possible to achieve maximum gains.\nFuture perfect?: A further conclusion that can be drawn is that not only do the right people have to be identified to push through corporate learning programs within an organization, but they also have to be ready and willing to do so. In most organizations, the human resources department would seem the natural home for such an undertaking, However any department has to develop and adapt to delivering corporate learning initiatives, and they can involve new, multidisciplinary thinking and decision-making processes, which may provide serious challenges to all but the most cutting edge departments.Characteristics of people that are required for such challenges are team-workers that have transferable management skills and keen organizational abilities, able to communicate well and have a high level of IT skills, and who are able to elicit changes in infrastructure and processes in line with their targeted outcomes. If these people are not in a given HR department, other areas of the business, or an entirely new area, may be the best option.\nCultural complexity: Aside from the people side of developing corporate learning, the cultural background is also fundamental to understanding its development, particularly in an area as ethnically and historically diverse as Europe. Problems arise in the types of institutions and habits that corporations have created in their development, many of which can be traced back to the era and location where they started.The complexity of studying, and making recommendations, for how Europe can progress with corporate universities is multiplied when cultural, economic and market-based factors are taken into account. Put simply, how can the same advice be given to Vodafone's UK-based global operation compared to a small to medium sized enterprise in Turkey with just a few hundred employees? Even restricting the study to SMEs, as ECUANET has done, leaves a lot of room for major differences to occur, not least the prospects for shared learning initiatives between companies. To say that the full results from ECUANET are eagerly awaited is an understatement.\nComment: The article \"Interim reflections on the corporate university and SME academy business development and its diffusion\", by Richard Dealtry is a fascinating insight into the current state of play in corporate education in Europe. The article promises much more in the shape of the case studies that will be produced from the ECUANET project, and the references of the article themselves provide a great resource for further reading in this area for corporations looking at corporate universities and their opportunities.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: - The paper finds that the systems are familiar, but the concepts are centuries apart. While European universities have been struggling to assimilate under the Bologna Process in order to achieve some kind of agreed template of education within Europe, bringing their qualifications more in line with the UK and the USA, a body called ECUANET has been assessing the differences in corporate university learning throughout the continent.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Do online communities support research collaboration?
|
[
"Social media",
"Disruptive innovation",
"Online communities",
"Researcher behaviour",
"Scholarly communications",
"Social networking tools"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As newspapers, television and radio programs evidence on a daily basis, the web and especially social media technologies have transformed the way people communicate and disseminate information. These technologies, for example social networking sites - the subject of this paper, have made it quick and easy for communities of every, and any, kind to form, interact and evolve online. But have they done for academic researchers what they have done for communities generally? After all scholarly communities and networks are the very bedrock of academe. The broad questions posed by this paper are whether the academic community, especially researchers, who, of course, are heavily involved in communication and dissemination, have taken to new online communities? If so, what are the changes in researcher behaviour and what are the implications for scholarly institutions. Surprisingly perhaps, the published research literature tells us very little.\nScope and definitions: The term \"online communities\" as used in the context of this study is defined as digital communities that concern themselves with research collaboration, the development and conduct of research projects, provision of advice, and exchange of information and data, prepublication of research results, dissemination, and speeding up the publication cycle through online and interactive refereeing. These communities might be formed around blogs or wikis; could exist on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, UseNet or Mendeley or as a forum, bulletin board or listserv. The focus was on the impact of social media tools and services. The term online communities is probably a relatively new and slippery term, which academics might not have come across, and which might cause confusion in their minds when confronted by it at interview, focus group and questionnaire. To minimize confusion, definitions, explanations and examples were provided at every methodological stage of the project. Social media, the building blocks for online communities are more easily understood because of the huge media coverage and usage that they attract.\nLiterature review: As previously mentioned, there is very little published on online research communities. We know that a majority of researchers make at least occasional use of some Web 2.0 tools or social media services for purposes related to their research, such as communicating their work; developing and sustaining networks and collaborations; or finding out about what others were doing (RIN, 2010). Social media have now found serious application at all points of the research lifecycle, from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end (Rowlands et al., 2011). Researchers have a strong positive attitude towards Web 2.0 and open publishing approaches. However, the major challenge for social media still resides in combining free dissemination of results with robust and reliable quality control mechanisms (Ponte and Simon, 2011). Some of the general social networking sites such as Facebook are used for the dissemination of information (Neo and Calvert, 2012), for example announcing published articles on wall posts (Kortelainen and Katvala, 2012). Facebook is also used for information sharing (Junco, 2011). All these studies show that researchers are aware of social networks and social media but still use them more in everyday life than in research or teaching work (Gu and Widen-Wulff, 2011).\nMethodology: A layered, mixed-methods approach was required for what is essentially a complex research topic. It was complex because the topic is novel, ill-formed, not easily explained or understood. Furthermore, partly because of this and partly because there had been very little substantive research on the topic, we did not know the appropriate questions that should be asked. In such circumstances it was necessary to tread very carefully, with each methodological stage scoping and informing the following stages.\nFindings: Demographics\nDiscussion: The first aim of the study was to find the extent to which academics are engaged with online communities for research purposes. The survey demonstrated interest in the subject area through the large number of participants, many of whom were seasoned researchers (on average they had 14 years research experience and had published over nine papers in the last five years), coming from all over the world (nearly ninety countries are represented). Slightly more than half had either belonged to or were currently a member of an online research community. Independent studies (Stewart et al., 2013) have corroborated the above - that a majority of researchers are making at least occasional use of one or more Web 2.0 services for purposes related to their research; for communicating their research activity; for developing and sustaining networks and collaboration; or for finding out what others are doing. There are quite big differences in membership rates according to subject, but not really by age or other demographic factors. Those whose research entails any form of collaboration are more likely to join online communities.\nConclusion: Going back to our main question considering whether online communities support research collaboration, we can say that scholars use them more for information seeking than for networking and forming collaborations. Online communities are one of the options that scholars consider when they need to scan what is going on in their field, or adjacent research areas. Since the research was conducted, organizations like Academia.edu have registered almost 6.5 M users registered (\"Academia.edu,\" 2014) with Mendeley claiming 1 M researchers registered (\"Mendeley,\" 2014). However, despite these impressive numbers, the research did not reveal that communication and collaboration between researchers has been disrupted in the way that Facebook and Twitter have disrupted other forms of communication.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which academics are engaged with online communities for research purposes, and the research activities, platforms and tools associated with these communities. In addition, the paper aims to discover the benefits, disadvantages and barriers involved in the use of online communities, and especially in regard to the trust and authority issues, so important in scholarly communications.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A layered, mixed-methods approach was used for this complex research topic. Interviews were undertaken with social science and humanities researchers, followed up with focus groups in both the USA and UK. This qualitative work was then followed up with an online questionnaire that generated over 1,000 responses.\nFindings: Over half the sample had experience of an online research community and a majority of researchers are making at least occasional use of one or more Web 2.0 services for communicating their research activity; for developing and sustaining networks and collaboration; or for finding out what others are doing. Big differences exist in membership rates according to subject, but not really by age or other demographic factors. The biggest benefit to joining an online community is the ability to seek information in one's own specialism. Younger researchers are more engaged with online communities.\nResearch limitations/implications: The qualitative research was limited to the UK and USA. While use of online communities is now accepted by both established and younger researchers, the main ways of communicating research remain scholarly journals and books.\nPractical implications: The implications for learned societies and publishers are not clear. Journals are confirmed as the primary way of disseminating research. However, it would be easy for these stakeholders to miss how younger researchers expect to connect in digital communities.\nSocial implications: With researchers of all ages accepting the existing and importance of online communities and connections, there are few technical or social barriers to using mainstream digital tools to connect professionally.\nOriginality/value: There is little published research considering the role of online research communities, so the study is highly original. It is valuable to discover that researchers still prefer to share research findings primarily through journals, rather than through social technologies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Niche market strategy in the textile and apparel industry
|
[
"Niche marketing",
"Competitive strategy",
"Textile industry",
"Garment industry",
"Marketing strategy",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With the elimination of quotas in January 2005, the international textile and apparel industry is facing many challenges. Among them are the increasing number of skilled producing nations, an overcapacity of goods, and a deflation of world market prices. Currently the country with the greatest capacity for capturing the largest share of the world market is China. China's ability to produce quality products efficiently at lower comparative costs is threatening the textile and apparel industries in those countries unable to compete solely based on price. For this reason firms located in these countries are looking for ways to remain competitive. One strategy firms are exploring is that of a niche market strategy. Niche marketing has become a focus of global companies, and especially with US companies, given the current increase in import levels from China for select products (see Table I).It has been proven that product focus, i.e. niche markets, is related to profitability (Porter, 1998). If textile and apparel firms can capitalize on the prospect of niche markets, imports will not be nearly as much of a threat as they currently are. There is no doubt that manufacturers who have created specialized, i.e. niche, markets will be better positioned to compete in the global marketplace and achieve higher margins for products while yielding greater profitability (Linneman and Stanton, 1991).A previous paper explored the potential for the use of niche marketing as a competitive strategy (see Parrish et al., 2004). However, little is known about how this strategy can be developed and used by the textile and apparel industry as a competitive strategy. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to uncover some of the uncertainty surrounding a niche market strategy by:* Examining how textile and apparel firms define a niche market strategy, particularly product versus market.* Examining how the firms identify these markets.* Determining which factors are important for a niche market to be successful.* Uncovering the benefits of implementing a niche market strategy.* Discovering what role niche markets will play in the future of the textile and apparel industry.The study focused on US textile and apparel companies since the US marketplace is one of the major marketplaces in the world for textile-related products.\nNiche market strategy: What is a niche market strategy?\nMethodology: In-depth interviews with US textile and apparel executives were used to collect data for this study. An explanatory qualitative survey methodology was chosen due to the exploratory nature of this research. This particular approach allows for a greater amount of information to be collected from the sample, as compared to a larger survey research method (Yin, 1994).Instrument\nResults: Sample description\nConclusions and limitations: Based on the findings of this research, textile and apparel firms have taken the initiative to start developing a niche strategy to compete with lower priced imports. This finding corroborates the prediction of the trade economists that specialization will result from trade liberalization, at least for those companies attempting to adapt to increased globalization.Niche market strategy definitions\nImplications: Despite the limitations, this study is significant for several reasons. First, results showed that a niche strategy is a promising global competitive strategy for the textile and apparel industry that can be used to compete with lower priced imports. There are two ways for companies to implement a niche strategy:1. create a product and then find a market for that particular product (push marketing); and2. identify a market and then develop a product based on the market's need (pull marketing).Whichever strategy a company chooses, the most important variable on which to focus is the consumer. Findings suggest that for a niche strategy to be successful a company must understand the consumer and the consumer must understand the company.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to examine how the textile and apparel industry can utilize a niche market strategy in order to compete with lower priced imports.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research design used for this study was an in-depth case study method. The sample consisted of selected companies from the fiber, textile, apparel, and auxiliary sectors who are considered leaders in the US textile and apparel industry.\nFindings: - Results indicated that firms can approach a niche strategy from either a market or a product perspective. Findings also indicated variables that are used by firms for both approaches. The most important factor in which a firm needs to focus is understanding the consumer.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Because of the limited sample size of US textile and apparel firms, the results can only be generalized to those companies that participated in the study and not the entire textile and apparel industry.\nPractical implications: - This research study showed that a niche strategy is a promising global competitive strategy for the textile and apparel industry that can be used to compete with lower priced imports.\nOriginality/value: - This study clarifies not only how a niche market/product is defined by the industry, but also how firms can implement and maintain a successful niche strategy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Promoting people-focused knowledge management: the case of IDOM
|
[
"Knowledge sharing",
"Socialization",
"Learning organizations",
"Organizational culture",
"Knowledge management systems",
"Spain"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The literature review on knowledge management gives clear proof of the prevalence of the information technology (IT) focused research in this domain. On the other hand, people-focused research represents a minority trend. In a recent survey on the focus of the research into knowledge management (Swan et al., 2001), it is proven that the dominant discourse in this area is not related to the development of people in the organizations, but to the technologies that facilitate the acquisition, codification, and exploitation of the knowledge people possess.In this sense, the most widespread knowledge management practices supported by IT foster the exchange and assimilation of explicit knowledge (internalization and combination processes, Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). However, such practices leave aside the social construction (Berger and Luckmann, 1966) and the organizational learning processes underlying the externalization and socialization processes, where tacit knowledge is more relevant.Managing this kind of knowledge involves taking other facets into account, such as those related to the behavior of individuals, and attitudes and cognitive skills on which said behavior is based (Swan et al., 2001). In particular, the creation of an organizational culture based on trust and commitment on the part of individuals is crucial (Argyris, 1990; Argyris and Schon, 1978, 1996; Allee, 2003; Friedman et al., 2003; Wiig, 2004). To support this culture, it is necessary to adapt assessment and reward systems (Allee, 2003), career development systems, and organizational designs accordingly (Swan et al., 2001).Considering this, the aim of this paper is to present the experience of a leading Spanish engineering company, IDOM, S.A., in order to promote people-focused knowledge management and socialization and learning processes within the company. Firstly, the values and philosophy which lay the foundations for creating the basis for company behaviour (\"behavioural world\", according to the terminology of Argyris and Schon, 1996) are examined. Then, the paper analyzes the different elements of the organizational context of the company that are feeding its culture and, as a result of this, helping to promote learning and socialization processes. Among such elements, special mention should be made of the organizational structure, the career development system, and the assessment and reward systems implemented in this organization. Finally, the last section includes the main conclusions drawn from the study of the IDOM case.\nThe company: IDOM is a company providing professional engineering services. It was set up in Bilbao (Spain) in 1957 by the Catalan engineer Rafael Escola. Referring to the meaning of the Latin word from where the term engineering derives (\"ingenium\"), IDOM defines its activity as the application - with judgment and creativity - of scientific knowledge, along with the experience of hundreds of professionals - engineers, architects, and consultants - for the benefit of society. Therefore, the very essence of IDOM is that of a company intensive in terms of knowledge.IDOM currently covers 18 areas of activity: architecture; advanced design and analysis; building; energy; studies and consultancy; project management; territorial management; civil engineering; industrial engineering; innovation services; environment; operations and logistics; city and country planning; chemistry, petrochemistry and process; information systems; telecommunications; and transport.Moreover, it has 22 offices spread over three continents: 17 in Europe (Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the UK, and Romania), three in South America (Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela), and one in Africa (Morocco). These offices have an independent legal status. In this sense, IDOM can be considered as a multilocated company made up of a geographically dispersed group of firms that offer global services.Over the last few years, IDOM has experienced spectacular growth. Its staff and its turnover have doubled in barely five years. Thus, the company has grown from having 770 professionals in 1999 to 1,401 in 2004, and from a turnover of EUR65 million in 1999 to a turnover of EUR143 million in 2004.Over the next few years, IDOM's ambitions focus on the international sphere of activity. From being a benchmark company in the Spanish market, the company aspires to do the same on a worldwide level. To do so, it must enter the US and Asian markets and ensure that 50 percent of its turnover derives from overseas by 2010.Table I includes the main magnitudes of the company during the years 2003 and 2004.As far as knowledge management is concerned, IDOM has a formal knowledge management strategy, which is linked to the firm's business strategy. In this sense, the strategic plan of the company encompasses the specific goals to be reached in this field. The main objective is the one related to knowledge sharing. Having a knowledge sharing attitude is a sine quae non condition in order to be a member of IDOM's staff. This is perfectly in line with the definition of knowledge as a strategic asset for the company.Additionally, there is a specific department that is in charge of knowledge management issues, and different information systems have been implemented in order to facilitate knowledge sharing. For instance, a database has been created which contains all the information and knowledge generated in each of the projects developed by IDOM. This is called the \"Technical Library\".Finally, different criteria have been established in order to assess the way knowledge is being shared and exploited within the organization. In other words, the control mechanisms in place are geared towards the measurement of knowledge assets and their use.\nThe cultural dimension: the \"behavioural world\": As has been said earlier, the basis for promoting tacit knowledge management and externalization and socialization processes related to it is the creation of an organizational culture based on trust and commitment on the part of individuals.Indeed, if one had to point out what the most valuable asset of IDOM is, it would without doubt be its organizational culture, constructed on the basis of the outstanding personality and leadership of its founder, Rafael Escola, who has at all times tried to equip the organization with solid and very deep-rooted values.Along these lines, the notion of \"commitment\" and, more precisely, the concept of \"associative commitment\" is the first distinct feature of IDOM's culture. According to the company's philosophy, \"IDOM is an association of professionals who are grouped together at the heart of a consultancy firm, that are related by their work and by their ownership of the firm, and that cooperate to bring about its greater professional and human development and the best customer service.\"All ownership of the company is distributed among 200 individuals who, by working in the company, have the status of partners. The partners are partners in the work, ownership, and business performance of the company. Therefore, it is something totally different from the employer-employee relationship prevailing in companies. Among other requirements, it is necessary to have over ten years' experience in the company in order to become a partner.Furthermore, the notion of \"trust\" is embedded in IDOM's philosophy in the following way: describing the company credo it is stated that \"the organization of IDOM is geared towards really understanding customer needs, meeting their demands, surprising them with new initiatives, and including them in business decisions.\" Thus, \"IDOM's competitive advantage lies in the professional level of its individuals. To this end, the basic nucleus of the firm comprises those professionals who are capable of contributing to and implementing solutions that may provide a permanent response to customer needs. In this sense, the provision of a quality service, professional development, and the proposal of solutions and initiatives are strongly promoted, facilitated, and appreciated, all within a framework of trust in individuals' capacity and respect for personal freedom.\"This climate of trust is really essential to IDOM's corporate culture and Rafael Escola embodied this in an emotive letter to all company employees when, for reasons of age, he gave up his chairmanship:Keep the trust each of you now has forever. Nobody should even imagine that another person would maintain a less than noble attitude towards him or her. Even less so in the case of the managers who one must always believe will wish the best for each other, and who will always say exactly what they mean rather than something else. They must really feel like that and, furthermore, look the part: they should always report (verbally and in writing) on points of view when faced with the realities of each month, regarding their plans, and even as to their intentions ... So far, this climate of trust in IDOM has been incomparable to any we see in other environments; as long as you preserve it, you will continue to form work teams that provide engineering services efficiently to the extent that you will have no competitors. At the present time, unity is of vital importance: how inappropriate it would be today to lose this value owing to the bad luck or bad temper of but a few! I don't want to think of a group of individuals from IDOM losing a customer who had sought us out, having seen our unity. Yet this fact of being vital is not the most important reason for not losing this value, the true crux of the matter lies in the fact that without it there can be no friendship among us or a worthwhile working environment.In order to keep these values alive, the profile of each professional level in IDOM (nine in total) includes attitudes, skills, and responsibilities related to them. Specifically, a desire to learn and improve in one's capacities, teamwork, capacity to listen, commitment to training and the development of other individuals, an attitude of collaboration, a desire to help, availability and attitude in terms of service, transfer of knowledge, and transmission and teaching of values, among others.Similar values can be found in the proposals made by several authors in order to promote individual and collective learning processes. For instance, Argyris (1990) established that the set of values that may favor the aforementioned processes are:* Integrity: fostering the assessment of principles, values, and one's own beliefs.* Help and backup: increasing the capacity of others in order for them to face their own ideas, open their minds, and recognize their assumptions, prejudices, and hidden fears.* Respect for others: contrasting ideas with others, attributing the capacity for self-assessment and self-reflection to them.* Strength: defending one's own attitude and accompanying it with self-reflection and assessment.* Honesty: encouraging oneself and encouraging others to express what they know and what they wouldn't normally dare to say.Fully in accordance with the values indicated, other authors such as Friedman et al. (2003) consider four basic values as a basis for creating optimum behavioral contexts in order to favor learning processes: transparency, inquiry, disconfirmation - or the capacity to admit mistakes -, and accountability.\nThe management context: The organizational design\nConclusions: The most important conclusion to be drawn from the IDOM case is that relating to the paramount importance of the philosophy and culture of the company in creating a basis for behavior, which acts as a backup to the socialization and collective learning processes. Along these lines, the \"organizational theories-in-use\" reinforce behaviour aimed at promoting such processes. These \"organizational theories-in-use\" or, in other words, corporate values, correspond to those defended by the literature in this field. In particular, the values of trust, associative commitment, and service are especially noteworthy in IDOM's culture.Additionally, another aspect of the philosophy and culture of IDOM that is particularly of note is the presence of the values mentioned at all levels, impregnating all corners of the company. Thus, said values are not only included in the formal definition of the company's mission and philosophy, in corporate policies and manuals, but are also present on intermediate levels of the organization and on the most operative ones. This is thanks to the organizational structure and management systems installed. The latter enable values to be \"fractalized\" or reflected at all levels in such a way that they may end up inspiring the actions of all individuals who work at IDOM. The middle managers play an essential role in this \"fractalization\" process.Likewise, the middle managers become the focus of collective socialization and learning processes by fostering the creation of and revitalizing project teams making up the \"BAs\" or most important spaces for the exchange of knowledge in the organization.Finally, special mention should be made of the career development system which, without doubt, provides a backup to the work carried out by middle managers and favors the alignment of individual values and \"theories-in-use\" of people, making it possible for them to transfer their actions and convert individual learning processes into organizational learning processes (Kim, 1993a, b).To bring this work to a close, it should be stressed that the experience of IDOM in the domain of knowledge management is applicable to different geographical settings. Proof of this is the fact that the set of initiatives in the area of Knowledge Management inside this multilocated company have been put into practice in all of its offices throughout the world. Hence, the same initiatives are in place in very diverse geographical and cultural environments. Therefore, the findings obtained in this case might be useful for companies belonging to different regions of the world.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to provide a practical experience in a leading Spanish engineering company in order to promote people-focused knowledge management and socialization and collective learning processes within the firm.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - From an epistemological perspective, the survey assumes a phenomenological approach, aimed at achieving a holistic understanding and interpretation of organizational processes. The evidence-collection sources have been documents and open-ended interviews.\nFindings: - The case shows the paramount relevance of articulating a knowledge-sharing culture throughout management systems and organizational policies and routines, in order to guarantee the alignment of individual and organizational mental models.\nOriginality/value: - The value of this paper lies in providing knowledge management practitioners with a useful insight about how to achieve effective socialization and collective learning processes within their companies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Whole systems approach: Advanced clinical practitioner development and identity in primary care
|
[
"Primary care",
"Workforce",
"Workforce planning",
"Nursing",
"Advanced clinical practice",
"Allied health professional"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The challenges that primary care is facing have been well documented. Issues include increasing demand on primary care services to support an ageing population with growing numbers of older people living with complex multi-morbidities and frailty (Barnett et al., 2012; NHS England, 2014, 2019). In addition, the primary care sector is faced with increasing budgetary and organisational pressures (Fawdon and Adams, 2013), rising demand and increased patient expectations (Williams, 2017), and continuing problems with staff shortages, particularly general practitioner (GP) shortages (NHS England, 2019). The Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CFWI, 2014) identified that the existing GP workforce did not have sufficient capacity to meet current and expected patient needs. The \"Five Year Forward View\" (NHS England, 2014) suggested radical changes to current care models, which would support out of hospital care and the integration of health and social care. In response, the \"General Practice Forward View\" (NHS England, 2016) aimed to support general practice with a strategy that included creating 5,000 additional doctors and at least 5,000 non-medical staff working in general practice by 2020/2021, and investing in development programmes for practice nurses and administration staff. The focus on primary care continues in the recently published NHS Long Term Plan (NHS England, 2019). This report proposes extending the skills of registered professionals and developing advanced clinical practitioner (ACP) roles. These changes aim to mitigate some of the challenges of an overloaded GP workforce, offering opportunities for improved patient-centred care, organisational efficiencies and rewarding careers for health professionals.\nLiterature review: A number of studies suggest the development of non-medical advanced practice roles in primary care is a response to medical staff shortages resulting from difficulties in recruitment and retention (Delamaire and Lafortune, 2010; Barton et al., 2012a; Williams, 2017). These authors suggest that to a large extent, the introduction of these roles involves a substitution of tasks away from doctors, with the main aim being to reduce demands on doctors' time, improve access to care and reduce costs. Participants in Clay and Stern's (2015) study \"Making time in general practice\" commissioned by NHS England, estimated that 27 per cent of GP appointments were potentially avoidable if the bureaucratic system operated differently. The most common potentially avoidable GP consultations were where the patient would have been better served by consulting someone else in the wider primary care team, for example, an ACP. A number of studies identify the benefits of the ACP role. For example, systematic reviews into the effectiveness of the ACPs in primary and community care services undertaken by Begley et al. (2013), Donald et al. (2013) and Laurant et al. (2018) suggest ACP care improves patients' functional, health and psychological status; improves rates of patients' goal achievements and increases levels of family-expressed satisfaction. Swan et al.'s (2015) systematic review of the quality of ACP care delivery suggests that ACPs in primary care settings perform as well as medical staff in terms of clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, but at a lower cost.\nMethods: For the study as a whole, a mixed methods approach was used. As phase 2 focussed on exploring factors that influence the development of ACPs, a qualitative approach was taken for this aspect of the study.\nFindings: Findings from the study suggested that five factors had a significant influence. These were: role definition; access to/availability of quality educational and professional development opportunities; support and supervision, organisational culture and infrastructure; career pathway. These factors are discussed below.\nDiscussion: Findings from the study suggest that a number of factors influence the development and practice of ACPs in primary care settings, and ACP professional identity. These are not limited to access to, and quality of, education but reflect the need for a \"systems thinking approach\" as findings demonstrate a need to address role definition, supervision/support requirements, organisational infrastructure and culture factors and career progression, as well as education. Table II summarises the findings of the study and highlights the influencing factors (IN FACT framework) that should be considered if ACPs in primary care to be effectively maximised at scale.\nRecommendations: During the discussion, proposals have been suggested to address the requirements of the IN FACT framework, but these may be insufficient, as none address the system in its entirety. A potential whole system strategy could be the development of primary care workforce development hubs, which are employing organisations funded by health education commissioners (in England, this would be HEE), as a means to facilitate standardisation of workforce development. In this model, the hub would take on responsibility for developing capacity for practice-based learning and assessment, and ongoing supervision of ACPs, both during formal learning programmes and upon qualification. The team would comprise of ACPs working as workforce development leads/practice educators, GP vocational training leads and practice placement facilitators. This ensures that appropriate skills resources are readily available, enabling members of the team undertaking ACP study to have time to engage fully with the course. This team would provide the infrastructure to develop practice placements in primary care; and support, supervise and assess students in practice on a wide range of programmes including ACP with backgrounds in nursing and AHP. It may be beneficial to allocate student ACPs to hubs, rather than individual practices or organisations. This would enable students to experience a range of primary care placements, maximising opportunities to develop confidence and competence in working across an integrated care system, and could maximise ACP development in primary care at scale. This would also alleviate some of the pressures and challenges faced by employing organisations regarding ongoing provision of a learning environment and backfill for employees who are both studying and working as clinical practitioners within that environment.\nConclusion: The debate about how best to address the challenges of an overloaded GP workforce, improve patient care, and facilitate organisational efficiencies, remains a prominent political, health and social care and economic theme. Previous literature suggests inclusion of ACPs in the primary care workforce can contribute to the mitigation of these challenges, but standardisation of role and competency are required if the initiative is to be effective. To date, proposals to address these challenges have been insufficient on their own. Utilising a workforce development approach to explore ACPs' perceptions and experiences of ACP identity and role development has led to the generation of the Whole System Workforce Framework of Influencing Factors (IN FACT), which lays out the issues that need to be addressed if ACP potential is to be maximised in primary care. This paper offers suggestions about how IN FACT can be addressed. However, as the study findings are based on the responses of a small number of participants located in the North of England, recommendations offered need to be piloted, and evaluations undertaken to measure impact on a range of outcomes including practitioner, patient and practice outcomes and cost benefit analysis.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ascertain primary care advanced clinical practitioners' (ACP) perceptions and experiences of what factors influence the development and identity of ACP roles, and how development of ACP roles that align with Health Education England's capability framework for advanced clinical practice can be facilitated in primary care.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study was located in the North of England. A qualitative approach was used in which 22 staff working in primary care who perceived themselves to be working as ACPs were interviewed. Data analysis was guided by Braun and Clarke's (2006) six phase method.\nFindings: Five themes emerged from the data - the need for: a standardised role definition and inclusive localised registration; access to/availability of quality accredited educational programmes relevant to primary care and professional development opportunities at the appropriate level; access to/availability of support and supervision for ACPs and trainee ACPs; a supportive organisational infrastructure and culture; and a clear career pathway.\nOriginality/value: Findings have led to the generation of the Whole System Workforce Framework of INfluencing FACTors (IN FACT), which lays out the issues that need to be addressed if ACP capability is to be maximised in primary care. This paper offers suggestions about how IN FACT can be addressed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Detection of electrical faults in induction motors using vibration analysis
|
[
"Low isolation",
"Three-phase induction motors",
"Vibration analysis",
"Voltage phase unbalance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the last 20 years several researches have been developed, aimed at detecting and diagnosing faults in three-phase induction motors (Trutt and Cruz, 1993; Han et al., 2007; Henao et al., 2003; Lamim Filho et al., 2007; Nakamura et al., 2008).\nExperimental tests: The experimental test (Plate 1) was assembled in the Laboratory of Vibration and Control of the FEM-UNICAMP - Department of Mechanical Design. The faults were inserted in two three-phase motors (four and six poles) {1}, squirrel cage rotor, 5 CV, 220 V, 60 Hz, category N, 44 bars, 36 slots, SKF 6205-2Z bearing, ID-1, frame 100 L, class of isolation B. The main difference between four and six poles three-phase motors is the synchronous speed. In four poles motors the synchronous speed is 1,800 rpm (30 Hz) and in six poles motors the synchronous speed is 1,200 rpm (20 Hz). A CC generator {4} fed by a resistance bank is used as a load system. By varying the excitation current of the CC generator field, it is possible, therefore, the variation of the motor load.\nGeneral considerations: The factors that affect the behavior of the induction motors can be grouped without problems of electric or magnetic origin and problems of mechanical origin. Due to the importance of understanding the sources of disturbances for fault diagnosis, several studies have been conducted in order to identify possible deterministic frequencies (Baccarini, 2005; Liu and Huang, 2005; Lamim Filho et al., 2007; Jayaswal et al., 2010).\nExperimental results: It has been acquired 210 spectra of vibration in a series of ten tests for each excitement (without fault, two, four, eight and ten turns short circuits, unbalance phase) and randomly repeated under the same load conditions (80, 90 and 100 percent of load).\nConclusion: In this paper, we discussed the use of vibration technique to detect and diagnose problems in induction motors from electrical sources (inter-turn short circuits and unbalanced voltage supplies) beyond normal conditions (motor signature). It was observed through the spectra of vibration, that all tests demonstrated a good repeatability and no interference problems of mechanical origin spectra of vibration, ensuring a perfect analysis of the results.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The objective is the application of vibration analysis for the detection and diagnosis of low isolation between the stator coil wind and the voltage phase unbalance in induction motors with different numbers of poles. The purpose of this paper is to provide an approach for maintenance engineers for diagnosis electrical fault through the vibration analyses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A detailed review of previous work carried out by some researchers and maintenance engineers in the area of machine fault detection is performed. By vibration analysis, the spectra were collected, which used to analyze the failure. Vibration spectra could detect particular characteristic for each fault in an initial condition, so the machine health can be preserved.\nFindings: Results show the efficiency of the technique of vibration analysis and their relevance to detect and diagnose faults in different induction motors. In this way, it may be included in future predictive maintenance programs.\nPractical implications: The paper presents a laboratory investigation carried out through an experimental set-up for the study of fault, mainly related to the stator winding inter-turn short circuit and voltage phase unbalance.\nOriginality/value: The main contribution of the paper has been the characterization of one more tool that makes the predictive maintenance process more efficient, effective and faster, increasing the reliability and availability of equipment.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Towards learning in SMEs: an empirical study in Iran
|
[
"Learning",
"Knowledge management",
"Small to medium‐sized enterprises",
"Knowledge economy",
"Developing countries",
"Iran"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The result of the knowledge revolution is represented by a new economy - the knowledge-based economy, which is radically different from previous economic types known to mankind. The knowledge-based economy is characterized by the conversion of knowledge into essential raw material, capital, products and services. In addition, it is developed through processes such as selling, buying, learning and storing. Developing, sharing and protecting this knowledge becomes a predominant condition for profit generation and the long-term durability of organizations, including SMEs at a micro level and national economies at the macro level.Considering the rapid changes in the world economic climate, SMEs must turn themselves into learning organizations. While knowledge management is assumed to be a vital resource for large organizations (especially for innovation), knowledge management is also important for SMEs to lead their efforts towards competitiveness and innovation.In this paper the authors explore learning and knowledge management dimensions in some Iranian SMEs in order to understand what factors impact on how learning and knowledge is managed in these organizations in a developing country.\nResearch methodology: For the research methodology, the authors implemented a structured survey. At first, the main areas for the research were discussed with some experts who understand SMEs and who have themselves done academic research in related domains. After that, a questionnaire was designed based on the feedbacks taken from the experts. The content of the questions has been summarized for better readability as listed in Table I. The choice for response was: strongly disagree, disagree, no opinion, agree, or strongly agree. This was then evaluated by a Likert Scale.The research targets were people in 26 SMEs in Iran, specializing and working in IT, communication and electronic domains including hardware and software, electronic and communication circuit design and implementation, ICT consulting and ICT services.\nDiscussion and the findings: The results were evaluated using multiple regression analysis, and it has been found that \"interactive participation of employees\", \"flat structures in SMEs\", \"training\", and \"CEO support and commitment\" have a high effect on learning. The statistical analysis results also showed that there is no relationship between knowledge management and the size of the organization. This may be because of the nature of knowledge and the necessity of its management, so it is free from the usual organizational features.The analysis showed that knowledge management is positively related to organizational mission. It means that organizations with knowledge based missions need knowledge management more. The technological/high-tech organizations are highly dependent on their intellectual capital rather than physical assets. As most of the SMEs in this research have been selected from technological ones including IT firms, and communication and electronic industries, they highly agreed with this statement.It is important to say that the nature of SMEs supports tacit knowledge rather than explicit knowledge. The analysis also showed that the selected Iranian SMEs felt that most knowledge in the organization was held as tacit knowledge rather than explicit.The selected SMEs were from a limited geographical area and because of their size, the skills and experiences of employees play an important role in the organization. As the employee's workstations were close to one another, they prefer to share their knowledge face to face rather than applying information technology. The analysis also confirms this opinion and the respondents in the selected SMEs prefer not to use IT for knowledge sharing. The respondents also believe that learning is done through experience sharing between the employees and not through documentation. This may be because of the lack of an integrated documentation system or because of the previous explanation about fact to face knowledge sharing.CEO support and commitment is an important and common factor of any system that needs to be implemented or established in an organization. The analysis showed that this factor is very important in the selected SMEs to ensure the adoption of knowledge management processes. This factor is also positively related with developing a learning organization. Of course, there are many requirements for moving towards a learning organization, but CEO support is one of the most important factors, which can facilitate and enable the other elements. The questionnaire analysis also showed that learning is positively related with the interactive participation of employees and flat structures in the SMEs. The level of participation of employees in decision-making processes is at least partly dependent on the flatness of the organization. Flat structures encourage employees to take part in decision-making and management processes by removing middle management layers.\nConclusion: In this paper we explored learning and knowledge management in some Iranian SMEs. A structured survey was designed and implemented. The findings showed that although the research was implemented in SMEs, there is no perceived relationship between organizational size and the need for knowledge management. The results also showed that CEO support and commitment plays a vital role in knowledge management adoption and learning processes. Learning itself was confirmed to be positively associated with some factors such as employee participation, flat structures and training.Findings also showed that IT does not have an important role in knowledge management in selected Iranian SMEs. This result may be due to the lower level of IT deployment in Iran as a developing country. However, it seems that Iranian SMEs look at IT as a tool for facilitating some of their work and processes and not as an important enabler for knowledge management and learning.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to show that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in national economies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper shows that we are experiencing a new kind of economy in recent times known as the \"knowledge economy\" which considers knowledge as the main resource of organizations for innovation and competitiveness.\nFindings: - The paper finds that considering SMEs as the microelement of a society or macro economy, knowledge management is crucial to drive them towards becoming learning organizations and to achieve sustainable competitiveness.\nOriginality/value: - The research results in this paper can help SME leaders to understand the knowledge management dimensions that will move their organizations towards becoming learning organizations, and is especially relevant for developing countries.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Seeking an ecologically defensible calculation of net loss/gain of biodiversity
|
[
"Conservation",
"Framing",
"Biodiversity",
"Sustainable development",
"Ecology",
"Offset"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Society's current model of economic development is set to become the cause of a mass extinction event (Barnosky et al., 2011; Ceballos et al., 2015). Extensive conversion of land to human use is causing rapid degradation of natural habitats and consequent decline in species abundance (Tilman et al., 2017). The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals identify halting biodiversity loss as a vital component of achieving sustainable development (UN, 2016). A fundamental challenge for accounting researchers, therefore, is to explain how accounting can create conditions conducive to a form of sustainable development that conserves biodiversity (Bebbington and Unerman, 2018; Cuckston, 2018b).\n2. Calculation and biodiversity offsetting: Accounting for biodiversity research seeks to explain the role that accounting plays in nature conservation efforts (Cuckston, 2017, 2018b; Feger and Mermet, 2017). Dominant policy discourse conceptualises accounting for biodiversity as a way of bringing the economic impacts of biodiversity loss into organisational decision-making (ACCA, Flora and Fauna International, and KPMG, 2012; Natural Capital Coalition, 2016; TEEB, 2010). This inherently anthropocentric approach to accounting for biodiversity has informed much of the extant literature in this field, particularly work examining corporate reporting on biodiversity (see e.g. Adler et al., 2018; Atkins et al., 2018; Rimmel and Jonall, 2013; van Liempd and Busch, 2013):In the sense of accounting as a calculative technology, biodiversity can only be \"accounted for\" if species can be \"valued\" in financial terms.(Jones and Solomon, 2013, p. 678)\n3. Data and analysis: In order to study how proponents of biodiversity offsetting have sought to (re)configure calculability for net loss/gain of biodiversity, to address anxieties expressed by conservationists, this paper will examine a case study of a biodiversity offsetting mechanism that might be seen to be ecologically defensible. This case study is a biodiversity offsetting mechanism deployed in the state of NSW, Australia. The NSW state government describes the mechanism as an attempt to substantially \"improve on the existing approach to biodiversity offsets\" (NSW, 2009, p. 3), by ensuring that calculations of net loss/gain of biodiversity are \"scientifically robust\" (NSW, 2009, p. 3) and \"based on ecological principles\" (NSW, 2007a, p. 15).\n4. An ecologically defensible calculation: The NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme is a mechanism that provides developers with a means of demonstrating that their particular development project (when taking offsets into account) causes no net loss of biodiversity. In NSW, this is a requirement of gaining planning permission. The mechanism was established by the NSW Government in the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016. It replaced a very similar biodiversity offsets mechanism within NSW called Biodiversity Banking, which had been operating since 2008. The mechanism is underpinned by a Biodiversity Assessment Method, which defines \"a repeatable and transparent assessment of terrestrial biodiversity values\" (NSW, 2017, p. 2). When developers wish to develop an area of land, they must apply the biodiversity assessment method to ascertain the value of the biodiversity that will be lost as a result of the development and, consequently, the number of biodiversity offset credits that the developer will need to purchase to be able to claim that the development causes no net loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity offset credits can be generated by landowners who designate their land as a biodiversity stewardship site. These landowners must apply the same biodiversity assessment method to ascertain the gains in biodiversity that will supposedly result from the management of this site for conservation and, consequently, the number of biodiversity offset credits that can be produced and sold.\n5. Discussion: The purpose of this paper is to explain how proponents of biodiversity offsetting have sought to produce an ecologically defensible mechanism for reconciling economic development and biodiversity conservation. To do this, the paper has analysed how the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme has framed a space of calculability that enables calculations of net loss/gain of biodiversity. The analysis identified three devices that address anxieties expressed by conservationists concerning biodiversity offsetting. The effects of these three devices, in terms of how they have captured the overflows identified in the conservation literature, are summarised in Table IV.\n6. Conclusion: This paper has shown that biodiversity offsetting is evolving as proponents seek to produce a more ecologically defensible mechanism for reconciling economic development and biodiversity conservation. This is being pursued by introducing accounting devices that frame a space in which calculations of net loss/gain of biodiversity are based on a calculative, but ecocentric, approach to accounting for, and valuing, biodiversity. In a world where economic development is a somewhat unstoppable force (cf. Gray, 2010), humanity must find ways of managing the biosphere to ensure biodiversity is conserved. The evolution of biodiversity offsetting witnessed in this paper may be seen to form part of ongoing efforts to achieve this kind of sustainable development.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain how proponents of biodiversity offsetting have sought to produce an ecologically defensible mechanism for reconciling economic development and biodiversity conservation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper analyses a case study biodiversity offsetting mechanism in New South Wales, Australia. Michel Callon's framing and overflowing metaphor is used to explain how accounting devices are brought into the mechanism, to (re)frame a space of calculability and address anxieties expressed by conservationists about calculations of net loss/gain of biodiversity.\nFindings: The analysis shows that the offsetting mechanism embeds a form of accounting for biodiversity that runs counter to the prevailing dominant anthropocentric approach. Rather than accounting for the biodiversity of a site in terms of the economic benefits it provides to humans, the mechanism accounts for biodiversity in terms of its ecological value. This analysis, therefore, reveals a form of accounting for biodiversity that uses numbers to provide valuations of biodiversity, but these numbers are ecological numbers, not economic numbers. So this is a calculative, and also ecocentric, approach to accounting for, and valuing, biodiversity.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the extant literature on accounting for biodiversity by revealing a novel conceptualisation of the reconciliation of economic development and biodiversity conservation, producing an ecologically defensible form of sustainable development. The paper also makes a methodological contribution by showing how Callon's framing and overflowing metaphor can be used to enable the kind of interdisciplinary engagement needed for researchers to address sustainable development challenges.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
How does family support work when older adults obtain information from mobile internet?
|
[
"Information literacy",
"Information seeking behaviour",
"Empirical study",
"Digital divide",
"Mobile system"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The mobile internet is the data transfer network that can be accessed through mobile communication devices such as smartphones or tablet devices by which internet experiences truly become portable across a multiplicity of spaces and places of every life (Herman et al., 2014). The 42th China Statistical Report on internet Development released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed that the mobile internet users in China increased from 464m in June 2013 to 788m in June 2018. The number of Chinese internet users aged 50 and above reaches 84.174m in June 2018, and the number had increased by 4.8 percent over December 2017 (CNNIC, 2018). Considering 98.3 percent of internet users surfed the internet by smartphones (CNNIC, 2018), we can see that more and more older adults are beginning to use mobile internet in China.\n2. Literature review: According to the social support theory, individuals can enhance their well-being, cope with stressful events, and achieve their goals through managing the psychological and material resources available in their social networks, such as family support (Cohen and Syme, 1985; Lin et al., 2012). In the current research context, the \"goal\" refers to obtaining high-quality information, and the provision of social support can improve the capacity for older adults to utilize the internet (Freese et al., 2006). The capacity improvement will enhance the internet using effect and encourage more online information seeking to improve decisions (Sheng and Simpson, 2013). Therefore, our theoretical framework is grounded on the proposition that family support, as one form of social support, can enhance older adults' ability to use mobile internet, and improve the quality of information they obtained through mobile internet. In this section, we will review the literature from the perspectives of information obtaining from mobile internet, internet literacy and family support.\n3. Hypotheses development: 3.1 The impact of family support on mobile internet literacy improvement\n4. Methodology: Survey methodology was employed to test the hypotheses. Interviews with some respondents after finishing the questionnaires were conducted as a supplement to enrich our understanding of the underlying reasons.\n5. Data analysis and results: 5.1 Common method bias and sample bias assessment\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Discussion of findings\n7. Limitations and future research: Nevertheless, this study presents specific limitations as well. First, to faithfully capture the association among family support, mobile internet literacy improvement and quality improvement of obtained information, an ideal research design would be a longitudinal analysis conducted over different periods. Future research can employ a longitudinal design to retest our proposed model. Second, in this study, the explained variance of mobile internet skill literacy improvement or mobile internet information literacy improvement is less than 50 percent. Thus, other factors such as other social support from friends, experts and teachers may be also associated with mobile internet literacy improvement. Furthermore, the older adults' learning ability, the change of mobile internet environment, peer influence and other factors also play important roles, so these factors should also be taken into consideration in the future research. Third, our research on family support does not distinguish between online support and offline support. In our interviews, some respondents received family support through online channels, such as WeChat, while others received family support through face-to-face contact. Yang et al. (2016) pointed out that online social supports and offline social supports have different impacts on technology use. Therefore, future research needs to differentiate between the impact of online family supports and that of offline family supports on mobile internet literacy for the older adults.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: More and more older adults begin to use the mobile internet to obtain information. However, the quality of information obtained through mobile internet by older adults is hard to be guaranteed. The purpose of this paper is to study the role of family support when older adults obtain information from mobile internet.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study conducted a survey of 263 older adults who owned mobile internet devices such as smartphones or tablet PCs. The theory hypotheses are tested using partial least squares techniques.\nFindings: For older adults, family support is the influencing factor of mobile internet literacy improvement. Family emotional support has stronger impacts on the improvement both of mobile internet skill literacy and of mobile internet information literacy than family cognitive support has. Furthermore, the improvement of both mobile internet skill literacy and of mobile internet information literacy hs positive impacts on the quality improvement of obtained information by older adults.\nPractical implications: This paper gives advice on how family members can support older adults during their obtaining information from mobile internet to improve their mobile internet literacy and quality of obtained information.\nOriginality/value: This study examines the factors that influence mobile internet literacy and quality of obtained information among older adults from the perspective of family support in the Chinese mobile internet context. The research results enrich the internet literacy theory and the information quality theory.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
When leisure and work are allies: the case of skiers and tourist resort hotels
|
[
"Leisure activities",
"Careers",
"Work design",
"Sports",
"Hotels"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Our understanding of careers has changed. No longer orientated solely around the work organisation, working lives are now acknowledged to be individualistic and heterogeneous (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996c; Baruch, 2004a; Hall, 1996). An important consequence is that non-work dimensions of life are included within the concept of career. As Baruch (2004a, p. 59) observes, this new individual orientation of career allows for movement \"to multiple commitments, which include merely a conditional commitment to the organization\". Thomas et al. (2005) note, however, that the careerist implicitly celebrated in the career literature is still the highly qualified - albeit now mobile - professional. This focus on professionals and managers not only ignores the working lives of many within our societies, it fails to realise the conceptual potential available in the recent revision of career. The focus in this paper will be on a group of workers whose strong commitment to leisure and merely conditional commitment to work challenges the taken for granted assumption of the centrality of work.Leisure has a growing importance in many contemporary lives (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996b; Schein, 1996; Snir and Harpaz, 2002). Traditionally, work and leisure have been treated as quite separate -invariably antagonistic- domains (Adler and Adler, 1999; Beatty and Torbert, 2003; Guerrier and Adib, 2003). Within the current work and employment literature, the boundary between work and leisure is much more permeable and the effects of leisure are seen to spill over into work through compensation and/or restoration for the work role (Greenblatt, 2002; Iwasaki et al., 2005; Kirchmeyer, 1993; Trenberth et al., 1999). In these studies however, work is held to be central, while leisure is conditional. The research presented in this paper contributes to the career and employment literature by examining the positive interdependencies between leisure and work, when leisure is held to be central and work merely conditional.Drawing from the work-family model presented by Friedman and Greenhaus (2000) and Greenhaus and Powell (2006) - where the inspiration for the title of this paper comes - I will identify the conditions under which work and leisure operate as an \"ally\" at the level of the employment relationship. In so doing, the particular resources that promote an individual's involvement in leisure and the resources that flow from this involvement to the employing organisation will be examined. The empirical material presented in this paper is drawn from a study of hotel employment within the tourist resort of Queenstown, New Zealand. The resources available from hotel work are presented from the perspective of four extremely committed skiers. The resources available to the hotel as a result of skiing employees are drawn from the accounts of nine hotel managers working within Queenstown hotels.\nTheoretical background: Career is conventionally defined in terms of accumulated work experience over the life-time of an individual (Arthur et al., 1989). Over the last ten to 15 years the perspective taken on this accumulated experience has shifted from the organization to the individual (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996c; Baruch, 2004a; Hall, 1996). Two primary consequences that emerge from this revision are: first that an individual's career is now a responsibility of the individual, and second the incorporation of the whole of the individual's life in his/her career experience. The heterogeneity across career paths navigated by a range of individuals is explained through career anchors (Schein, 1996), vocational identity (Vondracek and Skorikov, 1997) or central life interest (Dubin et al., 1975). While work may be the central life interest (CLI) for many, there is now an opportunity to study the careers of individuals who give priority to other life activities. Arthur and Rousseau (1996a, p. 6) for example, include \"the rejection of existing career opportunities for personal or family reasons\" within the meaning or emphasis of the boundaryless career. The rejection of conventional work/career patterns is an established theme within the work-family literature (Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000; Greenhaus and Parasuraman, 1997; Greenhaus and Powell, 2006). As Friedman and Greenhaus (2000, p. 14) state, \"the traditional concepts, with career progress and success defined so narrowly, do not respond to the fact that there is an increasingly diverse workforce, with different needs, values, and aspirations than in the past.\"It is important to acknowledge that rejection of existing career opportunities is not just about families. Learning and community involvement (MacInnes, 2005); personal growth, friendships, political involvement, creative activity and spiritual development (Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000, p. 193); and travel and adventure (Inkson and Myers, 2003; Richardson and Mallon, 2005) are also important goals affecting working lives. The focus of this paper is leisure. As Arthur and Rousseau (1996b, pp. 375-376) note, \"the need for leisure to provide both relaxation and growth is poorly understood, but we anticipate that it may have a more important place in the new boundaryless career arena\". There is some evidence to suggest that a growing number of individuals are opting for a stronger leisure focus in their lives (Schein, 1996; Snir and Harpaz, 2002). While this leisure orientation is often associated with youth it also features in more mature workers who actively seek to \"down-shift\" into working lives that can accommodate more leisure (Bell, 2006; Overell, 2004). Beatty and Torbert (2003, p. 240) suggest \"that attending to leisure and encouraging its cultivation has developmental benefits for both our professional and personal lives\".In Western economies, work and leisure have traditionally been defined as a mutually exclusive opposition (Adler and Adler, 1999; Beatty and Torbert, 2003; Guerrier and Adib, 2003). More recently, however, the emphasis has been on how work and leisure inter-connect with each other. The predominant theme emerging is the compensation quality of leisure (Kirkcaldy and Cooper, 1993). In this sense, the positive effects of leisure spill over to work by enabling individuals to cope with or restore themselves for their work roles (Greenblatt, 2002; Iwasaki et al., 2005; Kirchmeyer, 1993; Trenberth et al., 1999). While work and leisure are seen to be integrated - particularly on the psychological and emotional level - the emphasis here is still work supplemented by leisure. What is underdeveloped in this - and the career literature generally- is acknowledgement that there exists a stream of individuals who are engaging in a leisure-orientated career path. One exception is the discussion of self-initiated overseas experience (the big OE) by Inkson et al. (1997) and Inkson and Myers (2003). Briefly, the OE working holiday - generally undertaken by young people in their twenties - is an experiential package that weaves together travel, cultural exploration, leisure and work (Inkson and Myers, 2003).Leisure is, of course, more than just a personal or social experience, it is also a major industry grouping that is responsible for significant levels of economic activity - both through spending and employment (Kraus, 1994). Tourism is one such leisure industry where the complex intermingling of leisure, travel and work is notable. Within the tourism literature the travel orientated workers documented by Inkson et al. (1997) and Inkson and Myers (2003) are referred to as \"migrant tourist-workers\" (Bianchi, 2000; Lee-Ross, 1995; Uriely, 2001). Adler and Adler's (1999) sociological study of workers within a Hawaiian tourist resort also identifies a group of workers - labelled Seekers - who exhibit a clear prioritisation of leisure in their work/career decision-making. Seekers were seen to pursue \"a leisure ethos that sublimated work to its service. Their lives, goals, and identities were shaped by their leisure, their clear central life interest, giving them a leisure-driven work culture\" (Adler and Adler, 1999, p. 394). These seekers are important to the work, employment and career literature because they subvert the conventional relationship between work and leisure. This subversion presents a radical challenge to the taken-for-granted assumption of work centrality at the core of most work and employment research. In pushing the concept of career to its revisionary boundaries, these leisure-orientated workers also generate the need to think about leisure as something other than just psychological and emotional compensation and restoration for work. The question that emerges from this literature therefore, is how does the relationship between leisure and work operate in employment relationships where employees are pursuing a leisure orientated career path?While the focus for the leisure-orientated careerist is leisure, work is still important. In the absence of an independent source of wealth, a protracted period of leisure must be supported. Rather than frame this relationship as one of frustration and conflict however, like Greenhaus and Powell (2006) my objective is to explore how work and non-work activities can operate as allies. As such, Friedman and Greenhaus' (2000) general model of work-family relationships provides a useful platform in which to view the positive integration between work and leisure. Friedman and Greenhaus (2000) suggest that the key components of the interdependencies across the work and family domains are: resources, involvement and emotional gratification. Resources refer to the personal support or aids individuals get from work and/or the family, which enables them to respond to particular work and family situations or difficulties. These resources may be tangible (such as money and time) or intangible - (such as information, acceptance and self-esteem). Involvement relates to the intensity with which we \"invest ourselves in (a) role and the more extensively we participate in role-related activities (Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000, p. 126). Finally, emotional gratification refers to the emotional satisfaction we gain from our work and family roles (Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000). As their model is orientated towards the behavioural consequences for the employee, the integration between work and family is studied at the level of the individual. In this paper, analysis of leisure-work interdependence will be examined at the level of the employment relationship. This means that the resources from work that promote an individual's enjoyment of leisure and the resources from an employee's participation in leisure that promote the well-being of the employing organisations' operation will be explored. As such, my specific research questions are:RQ1. What resources are available to the leisure-orientated workers as a result of their participation in this employment relationship?\nMethod: Site and participants\nResults: A leisure orientated career path\nDiscussion and conclusion: The two key issues that emerge from these results are: first the existence of a leisure-orientated career identity, and second the importance of contextualising the leisure-work dynamic in the specific employment relationship.The leisure-orientated career identity\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - There are signs that leisure is becoming increasingly important in contemporary working lives. This paper seeks to contribute to the career literature by examining how work and leisure can operate as allies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Qualitative data from fieldwork engaging with hotel employees located within the tourist resort of Queenstown, New Zealand are used to explore the positive interdependencies between work and leisure for both the leisure-orientated employee and the hotels.\nFindings: - The results suggest that skiing-orientated employees are able to engage in skiing due to the money and time resources they receive from their hotel employment. At the same time, hotels have access to a seasonal, non-standard work-time and leisure competent labour pool as a result of the employees' orientation and participation in skiing.\nOriginality/value: - The results support the existence of a leisure-orientated career identity that conforms to the contemporary individualistic revision of career. In addition, the results emphasise the significant impact that the employment relationship, industry setting and geographic location have on the leisure-work relationship.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Assessing the design, management and improvement of Kaizen projects in local governments
|
[
"Public sector",
"Assessment",
"Kaizen",
"Spain",
"México",
"Kaizen projects"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since 2002 various academic authors have begun to engage in a greater amount of research, which is slowly creating a more robust body of knowledge concerning the Japanese management approach known as Kaizen or continuous improvement. This is perhaps a reflection of the countless articles on the dissemination of management practice (practitioner) which can be found in the literature. Some of them have generated detailed literature reviews in order to build more theory around Kaizen (Singh and Singh, 2009; Suarez-Barraza et al., 2011); other empirical studies have been conducted in Japan, China, the USA, Europe and Mexico (Brunet and New, 2003; Bradley and Willett, 2004; Aoki, 2008; Suarez-Barraza and Miguel-Davila, 2011; Swartling and Olausson, 2011). Thus, the dimensions of Kaizen have been studied in their approach to implementing Kaizen Blitzes or Kaizen events (Laraia et al., 1999; Montabon, 2005; Van Aken et al., 2010), the sustainability of improvement projects (Bateman and David, 2002; Bateman, 2005), the relationship with other methods such as Lean thinking, and even with some techniques such as 5S, restrictions theory or Six Sigma (Liker, 2004; Suarez-Barraza and Ramis-Pujol, 2012).\n2. Revision of the literature: 2.1 Background and definition of Kaizen projects\n3. Methodology of research: This section initially describes the methodology used to develop the assessment scheme of the design: the management and the improvement of Kaizen projects; subsequently, it explains the conceptual theoretical framework that was used for comparison with the findings of the case studies.\n4. Results: rating Kaizen projects according to each case study: Six completed Kaizen projects were selected for the three Town Halls studied. The first selection criterion was that all selected Kaizen projects use the QC Story methodology from beginning to end, i.e. from the selection of the problem to the implementation and standardization of solutions in the daily work. It is also important to note that the six selected Kaizen projects used the QC Story-methodology proposed by Kume (1985), thus ensuring uniformity in the understanding of the term Kaizen.\n5. Conclusions and proposed conceptual scheme: In order to corroborate the first objective in the research of assessing Kaizen projects in three Town Halls, we can conclude that using the conceptual scheme of Van Aken et al. (2010) was useful . For each phase of a Kaizen project a specific score was established for each stipulated criterion. Thereby it was possible to assess each of the studied Kaizen projects at the root within its design, management, implementation and monitoring. However, as indicated in the lessons learnt, there are certain elements that are peculiar to the public context, which means applying a conceptual framework for the public sector presents certain obstacles that are difficult to specify under this theoretical scheme.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Despite the abundant literature in the private sector, a significant gap was detected in the public sector where there were only a few academic efforts to appraise or assess the implementation of the Japanese approach. The likely reason for this lack of literature is the low implementation of Kaizen that has been evidenced over the years in the public sector. Public organizations have a large number of recommendations at their disposal which are vague, abstract and even contradictory. Accordingly, the assessment of the implementation of Kaizen represents a theoretical gap, the filling of which is both necessary and vital to the body of knowledge that represents the application of continuous improvement in a public setting. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the design, management and implementation of Kaizen projects in local governments through the analysis and comparison of empirical data with regard to a theoretical conceptual scheme found in the literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative study was conducted using a case study strategy. The case studies were conducted in three Town Halls (two in Spain and one in Mexico) with active and sustained implementation of Kaizen projects. It was verified throughout that the selected cases applied Kaizen projects for at least five years in their work processes and public services.\nFindings: As a result of the empirical work the authors proposed a new specific and individualized framework for the public sector called: \"Kaizen projects conceptual schemes (KPCS), based on the cycle Plan-Do-Check-Act in order to form a theoretical and practical guide that can serve as a base for local governments seeking to implement Kaizen in their management.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study focussed on three Town Halls (two Spanish and one Mexican), so is not possible to generalize the results.\nPractical implications: El KPCS may represent an instrument of evaluation, management, development and improvement to any Kaizen effort initiated in the public sector.\nSocial implications: The study focussed on public service.\nOriginality/value: As far as the authors are aware, this is one of the first paper to propose a framework of Kaizen in public organizations within both academic and practitioner ambits.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The moderating effect of self-efficacy and gender on work engagement for restaurant employees in the United States
|
[
"Self-efficacy",
"Work engagement",
"Gender",
"Perceived organizational support",
"Intent to leave"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Work engagement allows employees to bring full potential to their jobs. Engaged workers are satisfied with their jobs (Lu et al., 2016; Paek et al., 2015; Schaufeli et al., 2001) and are highly productive (Demerouti and Bakker, 2006), which positively affects business profits (Harter et al., 2003). Work engagement has recently gained considerable attention in business, consultancy and academia (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008); however, according to the 2014 Global Workforce Study, only 40 per cent employees were highly engaged (Towers Watson, 2014). Work engagement is thus still considered as one of the biggest challenges in business (Iqbal et al., 2012). The work engagement situation in the USA is even worse. According to a 2013 report by Gallup, only 30 per cent of employees in the USA feel engaged in work (Sorenson and Garman, 2013). Disengaged employees in the USA cost their companies $300 billion annually in lost productivity (Bates, 2004; Saks, 2006). The work engagement issue in the USA deserves special attention.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Work engagement\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Sample and procedure\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations and measurement properties\n5. Discussion and conclusion: This study was conducted to broaden our understanding of work engagement among restaurant employees. The results of the study have both theoretical and practical implications.\n6. Conclusion: As a result of its positive impact on organizations, work engagement is an important construct to examine in management research. We expanded the scope of that research by investigating the moderating effects of self-efficacy on the relationships between certain study variables and gender differences in the interaction effects of self-efficacy. Our results are noteworthy because they indicate a significant moderating effect of self-efficacy on the impact of POS in work engagement. They also demonstrate gender differences in the interaction effect of self-efficacy and the POS on work engagement, which were never investigated in the hospitality industry and proposed the necessity to test the behavioral plasticity theory in different industries and individuals with different characteristics. This work also shows that the main effect of self-efficacy on work engagement in restaurants is not significant, which does not agree with previous work conducted in other industries. The results of this study ultimately suggest that future researchers should turn their focus toward individual psychological and demographic factors that can possibly affect the relationship between work engagement and its predictors and eventual outcomes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the moderating effect of self-efficacy and gender on work engagement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The survey study was conducted on 149 restaurant employees, and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data.\nFindings: Self-efficacy significantly moderated the impact of perceived organizational support on work engagement, but the moderating effect of self-efficacy was only significant for women with low self-efficacy. Self-efficacy did not moderate the impact of work engagement on intent to leave.\nPractical implications: The results of the study provide suggestions for managing men and women with different levels of self-efficacy in the hospitality workplace.\nOriginality/value: The focus of previous studies on work engagement has primarily been on its antecedents and outcomes, but little is known about individual differences in the relationship between work engagement and its antecedents/outcomes. This is the first study investigating self-efficacy and gender as moderators of work engagement in the hospitality industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A follow-up ranking of academic journals
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Intellectual capital",
"Serials"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper presents a ranking of knowledge management and intellectual capital (KM/IC) academic journals based on Hirsch's h-index and Egghe's g-index. These indices reflect the citation impacts of these journals and offer a supplemental perspective on the recent KM/IC journal ranking presented by Serenko and Bontis (2009) in this issue. The results indicate a high correlation between these ranking methods and demonstrate that both perceived and objective ranking approaches may be employed interchangeably.KM/IC is a new academic discipline that has been dramatically growing for the past decade. On the one hand, KM/IC has become a popular domain that has its own academic outlets, conferences, leading scholars, theories, and preferred inquiry methods. On the other hand, researchers face various challenges when selecting KM/IC as their primary scientific domain. Recently, (Serenko and Bontis, 2009) developed a ranking of KM/IC academic journals by surveying 233 active researchers. During this project, the authors received unsolicited yet very valuable feedback from many academic researchers whose major challenge was to gain recognition from their institutions, departments, and colleagues on their KM/IC scholarly works. Specifically, a current lack of a well-established KM/IC journal ranking system was cited as a major obstacle on the way to tenure, promotion and achievement recognition. Some frustrated respondents even wrote several blistering paragraphs, for example:At my university, ranking is the number one reason for contributing to a particular journal (well, after relevance of course) and this makes our work - and tenure tracks - really quite difficult (Julie F.)Do I go for the Journal of Knowledge Management again? Yes I will but it won't get me promoted ... Do I go for the other journals you list? Doubtful cause ... it doesn't rate for my career (Peter M.)The Journal of Intellectual Capital, for instance, ranks based on our ranking as a third tier accounting journal. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management does not appear on the list at all. This is a critical issue for me professionally, as well as for several of my colleagues here (Loretta O.)Currently, many KM/IC researchers are virtually forced by their institutions to submit their works to various non-KM/IC specific outlets that are preferred internally. Some academic institutions and departments establish their own journal ranking systems whereas others employ lists published externally. However, many tenure, promotion, and merit pay committees are comprised of individuals from various disciplines who are not familiar with each applicant's research domain and thus cannot objectively assess his or her quality of publications (Coe and Weinstock, 1984). As a result, they have to rely on internal or external journal lists in their decisions. Therefore, it is believed that the development of KM/IC-specific journal rankings may help scholars achieve recognition among their peers and improve careers. In addition, journal ranking is an important attribute of discipline identity. In fact, it is often useful to retrospectively analyze the evolution of a scientific field through various attributes, including journals that are targeted for publication.The purpose of this particular study was to extend the previous journal ranking study (published in this issue), and to validate the ranking list by using an alternative methodology. In the previous project (Serenko and Bontis, 2009), a stated preference (i.e. peer review or expert survey) technique was used to develop a journal ranking. In the current investigation, a revealed preference (i.e. citation-based) approach is employed. Specifically, the ranking is constructed based on Hirsch's h-index and Egghe's g-index, which reflect the citation impact of each outlet, by using Google Scholar (GS) data.\nLiterature review: Two approaches to assessing scholarly journals\nMethodology and results: Journal list and data collection\nDiscussion and conclusions: The purpose of this project was to develop a ranking of KM/IC academic journals based on the revealed preference approach. For this, Harzing's Publish or Perish tool was employed to obtain citation data for the list of 20 journals from Google Scholar. The journals were ranked based on a combination of the h-index and g-index. During the study, several issues emerged.First, although some citation noise occurs by using Google Scholar, the system's aggregation mechanism is robust enough to provide very reliable citation metrics. During this project, manual re-calculation of the h-index and g-index for the select 20 journals resulted in only several minor adjustments, and had no impact on the actual journal ranking. In addition, perfect Spearman correlation coefficients (0.997 and 1.000) were observed between the initial Google Scholar and manually adjusted indices. However, future investigators are still encouraged to manually track each article that may be potentially included in the set of h or g articles. Even this was not observed in the present project, theoretically, some adjustments may affect the ranking of a particular outlet.Second, the values obtained through a stated preference (i.e. expert survey) and revealed preference (i.e. citation impact) approaches correlated very strongly, over 0.8 on average. This demonstrates the validity of both techniques.Third, the Journal of Knowledge Management and the Journal of Intellectual Capital still top the list. Out of five top journals indentified by Serenko and Bontis (2009), four stayed in the top five list. The most dramatic move was observed for the International Journal of Knowledge Management that dropped from fourth to eleventh place. As discussed earlier in this study, the lower result of this particular journal may not necessarily reflect its contribution to the field and may result from the Google Scholar article collection process. This, unfortunately cannot be currently investigated since little information is available from Google.Fourth, Knowledge and Innovation: Journal of the KMCI (Knowledge Management Consortium International) published only 19 articles and was discontinued in 2001 was ranked 12th and obtained good citation indices. It is likely that if this outlet was still in print, it would be ranked among the leading discipline journals.In summary, the overall purpose of this particular research project was to extend an earlier study that ranked the top academic journals in the field of KM/IC. Whereas the original study surveyed authors and asked for their opinions, this study examined actual citations. A major finding of this study is the emergence of a clear tiering (i.e. clustering of top journals) in the field when both approaches are considered. This is a very important development for KM/IC academic researchers seeking promotion and recruitment in universities. Traditional lists of accepted journals do not contain KM/IC publication outlets due to the relatively young age of the field and its cross-disciplinary nature. The results of this study support a specialized ranking list of KM/IC journals that academic researchers may use for reward and recognition purposes. This list has been corroborated with two distinct methodologies and can therefore boast a certain level of validity for administrators who are reviewing the performance of candidates.As the number of KM/IC publications and researchers increases over time, so must the field's ability to understand its identity. Identifying the top outlets of publication in KM/IC creates a strong momentum of academic pursuit for doctoral candidates and researchers who are seeking promotion or positions elsewhere. This momentum provides an important direction for researchers as it reveals a landscape of potential outlets for their important work.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to develop a ranking of knowledge management and intellectual capital academic journals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A revealed preference, also referred to as citation impact, method was utilized. Citation data were obtained from Google Scholar by using Harzing's Publish or Perish tool. The h-index and the g-index were employed to develop a ranking list. The revealed preference method was compared to the stated preference approach, also referred to as an expert survey. A comprehensive journal ranking based on the combination of both approaches is presented.\nFindings: - Manual re-calculation of the indices reported by Publish or Perish had no impact on the ranking list. The revealed preference and stated preference methods correlated very strongly (0.8 on average). According to the final aggregate journal list that combined stated and revealed preference methods, Journal of Knowledge Management and Journal of Intellectual Capital are ranked A+, and The Learning Organization, Knowledge and Process Management, and Knowledge Management Research & Practice are ranked A.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study was the first of its kind to develop a ranking system for academic journals in the field based on the journals' citation impact metrics. This list is vital for knowledge management and intellectual capital academics for tenure, merit, and promotion decisions. It may also help them achieve recognition among their peers and colleagues from other disciplines.\nPractical implications: - The proposed ranking list may be fruitfully employed by knowledge management and intellectual capital practitioners, librarians making journal subscription decisions, academics looking for best outlets, and various academic committees.\nOriginality/value: - This paper represents the first documented attempt to develop a ranking of knowledge management and intellectual capital academic journals by using the h-index and the g-index that reflect journal citation impact.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Portfolio diversification during monetary loosening policy
|
[
"Portfolio diversification",
"Dynamic conditional correlation",
"Quantitative easing",
"E58, G15, C58"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since 2008, quantitative easing (QE), which is specified as the purchase of financial assets financed by central bank reserves, has become a major interest of monetary policy in the most important central banks. Earlier decisions such as reducing interest rates to close to zero levels did not bring the expected results in terms of achieving the inflation target and the restoration of economic growth. According to the theoretical foundations of QE, such kind of operation should have a significant influence on asset prices. The decrease of bond yields due to their buying is simultaneously associated with higher amounts of money in the market, which should result in stimulation of consumption and investments in riskier assets. Therefore, the evolution of relations between assets during the different phases of QE seems to be an interesting problem. Due to the uncertainty regarding the possible emergence of high inflation as a result of QE, relations between assets on the commodity markets seem to be particularly noteworthy. Their observation can generate insights regarding risk diversification for investment portfolio creation in upcoming years. An analysis of the evolution of correlations between the selected markets will determine whether the different phases of QE have affected the relationships between them.\n2. QE in the USA: The intensification of the global financial crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to governments and central banks around the world introducing a variety of measures aimed at stabilizing financial markets and supporting aggregate demand. Because standard monetary policy had become ineffective, many countries implemented an unconventional monetary policy: quantitative easing. This meant that they began purchasing public and private sector assets using central bank money. This way, the central bank injects money into the economy to provide an additional stimulus to nominal spending to meet the inflation target (Benford et al., 2009; Joyce et al., 2010). The largest scale of this phenomenon took place in the USA where more than US$2 trillion was injected to the markets. Economic literature distinguishes five stages of QE.\n3. Econometric methods: The DCC-GARCH class of models was used to estimate the conditional correlation between the selected assets. The application of this method in the present context has been recommended in earlier studies, e.g. Tansuchat et al. (2010). Multivariate models which enable the estimation of conditional correlation allow inferring changes between the different markets in specific time intervals. This kind of model also generates information about the distribution and stability of the correlation. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test was applied to compare the series of the conditional correlations in different periods.\n4. Empirical results: Nine different DCC-GARCH models were estimated. For each of them, the sub-models have been estimated separately due to changes in the number of observations. As a result, 65 correlation pairs between various markets have been obtained. Tables I-IX contain the mean value of the conditional correlation (obtained by the DCC-GARCH) and the standard deviation for each correlation pair.\n5. Discussion: The results can be generalized when considering asset allocation. The empirical analysis has been performed to show the general overview for relationships between equities, exchange rates and commodities during QE. The main motivation was that the aggressive monetary policy can generate inflation risk which could be diversified by investing in the commodities.\n6. Conclusion: Eighteen different assets, connected mainly with the oil and mining industry, have been analyzed in this paper in terms of the distribution of correlations. Nine DCC-GARCH type models have been estimated for each group centered around a main asset: a company from the oil or mining industry, the appropriate currency pair for its market of origin, commodities which could be used for the diversification of risk involved in investing in a portfolio containing the company and the largest company from the same industry listed on the US market.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to analyze the impact of quantitative easing (QE) performed in the USA on relationship between assets mainly from mining and oil industries. Based on the empirical results, the method of diversified portfolio creation has been proposed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Nine DCC-GARCH-type models have been estimated for each group centered around a main asset: a company from the oil or mining industry, the appropriate currency pair for its market of origin, commodities which could be used for the diversification of risk involved in investing in a portfolio containing the company, and the largest company from the same industry listed on the US market. Each series of conditional correlations was analyzed with regard to the changes that occurred during the various stages of QE.\nFindings: The correlations are shown to be stabilizing in the successive stages of QE. The most significant changes in the distribution of correlations can be observed after the first stage of QE. The effects of QE are evident not only in the USA but also in other countries; however, the level of its influence varies between different markets and assets. It is possible to diversify the inflation, currency and market portfolio risk by appropriately chosen asset decomposition.\nResearch limitations/implications: The DCC model is limited, so to provide more precise results, more sophisticated models can be estimated and compared.\nPractical implications: The paper investigate the fact of stabilization in financial markets relations. The findings may prove the validity of continuation of QE. A portfolio creation method has been proposed - it has been stated that including commodity in portfolio is more appropriate then only-bond-equity mix.\nOriginality/value: The new approach of analyzing financial stability has been proposed - the control for stability of conditional correlation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The relationship between proactive goal generation and innovative behaviour at work
|
[
"Self-regulation",
"Innovative behaviour",
"Proactive goal generation",
"Role breadth self-efficacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In today's highly dynamic, uncertain, and competitive socioeconomic context, organizational efficacy has become progressively dependent on workers' creativity and innovation (Anderson et al., 2004; George, 2007). Therefore, to maintain high levels of efficacy, it is fundamental to identify the motivational factors that foster and support the voluntary generation and introduction of new and useful ideas through individual innovation in a role, group, or overall organization (Janssen, 2000; West and Farr, 1990). Scholars believe that job motivation is a central driver of creativity, innovative processes, and results and most of the empirical research has emphasized the positive impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on individual creativity (e.g. Amabile, 1996; Eisenberger and Rhoades, 2001; Hammond et al., 2011).\nPurpose: This study addresses these concerns. Specifically, it proposes and verifies a motivational aspect of goal-based innovation that accounts for the effect of goal-directed self-regulation processes on innovative behavior. Its purpose is to extend present knowledge of the motivational antecedents to innovation at work. Based on goal-regulation theory (Gollwitzer, 1990; Kanfer, 1990), the research focusses on the \"proactive generation of goals\" - defined as a self-regulatory process involving the self-selection of proactive goals and action plans to pursue them (Parker et al., 2010) - and how this effectively drives individual motivation toward involvement in innovative activities. Additionally, the study assesses the extent to which the positive effect of the proactive generation of goals may increase as a result of role breadth self-efficacy (defined as individuals' perceived capacities to exercise proactive, interpersonal, and integrative activities above and beyond the formal requirements of their job descriptions (Parker, 1998; Parker et al., 2006).\nThe moderating effect of role breadth self-efficacy: Psychological factors likely influence individuals' goal generation and innovative behaviors. Therefore, it is important to assess the extent to which psychological factors may influence the positive impact of goal-directed self-regulation processes on individual innovation. Self-efficacy is a psychological factor that is an important aspect of motivation (Bandura, 1986) when it is defined as an individual's judgments about his or her capability to perform particular tasks. There is consistent evidence (see, e.g. the meta-analysis conducted by Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998) that links self-efficacy to work-related and contextual performance (Somech and Drach-Zahavy, 2000). Role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) is a type of self-efficacy that may be particularly relevant to carrying out the wider and more proactive roles that characterize today's work environment (Parker, 1998). In this study, RBSE is defined according to Parker (2000, p. 450) as the extent to which people feel able \"to carrying out a range of proactive interpersonal and integrative tasks beyond the prescribed technical requirements\" (see also, Parker, 1998; Parker et al., 2006). Because RBSE theoretically influences people's perceptions of their abilities, it is a psychological factor that potentially moderates the relationship between proactive goal generation and innovative work behavior that is the focus of this study.\nMethod: Procedure and participants\nResults: The result of the confirmatory factor analysis shows that the hypothesized three-factor model has a good fit: kh2(317)=696.469, CFI=0.93, RMSEA=0.06, SRMR=0.04. This model was also compared to three two-factor models (providing for every possible combination of the examined variables) and to a one-factor model. As shown in Table I, the hypothesized model was a much better fit than the more parsimonious alternative models (p<0.01), confirming the distinction between the variables under examination.\nDiscussion and conclusions: Based on Gollwitzer's (1990) goal regulation perspective, this study aimed to extend knowledge of the role played by goals in the motivational dynamics that underlay individual innovation at work. To accomplish this, we analyzed the influence of proactive goal generation on innovative work behavior and the moderating effect of RBSE in boosting the efficacy of this self-regulatory process.\nPractical implications: The results of this study imply that pro-innovation organizational strategies and practices should stimulate among workers an anticipatory, self-directed approach toward professional action in the workplace. It is management's task to encourage a proactive environment of change-oriented goals and the corresponding strategies with which they may be realized. Creating such an environment would provide a motivational stimulus that could effectively guide workers' proactive and innovative conduct (Frese and Fay, 2001).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose and verify a motivational aspect of goal-based innovation that accounts for the effect of goal-directed self-regulation processes on innovative behavior. Its purpose is to extend present knowledge of the motivational antecedents to innovation at work. Additionally, the study assesses the extent to which the positive effect of the proactive generation of goals may increase as a result of role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) (defined as individuals' perceived capacities to exercise proactive, interpersonal, and integrative activities above and beyond the formal requirements of their job descriptions (Parker, 1998; Parker et al., 2006).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted with a sample of 395 male and female administrative employees in two institutions in central Italy (city hall).\nFindings: The results confirmed the two hypotheses: proactive goal generation was a strong predictor of individual work innovative behavior and the RBSE as a psychological state, is directly related to proactive and innovative behavior and it is also moderator in the relationship between proactive goal generation and innovative behavior.\nResearch limitations/implications: The data were collected using one-time, self-report measures and with the cross-sectional research design.\nPractical implications: The results of this study imply that pro-innovation organizational strategies and practices should stimulate among workers an anticipatory, self-directed approach toward professional action in the workplace. It is management's task to encourage a proactive environment of change-oriented goals and the corresponding strategies with which they may be realized. Creating such an environment would provide a motivational stimulus that could effectively guide workers' proactive and innovative conduct.\nSocial implications: The results of this study contribute to change human resources management practices in public administrations where administrative employees have been assigned goals that they were required to meet by performing well-defined tasks. Recently, public administrations have been encouraged to innovate and answer with efficiency to new public policies and customers' demands. Thus, human resources management needs to find new solutions to address these changing demands and employees' changing attitudes and behaviors.\nOriginality/value: Furthermore, the results of this study contribute to broadening understanding of the psychological factors that can boost the positive effect of self-regulatory efforts on creativity and individual innovation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
No-one now is at my desk
|
[
"Employee attitudes",
"Grievances"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nNo-one now is at my desk: No-one now is at my desk.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to raise the issue of transition problems in organisations when employees are taken for granted.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Satirical poem.\nFindings: - Employers need to consider the risk of not dealing adequately with staff grievances.\nOriginality/value: - The paper addresses the negative impact on an employer of staff departure from the perspective of the former employee.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Participatory budgeting as a form of dialogic accounting in Russia: Actors' institutional work and reflexivity trap
|
[
"Curiosity",
"Democratic governance",
"Institutional work",
"Dialogic accounting",
"Participatory budgeting",
"Reflexivity trap"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: During recent decades, scientific publications have demonstrated an increasing interest in how accounting and accountability can promote pluralistic democracy (Brown et al., 2015). This literature particularly suggests that accounting should not only represent one dominant voice, i.e. monologic accounting[1], but rather foster the multiplicity of divergent voices to be heard through the accounting dialogue (Brown, 2009). This potentially may foster social emancipation and democratic transformative change (Brown et al., 2015). It is especially suggested in a number of studies in the social and environmental accounting literature (amongst others, e.g. O'Dwyer, 2005; Gray, 2002; Bebbington et al., 2007). However, this literature, together with some recent studies, shows quite ambivalent results in this regard through both certain possibilities for social change in non-institutional arrangements (amongst others, e.g. Apostol, 2015; Atkins et al., 2015) and the domination of monologism via mainstream institutions (e.g. Archel et al., 2011).\nDialogic accounting from an institutional work perspective: Democratic governance, PB and the move to dialogic accounting theory\nResearch setting, method and design: Based on the research questions and theoretical considerations, this study is founded on qualitative data, applying a case study strategy. We investigate the case of an institutional innovation called \"iBudget.\" It was initiated in one municipality in the northwest of Russia in 2013 with the intervention of consultant-researchers for PB experimentation. In terms of ethical considerations, the names of actors are not revealed. \"iBudget\" was one of the first PB experiments in Russia. It received extensive attention in the mass media and became the topic for regional and federal authorities' discussions as, untypical for Russia, a form of interactive dialogue between public officials and citizens. This novelty and strangeness became one of the main reasons for our investigation. In addition, the second rationality for the case is connected with good access to both secondary and primary data, giving a rich understanding of the PB phenomenon.\nDevelopment of PB in Russia: The empirical section presents a summary of the PB story with several stages constructed by our interpretation of the main notes from the collected data. Each stage is supplemented by analysis based on institutional work. In particular, analysis was framed by our three research sub-questions regarding actors' embeddedness, patterns of institutional work and especially their reflexivity during the PB experiment. In addition, each phase is accompanied by implications for dialogic accounting literature.\nDiscussion and conclusions: The paper examined the case of PB as a possible form of dialogic accounting which can foster democratic governance. The aim was to explore the underlying processes of PB development in practice, its effects and, therefore, to develop a more nuanced view of PB as a form of dialogic accounting in general. This section presents our findings, particularly elaborating on our main research question:How is PB, as a form of dialogic accounting, produced in practice?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how participatory budgeting (PB), as a form of dialogic accounting, is produced in practice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative case study of PB development for the period 2013-2016 in one Russian municipality. Based on triangulation of in-depth semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis, videotape data and netnographic observation, the authors employ ideas of dialogic accounting and institutional work.\nFindings: The study shows that the PB experiment, which began with dialogic rhetoric, in reality, had very limited dialogic effects. However, the authors also observed that the PB dynamics over time made the practice neither inherently monologic nor dialogic. The authors explained such transformations by the way in which the individual reflexivity of actors altered when carrying out institutional work. Curiosity reflexivity was the most essential, triggering different patterns of institutional work to set up the PB experiment. However, further, the authors demonstrated that, over the course of the experiment's development, the institutional work was trapped by various actors' individual reflexivity forms and in this way limited PB's dialogic potential.\nOriginality/value: The study shows the importance of understanding and managing individuals' reflexivity, as it shapes the institutional work performed by different actors and, therefore, influences the direction of both the design and materialization of dialogic accounting experiments such as PB. In a broader sense, this also influences the way in which democratic governance is developed, losing democratization potential.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Workforce diversity and organizational performance: a study of IT industry in India
|
[
"Organizational performance",
"Perception",
"Workforce diversity",
"Gender diversity",
"IT industry"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is now no longer possible to ignore the pervading influence of diversity in organizations. The concept of diversity has transformed from being a governmental or legal obligation to a strategic priority. The aim of attaining sustainable competitive advantage (Sub and Kleiner, 2007) and the need to become an employer of choice (Foster and Harris, 2005; Ng and Burke, 2005) has instigated organizations worldwide to embrace the concept of diversity. However, in the opinion of Farrer (2004), mere manifestation of diversity or embracing diversity as a concept alone does not guarantee success; organizations need to effectively manage diversity by celebrating, valuing, and actively encouraging the diversity of the workforce. Management of diversity has thus become a top priority for top executives of organizations around the world (Wikina, 2011).\nIndian context: India, largest democracy and the second most populous country in the world with an estimated population of 1.25 billion (World Bank, 2013), is one of the oldest and richest civilization being extremely diverse and multi-faceted in its history, culture, and institutional frameworks (Thite, 2011). The country addresses a range of diversity issues, including age, education, religion, caste, socially disadvantaged (e.g. SCs, STs and OBCs), gender, language, regional background, ethnicity, and disability (Kundu, 2003; Venkata Ratnam and Chandra, 1996). It is a multi-religious country, with Hinduism being practiced by 79.8 per cent of the population, followed by the other six religions which have been awarded \"National minority\" status - Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis (RGI and Census Commissioner, 2011). Indian society is also marked by the presence of a strict system of social stratification legitimated by perceived cultural and religious principles (Nair, cited in Shenoy, 2013). The most visible of the social hierarchies is the caste system, which is a complex social code, with the upper/forward castes exercising considerable subjugative influence over the economically and socially disadvantaged castes: SCs, STs, and OBCs (Sridharan, 1999). No less significant in Indian society is the hierarchy that separates men from women (Wang and McLean, 2016). Women are expected to leave their jobs after marriage, pregnancy, or childbirth to carry out their domestic duties; they may never be encouraged to return to their jobs (Budhwar et al., 2005).\nIndian IT industry: As predicted by Basu (2001), the IT industry has turned out to be \"India's philosopher's stone\" and has been able to make its presence felt in the global market, making India a name to reckon within the global scenario (Gupta et al., 2015). The sector has increased its contribution to India's GDP from 1.2 per cent in FY1998 to 9.5 per cent in FY2014 (NASSCOM, 2015). In addition to fuelling India's economy, Indian IT industry positively influences the lives of its people by contributing to the various socioeconomic parameters such as employment, standard of living, and diversity among others (NASSCOM, 2013). Indian IT sector empowers diverse human assets in terms of age, gender, educational background, disability, etc. It is the largest private sector employer and employs about 3.5 million people, out of which 34 per cent represents women (NASSCOM, 2015). The Indian government has declared IT industry as a thrust area for national development and provides substantial support to accelerate its growth (Balakrishnan, 2006; Ilavarasan, 2007). The growth of this industry serves as a benchmark for other industries.\nEmployee perceptions of diversity: Diverse workforce (diversity) refers to the co-existence of people from various social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds within the company (Kundu, 2001). Diversity also denotes the differences between individuals on any personal attributes that determine how people perceive one another (Ragins and Gonzalez, 2003) and diversity management seeks to harness those differences in the pursuit of more productive environments (Kandola and Fullerton, 1998). The commonly espoused objectives of diversity management include valuing, harnessing, and utilizing workforce diversity and overcoming barriers like discrimination and segregation (Healy et al., 2010). Diversity management constructs on the social categories encapsulated by conventional equal employment policies to include personal characteristics, with the emphasis placed on voluntary actions instead of compliance with external legislation (Kossek et al., 2006). But, if employees do not accept and value differences and recognize the importance of the employer's diversity-management initiatives, these initiatives are likely to have a very low probability of succeeding (Soni, 2000). Thus, to implement diversity-management programmes effectively, it is important to systematically identify key factors that must be taken into account by organizations attempting to enhance their diversity-management efforts (Soni, 2000).\nPerceptions of diversity and perceived organizational performance: Perceived organizational performance\nResearch methodology: Sample\nResults: A total of 19 variables regarding diversity were subjected to principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. For stating the factors clearly, only items with a strong loading of 0.50 or higher were retained (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994), which led us to delete an item \"development opportunities for handicapped employees\" from the \"value efforts to promote diversity\" scale with loading below 0.50. We, therefore, ended up with final 18 variables and four cleanest factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00. The four factors extracted had eigenvalues between 1.046 and 6.771 explaining 70.999 per cent of the total variance. The value of commonalities ranged from 0.470 to 0.851 for various variables. Table II shows the factors, loadings for all variables, eigenvalues, and percentage of variance explained by each factor. The derived factors were considered as sub-scales and used for further analysis. The first factor named \"receptivity to diversity and diversity management\" loaded significantly with eight variables; it showed the perceptions of employees towards diversity and diversity management. Second factor named \"equal representation and developmental opportunities\" loaded significantly with five variables. This factor assessed the perceptions of employees toward the availability of equal development opportunities to the workforce and equal representation of diverse employees. Third factor was described as \"hire and retain diverse employees\" and it loaded with three significant variables. This factor assessed the attitude of employees towards hiring and retaining diverse employees in order to tap their contributions and maintain the value of the organization. The final factor named \"promotion of gender diversity\" loaded with two variables and measured the perceptions of employees toward gender diversity and its importance. The Cronbach's a values for the four sub-scales ranged from 0.659 to 0.954 and for the full scale was found to be 0.897 (see Table II); all meeting the acceptable value of 0.6 (Hair et al., 2006).\nDiscussion: The purpose of the research was to study the perceptions of employees towards diversity and the effect of these perceptions on perceived organizational performance. We tested our hypothesized relationships on a sample of 402 Indian IT professionals. With reference to the personal value attached to diversity and its management, findings indicated that respondents, regardless of their gender and categories positively perceived/valued, and did not differ significantly on their insights of receptivity to diversity and diversity management. Although not significant, results were also indicative of the differences in insights of employees based on their gender and category regarding receptivity to diversity and diversity management, where general category males were found to be least (negatively) receptive. On the contrary, Soni's (2000) study demonstrated significant differences between gender and ethnic groups of employees in their receptivity to diversity and diversity management. The lack of significant main effect for gender and category on receptivity to diversity and diversity management may represent a selection effect due to the environment studied. In this respect, Schaafsma (2008) found that work contexts affect the degree of receptivity towards diversity, wherein employees from departments with high skilled professional work are more receptive to diversity compared with employees working in structural characteristics of settings with low skill work. Patrick and Kumar (2012), in a study of Indian IT industry, confirmed this finding that the employees were mostly \"diversity realists\" and could cope with diversity; few being diversity optimists as well.\nConclusions, managerial implications, and limitations: The current study provides considerable insight on present diversity scenario in Indian IT industry through the perceptions of employees. The results highlight that the employees, irrespective of their gender and category, are mostly aware of the effect of diversity on organizations and the need for diversity initiatives, and thus, attach importance to and believe in diversity and diversity management. However, the findings also infer that perceptions of employees towards organizational support for diversity through fair employment practices like hiring and retaining diverse employees and promotion of gender diversity varies based on their categories and gender, respectively. Apparently, there may be a general level of acceptance and appreciation for diversity and diversity management that mitigates not all, but most of the differences in supporting organizational efforts. Yet, traces of gender and category differences are still evident on some aspects of diversity issues perceived.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between employee perceptions of diversity (i.e. significance of diversity and diversity management, and value of diversity practices employed) and perceived organizational performance. It also attempts to examine whether the perceptions of diversity vary among employees from different diversity backgrounds (i.e. across gender and categories) in Indian IT industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Primary data based on 402 respondents were analysed using statistical tools like factor analysis, correlations, analysis of variance, means, grand means, and regression.\nFindings: Results indicated that employees irrespective of their diversity backgrounds positively acknowledged diversity and diversity management. However, limited but significant differences were observed among employee perceptions regarding valuing the diversity practices employed based on their diversity backgrounds. Further, employees' perception of promotion of gender diversity was found to be positively related to perceived organizational performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper relied on self-report surveys for data collection. Future studies should collect data using multiple methods to avoid common-method bias. As the sample was drawn from India, specifically from IT industry, the conclusions may not be generalized to other industries. Future studies may be conducted across industries covering different cultural settings.\nPractical implications: Implications are first, that, in addition to investing in initiatives for promoting diversity, especially gender diversity, organizations need to ensure positive perceptibility of these initiatives by employees. Second, to foster acceptance and effectiveness of gender/diversity initiatives in organizations, managers need to ensure men and majority group employees are part of these initiatives. Third, IT industry needs to reassess their hiring strategies and should design diversity programmes with goals in mind, if not quotas, to hire and retain diverse employees to explore their potential contribution.\nOriginality/value: Inclusion of employees of Indian IT industry of different categories will definitely add value to the existing knowledge on diversity, management theory, and practice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Project managers for risk management: case for Japan
|
[
"Project manager",
"Risk management",
"Japanese companies",
"Product manager",
"Risk manager",
"Japan"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With intensifying global competition, easy access to top-notch technologies, and constantly changing customer requirements, firms face increasingly difficult risk management challenges. The global financial crisis in 2008 showed its impacts on many Japanese firms in the form of increasing business risks. Risks are the possibility of occurrence of events or accidents that disrupt the overall goals of business (Tang, 2006; Drew et al., 2006). Key aspects of risk management include product quality problems, oversupply of key products, patent rights violations, and time-to-market failures (Ritchie and Marshall, 1993; Norman and Lindroth, 2004). Effective risk management requires minimizing the overall business risks through systematic risk management that responds to the changes of internal and external business environments (e.g. global financial environment, emerging technologies, customer needs) (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), 2004). The global Toyota recalls of 2010 also highlighted the urgent needs for reexamining the risk management practices in Japanese firms. Critical aspects of risk management are related to a series of product failures and managerial blunders.Over the years, Japanese firms have maintained an excellent product quality reputation in the world (Fujimoto, 1999). Yet, it is still unclear why firms like Toyota failed in timely intervention and constructive responses to numerous customer complaints. While risk management has been approached from multiple angles, the roles of project management (PM) and project managers (PMs) as a critical organizational response to product failures have not been adequately explored. This paper discusses how PMs and PM are essential for firms to address product failures. The particular research attention focuses on risk management for a variety of product accidents. It examines:* How firms utilize risk management to respond to various types of risks related to product planning and process designs, especially the utilization of product management.* How the firms with risk managers respond to similar incidents.This focused group research uses surveys and additional interviews.\nLiterature review: Project process perspective of risk management\nMethods: Research design\nAdditional follow-up studies: The above results suggest three types of risk management practices in Japanese firms:1. Traditional firms maintain a QMD.2. Firms use both PMs+QMD for risk management.3. Reactive firms that make PMs deal with risk management upon experiencing serious risk accidents.Additional in-depth interviews were conducted for the selected firms to examine how different these three types really are.Firm A\nConcluding remarks: Since this article is based on the survey results of risk management practices of a small focus group of Japanese firms, one should be prudent in applying the research implications. However, it is worthy to summarize the findings of this research for future studies.This study suggests that involving product managers in risk management can be a good way to deal with product-related risks, especially in the recent turbulent environment. Needless to say, the roles of product managers are not all the same. Heavyweight product managers in large firms, such as managers in Toyota, are able to respond to all aspects of product risks, as is seen in Firm C. On the other hand, firms that do not have such heavyweight product managers have to consider a different way to involve them in risk management. A majority of companies define the scope of risk management in the context of the entire supply chain (Narasimhan and Talluri, 2009; Braunscheidel and Suresh, 2009; Frohlich and Westbrook, 2001; Simatupang and Sridharan, 2004). Companies reexamine their risk management system processes and thus emphasize the roles of product managers mainly after experiencing critical product failures. Our case study suggests that accident experience can be in its own (Firm C) or a related firm (Firm B), but it must be so serious as to overcome the organizational inertia and information filtering within the organization. Most firms rather would hope to go on smoothly sailing without ever experiencing any risk failures. Thus, it is imperative that the top management instill risk awareness within the internal system instead of expecting to deal directly with the risks through taking their own initiatives and inculcate a healthy sense of crisis and organizational learning (Smith and Elliott, 2007; Park et al., 2010).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine complex risk management practices of Japanese firms in a turbulent environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The focus of this research is to examine risk management practices based on product accidents in Japanese firms. It examines how firms utilize risk management to respond to various types of risks related to product planning and process designs and how the firms with risk management respond to similar incidents. This focused group research uses surveys and additional interviews.\nFindings: - The research findings suggest the following: the majority of firms define the scope of product risk management in terms of product quality management, project management, and project management+quality management; firms that have risk managers include the entire supply chain in the scope of risk management; and firms reexamine the systematic risk management processes through actual major accidents (direct learning) or other firms' risk outcomes (indirect learning).\nResearch limitations/implications: - This article presents a research model that identifies and examines key aspects of risk management practices. This focused group research provides a useful basis for future empirical research on risk management practices.\nOriginality/value: - This is a rare study on the risk management practices of Japanese firms. The risk management framework in this article introduces actual risk management practices of successful Japanese firms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Social and economic inequality limits disaster prevention amongst the most vulnerable in Vietnam
|
[
"Housing",
"Local governance",
"Disaster risk reduction",
"Advocacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe case study: This study draws on Development Workshop France (DWF) 30 years' work promoting safe construction with poor families facing repeated typhoons and floods in Vietnam.\nContext: A growing class divide\nDWF in Vietnam - 1989-2019: Three periods demark different aspects of DWF activity in Vietnam, from collaboration with local communities to almost influencing part of state policy (Table I).\nConclusion: DWF actions could be considered as successful, as they demonstrate on a large scale that safer housing built by the poor is viable, and this brought into the debate the safe housing issue with adapted practical solutions and methods.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Vietnam is historically hit by extensive disasters. However, the most vulnerable populations are far from being backed by national/local programmes to reduce disaster impacts on their well-being. In practice, political and socio-economic top-down organisation, channels efforts and limited resources into wealthier parts of the country. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Learning from 30 years work in Vietnam, this paper presents how \"horizontal\" solidarity and networking should be promoted and reinforced to really target the needs of vulnerable poor communities. Findings on conditions and challenges are based on practical experience, from family/village level to provincial/national administration, in promoting safe housing and safer communities and in evaluating the barriers for extending and sharing such practices.\nFindings: Political environments in South East Asian countries become similar to Vietnamese systems, and share a common attitude towards DRR (and CCA): official statements reaffirm the need for DRR at all levels, and the CC threats for local development. But year after year, the situation of marginalised or low-income poor facing disasters does not really see progress.\nOriginality/value: New data collecting methods and technologies are proposed, resilience is quoted as criteria for development, but the major issue remains: how could communities be \"at the frontline\" when receiving so little \"backline\" support and resources, compared to benefits from capitalist development shared by only richer parts of society - not concerned in the same way by disasters? The SFDRR in encouraging non-compulsory Civil Society involvement will remain inadequate faced with the increased vulnerability by Vietnam and South East Asian inhabitants.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Faking it: salesperson emotional intelligence's influence on emotional labor strategies and customer outcomes
|
[
"Authenticity",
"Emotional intelligence",
"Emotional labour",
"Trustworthiness",
"Future interaction"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: For decades now, salespeople have been stereotyped to be deceptive, inauthentic and overall disingenuous. Recent articles entitled \"Why Customers Hate Most Salespeople\" (www.forbes.com) and \"Why Jerks are Outselling You and Your Team\" (www.forbes.com) suggest that firms are seeking answers regarding why some salespeople are successful at building genuine, profitable relationships with customers, while others struggle to fight the negative salesperson stereotypes. Although many factors may influence these relationships, an individual's ability to be authentic, through understanding their own and others' emotions, plays a critical role in customer outcomes (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006). Consequently, emotional intelligence (EI) and the expression of emotions have been recognized as important components for effective selling (Weitz et al., 2001; Brown et al., 1997). EI is defined as the ability to acquire and apply inferences and knowledge from one's emotions and those of others to create positive outcomes (Kidwell et al., 2011). EI is a highly sought after skill that is considered one of the most important aspects of the corporate workplace today (Nadler, 2011). For example, 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies motivate and encourage EI in their employees, and almost 90 per cent of high-performing employees, regardless of the industry or profession, have high EI ability (Talentsmart, 2009). Although recently, there has been an increased interest in understanding how EI influences organizational behavior, human resources and managerial literature (O'Boyle et al., 2011), limited research has focused on understanding EI's influence on buyer-seller relationships in a business-to-business selling environment (Kidwell et al., 2011).\nRelevant literature: Emotional intelligence\nTheoretical background: Emotional regulation theory, the overarching theory we use to found this study, has been defined as \"the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions\" (Gross, 1998, p. 275). Through regulating emotional arousal and cognition that creates emotions, a person can manage their emotional expressions to fit the external social environment. To do so, a person should have the ability to recognize, appraise, analysis, evaluate and RE that are complex to fit the display rules of the situation (Goffman, 1959). Based on the input-output model of emotional regulation as proposed by Gross (1998), one would receive stimulation and information from the specific situation and then will respond with emotions and behaviors. In this proposed framework, an individual can take two different approaches:\nConceptual model and hypotheses: In the business-to-business selling environment, the ability to genuinely understand and express emotions are critical due to often complex products or services, long prospecting relationships and extensive sales cycles. Logically, a salesperson's ability to perceive, understand, regulate and authentically express emotions should have an impact on the customer's attitudes and behaviors in the pre-purchase stage of the sales process. Consequently, we propose that a salesperson's emotional labor strategies (i.e. deep vs surface acting) mediate customer outcomes during pre-purchase (Figure 1).\nResearch methodology: This study uses dyadic data (salesperson and customers) from three companies that are located in the southern region of the USA through a matched survey design. All three companies focus on business-to-business selling and target small to medium sized companies as potential clients. The three companies operate in three industries, which include information technology solutions, energy and gas industries and media and telecommunication services. Each company requested that their salespeople provide a name of a prospective customer with whom the salesperson had initiated a relationship but had not made a purchasing decision. A total of 97 salespeople from the information technology (IT) solutions company, 76 salespeople from the energy and gas company and 81 salespeople from the media and telecommunications company agreed to participate and provided names of potential customers. Out of the 254 initial customers, only 183 customers agreed to participate in the study. After multiple attempts to attain the 71 customers who did not respond, new customers were contacted. Only 63 salespeople responded with new customer information as three salespeople had left the original company and five salespeople had their roles reassigned. Out of the 63 new customer contacts, 59 customers agreed to participate, resulting in 242 matched salesperson-customer dyads. A total of 18 dyads were deleted due to either a salesperson or the customer providing incomplete responses. This resulted in 224 usable salesperson-customer dyads for the study. In total, 59 per cent of salespeople and 52 per cent of customers were male. With regard to age, the mean for salespeople was 39 years, while the mean for customers was 44 years. The average salesperson had been working for the company for approximately five years. As for the customers, they were affiliated with their firm for approximately six years. The demographic characteristics of the sample is presented in Table II.\nAnalysis: Non-response bias\nResults: The results showed that when salespeople have the ability to recognize their own emotions and to perceive their customers' emotions accurately (H1a), use emotions to create thoughts and ideas in a meaningful manner (H2a) and analyze, evaluate and portray complex emotions effectively (H3a), it increases the salesperson's deep acting (authentic) emotional labor strategies. Hence, H1a (b = 0.241; p < 0.001), H2a (b = 0.571; p < 0.001) and H3a (b = 0.133; p < 0.001) were supported. Salesperson's use of emotions and regulation of emotions such as analyze, evaluate and portray complex emotions effectively were found to have a negative relationship with salesperson's inauthentic emotional labor strategies (H2b: b = -0.271; p < 0.001 and H3b: b = -0.007; p < 0.05); therefore, H2b and H3b were supported. However, H1b, which examined the relationship between salesperson's ability to PE and inauthentic emotional labor strategies, was not supported.\nDiscussion: This study explored how salesperson's emotional labor strategies influence the relationship between salesperson's EI and customer outcomes using a dyadic sample. We found that when salespeople possess the ability to perceive their customers' emotions, evaluate their own and customers' emotions accurately and use this knowledge to regulate relevant and suitable emotional responses, salespeople are more likely to participate in deep acting (vs surface acting), increasing the customer's perception of salesperson trustworthiness. These findings highlight that the three EI dimensions influence customer outcomes differently, which provides evidence for the conceptualization of EI as a distinct, three-dimensional construct.\nManagerial implications: The findings underscore that salesperson's EI is an important salesperson skill that enhances customer outcomes. Considering this finding sales recruiters and hiring managers should focus on using assessment tools to evaluate the EI ability of the recruits. A study conducted by Spencer et al. (1997) found that when L'Oreal implemented an EI screening assessment to recruit salespeople, salespeople who had high levels of EI ability sold about $90,000 more and was 63 per cent less likely to switch jobs during their first year, compared to new recruits who did not have high EI ability. This validates the relationship EI has on developing trusting partnerships with customers which enhances salespeople's productivity and retention. However, it is important to note that emotional labor training has been linked to employee strain (Hulsheger and Schewe, 2011); therefore, it is critical to combine salespeople EI training with appropriate stress coping mechanisms, such as welfare meetings with their sales managers and the ability to be trained over extended periods as opposed to forcing salespeople to endure short, intense periods of EI training.\nLimitations and future research: Although we believe our study provides a deeper understanding of how EI leads to behavioral and customer outcomes in sales situations, there are certain limitations, some which provide fruitful avenues to be addressed in future research. This study only focuses on one type of behavioral outcome, emotional labor strategies (i.e. deep vs surface acting). Other studies could explore how the three dimensions of EI influences other constructs such as relationship variables and/or selling strategies and tactics. Although many of the EI frameworks imply that behaviors are subsumed under or parallel with the dimensions of EI, actual empirical research regarding EI does not seem to account for the distinction between EI and actual behavioral outcomes of EI. Consequently, researchers should explore more behavioral outcomes of EI.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how salesperson's emotional intelligence (EI) influences salesperson behaviors (i.e. emotional labor strategies) and the influence these behavioral strategies have on customer's outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study develops a conceptual model using past literature and tests hypotheses using a salesperson-prospective customer dyadic sample. To participate in the study, 224 salespeople and their potential customers were recruited from three different companies.\nFindings: Results reveal the importance of conceptualizing the dimensionality of a salesperson's EI ability, as different dimensions impact customer outcomes differently. Additionally, the importance of salesperson's authentic emotional labor strategies is highlighted.\nPractical implications: EI is a foundation for successful selling in a business-to-business environment, but it is not a silver bullet. Sales managers and recruiters should use assessment tools to evaluate sales recruit's EI, but it is also critical to train salespeople to engage in deep acting, creating authentic emotions in the buyer-seller relationship.\nOriginality/value: Using a dyadic sample, this study suggests that the dimensions of EI and emotional labor strategies influence customer's perception of salesperson's trustworthiness and propensity to continue the relationship with the salesperson differently. Specifically, not all dimensions of salesperson's EI is found to be positive, and only salesperson's authentic (deep) emotional strategies are found to influence customer outcomes positively.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Aligning strategic orientation with local market conditions: Implications for subsidiary knowledge management
|
[
"Strategic orientation",
"Knowledge management capabilities",
"Croatia",
"Markets",
"Strategic choices"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The activities of multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries have become of increasing interest to international marketing scholars (Lee, 2010; Phersson, 2009; Pinho, 2007; Sakarya et al., 2007). While MNC subsidiaries have often been examined for their role in relation to factors such as low cost labor, access to resources, exploitation of the learning curve and location advantages, increasingly foreign subsidiaries are being viewed in relation to their role in innovation (Lee, 2010; Mudambi, 2002) and as part of the MNC's knowledge network (Lee, 2010; Roth et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2009). Under this expanded view of the role of MNC subsidiaries, it has come to be acknowledged that one role of MNC subsidiaries is to obtain local knowledge about local customers' current and future needs so as to act upon this knowledge to supply superior offerings, as well as to provide critical market knowledge back to the MNC that can be integrated into the MNC's global knowledge network (Hewett and Bearden, 2001; Roth et al., 2009; Solberg, 2002). In fact, MNCs increasingly rely on the implementation of knowledge management capabilities (i.e. the processes of knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion and knowledge application; Gold et al., 2001; Inkpen, 1998; Simonin, 1999) to establish competitive postures in the global marketplace that are reflective of local market conditions (Grant, 1996; Roth et al., 2009; Schlegelmilch and Chini, 2003) and this is typically spearheaded at the MNC subsidiary level. The ability of the MNC to gain knowledge from these markets is challenged by the environments in which the foreign subsidiaries operate, especially in markets which are different than MNC home markets, thereby heightening the importance of MNC subsidiaries adjusting to the local market conditions and building knowledge management capabilities.The alignment approach suggests that there is link between local market conditions and the strategic orientation a firm employs and capabilities developed. For example, Luo and Park (2001) examine the link between strategic orientation of MNC subsidiaries (i.e. prospector, analyzer and defender) within the turbulent market of China and its influence performance. They find that the when MNC subsidiaries adopt an analyzer orientation in the turbulent market of China that they achieve enhanced performance. A foreign subsidiary's strategic alignment to local conditions is consistent with the adaptation approach to global marketing strategy (e.g. Griffith, 2010; Viswanathan and Dickson, 2007). Alignment research draws upon the concept of strategic choice (i.e. Child, 1972; Luo and Park, 2001) to contend that firms can be most effective when they have appropriately aligned the firm's strategy with the environment (Hoque, 2004; Luo and Park, 2001). Although Luo and Park (2001) greatly extend the literature, they only examine three of the four strategic orientations under the Miles and Snow typology, thus limiting our understanding of the strategic orientation alignment to local market environment. Furthermore, although Luo and Park (2001) link strategic alignment to performance, they do not explore the issue of knowledge management capabilities of the MNC subsidiary. As researchers have demonstrated that knowledge management capabilities of MNC subsidiaries are a driver of performance (e.g. Cui et al., 2005), the lack of understanding of the linkage between strategic orientation and knowledge management capabilities within the MNC subsidiary context creates a gap in the literature.As such, we work to contribute to the field in two ways. First, we work to advance our understanding of the relationship between local market conditions and strategic orientation of the MNC subsidiary as related to the MNC subsidiary's role of connecting with the local market. To do so, we follow the strategic choice approach of Luo and Park (2001) to examine the alignment of a foreign subsidiary's strategic orientation (employing Miles and Snows' (1978) strategic orientations which conceptualizes the firm's strategic approach to the consumer marketplace). We specifically capture the full range of strategic orientations employed by the MNC subsidiaries to provide a more complete understanding of the relationship than in prior literature. Furthermore, we advance the literature by specifying two local market conditions i.e. market dynamism (i.e. the degree of competition a firm faces in the market; Grewal and Tansuhaj, 2001; Jaworski and Kohli, 1993) and competitive intensity (i.e. the competitive activities of firms in the market, including price competition, promotion competition; Cui et al., 2005; Jaworski and Kohli, 1993) that have been theorized in prior marketing literature to be key to local market knowledge generation and dissemination. As such, this work builds upon recent research employing strategic orientation in the international marketing literature (e.g. Alam, 2006; Song et al., 2008), providing new insights into how foreign subsidiaries work to align themselves to the local market conditions in which they operate (thereby also contributing to the international marketing standardization/adaptation literature in assessing whether firms adjust to local market conditions; e.g. Backhaus and van Doorn, 2007; Douglas and Craig, 2011; Ryans et al., 2003; Solberg, 2002; Vrontis et al., 2009).Second, we work to contribute to the international marketing literature by demonstrating that the strategic orientation that the foreign subsidiary undertakes has substantive implications for its knowledge management capabilities. Through this assessment, we can more clearly discern what type of strategic orientation fosters the MNC subsidiary to develop the requisite knowledge management capabilities to obtain knowledge about local customers' current and future needs. As such, this work extends our current understanding of how strategic orientation of an MNC subsidiary influences knowledge management capabilities within the MNC subsidiary that allows it to operate more effectively in the local market context. The findings, which are specific to the MNC subsidiary level, also have implications pertaining to the foreign subsidiary's ability to contribute to the MNC's global knowledge network (Hewett and Bearden, 2001; Roth et al., 2009).The following section presents theoretical arguments pertaining to the alignment of strategic orientation with local market conditions and the relation of strategic orientation to subsidiary knowledge management capabilities. The method and analysis are then presented. The results, based on a survey of 112 MNC subsidiaries, operating in Croatia, indicate that knowledge management capabilities emerge as most important to those MNC subsidiaries adopting a prospector strategy. The paper concludes by suggesting avenues for theoretical refinement and future empirical investigations in the international marketing literature.\nConceptual development and hypotheses: Figure 1 presents the proposed conceptual model. The model depicts the influence of two local market conditions (i.e. competitive intensity and market dynamism) on MNC subsidiary strategic orientation and MNC subsidiary strategic orientation's influence on the knowledge management capabilities of knowledge acquisition, conversion and application.Strategic choice and local market conditions\nThe study: Sample\nAnalysis and results: Measurement issues\nDiscussion and conclusion: This purpose of this study was to advance the literature by providing a broader understanding of the relationship between local market conditions and strategic orientation of the MNC subsidiary under the strategic alignment approach, and gaining a deeper understanding of the relationship that the strategic orientation of an MNC subsidiary has on its knowledge management capabilities. The findings provide unique insights into each of these areas, substantively enhancing the international marketing literature.Broadening the extant literature (i.e. Luo and Park, 2001), the results of this study demonstrate that the reactor orientation is a substantive segment of the MNC subsidiary marketplace. In fact, almost 20 percent of respondent MNC subsidiaries reported adopting the reactor orientation. These findings, purely from a descriptive perspective, indicate the importance of including the full Miles and Snow strategic orientation typology when investigating MNC subsidiaries. Furthermore, the findings pertaining to reactor orientation suggest similarity to defender orientation when considering adoption of strategic orientation and alignment to local market conditions of competitive intensity and market dynamism. Theoretically, the prevalence of reactor orientation is of note as it suggests that if we are to gain a better understanding of MNC subsidiary relation to markets, we need to broadly approach the concept of strategic orientation.Specifically to the issue of alignment, the findings indicate that MNC subsidiaries tend to favor a prospector orientation when faced with higher levels of market dynamism and competitive intensity (prospector: n=42, analyzer: n=35, reactor: n=22, defender: n=13). While international marketing scholars have increasingly been adopting the Miles and Snow typology (e.g. Song et al., 2008), this work demonstrates that MNC subsidiaries carefully consider the local market contexts in which they operate when determining strategic orientation. In fact, the results clearly demonstrate that the prospector orientation is aligned to highly dynamic and competitive market conditions, thus suggesting the proactive approach inherent within the prospector orientation is perceived by managers to assist in gaining the subsidiary in its underlying roles.However, although the results indicate that the prospector orientation is related to higher levels of market dynamism and competitive intensity, it is important to note that the prospector orientation was not the only orientation adopted by MNC subsidiaries. In fact, the analyzer orientation was heavily adopted by MNC subsidiaries (both the prospector and analyzer orientations account for the majority of the MNC subsidiary strategic orientations selected). Our findings are in contrast to Luo and Park (2001) who examined the environment to strategy linkage in the emerging market of China. Their findings suggest that MNC subsidiaries adopt an analyzer strategy due to highly uncertain conditions of the Chinese market. Explanations for the inconsistency in the findings may derive from the unique differences between the Chinese market and the Croatian market, from the operationalization of local market conditions, or from the more inclusive strategic orientation approach undertaken here. All of these areas can serve as fruitful areas of investigation to further understand the importance linkage between local market conditions and MNC subsidiary strategic orientation.The findings of this study also provide clear support for the linkage between strategic orientation and knowledge management capabilities. As theorized and empirically supported in this study, prospectors develop advanced knowledge acquisition, conversion and application capabilities to allow them to more appropriately exploit opportunities in the highly uncertain and dynamic environment. Through the development of knowledge management prospectors are able to optimize resource investments while coordinating efficiently and effectively with their MNC. The ability of MNC subsidiaries to capitalize on market opportunities requires that the MNC subsidiary have knowledge management capabilities. While some may argue that under highly uncertain and dynamic local market conditions MNC subsidiaries may adopt a defender orientation to minimize risks, the study results indicate that few MNC subsidiaries adopt this orientation as it does not provide the MNC subsidiaries with opportunities for market exploitation, a key rationale for MNC subsidiary establishment.Also, while it can be argued that MNC subsidiaries adopting an analyzer orientation minimize the risks associated with the dynamic market while concurrently adopting a strategic stance to allow for market exploitation, the actual reluctance to take a more aggressive posture in the market, such as a prospector orientation, may diminish an analyzer's long-term prospects. Analyzers may lack the necessary capabilities to exploit opportunities when they appear. By being a second mover, analyzers may relinquish market opportunities to those employing a more aggressive strategic posture.Managerially, the results suggest that MNC's allow subsidiaries autonomy in determining their strategic orientation (as gauged by the diversity of strategic orientations undertaken in the sample and their alignment with the environment), assisting in assessing issues of market dynamism and competitive intensity within each subsidiary's local market. Appropriate alignment will assist in the development of knowledge management capabilities at the MNC subsidiary level. It can be further argued that the development of knowledge management capabilities at the MNC subsidiary level has important implications for the MNC itself (although not tested here) in that greater local knowledge at the MNC subsidiary level could be transferred into the MNC's global network. That is to say, as MNC managers are increasingly in need of local knowledge (e.g. Hewett and Bearden, 2001; Roth et al., 2009), the active management of the MNC's subsidiary portfolio by the MNC could result in competitive global positioning for the MNC.Limitations\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - One role of a foreign subsidiary within a multinational corporation's (MNC's) global portfolio is to connect the MNC to foreign customers. To examine this key customer contact point, this study aims to examine the linkages between local market conditions and strategic orientation, and how strategic orientation influences knowledge management capabilities of MNC subsidiaries, employing the Miles and Snow strategic orientation perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey was conducted of 112 managers in foreign MNC subsidiaries in Croatia. Data were analyzed with both discriminant analysis and MANCOVA.\nFindings: - The results indicate that in highly dynamic and competitively intense markets, MNC subsidiaries primarily employ a Prospector orientation. Furthermore, the results indicate that there is a significant difference in knowledge management capabilities among subsidiaries depending on their strategic orientation, with the Prospector orientation most closely aligned with knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion and knowledge application.\nPractical implications: - The findings highlight the importance of strategic orientation in MNC subsidiaries tailoring to local market conditions. The results suggest that MNC subsidiaries undertaking a Prospector strategic orientation develop greater knowledge acquisition, conversion and application capabilities.\nOriginality/value: - This study conceptualizes the MNC subsidiary as a key marketing element of the global MNC whole and examines the nuanced relationships between the host environment and MNC foreign subsidiary strategic orientation as well as MNC subsidiary strategic orientation and knowledge management relationship.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Why wait? Impact of waiting lines on self-service technology use
|
[
"Service operations",
"Service quality",
"Hospitality management",
"Customer behavior",
"Self-service technology",
"Waiting lines"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Service providers such as hotels, restaurants, and banks are increasingly using self-service technologies (SSTs) to supplement or replace their traditional service delivery channels. SSTs allow customers to produce their own service with little or no service employee involvement (Meuter et al., 2000), effectively lowering labor costs, and increasing service providers' efficiency, productivity and corporate performance (Lin and Hsieh, 2011). SSTs also have the potential to increase customer satisfaction as they increase the availability of services to customers by allowing them to obtain service outside the normal operating hours and from different service channels (Meuter et al., 2000). SSTs provide other benefits such as speedier and cheaper transactions, opportunities for customization and less heterogeneous service encounters (Weijters et al., 2007).\nConceptual development: Customer usage of self-service technology\nEmpirical study: To examine whether waiting line information could explain customers' choice to use SST over and above their beliefs about the SST, 16 scenario-based surveys, following a 4 (number of customers waiting for the SST) x 4 (number of customers waiting for the service employee) design, were administered using an online survey software and questionnaire tool (SurveyMonkey, LLC, at SurveyMonkey.com). In the context of SST research (Dabholkar, 1994, 1996; Weijters et al., 2007), scenario-based surveys have been widely used as a form of laboratory study (Surprenant and Solomon, 1987) that allows researchers control over the experimental conditions and manipulated variables while reducing random noise (Bitner, 1990). In the context of SST research, scenario-based surveys have several advantages over field studies (Dabholkar, 1996). First, it would be difficult to administer a long questionnaire in a field setting. Non-response bias could occur as rushed individuals would decline to participate. Second, experimentation with waiting lines is difficult to realize in a field setting.\nResults: A preliminary examination of the results (see Table II) showed a difference in the number of participants selecting each alternative (service employee or SST) depending on the number of customers waiting in line. For example, when both alternatives were described as available (Scenario 1), 18.68 per cent of participants selected the SST alternative. However, when the service employee was described as busy (Scenario 2), this percentage increased to 55.42 per cent.\nDiscussion and limitations: The role of situational factors, such as waiting lines, has increasingly been accepted as driving customers' decisions to use SST, especially in service contexts where they are physically present. However, the direct effect of waiting lines on customers' decision to use SST remained unclear, despite the fact that waiting lines are the situational factor service operators have the most control over, by deciding to add capacity either in the form of service employees or SSTs (Kokkinou and Cranage, 2012).\nConclusions and implications for theory: Despite the consensus in the SST literature regarding the antecedents of customer choice to use SST, the numerous models that have been developed and tested to explain customers' decision to use SST show inconsistent results (Curran and Meuter, 2007; Dabholkar, 1994; Dabholkar and Bagozzi, 2002; Weijters et al., 2007). Our findings show that, while influenced by SST and customer characteristics, customers' decision to use SST is primarily contextual. In other words, customers make trade-offs between their beliefs and the situation they are in, suggesting that future research should focus on isolating the effects of situational factors on customer choice to use SST.\nImplications for practitioners: Our findings suggest that service providers have some leeway in how they make their capacity decisions. Specifically, service providers can design their process to take advantage of the fact that customers have some tolerance for waiting (Kokkinou and Cranage, 2012). The increase in waiting lines that would result from a reduction in service employees available to serve customers would prompt those customers who do not hold strong beliefs to use the SST instead. Maintaining both alternatives would prevent customers from thinking that they are being forced to use the SST, which could lead to negative attitudes toward the SST and the service provider and result in negative behavioral intentions (Reinders et al., 2008). In other words, an ideal design of the service process would encourage customers to use the SST while providing an option to customers who prefer waiting for a service employee.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to examine the effect of waiting lines on customers' decisions between using a self-service alternative and using a service employee. As self-service technologies are expensive and time-consuming to design and implement, service providers need to understand what drives customers to use them. Service operators have the most control over waiting lines and flexibility in expanding capacity, either by adding service employees or by adding self-service kiosks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study used online scenario-based surveys following a 4 (number of customers waiting for the self-service technology) x 4 (number of customers waiting for the service employee) design. A binary dependent variable was used to record participants' choice of service delivery alternative.\nFindings: Using logistic regression, the authors found that customers are increasingly motivated to use self-service technology as the waiting line for the service employee grows longer. This effect is influenced by perceived usefulness, anticipated quality of the self-service technology, need for interaction and technology anxiety.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study should be replicated in a real-world setting where actual behavior, and not only intention, can be measured.\nPractical implications: The study provides guidance on how service providers can design their service to take advantage of the motivating effect of waiting lines on usage of self-service technology.\nOriginality/value: The present study is the first to combine a scenario-based experiment with a binary dependent variable to isolate the impact of waiting lines on the choice between using a self-service technology and using a service employee. The use of the binary dependent variable overcomes the ambiguity of extrapolating from a continuous measure of intention to draw conclusions about behavior, a binary variable.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Ecology of social search for learning resources
|
[
"Learning",
"Information retrieval",
"Digital libraries"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Learning resource repositories and libraries make educational material and/or its metadata available in digital format, the sharing of which is their core raison d'etre. Their reuse has been touted for enabling cost savings because the creation of high quality material is costly, hence the focus on standards that enable interoperability (Campbell, 2003) even across repositories (Ternier et al., 2008). Traditionally, metadata and/or web directories are used for searching and exploring the content items. Currently, novel exploratory search systems are developed for learning resources to assist users in obtaining information to meet their information needs. Such systems include social navigation and collaborative recommender systems, both of which belong to the family of techniques called social information retrieval (Goh and Foo, 2007).Social navigation involves using the behaviour of other people to help navigate online. It is driven by the tendency of people to follow other people's footprints when they feel lost (Dieberger et al., 2000). Such footprints in an online environment are what Claypool et al. (2001) define as implicit and explicit interest indicators and can be acquired either directly from the user (e.g. rating) or indirectly (e.g. time spent on an object). Collaborative recommender systems, on the other hand, use explicit ratings to find like-minded users (Adomavicius, 2005). Evaluation of recommender systems traditionally focuses on the algorithms and their performance (Herlocker et al., 2004), similar to exploratory search systems (White et al., 2008). Evaluating recommenders from the user perspective has received less attention (McNee, 2006).Within the field of technology enhanced learning (TEL) such systems exist. Rafaeli et al. (2005) introduced a system to harness the social perspectives in learning where the learner could choose from whom to take recommendations (friend or algorithm). Koper (2005) used indirect social interaction in choosing a path that allows successful competition of a learning task. Drachsler et al.(2008) took this research further showing that users employing a recommender system that offers navigation support in self-organised learning networks, were more efficient time-wise in completing an equal number of learning activities. Farzan and Brusilovsky (2005) studied social navigation and found that adding the time spent reading each page provides more precise insight into the intention of the group of users and more accurate information about pages selected from search results. Jung et al. (2007) studied implicit click data to increase both precision and recall of the feedback data on a university search portal. Tang and McCalla (2009) studied the pedagogical value while using collaborative filtering to recommend papers for learners, and Manouselis et al. (2007) used multi-criteria ratings to recommend resources to teachers.Both the field of recommender systems and social navigation, however, suffer from the same problems: how can interest indicators be gathered without being too intrusive, and yet, at the same time, remain accurate enough in guiding users in their choice of product or navigational path. The sparse data and new items often are problematic too (Herlocker et al., 2004; Adomavicius, 2005; Rafaeli et al., 2005). Social bookmarking and tagging systems overcome these problems: they allow users to describe their interest by using tags that lead to the social nature of information sharing. The underlying structures by the triple (user, content, annotations) create relationships between resources, users, and tags (Golder and Huberman, 2006; Marlow et al., 2006; Sen et al., 2007). Social bookmarking systems thus take advantage of both social navigation and collaborative recommender systems by linking like-minded users. The idea of social tagging and bookmarking has been implemented in the TEL context (Maier and Thalmann, 2008; Vuorikari and Poldoja, 2008), in digital libraries (Puspitasari et al., 2007) and for scientific papers (Farooq et al., 2007).Millen et al.(2007) studied the use of social bookmarking at the enterprise level and suggest that integrated with traditional search engines, it has the potential to solve commonly known enterprise search problems, e.g. content from heterogeneous repositories that do not cross-reference via hyperlinks (Mukherjee and Mao, 2004). We study a similar implementation for multilingual learning resources within a federation that has social bookmarking and tagging features. Our aim is to study such a hybrid system to understand how it is used, how different variables are interconnected and, finally, how the behaviour of previous users could be leveraged to support and enhance the discovery process of educational resources for all users of the system.From previous studies (McGormick et al., 2004; Vuorikari and Koper, n.d.) we have evidence that users of educational content use cross-boundary resources to a certain extent, but their reuse remains rather low (equal or half of the normal reuse, around 10 per cent).In this study our specific questions focus on the efficiency of resource discovery and how we can support the users in discovering cross-boundary resources. We have defined our two hypotheses as following:H1. The search methods that take advantage of Social Information Retrieval yield more relevant resources with less effort from the users than the methods based on conventional text based search.H2. The users who take advantage of community browsing discover more cross-boundary learning resources than those who use conventional text base search.We focus on a specific moment in the lifecycle of a learning resource, namely when the user discovers the learning resource and evaluates whether it matches with the information seeking need at hand (Figure 1).In the following section we introduce the study methodology and the data set. The next section focuses on the results followed by the discussion. The paper is concluded with an outlook for future work.\n2. Context of the study and its method: The portal that we study makes open educational resources available from 19 content providers from Europe and elsewhere. These resources exist in different languages and conform to different national and local curricula. The portal, developed in the MELT project (Figure 2), offers three different categories of searches (Millen et al., 2007):1. Explicit search. Comprises the traditional search box with text and filtering options. \"Find by subject\" offers browsing through pre-defined categories. The results are shown on the search result list (SRL) with metadata and annotations about the resources. Resource-related tags allow pivotal browsing.2. Community browsing. Includes browsing the tagcloud, tags, other people's Favourites. Figure 2 shows part of the tagcloud, and the lists of \"travel well\" and most bookmarked resources.3. Personal search. Looking for bookmarks from one's own personal collection of bookmarks (MyFavourites).In this study, social information retrieval comprises community browsing features and other retrieval of resources that contain user-generated interest indicators. By clicking on the link users play resources and generate click-through. An annotation is a public contributing action and happens when the user makes an explicit interest indicator on the resource, e.g. a rating (usefulness, scale 1-5) or a bookmark with tags (called favourites). We use the term \"cross-boundary discovery\" when the user bookmarks or rates resources that come from different country than she does and that are in a language other than that of the user's mother tongue.We use the following metric for relevance: when a resource is added in the favourites, or the resource is rated with the value of 3 or greater. Such relevance represents the relationship between the object and the information need, as perceived by the user. We do not focus on the other types of relevance, such as the query and object match or topical relevance (Borlund, 2003). With \"less effort from the user\" we mean that users will play and annotate more relevant resources with less search effort (e.g. the number of executed searches).2.1 Description of the data\n3. Results: We first give descriptive results on our three main actions: how do users search, play and contribute, and then look how new resources generated clicks and annotations. Following, we present the model of the process that produced this data and then focus on our two hypotheses.3.1 Descriptive results\n4. Conclusion: In this paper we used empirical data from server-side logging to study and model the ecology of social search of a learning resource portal integrated with a social bookmarking and tagging system. We conclude that explicit Interest indicators have an important role as a part of the social search ecology and studies into inter-relations of these variables will offer interesting further insights. By studying the cross-boundary discoveries, we find that users create underlying connections between resources that come from a number of countries and are in a variety of languages, which is important for bringing them under the umbrella of SIR methods.H1 was approved showing that the search taking advantage of social information retrieval (SIR) methods yield more relevant resources with less effort from the user. Despite this edge, users have a strong search preference for explicit search methods (two-thirds of all executed searches). These conventional search methods strongly proved their role in discovering new resources. This also led us to refute our second hypothesis (H2): most cross-boundary resources are discovered using explicit search. Encouraged by the H1, though, we believe that enhancing explicit interest indicators to support cross-boundary discovery (e.g. indicating the cross-boundary nature of resource discoveries, tag clouds filtered by language and by the country of users) and collaborative filtering methods for like-minded users are worth studying further, once the new item problem has been overcome.A limitation in this research was that we studied a system that was still evolving. This has the positive effect of allowing us to revisit our SIR strategies for both cross-boundary and within-boundary discoveries to better support users. A second limitation is that as the study is based on server-side log-files, we have left out subjective measures such as user satisfaction or cognitive load while searching, which would also add important information in studying such system. Future studies should include testing wider range of SIR methods to leverage the underlying connections that users have created though social tagging and bookmarking between resources that originate from a number of repositories and are in a variety of languages.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper deals with user-generated interest indicators (ratings, bookmarks and tags). The authors aim to answer two research questions: Can search strategies based on social information retrieval (SIR) make the discovery of learning resources more efficient for users? Can Community search help users discover a wider variety of cross-boundary resources?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Cross-boundary is defined as that the user and resource come from different countries and that the language of the resource is different from that of the user's mother tongue. The authors focus on a portal that accesses a federation of multilingual learning resource repositories. The authors collect users' attentional metadata based on a server-side logging scheme and use this empirical data to answer two hypotheses.\nFindings: - The search-play-annotation ratio is more efficient with social information retrieval strategies, but community browsing alone does not help users to discover more cross-boundary resources.\nPractical implications: - By social tagging and bookmarking resources from a variety of repositories, users create underlying connections between resources that otherwise do not cross-reference, for example, via hyperlinks. This is important for bringing them under the umbrella of SIR methods. Future studies should include testing wider range of SIR methods to leverage these user-made connections between resources that originate from a number of countries and are in a variety of languages.\nOriginality/value: - The use of attentional metadata to model the ecology of social search adds value to the actors of learning object economy, e.g. educational institutions, digital libraries and their managers, content providers, policy makers, educators and learners.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Between ideal and tradition: the roles of HRD practitioners in South Australian organisations
|
[
"Human resource development",
"Learning methods",
"Workplace learning",
"Trainers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: HRD practitioners can play an important role in encouraging employee learning in the workplace (Johnston et al., 2000; Koornneef et al., 2002; Tjepkema et al., 2002). They can be instrumental in operationalising individual learning goals and creating learning programmes, interacting with various organisational actors through processes of negotiation, collaboration, participation, and conflict (Poell and Chivers, 1999; Romiszowski, 1982). As yet, not much is known about the ways in which HRD practitioners stimulate employee learning in the workplace. Research into this topic is beginning to add, however, to the knowledge developed in the 1980s and 1990s about trainer and training effectiveness (Ford, 1997; Robinson and Robinson, 1989; Romiszowski, 1982).\nTheoretical framework: Roles of HRD practitioners\nResearch methods: Design\nResults: The roles of HRD practitioners\nConclusion: Two research questions were investigated in this study:1. What roles do HRD practitioners play in organising learning programmes?2. How are the roles of HRD practitioners related to their organisational context?A qualitative analysis of semi-standardised interviews with 18 South-Australian HRD practitioners was conducted to answer both questions.For the first research question, the main tasks of the HRD practitioners were summarised and categorised. Although several important tasks were distinguished, the most prevailing ones were training delivery and needs analysis. From this, it can be concluded that many respondents in this sample performed rather traditional roles (trainer, analyst). These HRD practitioners often act as initiators for learning, through designing and organising programmes for employees. With these roles still reserved for HRD practitioners, there is little scope for employees who want to organise their own learning or try out new ways of learning. The rather dominant tasks of planning and control are most indicative in this sense. HRD practitioners are responsible for giving shape to employee learning and for practical organisational tasks following from that.Only one somewhat less traditional role emerged as relatively common from this sample, namely acting as a resource. So, besides being involved in the core process of organising employee learning, many HRD practitioners were also busy supporting learners and creating new learning opportunities in the workplace. One other role that may be termed non-traditional, referring to the formation of a framework for learning in the organisation, was mentioned by a small minority in one work type only.It can be concluded overall that the most prevailing roles of HRD practitioners still link strongly to traditional training practices. HRD practitioners in this sample seemed to hold the responsibility for learning rather than employees or management. The interviews made it clear that HRD practitioners often find themselves in the middle, trying to keep these other stakeholders happy by solving problems related to training. HRD practitioners often felt torn between these concrete demands made on them in practice and their own professional ideals about devolving responsibility for learning to employees and managers. These findings are consistent with earlier studies on this topic, which also concluded that non-traditional HRD roles are put into practice far less often than theory and rhetoric will have it (Kieft and Nijhof, 2000; Nijhof, 2004; Poell et al., 2003; Tjepkema et al., 2002).For the second research question, two contextual factors were taken into account, namely organisational size and work type in the organisation. Two tentative conclusions can be drawn about their relationship to HRD practitioners' roles. First, there seems to be a modest relationship between organisational size and core tasks performed by HRD practitioners. Respondents from medium-sized companies were found to differ from HRD practitioners in small and large companies, in that, their roles seemed more diverse. Notably, providing coaching was very important in small organisations and large organisations saw a lot of planning and control, as well as managing/overseeing of programmes. The latter is perhaps inevitable in large organisations, whereas small organisations may offer more scope for the more personal relationships among employees that go with coaching. HRD practitioners in medium-sized organisations, however, apparently have to tend to both the more regulative tasks and the more person-oriented activities.A second conclusion concerning the work context is that this factor seems to be related to the roles of HRD practitioners. On the whole, respondents operating in different work systems mentioned different core tasks. Entrepreneurial work organisations saw roles focused on the orientation and learning phases of programmes, especially on planning and control, and on delivery. HRD practitioners in machine-bureaucratic work systems had roles that emphasised control and assessment, as well as managing and overseeing. Needs analysis and continuation tasks were key within adhocratic group work. Finally, respondents from professional work organisations focused strongly on tasks within the core learning phase of their programmes. It can be concluded that the key roles of HRD practitioners differ from one type of work system to the other, which may be explained by the notion that different work types require different types of learning programmes and, therefore, different HRD practitioner roles (van der Krogt, 1998).\nDiscussion: The most important conclusions from this study are that the roles of HRD practitioners in our South-Australian sample were still rather traditional and that there seemed to be certain relationships between the roles of HRD practitioners and their work context. It has to be noted, however, that the study was qualitative with only a small sample size (n=18). Therefore, it is possible only to a very limited extent to generalise the conclusions to a larger population of HRD practitioners. The main aim of the study was to provide more insight in the practices that HRD practitioners engage in and to find out to what extent these were modern rather than traditional in nature. However, there remains a need for the replication of the study using a larger and more diverse sample.A second methodological point of discussion is to what extent the interviews give an accurate view of the actual practices of the HRD practitioners. Although the interviewers attempted strongly to find out about respondents' theories in use rather than their espoused theories, there is always a loss of information because this method of data gathering about work practices is indirect. Measures that were taken to increase the validity of the interview information included continually asking for examples and drawing on real-life cases (Poell and Chivers, 1999; Poell et al., 2003).The findings of the present study are consistent with earlier research, including other empirical evidence from elsewhere in Australia. Anderson and Johnston (1997), for example, also concluded that HRD practitioners' roles were still mostly traditional. The previous studies conducted by Poell and Chivers (1999) in the UK and by Poell et al. (2003) in The Netherlands, which the present study based itself on, drew largely the same conclusions. The European study by Tjepkema et al. (2002) and the Dutch longitudinal study by Kieft and Nijhof (2000) (see also Nijhof, 2004) were in line about the issue as well.The conclusion that most HRD practitioners still seem to perform largely traditional roles is a consistent finding in many recent studies, conducted in different countries over a considerable number of years. It seems that the conclusion is largely independent from time and place. The contribution of the present study, besides corroborating earlier research conducted elsewhere, lies mainly in the further elaboration of the methodological framework for doing this type of study. A more fully elaborated and more structured interview guideline was developed compared to the ones used for the earlier UK and Dutch studies (Poell and Chivers, 1999; Poell et al., 2003). As such, the present study is one further step in the direction of a more standardised operationalisation of the Learning-Network Theory (van der Krogt, 1998), allowing for the development of more quantitative research designs.In view of all the aforementioned accumulating evidence, the question needs to be asked: is HRD practice so conservative or are HRD theory and professional ideals so progressive that a huge gap between the two continues to come to the fore? There seems to be a large disconnect between normative ideas put forward in HRD literature and organisational practices in this area. One may wonder to what extent it is helpful for HRD practice to be confronted continually with HRD theory that emphasises the importance of what is not there that should be implemented. It could actually be more harmful than supportive. HRD theory should reflect on its own ability to inspire HRD practice, balancing theoretically sound ideas about devolution of learning responsibilities with an understanding of the real-life reasons why traditional HRD practices are consistently hard to change.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To investigate how modern or traditional are the current roles of South Australian HRD practitioners in the context of present-day work organisations. Also, how are their roles related to the organisational context in which they operate?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study is a replication of two prior qualitative empirical studies conducted in the UK and The Netherlands. Learning-Network Theory was used to analyse qualitatively 18 in-depth interviews with South Australian HRD practitioners. Four phases were distinguished in the analysis of interview data, namely exploration, specification, reduction, and integration.\nFindings: - HRD practitioner roles are still rather traditional in nature, focusing, for example, on training needs analysis and delivery. Furthermore, roles of HRD practitioners are related to the work type in their organisation. Those dealing with team-based work were found to have the least traditional tasks, emphasising the continuation of learning, evaluation and acting as a resource to the organisation.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Qualitative small sample study limits generalisation. Also, interviews may yield respondents' espoused theories rather than those in use. Further research should use larger, more diverse samples and include more direct ways of data collection (e.g. observation).\nPractical implications: - The question arises whether HRD practice is too conservative or HRD theory and professional ideals are too progressive, if a huge gap between the two continues to come to the fore.\nOriginality/value: - Besides corroborating earlier research conducted elsewhere, this study developed a more fully elaborated and more structured interview guideline based on Learning-Network Theory.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Foresight on the future of public research metrology in Europe
|
[
"Research methods",
"Research organizations",
"Measurement",
"Statistical forecasting"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The focus of this paper will be on describing and evaluating the use of a foresight exercise which was designed, organized and implemented around five sequential steps, as proposed by Miles (2002a), to reflect on the future role of public metrology research institutes within the European Research area (ERA). The process involved scoping activities, expert participation and use of scenario workshops to achieve the aforementioned goal. This paper will focus on exploring the use of the foresight methods employed in the process and establish lessons learned during the course of the project.The mission of the metrology sector can be summarised as the development, maintenance and dissemination of measurement standards. Reliable metrology systems are essential to a successful modern economy and safe civil society. Any activity within science and technology must be accompanied be reference measurements to ensure that quantitative results are comparable and products interchangeable (Carneiro, 2001). Metrology research is based on expertise in various scientific fields. It is used to underpin economic activity in diverse productive sectors and used by governments for regulation and standardisation essential for trade and functioning of goods and services. Metrology institutes in European countries all participate in the process of metrology policy formulation. Metrology research is necessary for underpinning international standards and laws and for supporting national compliance, for example with European Directives. As technologies become more advanced, cross-cutting and novel technologies emerge, an obvious example here is the pervasive exploration of nanotechnology applications, new research and expertise is needed for standards and measurement systems. The sustaining of innovation and growth from new technologies is underpinned by metrology research.Metrology was one of six thematic areas, which were chosen as the focus of a European study to analyse the historical evolution and future scenarios for public research institutes in Europe in selected S&T fields. The objective of this work was to build on past experience of the research institute sector to consider potential future roles for the institutes in the development of the European Research Area (ERA). The research was divided into two phases. The backward looking phase, which comprises literature review, historical research on each field and interviews with selected experts in each thematic area. The forward looking phase comprised of a meeting with an expert group in order to carry out a foresight exercise to develop anticipatory, strategic intelligence and build on the backwards looking work, which allowed the research team to propose policy recommendations for the thematic area.For this analysis Miles' (2002a) five-step account of the foresight process was used to guide the organisation of the project. The five stages of foresight are:1. pre-foresight (scoping);2. recruitment (participation);3. generation;4. action and evaluation; and5. renewal phases.The methods used were expert interviews and literature reviews, for scoping purposes, followed by foresight scenario workshops with experts from each of the S&T fields involved in the project.Scenario workshops are a well-known futures technique, which commonly involve working groups of experts who focus on developing alternative futures for a specific field or subject (Popper, 2008). Foresight, itself, has become one of the most popular, strategic planning tools for establishing common visions, strategies and long terms plans for not only business but for government among policy making bodies (Jemala, 2010).The paper will describe and evaluate each step of the foresight process, which was used to consider the range of possible future alternatives that may affect aspects of the metrology system in Europe. It will describe the usefulness of this approach for foresight research as well as for policy and strategy input.The present and future of metrology research institutes in Europe\n2. The five stages of the foresight process: Introduction - five stages of foresight\n3. Conclusion - findings: The process of implementing the five step foresight model to elaborate the range of future alternatives that might confront researchers and research managers in European metrology research institutes provided, on one level, a useful discussion platform for forming the future of a science field within Europe. The workshop format offers a chance for experts and policy makers to network and come to a consensus about aspects of the future of their field within Europe. The findings will be useful for any policy making that touches on future changes to the field of metrology. This also gives the experts a voice and a chance to impart their views across to a wider audience and influence possible policy amendments through an opportunity for unified action. The method allowed for systematic speculation about the field of metrology and encouraged participants across the various stages to engage in reflection on the subject without being constrained in any way, allowing freedom of speech in an environment without sanctions.The process has benefits for the ERA in that it allowed some of the key players in the sector to become engaged in discussion about further European integration activity either through the interviews or the workshop. It also has benefits for the metrology field as the networking activities induced reflection about a range of important features affecting the sector, including working within Europe and across national boundaries, key drivers, key emerging fields, alternative futures, externalities, climate change and environmental efficiencies with other key experts.Use of findings\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to describe and evaluate the use of a five-step foresight process and the application of scenario methods to grasp the range of future alternatives that might confront researchers and research managers in European metrology research institutes. The sector is to be examined as a part of a larger study that aims to reflect on the potential future roles for the public research institutes, in several sectors (the other sectors in the study included civil space, plant science, geosurveys, and marine), towards the development of the European Research Area (ERA).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper illustrates how scenario methods were used to, first, serve as a basis for policy recommendations for the field of European metrology research institutes and, second, help experts and stakeholders to network and actively discuss a shared vision of the future of the field.\nFindings: - This case demonstrates the need for proactive strategic management which goes well beyond the institutional boundary, into national policy and European decision making. As other areas of European research begin to think about the importance of European cooperation, lessons can be drawn from the experience of this particular sector. The process of looking forward took on board the political context and allowed participants and the researchers to think beyond these boundaries.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Although this is a pioneering study, there is a danger that some inputs may not have been captured. The results build on the input of a limited number of experts only and on the literature available in the public domain. There were few participants discussing the future of a vast field of research and this may mean that important input has not been captured. Time limitations in the workshops necessarily limit the scope for experts and policy makers to engage with the concepts. Follow-up activities based on the research outputs are required for the findings to go forward.\nPractical implications: - Bringing together different stakeholders for shaping a shared vision through scenario workshops led to rich interactions and creative thinking. The workshops created a space for experts to consider policy options for reforming and making better use of the institutes in building the ERA.\nOriginality/value: - Using scenario workshops for foresight research results as an opportunity for stakeholders to visualise different futures for metrology research within Europe. The public research institute sector tends to be more generally under-studied as a component of modern innovation systems. We evaluate and show that the foresight process is an appropriate methodology to look at what is inherently a political process at the implementation level.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
"Understanding restaurant firms" debt-equity financing
|
[
"Debt financing",
"Equity financing",
"Pecking order theory",
"Debt maturity",
"Optimal leverage point"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Modern corporate finance literature often cites two main theories to explain firms' financial decisions: trade-off theory and pecking order theory (Myers, 1984; Myers and Majluf, 1984). In traditional corporate finance models, firms determine whether to use external financing, and if so which type (e.g. either debt or equity), by weighing the benefits and costs of debt financing. In contrast, pecking order theory suggests that due to information asymmetry firms prefer to use retained earnings first, followed by debt and then stocks. Therefore, if external funding opportunities are available, firms will use debt to cover internal cash flow deficits until they hit debt capacity (Shyam-Sunder and Myers, 1999). Consequently, based on pecking order theory, it is reasonable to expect that firms issuing stock have greater financial leverage than firms issuing debt.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Trade-off theory vs pecking order theory\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive information\n5. Discussion and conclusions: 5.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study was to extend the understanding of restaurant firms' overall debt and equity financing practices by considering what drives equity financing. More importantly, this study attempted to identify whether an optimal financial leverage point exists in the relationship between debt financing and equity financing for restaurant firms.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used fixed-effects regression models with a sample of 1,549 unbalanced firm-year panel data to identify restaurant firms' financial practices and the impacts of financial constraints.\nFindings: First, restaurant firms tend to issue long-term debt to pay back existing debt. However, the amount of debt does not exactly match the debt's maturity. Second, small restaurant firms' net debt financing, as well as net equity financing, has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with financial leverage. Finally, the effect of financial leverage on external financing significantly differs between small and large restaurant firms.\nPractical implications: Restaurant firms routinely use both debt and equity financing interchangeably to manage their financial constraints and target debt ratio. Further, firm size is an important indicator of financial constraints, while equity financing plays an important role in managing an optimal target debt ratio.\nOriginality/value: This study is unique in that it considers determinants of restaurant firms' long-term debt financing as well as equity financing. This study also examines differences in long-term debt and equity financing practices between financially constrained and unconstrained firms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Risk segmentation in Chilean social health insurance
|
[
"Social health insurance",
"Modelling",
"Chile",
"Segmentation",
"Social insurance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is general interest in scholarship about the overall increase in healthcare cost and healthcare insurance (Pauly, 1986; Allin et al., 2011; Mossialos and Lear, 2012). Two major concerns about increased private sector participation in healthcare insurance relate to risk allocation and the illusion being created that the risk burden is being transferred to private companies. In reality, this burden is translated into costs that are passed back to the public as higher premiums. Because a social agenda for health is based on the principle that healthcare provision should be widely available regardless of an individual's to meet its cost (Wagstaff, 2010a), overall health services cost are more likely to rise owing to various interest groups (with a primary interest in profit), taking over the health agenda. The implication is that in all sense and purpose, the patient ceases to be the primary focus.\nThe study: To address the two research questions, data were obtained from the SHC, which since 1995 has collected customer data from insurance companies participating in the ISAPRES initiative (as part of its legal obligations set out by the Chilean government). The data provide demographic information on ISAPRES customers and behavioural information such as payments and claims made by users. Three large databases were used to obtain these data:\nImplications: Risk segmentation (in an insurance context) is based on an assumption that those who purchase health insurance are demonstrating heterogeneous health characteristics. Effective risk segmentation may only be possible if there is a clear desire by insurers to understand how a specific risk variable will affect potential claims. Crucially, for easy identification, individual variables must be homogenous and exhibit distinctive characteristics that make them easily differentiable. Segmenting risk enables insurers to deal with several customers; but at the same time, it allows insurers to focus all their effort on customers who exhibit specific risk variables. Risk segmentation, therefore, provides an appropriate platform for predictive risk management. From this perspective, risk segmentation represents a rational decision-making approach. Based on studies undertaken by Feldman and Dowd (2000), Sapelli (2004) and van de Ven (2011), there is evidence to suggest that risk segmentation is of considerable interest to health economics scholars. From the literature, it appears that the primary risk-segmentation objective within health insurance is to redistribute possible insurance benefits (cover) from high- to low-risk customers. Arrow (1963) found this positioning particularly troubling as simple economic theory means that low-risk customers continue to be offered lower premiums, while high-risk customer premiums rose. This assumption was dependent on two factors. First, perfect information about health insurance customers is needed from insurers lacking government interference through industry regulation. As literature shows, neither condition was met. Chile's health insurance policy schemes appear to have been drawn specifically from a social, universal healthcare provision. Second, the rationale that market forces will determine health insurance provision has not been possible owing to community-rated health insurance premiums whereby both public and private health insurance policies cost 7 per cent of wages for a basic plan. Although the news that FNE filed charges against five firms participating in the ISAPRES initiative, one may argue that their actions may have resulted from market failure. Sapelli (2004) points out that establishing community-rated premiums by government distorts insurers' ability to assess risk. Ultimately, this causes artificial insurance prices. Noting Chile's agenda on universal healthcare provision, there is no doubt that there are costs to ISAPRES if a decision is taken to commence risk segmentation. The implication is that such a decision needs to be carefully weighed against three parameters: cost, especially to the health insurance industry (there are concerns over whether the cost will be passed on to customers); how the principle will fit into the country's social agenda (in effect, whether there are any real social benefits); and perceptions that ISAPRES customers are being profiled. Presently, the general mood in the country following the ISAPRES collusion accusations and the political fallout after the 2010 earthquake (about 800 fatalities), is that such an initiative will not attract support from ordinary Chileans or the present Chilean government, which appears to be pursuing a populist agenda.\nConclusions: Governments traditionally regard privately provided health insurance schemes as viable support that enhances public sector's capability to provide healthcare insurance. Publicly funded health insurance schemes also serves in some circumstances as the primary insurance coverage for specific groups. Although one can argue that private health insurance's role in developed countries is well established; in developing countries, the story is slightly different. Private health insurance in developing countries faces tough questions, especially whether there are social consequences in allowing companies that provide private health insurance to cover larger populations or whether their services should be restricted. On one hand, private health insurance companies, in their search for profits, will enhance efficiencies. Infusing efficiencies into their operations will be expected to deliver lower premiums to customers, which means that more customers may purchase their insurance from the private sector, leading to an overall reduction in public health spending. Critics, on the other hand, are convinced that encouraging more private-sector participation will not deliver lower premiums to customers, especially without stringent regulation. They also argue that private health insurance company efficiency drives will only lead to insurers providing insurance cover to people who fit a desired health and social profile.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The objective of this study is to identify how risk and social variables are likely to be impacted by an increase in private sector participation in health insurance provision. The study focuses on the Chilean health insurance industry, traditionally dominated by the public sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Predictive risk modelling is conducted using a database containing over 250,000 health insurance policy records provided by the Superintendence of Health of Chile.\nFindings: Although perceived with suspicion in some circles, risk segmentation serves as a rational approach to risk management from a resource perspective. The variables that have considerable impact on insurance claims include the number of dependents, gender, wages and the duration a claimant has been a customer.\nPractical implications: As shown in the case study, to ensure that social benefits are realised, increased private sector participation in health insurance must be augmented by regulatory oversight and vigilance.\nOriginality/value: As it is clear that a \"community-rated\" health insurance provision philosophy impacts on insurance firm's ability to charge \"market\" prices for insurance provision, the authors explore whether risk segmentation is a feasible means of predicting insurance claim behaviour in Chile's private health insurance industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Organisational antecedents of market orientation in the public university system
|
[
"Universities",
"Public administration",
"Market orientation",
"Structural analysis",
"Spain"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For more than a decade, market orientation has been a primary area of interest in research carried out in the field of marketing. During this period there has been a continual evolution of the study of market orientation that has given us a glimpse of the progress of this research, in terms of the objectives envisaged as well as of the analytical contexts selected.Firstly, we can state that the many studies carried out in this field have concentrated not only on the defining of the concept of market orientation itself, and the dimensions that frame it (e.g. Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Ruekert, 1992; Deshpande et al., 1993; Deng and Dart, 1994; Cadogan and Diamantopoulus, 1995; Tuominen and Moller, 1996), but also on the study of organisational antecedents that condition its adoption (e.g. Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Jaworski and Kohli, 1993), as well as on the consideration of external factors that have a moderating effect on the stated concept and its consequences (e.g. Day and Wensley, 1988; Slater and Narver, 1994a). Nevertheless, most research in this area has concentrated on the positive effects that a greater market orientation can have on the results of an organisation (e.g. Greenley, 1995a; Pitt et al., 1996; Bhuian, 1997; Chang and Chen, 1998).In second place, we have to point out that although from the very beginning applications in sectors guided by economic results were considered, there are a growing number of studies centred on contexts where the expected benefits are not of a monetary or commercial nature. In this respect, there are noticeably some analyses concerning market orientation in non-profit organisations (e.g. Wood et al., 2000; Voss and Voss, 2000; Vazquez et al., 2002) and even public administration services (e.g. Caruana et al., 1997; Drummond et al., 2000; Cervera et al., 2001; Mir and Rahaman, 2003). Following this last trend, this study aims to contribute to the body of market orientation research that does not consider economic profitability as its most relevant factor.The objective of this study is to evaluate the influence of several antecedents, of an organisational nature, on the level of market orientation in university teaching. In more detail, the aim is to discover the organisational factors that influence the intensity with which teaching staff exhibit a market-orientated behaviour; in other words, how they respond to the requirements and demands of an increasingly globalised university environment (Pratt and Poole, 1999; Hagen, 2002). In the Spanish context, this aspect has a special interest, not only because of recent major changes in University legislation, but also in terms of the future development of the European Space for Higher Education.To a certain extent, it is fair to say that the main objective of university teachers is to obtain good results when carrying out their activities (teaching, research and cultural diffusion). This paper suggests that market orientation might be an effective tool for improving results obtained in the university context. Similarly, it suggests that the potential of this tool might be enhanced or harmed by the coming into play of a set of antecedent factors.Specifically, the positive influence between the degree of market orientation and the results obtained by an organisation is a hypothesis that has been traditionally tested in research in for-profit business contexts. Indeed, a review of the literature suggests that one should consider market orientation as a new angle on business strategy. This new perspective has been arrived at through the need to guarantee present results and future survival in view of growing competition in the business world[1]. However, in spite of their diversity, it should be emphasised that the relationship between market orientation and results in all cases has been analysed with regard to for-profit companies. As discussed earlier, in more recent literature on market orientation, we find some applications of the concept in contexts in which obtaining profitability is not a priority objective.More in line with this work, we find the works byCaruana et al., 1998a, 1998b). In these studies, the authors found evidence of the positive relationship between the market orientation of universities in Australia and New Zealand and two result indicators referring to the previous five years: a global performance measure and the ability to attract private financing.However, the development of this research has necessitated a considerable effort to adapt, so as to be able to analyse the achievement and implications that the concept of market orientation can have in the university sector, a context that combines teaching with research and cultural diffusion.\nMarket orientation and the influence of antecedent factors: We begin by defining the meaning of market orientation as used in this study; it should be noted that although widely varying definitions of the concept can be found in the literature, recent and exhaustive revisions of the meaning employed in studies in this field (e.g. Avlonitis et al., 1992; Diamantopoulos and Hart, 1993; Dreher, 1994; Tuominen and Moller, 1996; Gounaris and Avlonitis, 1996, 1997; Tuominen et al., 1997; Bhuian, 1998; Homburg and Becker, 1998; Avlonitis and Gounaris, 1999) have tended to fall into two main perspectives of analysis. This dual nature of the concept of market orientation makes it ostensibly possible to simplify its definition.On the one hand, Narver and Slater (1990) understand market orientation as a phenomenon related to the cultural values and norms of an organisation. The concept in this case is identified not so much by \"behaviour\" but more by an \"attitude\"; it is therefore used in association with denominations such as cultural, philosophical or attitudinal.On the other hand, the work of Kohli and Jaworski (1990) considers market orientation as an activity of processing market information. Therefore, those most identified with this focus understand market orientation as a form of behaviour or conduct more than an attitude, as the concept is more identified with the putting into practice of the concept of marketing. In this way, the perspective identifies itself with \"action\" and is associated with terms such as operational or behavioural strategy.In addition, within market orientation research the study of antecedents attempts to answer a fundamental question: why are some organisations more market-oriented than others? This is the approach of Kohli and Jaworski (1990) in their initial theoretical proposal, and later in their empirical study (Jaworski and Kohli, 1993), which poses the question and attempts to find answers. In this respect, from this current of research a series of internal organisational factors has been developed. These factors condition the fact that a specific organisation orientates itself to the market with greater or lesser vigour. That is to say that the authors assume the existence of influences on these factors that predispose the organisation to behaviour of greater or lesser market orientation. More specifically, the aforementioned influences derive from three different types of antecedent:1. Top level management: includes the emphasis of the managers towards market orientation and the level of risk aversion concerned with new product development.2. Interdepartmental dynamic: represents the structure of existing relations between the functional areas and levels of an organisation (this is represented through conflict and cohesion at the heart of the organisation).3. Organisational systems: reflect the influence that the organisational structure has on the way that information about the market is used. Jaworski and Kohli (1993) considered as antecedents the level of formalisation and centralisation, as well as the level of departmentalisation and incentive systems. In this context, formalisation refers to the normalisation of functioning rules, communication, roles etc. within an organisation and centralisation represents the level of power concentration in decision-making (Aiken and Hage, 1968).\nAnalysis of the antecedents of market orientation in Spanish universities: The present situation in Spanish public universities\nConclusions and future research lines: Throughout this study, attention has been concentrated on the influence of different organisational factors on the level of market orientation adopted by members of a given organisation. More specifically, we have analysed the case of the Spanish public University system, examining how the set of regulations, values and beliefs, promoted in the different departments, condition and influence the level of market orientation adopted by University teachers.The particular circumstances involved made it necessary to develop an in-depth study of the specific problems associated with relationships between the teaching staff in a department and the mechanisms that form them. In particular we developed specific scales for quantifying the level of market orientation of University teachers, and the different organisational factors that act as its antecedents. After a rigorous process of refinement to obtain valid measurement instruments, these scales were used to test the different hypotheses concerning the possible causal relationships that might exist between them.The results have made it possible to draw various conclusions. Firstly, with regard to antecedents related to high-level management, it was observed that the level of market orientation adopted by the university teaching staff is positively affected by the predisposition of the department to take account of the needs of society in terms of research, training and employment. Specifically, this antecedent refers to the work carried out by the department to find out the needs of companies, not only in terms of human resources, but also of implementing innovations and mechanisms that will ensure their advancement.Secondly, with regard to antecedents related to interdepartmental dynamics, it was concluded that cohesion between the departmental teachers (understood to mean the existence of a certain atmosphere of affinity and understanding between its members) also had a positive effect on the level of market orientation. In other words, the existence of good informal relationships in departments can be conducive to market-oriented behaviour in the teaching staff. Thus, aspects such as the promotion of dialogue, the group dynamic among the teaching staff or an understanding attitude between the various areas of knowledge making up a department can all produce stimuli that interact to the benefit of market orientation and increase the department's willingness to analyse what is happening around it.Thirdly, when testing the relationship between antecedents related to organisational systems and the level of market orientation shown by university teachers, it was clear that centralisation (taken to mean a concentration of power in the department) did not seem to have a significant effect on the level of market orientation. Nevertheless, prestige bestowed on the staff by the department for teaching and research work did have a positive and significant effect on levels of market orientation adopted by the teachers. In short, the elements making up this factor act as catalysts to encourage teachers to display behaviour that is more market-oriented. Thus, receiving positive assessment for their teaching activity, obtaining good research results (taking part in conferences, being published and supervising doctoral theses) or being linked through projects to private companies or public institutions are all aspects that improve teachers' understanding of social needs.Considering these results from a global perspective, it is important to point out that the weight of the three relationships examined in this analysis is not the same in all cases. Specifically, the study shows that the market orientation actually adopted by the teachers is much more influenced by the emphasis placed on market-oriented activities by the department than by the degree of cohesion between the teachers, or by the prestige awarded by the department. These are cases in which the significance of the positive influence is confirmed, although to a lesser extent.Managerial implications for the university\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: - Over recent years, the new public management system has made significant inroads in Spain, and brought about considerable change. This study seeks to analyse the application of market orientation theories in the context of the Spanish public university. More specifically, the paper aims to study the causal relationship between organisational factors which characterise University departments and the level of market orientation adopted by their teaching staff.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Considering the particularities of this context an exhaustive process is followed to develop the appropriate scales to measure the different constructs studied; then the psychometric properties of these scales are checked and structural equation models applied to analyse the causal relationship between the level of market orientation adopted by the teachers and their antecedent factors.\nFindings: - The results of the study allow one to identify and confirm that several factors significantly condition the level of market orientation adopted by the University staff in their activities of teaching, research and cultural diffusion.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The analysis is centred on the case of the Spanish public University system.\nPractical implications: - University managers should take measures to increase the market orientation of departments. It is necessary to improve knowledge of society's needs, to develop an atmosphere of cohesion and an incentive system that motivates market-oriented behaviours.\nOriginality/value: - In this paper the market orientation concept is applied to a public service such as the University. The particular characteristics of this context called for an ad hoc re-adaptation of the concept. Specifically, the design of the scale and its contents had to take into account the plurality of the higher education beneficiaries (students, companies, the administration, society), the three-fold objectives of the teaching staff (teaching, research, and cultural diffusion) and the particularities of University departments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Multimodal biometric system combining left and right palmprints
|
[
"Multimodal biometrics",
"Feature selection",
"Local descriptor",
"Palmprint recognition",
"Feature fusion",
"Genetic algorithms",
"BSA"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Palmprint recognition is a relatively new and novel biometric authentication technology (Kong et al., 2009; Jain and Feng, 2009), and has received more and significant attention from researchers recently. As the palmprint possesses many types of features like minutiae points, singular points, texture, principal lines, wrinkles and patterns of ridges, it is more distinctive and has the potential to achieve reliable and good performance in biometric recognition (Zhang et al., 2012; Malik et al., 2015; Yue et al., 2013).\n2. Feature extraction using local descriptors: 2.1 Multi-Block local binary pattern (MBLBP)\n3. Feature fusion: At feature-level, fusion is the combination of two or more biometric modalities before matching in a multi-modal biometric system. The fusion of multiple feature vectors obtained from different biometric modalities produces a single high-dimensional feature vector which provides more discriminative power than single feature vectors. A minimal feature set may be obtained from the resulting high-dimensional feature vector by adopting a feature selection procedure.\n4. Feature selection using genetic algorithms and backtracking search algorithm: The fusion of two or more feature vectors results in a single feature vector which may include redundant and irrelevant features which can affect the recognition accuracy by decreasing it, and increase the time of the system response. Thus, feature selection is one solution for these problems.\n5. Proposed multimodal biometric system: For building a multimodal biometric system, two or more biometric traits are needed. To fuse these traits, an efficient fusion method is required. Fusion at feature-level provides to the system richer information than matching score-level and decision-level fusion. Hence, the system is able to obtain better performance. The serial fusion at feature level is chosen because it has proved its effectiveness (Hezil and Boukrouche, 2017). Thus, the different steps of the proposed multimodal biometric system are as follows:\n6. Experimental results and analysis: 6.1 Database\n7. Conclusion: In the present paper, we have proposed a new multimodal biometric system based on the fusion of left and right palmprint images for recognition purposes by using some proposed multi-block local descriptors such as MB-LDP, MB-ELDP and MB-LDN, in addition, to use MBLBP. The two feature vectors result were fused at feature-level by concatenation in order to produce a single global vector. Then, in the aim of increasing the recognition accuracy, reducing the feature set size, and saving the running times, feature selection was performed on the global feature vector using evolutionary algorithms such as GAs and BSA. On the other hand, extensive experiments were done on the known IITD database to test the strengths and robustness of the proposed system. Experimental results show that the proposed multi-biometrics system using MBLBP and MB-LDN local descriptors outperforms both unimodal and multimodal biometrics systems using other local descriptors with or without the use of feature selection.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Palmprint recognition is a very interesting and promising area of research. Much work has already been done in this area, but much more needs to be done to make the systems more efficient. In this paper, a multimodal biometrics system based on fusion of left and right palmprints of a person is proposed to overcome limitations of unimodal systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Features are extracted using some proposed multi-block local descriptors in addition to MBLBP. Fusion of extracted features is done at feature level by a simple concatenation of feature vectors. Then, feature selection is performed on the resulting global feature vector using evolutionary algorithms such as genetic algorithms and backtracking search algorithm for a comparison purpose. The benefits of such step selecting the relevant features are known in the literature, such as increasing the recognition accuracy and reducing the feature set size, which results in runtime saving. In matching step, Chi-square similarity measure is used.\nFindings: The resulting feature vector length representing a person is compact and the runtime is reduced.\nOriginality/value: Intensive experiments were done on the publicly available IITD database. Experimental results show a recognition accuracy of 99.17 which prove the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed multimodal biometrics system than other unimodal and multimodal biometrics systems.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Conflict minerals traceability - a fuzzy set analysis
|
[
"Resource-based view",
"Social sustainability",
"Sustainable sourcing",
"Stakeholder theory",
"Traceability",
"Conflict minerals",
"Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Complex, global supply chains make tracing the provenance of inputs difficult for individual firms at all stages of the supply chain (Kim and Davis, 2016). This difficulty is especially pronounced for the \"conflict minerals\" (CM) - tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold - that are mined primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After being smelted, the first three CM are used mainly in consumer electronics products, such as smartphones and computers. Gold is used primarily in the jewelry industry; it has a shorter supply chain, but its highly dispersed supply base also makes tracing difficult. Armed groups in the DRC earn large amounts by mining and trading CM, and in that process they continually violate the most basic human rights by committing sexual violence and torture, or by employing children as miners (Hofmann et al., forthcoming). To end the trade in CM, the US Dodd-Frank Act (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 2010) has recently forced listed companies to determine the degree to which any of their products contain CM. This regulation forces them to trace the provenance of the minerals, making it evident that traceability is a critical prerequisite for addressing social issues. This study adapts the definition of traceability of Olsen and Borit (2013) as \"a firm's ability to identify the source of an input, by means of recorded identifications,\" and uses the terms traceability and provenance determination interchangeably.\nTheoretical foundation: Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and its social dimension\nMethodology: Fuzzy set method\nResults: configurations for high traceability: Table VII shows the configurations for the solutions for 2013 and 2014 that allow firms to reach high traceability with sufficient consistency levels (minimum 0.90). The table reports two measures of fit for each configuration and for the overall solutions: consistency and coverage. Consistency refers to the degree to which cases that have the same combination of causal conditions display the same outcome (Ragin, 2008). Coverage evaluates the extent to which a causal configuration explains instances of an outcome (Ragin, 2008).\nConfigurations for low traceability: The study also analyzed configurations leading to lower levels of traceability, meaning configurations with an outcome of 0, 0.2, or 0.4, with a consistency threshold set at 90 percent. The resulting configurations are shown in Table VIII. Four groups of companies emerged, briefly summarized here.\nDiscussion and implications: In response to a call to adopt asymmetric thinking in management research (Woodside, 2013), this study employs the fsQCA method to explore traceability and finds that firms have multiple pathways to achieve CM traceability. Our study offers three main theoretical contributions. First, this study leads to a better understanding of how stakeholder salience might incite firms to mobilize internal resources to achieve traceability. Different configurations of stakeholder salience and resources lead to high traceability outcomes. More importantly, though, our findings suggest that not only the presence of certain stakeholder pressures or resources, but also their absence can lead to high traceability, depending on the configuration. Individual conditions do not have a single effect, and the outcome of a combination of conditions depends on their configuration. To illustrate, the presence of customer salience and the absence of brand equity were core conditions in the \"customer-driven\" configurations, while the opposite was true for \"brand leaders\" (i.e. the absence of customer salience and presence of brand equity). This result might explain the ambiguity in findings of SSCM studies analyzing effects of individual variables on SSCM. In the CM context, Kim and Davis (2016) found that on their own the variables of firm size, reputation, and motivation to be sustainable had no significant direct effect on the conflict-free status of a firm's products, whereas our study suggests that these effects depend on the configuration of causal conditions. We therefore call for SSCM research using configurational methods such as fsQCA, grounded in stakeholder theory in conjunction with the RBV, to cast a different light on extant findings.\nLimitations and future research: We acknowledge several limitations in our study that open opportunities for future research. First, an inherent limitation of working with secondary data in this study is the use of proxies. Moreover, public company disclosures only capture what a company reports, not necessarily its actual behavior or what it knows (Gattiker et al., 2014). This reliance on self-reporting might affect our traceability measure.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate legal effects on social sustainability practices at buying firms. The US Dodd-Frank Act has forced listed companies to determine the degree to which their products contain conflict minerals (CM). The research question this study seeks to answer is the following: which factors influence a company's ability to determine the provenance of its inputs?\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study examines secondary data in the form of CM reports of 50 US listed firms for two consecutive years using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach.\nFindings: This study identifies different configurations of stakeholder salience and firm resources that lead individual companies to achieve high levels of traceability. Findings show that firms' CM governance mechanisms are a key determinant in the firms' capacity to meet regulatory traceability requirements. Further, the authors find that both the presence and absence of specific stakeholder pressures and firm resources can lead to traceability. Findings also suggest that firms can achieve traceability without any pressure from stakeholders.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study investigates the practices of individual firms that are subject to the Dodd-Frank Act, rather than adopting a supply chain-wide perspective. Further, proxies had to be used to measure several constructs because of reliance on firms' reporting, which implies that the study did not account for certain behavioral factors that influence traceability.\nPractical implications: This study provides managers of both resource-rich and less resource-rich firms with possible pathways for achieving CM traceability.\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to the field of sustainability by providing exploratory insights into the antecedents of traceability and deriving theoretical propositions to guide further research. The authors apply fsQCA to investigate secondary data over multiple years, thus using a novel configurational methodology.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Audit committee experts and earnings quality
|
[
"Public companies",
"Financial reporting",
"Audit committees",
"Experts",
"Resource dependence",
"Qualification",
"Earnings management",
"Governance",
"Lifelong learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Audit committees play important role in the quality and credibility of financial reporting, since they act as part of the governance mechanism to improve operations and economic profit of firms. Audit committees are important mechanism in the corporate governance (Zhang et al., 2007; Anderson et al., 2004), and have an important role ensuring the financial reporting quality (Carcello and Neal, 2000). The audit committee literature mostly focus on the audit committee effectiveness from various aspects; as a non executive director or board independence (Chen et al., 2005; Iskandar and Abdullah, 2004; Windram and Song, 2004), on responsibilities or functions (Joshi and Wakil, 2004; Gendron et al., 2004), and being a financial expert or having accounting and finance background (Engel et al., 2010; Baxter and Cotter, 2009, Mangena and Tauringana, 2008; Coates et al., 2007; Qin, 2006; Defond et al., 2005). Audit committees with financial expertise are important as they show support for auditors (DeZoort et al., 2003; DeZoort and Salterio, 2001), the credibility of the financial statement (Burrowes and Hendriks, 2005), and the high quality of reported earnings (Qin, 2006). Subsequently, market appreciates audit committee financial expertise as studies have shown an excess return of 4.6 percent in Coates et al. (2007) and a positive market reaction to the announcement of directors with accounting financial expertise (Defond et al., 2005).Prior studies show two categories of experts - the accounting experts, and non-accounting experts. Accounting experts are those with professional accounting certification or affiliation. While, the non-accounting experts are directors without any certification but have served in senior managerial positions such as CFO or CEO. The need to have accounting experts or financial experts on the audit committee is clearly stated in Sarbanes Oxley Act, 2002, BRC (Blue Ribbon Committee), 1999 and Code of Corporate Governance.However, the measurement of expertise may need to be further analysed, as SOA and SEC's description may not be suitable for emerging economies, such as Malaysia. Even though, it shows that Malaysian listing requirements' guideline is almost similar with other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and BRC (see Appendix), but the measurement of financial expertise is not a case of \"one size fits all\" scenario. Furthermore, studies in the Malaysian context, such as Ismail et al. (2008), Rahman and Ali (2006) and Iskandar and Abdullah (2004), fail to find any association between financial expertise and financial reporting quality. Hence, focus of expertise may need to be expanded than the existing measurement that majority studies adopted, i.e. the SEC or SOA's definition (Defond et al., 2005; Carcello et al., 2006), or merely relying on measurement such as MIA[1] membership (Ismail et al., 2008; Rahman and Ali, 2006), or only brief description such as Rahmat et al. (2009) that mentioned audit committee experts, are those with knowledge in accounting and finance, with relevant years of experience in practice, or audit committee members with accounting and finance qualifications such as in Saleh et al. (2007), Yatim et al. (2006) and Iskandar and Abdullah (2004). Perhaps defining expertise may need to be expanded rather than focus on accounting professionals only.The study extends the expertise benchmark by Saleh et al. (2007), which posited that earnings management is lower for firms with an active and knowledgeable audit committee, and complements prior studies on audit committee expertise such as Engel et al.(2010), Baxter and Cotter (2009), Coates et al. (2007) and Aier et al. (2005), by introducing new measure of expertise such as the introduction of other qualification namely academic qualification.\nTheoretical framework and hypotheses development: Based on prior literature and existing listing requirements, three basic requirements were introduced, namely, work experience, academic qualifications and professional qualifications (Bonner and Lewis, 1990; Abdolmohammadi and Shantaeu, 1992; Choo, 1996; Busch, 1997; BRC (Blue Ribbon Committee), 1999; Sarbanes Oxley Act, 2002; SEC, 2003; Smith Report, 2003; MCCG, 2007; Defond et al., 2005; Qin, 2006; Carcello et al., 2006; Rose et al., 2007). Four variables are hypothesised from these guidelines; audit committee financial expert, audit committee accounting expert, audit committee non-accounting professional expert, and audit committee non-accounting non-professional expert (see Table I). These variables are shown in Figure 1. The study extends the literature by expanding the composition of audit committee experts as follows, supported by BRC (Blue Ribbon Committee) (1999), Sarbanes Oxley Act (2002), SEC (2003), Smith Report (2003), MCCG (2000), Defond et al. (2005), Qin (2006), Bonner and Lewis (1990), Busch (1997), Rose et al. (2007), Abdolmohammadi and Shantaeu (1992), Choo (1996), and Carcello et al. (2006).The audit committee experts are:1. Type A, the financial expert, is a person with professional accounting certification, at least a postgraduate qualification, and experience in a senior managerial position.2. Type B, the accounting expert is a person with professional accounting certification, and experience in a senior managerial position, the difference between No. 1 and No. 2 here, is that No. 2 excludes any postgraduate qualification.3. Type C, the non-accounting professional expert is a person that is professionally affiliated with any professional body or organisation in any field such as Engineers, Architects, Lawyers and Mariners, and has at least a postgraduate qualification, and also experience in a senior managerial position.4. Type D, a non-accounting expert. An audit committee member with postgraduate qualification and senior managerial experience.The variables are expanded from the agency theory (Jensen and Meckling, 1976) that defines the agency relationship as a contract under which one or more persons, i.e. principals (stakeholders) engage another person such as an agent (audit committees) to act on their behalf. Thus, it is the duty of the audit committee to perform the task diligently with the skills, knowledge and expertise that they have acquired to produce quality financial reporting. Consequently, Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) explains, audit committee as provision of resources, providing expertise and experience in order for firms to gain competitive advantage especially in financial reporting quality.These experts (Type A,B,C and D) are expected to mitigate the agency problem that arises from the managers' ability to manipulate earnings reports. Furthermore, based on RDT, audit committee expertise should not only focus on accounting affiliated directors. They should also consist directors with other relevant expertise as external resources that also represent the social context in which the organisation is embedded (Pfeffer, 1973).The study expects that audit committee experts with prior experience in auditing, and managerial positions such as CFO, and, or CEO, will give a lower magnitude of earnings management (see Dechow et al., 1996; Beasley et al., 1999), where the existence of the audit committee is associated with better financial reporting quality (Read and Raghunandan, 2001). Furthermore, previous experience in accounting and auditing, will increase the accuracy (Hertz and Schultz, 1999) of their investigation, and generate better corporate financial reporting quality.Prior studies in education and work, lends support in using education as a measure of experts, such as Trostel and Walker (2006), who found a positive relationship between education and work, and evidence by Anderson and Keys (2007) that attaining higher education increases, on average, the likelihood of being active in the labour market. Likewise, the presence of earnings management, and weak corporate governance may create a demand for better monitoring, which would suggest a positive association between these factors and the need for accounting financial experts (Krishnan and Lee, 2009).Evidence show that accounting affiliated audit committees are associated with better financial reporting quality such as Abbott et al. (2007), Abbott et al. (2004), Lin et al. (2006), and Defond et al. (2005). As noted in Defond et al. (2005) specialised skills possessed by accounting financial experts make directors more effective in ensuring financial reporting quality. Hence, an effectively composed audit committee may help a firm avoid restatement as noted in Arthaud-day et al.(2006), whilst Aier et al. (2005) document that companies that have CFOs with a CPA certification, an MBA or more experience as CFOs, are less likely to restate earnings.Consistent with Conford and Athanasou (1995), Krishnan and Visvanathan (2009), Zhang et al. (2007), and Defond et al. (2005), where non-accounting experts are those who have experience in senior managerial positions. Kor (2003)) documents that management experience at firm, team and industry levels adds value to entrepreneurial growth, and proves that prior industry management experience contributes to the competence of the top management team. Whereby, past managerial knowledge of the opportunities, threats, competition, and technologies specific to an industry is useful in creating entrepreneurial growth. This is supported further when investment bankers on audit committees improve the monitoring function of the audit committee as evidenced in Xie et al. (2003), and Baxter and Cotter (2009) who examine experts from a legal background, other than the accounting experts.\nMethodology: Independent variables\nFindings: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion and conclusion: The results show that accounting affiliated audit committee members are negative and significant to discretionary accruals, thus supports the second hypothesis that firms with accounting affiliated directors and managerial experiences, are negatively related to the magnitude of earnings management. Hence, lends support to Abbott et al.(2004), Aier et al. (2005) and Lin et al. (2006) that accounting affiliated audit committees are associated to better financial reporting quality, and accounting expertise contributes to greater monitoring by the audit committee (Defond et al., 2005; Krishnan and Visvanathan, 2009). Even though the introduction of academic qualification as one of the financial experts' criteria is not supported, but the results support the theory on the presence of experienced and academically qualified non-accounting directors on audit committee, it is negative and significant to the dependent variable. Hence, lends support to Kim et al. (2006) that advanced education and managerial experience are significantly associated with entrepreneurial attempts, where here the entrepreneurial attempts is looked upon being a successful mitigating factor to reduce the agency problems.Furthermore, the significant and negative coefficient of type D (non-accounting experts) to DAC, support prior literature on experts' studies that document, work experience as among the attributes of expert, as suggested by prior literature and lends support to Fich (2005) that document CEOs are also sources of unique expertise. Audit committee should be composed of highly efficient directors with relevant expertise, as highlighted by Dalton et al. (1999) that board should comprised of members with various expertise and skills.The study shows support that additional theory is needed to explain board of directors' expertise and experience, other than the agency theory that is almost grounded in prior literature in the accounting domain (such as Menon and Williams, 1994; Rager, 2004; Piot, 2004). Assumptions made in agency theory about individualistic utility motivations resulting in principal-agent interest divergence may not hold for all managers (Davis et al., 1997), such as the independence of audit committee as shown in the analysis. Furthermore, results in Nicholson and Kiel (2007) indicate that high monitoring alone is no guarantee of corporate performance, even though Peasnell et al. (2005) noted that outside directors act as a measure of board monitoring that contribute towards the integrity of financial reporting. Hence, combining two theories on explaining monitoring functions of the board as well as the composition of expertise of the boards, with agency theory and resource dependence theory, seemed appropriate and complements prior studies such as Hillman and Dalziel (2003), Hillman et al. (2007) and Dalton et al. (1999), Arthurs et al. (2009) and Engel et al. (2010).The findings show RDT is prevalent in accounting or auditing domain, hence, contribute to the mainstream accounting literature that the resource dependence theory can be utilised in explaining situations where directors' expertise and knowledge are involved. It explains the mere presence of independent directors as monitoring mechanism is insufficient, and links the background and knowledge expertise of the directors have that can be used to assist them in their functional role as audit committee members.The study complements the recent call for INED (Independentt Non-Executive Director) to improve oversight and risk management, there has been a large demand for competent INED to provide element equilibrium in the organisation, and the initiatives by MSWG[2] and MACD[3] to develop directors' quality and advocate their interests (Gomes, 2009). Therefore, more options may be given to those with prior experience in senior managerial positions, and academically qualified persons, to be included in the pool of directors available for independent directors.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between audit committee expertise and financial reporting quality. Since the Sarbanes Oxley Act, 2002, there has been growing interest in the research concerning audit committee expertise, especially as the Security Exchange Commission requires firms to identify their audit committee financial experts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based on two theories, the resource dependence theory and agency theory, the study examines the association of audit committee experts with financial reporting quality, proxied by earnings management. Samples involved 2008 financial data of 300 firms that were ranked by highest market capitalisation. In total, four types of expertise are developed based on academic qualification, professional qualification and work experience.\nFindings: - Presence of non-accounting experts and accounting experts is significant to reduce the magnitude of earnings management. Other than that, leverage and firms size are also found to be significant.\nOriginality/value: - The findings show RDT is prevalent in accounting or auditing domain, where there is evidence showing directors bridge firms with external resources such as expertise and experience. Subsequently, contribute to the mainstream accounting literature that the resource dependence theory is also vital in explaining situations where directors' expertise and knowledge are involved.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How academic leaders facilitate knowledge sharing: a case of universities in Hong Kong
|
[
"Knowledge donation",
"Knowledge collection",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Higher education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Effective knowledge management (KM) enables organizations to gain competitive advantage in the market (Al-Husseini and Elbeltagi, 2015; Li et al., 2014; Raj Adhikari, 2010; Yeh, 2011; Zheng et al., 2010). Within the KM domain, processes are broadly defined as the activities which involved in identifying, capturing, sharing and applying knowledge. Al-Aama (2014) attempts to classify these KM processes into four main groups: The first category is creation which refers to processes involving identifying and creating knowledge. Second, capture process is composed of tasks that are connected to store and organize knowledge. Third, distribution process involves activities related to knowledge transfer or knowledge dissemination. Lastly, sharing process involves the share and review of organizational knowledge. Among all the KM processes, knowledge sharing (KS) is considered as the most important process (Babalhavaeji and Kermani, 2011; Chakraborty and Laloo, 2013; Chiang et al., 2011; Feng and Chen, 2011; Hong et al., 2011; Jeenger and Kant, 2013). Several studies further emphasize that KS is the most challenging process to be managed or controlled (Abdullah et al., 2011; Berry, 2014; Bhatti et al., 2014). As most of the authors agree that KS is the crucial process in KM, this study aims to focus on the enablers of the sub-processes in KS.Several recent studies attempt to investigate the antecedents of KS (Chuang et al., 2015; Liou et al., 2016; Liao, 2017), however, these studies did not examine how these antecedents affect the sub-processes of KS (knowledge donation and knowledge collection). Some researchers studied knowledge donation and knowledge collection in the higher education sector, however, the foci were placed in their impacts, for instance, product and process innovation (Al-Husseini and Elbeltagi, 2018). Furthermore, most of KS studies were conducted in other countries and the generalizability is still questionable. To the best knowledge of the researchers, there is a lack of empirical study investigating the antecedents of both knowledge donation and knowledge collecting processes in Hong Kong higher education sector. In order to provide a better understanding to higher education management, this study develops a framework to address the following research questions:RQ1. What are the factors affecting the knowledge donating process?RQ2. What are the factors affecting the knowledge collecting process?\nLiterature review: Knowledge sharing\nFactors of knowledge sharing in higher education: To define the scope of this study, the following papers investigating the factors affecting KS behavior in higher education were reviewed. According to a study in India, Anwar and Prasad (2013) investigated teachers' perception of factors contributing to attitude towards KS and categorized into three levels: individual (e.g. perceived enjoyment in helping others, self-efficacy), organizational factors (e.g. teamwork and cooperation) and technological factors (e.g. technology availability and technology usage). Tan and Noor (2013) and Tan (2016) examined a number of KS predictors in high education sector and they were trust, knowledge self-efficacy, reciprocal benefits, top management support, organizational rewards, organizational culture, KM system infrastructure, KM system quality, openness in communication and face-to-face communication. Besides, commitment, enjoyment in helping others, reputation and organizational rewards were proven to be the significant KS predictors in five Malaysia higher education institutions (Tan and Ramayah, 2014).Furthermore, Mansor and Saparudin (2015) attempted to investigate both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors of KS behavior among the academics in private universities. Intrinsic factors included self-efficacy, enjoyment in helping others while extrinsic factors included reciprocal benefits and expected organizational rewards. A recent study about KS in higher education context was presented by Phung et al., (2018). Authors examined a number of KS antecedents, including environmental factors (trust and subjective norms) and personal factors (knowledge self-efficacy, enjoyment in helping others, organizational rewards, reciprocal benefits and psychological ownership of knowledge), with the data collected from Vietnam. Lastly, Fullwood et al. (2019) investigated individual, organizational and technological factors of KS behavior in UK higher education sector. Through the semi-structured interviews, researchers discussed the impacts of various factors, including trust, reward and culture, on KS. Based on the KS literature in the higher education context, this study utilized the three-dimensional approach and examined factors that were the most widely investigated in higher education. Individual factors include enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy while organizational factors refer to top management support, organizational reward, organizational culture. The use of ICT system is considered as the technological factor.\nEnjoyment in helping others: Enjoyment in helping others plays a crucial role of KS at individual level (Cavaliere et al., 2015; He and Wei, 2009; Hung and Yuen, 2010; Kankanhalli et al., 2005; Lai and Chen, 2011; Lin, 2007; Lin, Lee, and Wang, 2009a). The concept of enjoyment in helping others is developed from the altruism idea, which is considered as an intrinsic motivation in KS behavior (Hung et al., 2011; Kankanhalli et al., 2005; Lin, 2007; Ma and Chan, 2014; Okyere-Kwakye and Nor, 2011; Podrug et al., 2017). This factor refers to the perceived pleasure when an individual contributes knowledge so as to solve others' problems (He and Wei, 2009; Lin, 2007). The significant positive relationship between enjoyment in helping others and KS is proven in many recent studies (Lin, 2007; Lin, Lee, and Wang, 2009a; Ma and Chan, 2014; Van der Capellen, Koppius, and Dittrich, 2011; Ye et al., 2006). The empirical result by Hung et al. (2015) exhibits that enjoyment in helping others affects the attitude towards KS and finally influence the KS intention for one of the study groups. Nonetheless, this study was examining under professional virtual communities. The characteristics under a virtual environment may be different from real-world settings. However, this argument is disproved with the findings in the other studies (Hitam and Mahamad, 2012; Kwahk and Park, 2016; Sambamurthy and Subramani, 2005; Wang and Lai, 2006). Therefore, the role of enjoyment in helping others in KS under Hong Kong higher education context needs further investigation. This study hypothesizes that:H1. Enjoyment in helping others has a positive relationship with (a) knowledge donating process and (b) knowledge collecting process.\nKnowledge self-efficacy: Knowledge self-efficacy is interpreted as the beliefs or judgments of employees about their capability or ability to provide knowledge which can solve job-related problems and ultimately enhance work efficacy (Bandura, 1986; Chen and Hung, 2010; Chen and Cheng, 2012; Lin, 2007; Luthans, 2002; Tohidinia and Mosakhani, 2010). Several studies have revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between knowledge self-efficacy and KS process in different industries (Abouzahra and Tan, 2014; Cavaliere et al., 2015; Chen and Hung, 2010; Hussein et al., 2016; Lin, 2007; Lin, Hung, and Chen, 2009b; Lu et al., 2006; Shaari et al., 2014; Tohidinia and Mosakhani, 2010; Zawawi et al., 2011). Furthermore, Chen and Hung (2010) point out that employees with high knowledge self-efficacy are more eager to perform KS behaviors than those with lower self-efficacy. Several studies advance the arguments which knowledge self-efficacy promotes both the knowledge donating and knowledge collecting sub-processes (Tohidinia and Mosakhani, 2010; Wee and Chua, 2013). In a recent social media study, Kwahk and Park (2016) found that knowledge self-efficacy imposed a positive impact on KS activities. Nevertheless, Van der Capellen et al. (2011), Hitam and Mahamad (2012) and Podrug et al. (2017) conclude that such relationship is not supported. The former study was conducted in a software company (more knowledge-intensive) while the latter one was carried out in a department store chain (less knowledge-intensive). Apart from the industry, the result of Zhang et al. (2014) exhibits that the impacts of enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy varies among national culture. For example, Zhang and Ng (2012) proved that perceived losing face has a negative impact on one's attitude toward KS in Hong Kong, China. As a result, the impacts of enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy on KS process are still questionable in Hong Kong higher education industry. Further investigation is necessary; therefore, this study proposes:H2. Knowledge self-efficacy has a positive relationship with (a) knowledge donating process and (b) knowledge collecting process.Top management support\nMethodology: Sample\nData analysis and findings: Measurement model\nDiscussion and implications: Individual factor\nConclusion: KS, an important process of KM, plays a critical role in the maintenance of organizational competitiveness. Instead of investigating the antecedents of KS only, this study examines how these antecedents affect the sub-processes of KS (i.e. knowledge donating and knowledge collecting). Based on the literature review, there is limited studies in Hong Kong higher education context. The study contributes to our understanding of the factors affecting academics' KS activities in Hong Kong. Both enjoyment in helping others and organizational culture are the critical factors for knowledge donating and knowledge collecting activities. The use of ICT only supports the knowledge donating, but not knowledge collecting. Other factors, for instance, knowledge self-efficacy, top management support, perceived organizational rewards, are not significant in this study. For the limitation, this is a cross-sectional study from a single industry in Hong Kong. The results may vary in different settings (e.g. culture, region and industry) and researchers are also suggested to further examine other KS antecedents (e.g. openness in communication and face-to-face interactive communication).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The objective of this study is to investigate the factors of two sub-processes - knowledge donating and knowledge collecting - of knowledge sharing in Hong Kong higher education context. This study examines the individual factors, organizational factors and technology factor of knowledge sharing. Individual factors include enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy while organizational factors refer to the top management support, organizational rewards and organizational culture. The use of technology system is proposed to be the technology factor.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the literature review, this study develops a structural model representing the impact of six latent variables on knowledge donating and knowledge collecting processes Data from a questionnaire survey of 166 respondents from academics from Hong Kong higher education sector was used to analyze the model. PLS-SEM was adopted in this study.\nFindings: The result of the data analysis suggests enjoyment in helping others has a positive impact on both knowledge donating and knowledge collecting. For organizational factors, a trust and collaborative culture enhance both the sub-processes. The technology factor only contributes to the knowledge donating process. Several practical implications are provided to high education leaders, for instance, by establishing a trust and collaborative environment, academics are more eager to donate and collect knowledge.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides insights for researchers to further understand how individual, organizational and technology factors affect two sub-processes of knowledge sharing. On the practical side, this study validated several critical factors to successful knowledge donation and knowledge collection.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Knowledge management measures: an empirical investigation of Indian cement industry
|
[
"Competitive advantage",
"Knowledge management practices",
"Knowledge management processes",
"Cement organization",
"Marketing and sales"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The Indian cement industry is over 100-year old and has been contributing significantly to the growth and development of Indian economy. It has undergone two distinct phases of growth - having a full control between 1914 and 1988 and another phase of complete de-control from the year 1988 onwards. The first phase adversely affected the growth of the industry wherein industry witnessed shortage of cement to meet the demand of the growing economy. However, the second phase of de-control resulted in increased installed capacity compared to demand, change in a variety of cement produced, entry of MNC's, consolidation of players by mergers and acquisition, increased focus of companies on value addition, customer service and use of alternate fuels in cement production. The industry is facing multiple challenges amidst fast emerging competitive environment. The key challenges faced by industry today are - marketing, human resources (HR), IT, data analytics, inter-regional movement of cement, over supply, logistics management, etc. Although the industry has great potential that provides multiple opportunities, it is finding old and existing strategic tools as obsolete to respond to upcoming challenges.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Knowledge management\n3. Objective of the study: The objective of this paper is to develop knowledge management constructs comprising of KM processes and KM practices through marketing and sales to derive CA in the cement industry.\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Development of survey instrument\n5. Data analysis and discussions: The data analysis was carried out by considering importance index analysis to know the relative importance of each variable under seven constructs. Subsequently, reliability assessment was undertaken to determine the consistency of constructs and their sub-constructs that were duly validated for developing the questionnaire.\n6. Findings: The various measures of knowledge management proposed by different authors in the literature were organized into a set of seven constructs pertaining to knowledge management practices and processes, and CA that comprised 65 variables considered in the study. Out of the seven constructs, the three constructs had two sub-constructs namely - knowledge management practice pertaining to HR, IT and knowledge management process pertaining to use of knowledge. The final constructs and variables developed are shown in Appendix.\n7. Conclusion and future scope of research: It is evident from the constructs fulfilling the criteria that KM will be one of the key strategic inputs for the future. The factor analysis of the seven constructs clearly reveals that all the seven constructs were found to have a factor loading in the range of 0.565-0.905 that was found to be higher than the acceptable factor loading limit of 0.50. Thus, all the seven constructs were found to be relevant and useful for evaluating knowledge management initiatives. The empirical results also show that each variable variance under each construct explains 54.16 percent or above and is shared with other variables under that construct. This also reveals the importance of each variable under each construct that hypothesizes to the similar intent of measurement for the respective construct. The instrument developed for measuring the effectiveness of knowledge management initiative in the cement industry comprising of seven constructs and 65 variables was found to be valid and reliable. It is also established from the study that knowledge management initiatives consisting of practices and processes need to be viewed in an integrated manner to derive CA.\n8. Implications: The instrument developed through the study will have direct relevance to measure the effectiveness of knowledge management initiatives in the cement industry through marketing and sales function. The main implication of this study to the professionals in the cement industry is to recognize and develop the measures of KM for the marketing function with focus on - marketing and sales, outbound logistics and services. The specific measures developed in this study will help in identifying areas of investment to improve or change in three areas - HR practices pertaining to reward, recognition and transfer of TSM or equivalent within organization; IT practices pertaining to solutions and gadgets to be provided to territory sales managers or equivalent; and the level of knowledge management processes; acquire, share, use and apply are adhered to while processes are implemented.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop knowledge management constructs comprising of KM processes and KM practices through marketing and sales to derive competitive advantage (CA) in the cement industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A thorough and detailed analysis of the literature was carried out to develop the measures for KM practices, KM processes and their impact on CA. A total of 65 variables affecting competitiveness in the form of questionnaire were developed. The questionnaire was administered through e-mail to 962 territory sales managers (TSM) and equivalent employed in the marketing and sales function of the cement organizations in India. A total of 121 valid and complete responses were received, representing a response rate of 12.6 percent. The factor analysis was carried out on the data collected to establish reliability and validity of the measures.\nFindings: A total of seven constructs pertaining to knowledge management practices and processes and competitiveness that comprises of 65 variables have been developed. The statistical results establish that the constructs and the variables considered in the study are reliable and valid.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample of respondents for developing constructs consisted of TSM and equivalent employed in the marketing and sales function of cement companies in India. Research scope can be enhanced in the future study by including middle and senior level managers in cement companies to better diagnose and understand perception of KM initiatives across different levels in the cement industry. The work can also be extended to incorporate inbound logistics and procurement that directly contributes to the overall value chain to have a holistic perspective.\nPractical implications: The measures developed in this study would be effective management tools for the implementation of knowledge management initiatives in the marketing and sales function to ascertain their level of implementation and impact on the competitiveness.\nOriginality/value: This study is probably the first of its kind in India to provide KM measures combined for practices and processes to understand the relationship with competitiveness in cement companies pertaining to marketing and sales function. It provides valuable insights as a strategic tool for investing in KM initiatives.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Illuminating the core of Singapore school leadership preparation: Two decades of in-service experience
|
[
"Schools",
"Singapore",
"Leadership development"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The centrality of the principal's role has been reiterated by numerous writers (for instance, Fullan et al., 2006; Hallinger, 1992; Lane, 1992). This is in congruence with a key finding in research (Bolam et al., 1993; Mortimore et al., 1988; Rutter et al., 1979).In relation to the above, the learning of school leaders has been in focus both locally and overseas. Reports on school management emphasis on the highly significant role of the headteachers and their preparation for leadership roles (Lim, 2005; Developing School Management (HMSO, 1990); Improving The Preparation Of School Administrators (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 1989); Towards Excellence In Schools (Ministry of Education, 1987).With regard to school leadership preparation in Singapore, it was in the year 2001 that a new school leadership program, the Leaders in Education Programme (LEP), was launched. It replaced the Diploma in Educational Administration (DEA) program at the National Institute of Education of the Nanyang Technological University, which had been in existence since 1984. Both full-time programmes served to formally prepare promising vice-principals of Singapore for school leadership. While leadership mentoring was the highlight of DEA, the concept of innovation permeates LEP. Table I illustrates the two models.\nRelevant background: Through the years of minor reviews of on-going programmes, there has always been the quest for improvement. The conservation of co-creation is reflected in the DEA mode of daily mentor-protege reflective sessions and the LEP mode of regular syndicate leader-members sessions. In sum, there is conservation of what is valued and could be perennial, the co-creation of knowledge. The relevant background on DEA is provided below.Leadership mentoring was the prime aspect of a managerial development strategy for aspiring school principals attending the DEA programme. The one-academic-year programme integrated mentoring with formal instruction given by faculty members who also facilitated the school attachment component. For eight weeks during school attachment, each DEA participant was paired with a school principal who served as a mentor to the participant. The mentors of the DEA were carefully selected by the Ministry of Education as worthy role models for aspiring school principals.Literature has surfaced the existence of some relationship that could be developed in mentoring (Barnett, 1990; Daresh and Playko, 1989; Kram, 1988). The phases for the development of the mentor-protege relationship that were identified by Walker et al. (1993) are as follows: formal, cautious, sharing, open, and beyond phases. There appeared to be some progression in the relationship from the formal phase of performing routine tasks and of feeling uncertain and apprehensive, through the cautious, sharing, and open phases marked by increasing trust and confidence between mentors and proteges, and to the final beyond phase of open professional discussion between mentor and protege in friendship maintained on their own initiatives after the school attachment component of the DEA program.The phases of mentor-protege relationship identified in Singapore are similar to those reported by studies done elsewhere. For instance, entry, mutual building of trust, risk taking, teaching of skills, professional standards and dissolution phases (Bova and Phillips, 1984); telling, role-modelling, mutual participation, delegation and self-direction phases (Gray and Gray, 1985); as well as initiation, cultivation, separation and redefinition phases (Kram, 1988).Distinct from the above-mentioned models, the concepts of friendship and mutual learning or learning from one another for mutual benefit and collaboration were explicit features of the Singapore model of mentoring. The DEA mentors associated mentoring with the four descriptors of \"peer support\", \"collaboration\", \"mutual/reciprocal learning\" and \"coaching\" (Coleman et al., 1996). There was \"growth of trust and friendship\" over the period of structured mentoring; learning was the \"greatest benefit\" for proteges, and mentors \"learned a great deal\" in Singapore. Walker et al. (1993) reported that the mentors and proteges in Singapore felt as if they had become friends and mutual trust seemed to exist in the open and beyond phases. Both benefited from reciprocal learning. Mentors in Singapore felt that having a protege broadened their own knowledge, sharpened their skills and made them more aware of how and why they did things in specific ways. The exploration of such co-creation of knowledge in the relationship process is elaborated below.\nCo-creation of knowledge: Such generation of knowledge in co-creating, within the formal leadership preparatory programme as indicated above, was further explored by Lim (2005). Learning relationships at work, featuring friendship, collaboration and mutual learning, emerged among school principals in Singapore as a consequence of leadership mentoring in the formal mentor-protege relationships. There was active networking for learning relationships at work among fellow principals. These principals created, seized and improved through learning from unstructured learning relationships at work. The former school leadership preparation programme that the principals attended emerged as a strong breeding ground for the initiation of such learning relationships.In co-creating knowledge, the relevance and significance of relationships permeated the Singapore experience in mentoring (Lim and Low, 2004). In particular, the practice of leading (in relating with people, providing direction and setting expectations, consulting and developing ownership of decisions, trusting and empowering, and acting visibly) surfaced prominently in leadership mentoring (Lim, 2005, p. 31). As such, learning relationship at work could define a Singapore concept of mentoring and provide a form of continuous workplace learning as the principals in times of change and expanding corpus of information.Further, educational developments in Singapore advocate relationship skills. \"People our Focus\" (BlueSky, 2003, pp. 13, 14) was officially pronounced as a corporate value of the Singapore education system, encompassing the statement of \"we value people, seeking to bring out the best in everyone\" in \"having and showing care and concern; serving people with sincerity\", \"seeing the potential of each person and helping each to develop and succeed\", \"building a team and recognising that everyone has a part to play in the organisation\" and \"respecting people with backgrounds or views different from ours\".Mentoring traditionally serves as education of the less learned from the more learned. The Singapore experience reveals that it has since extended beyond such confines to co-creating knowledge in learning relationships that have features of friendship, coloration and mutual learning. Relationships are subjected to change and a good match between the parties concerned could enhance the success of the endeavor. While the DEA programme adopted a one-to-one mentor-protege match, LEP adopts a team approach. Consistent with emphasis on the choice of mentors (for example, Carruthers, 1988; Yeap et al., 2005), the choice of LEP syndicate leaders and their role in facilitating learning and co-creating knowledge among various participants is of prime importance. The team of syndicate leaders comprises faculty staff at the National Institute of Education of the Nanyang Technological University. Functions of the syndicate are wide-ranging, inclusive of mutual support, discussions to integrate seemingly discrete ideas and debates on current issues of concern (LEP, 2006). The key component of the DEA programme was mentoring while the LEP is that of the syndicate to \"intensifying the learning\" in an \"intensive learning relationship\" between the syndicate leader as well as among fellow participants (LEP, 2006, p. 10). In essence, the aspect of co-creating knowledge involving learning relationships is a common thread that binds the DEA and LEP.\nSynergy with the schools cum Ministry of Education: The seemingly on-going process of education reform in Singapore could be reflected in the annual workplan seminars for all school leaders, officers from the Ministry of Education, and invited guests from tertiary institutions, and exemplified in policy emphases such as IT Masterplan in Education 1997; National Education 1997; Thinking Schools, Learning Nation 1997; MOE Curriculum Review 1997; Desired Outcomes of Education 1998; Developing Thinking Schools: A Strategic Perspective on Education for the 21st Century 1999; Toward Ability-Driven Education 1999; School Excellence Model 2000; IT Masterplan II 2002; Innovation and Enterprise 2003; Teach Less Learn More 2004; Touching Hearts, and Engaging Minds: Preparing our Learners for Life 2005.In relation to the above, school leaders in Singapore are ranked annually and they are held accountable for all key aspects of school matters, with \"roles and responsibilities\" defined as follows: \"leadership, strategic planning and administration, and management of staff, students and resources\" (Principals' Handbook (Ministry of Education, 2006)). The handbook is a guide to all school leaders, issued by the Ministry of Education, and made available to all education officers via the ministry intranet. To a certain extent, the pressure on school leaders in Singapore is akin to those experienced by counterparts elsewhere, in meeting accountability expectations (Billot, 2002), to the extent that the ministry is reviewing areas of the principal's duties that can be offloaded to other appointment holders like the administration manager, operations manager and vice principal.With such emphasis on accountability, it has been inevitable that the preparation of school leaders be deemed important. Implementation of the DEA and LEP programmes encompasses the direct involvement of the National Institute of Education as well as the schools and Ministry of Education in repeated yearly cycles over a sustained period for more than two decades. The Singapore Ministry of Education recruits potential school leaders for the DEA and LEP participants of the National Institute of Education, and the participants are attached to schools for a substantial period in the course of their headship preparatory programme. The financial sponsorship in terms of full-pay as well as opportunity of time in terms of full-time in-service learning, are distinctive features of both the DEA and LEP programmes. This financial sponsorship is in congruence with the \"government's commitment to human capital development\" (Parliamentary Debates Singapore, 2002b) that as a small nation, Singapore has \"invested heavily\" in people, in a quest to \"continue to thrive and prosper in an uncertain world\" (Parliamentary Debates Singapore, 2002a).The financial support also includes the international component of the LEP programme whereby each team of participants in the same cohort visit a different country. The participants, facilitated by their tutor and accompanied by a ministry nominated principal from school, seek to understand aspects of leadership and innovation beyond the shores of Singapore. Beyond the intra-team sharing, there is also structured inter-team exchange of information in the form of team presentations and reports upon their return from the international trips. All expenses incurred for the international component of the LEP programme are undertaken by the Singapore Ministry of Education.Void of any official position and responsibilities, participants of the school leadership preparation programmes are offered the opportunities of time and space to focus on the exploration and consolidation of learning. Such synergy with the schools and ministry provides the LEP faculty staff sufficient space to focus on the professional aspects of the programme and be free from the shackles of issues pertaining to recruitment, funding and placement of participants before, during and after the in-service programme.\nCreating the next wave of seascape change: After more than two decades of conception and delivery of school leadership preparation, it is apt to re-ascertain future direction in times of on-going change. It is inevitable that the Institute of Education, being the sole tertiary school leadership preparation institute in Singapore, moves ahead in its school leadership preparation for the future.In Singapore, mentoring research indicates behavioural norm of principalship practice that encourages the continual creation of learning. The attachment-school principals in the former DEA programme served as mentors to participants in the programme. There is a lack of evidence to prove that the DEA mentors were not innovative in their approach and their proteges were denied opportunities to learn innovatively. In contrast, it has been reported that in DEA, the participant proteges presented case studies of incidents in the mentor's schools during review meetings organised by the facilitators of the program, and \"through these presentations they learnt how different school leaders worked and how the various mentors tackled problems in innovative ways\" (Low, 2001, p. 33). The learning relationships could help both mentor and protege perceive matters innovatively.In the current LEP, the role of the attachment-school principal is that of \"investing\" in the participant's \"development in innovation\" as the participant \"should produce marketable results for the school\" (LEP, 2006, p. 7). The focus of LEP is on preparing school leaders for tomorrow who are able to innovate as they lead, as they work in contexts characterised by uncertainty and rapid change.The focus on change and innovation does not contradict highlights of research findings on leadership mentoring in Singapore that indicate the pervasive impact in generating learning. The concerns that mentoring may not be contributing to critical reflective leadership but passing on conservative role assumptions and practices (for instance, Southworth, 1995) could not be substantiated as the findings reveal otherwise. Leadership mentoring in Singapore has transcended the \"traditional apprentice models ('this is what I always do, so you should do the same')\" (Daresh, 1995, p. 14). Effective mentoring gives confidence to proteges in a period of change and uncertainty (Bush and Coleman, 1995; Lim, 2005).Further, there has also been a recent focus on the development of system-wide \"structured mentoring programme, with a strong school-based mentoring component\" in order for beginning teachers with the \"necessary guidance and en-culture them in the ethos and values of the profession\" (Touching Hearts, Engaging Mind, (Ministry of Education, 2005, p. 12)). With the impending pervasiveness of mentoring cascading from the level of school leadership preparation to the induction of beginning teachers, the systemic impact of mentoring could be extended. In view of the above, the integration of the key foci of innovation and mentoring, in LEP and DEA respectively, could possibly be explored.\nConclusion: Mentoring as a concept and a practice in Singapore encapsulates quintessentially the prime elements of learning and relationships, in featuring friendship, collaboration and mutual learning. Tapping on this uniqueness renders the co-creation of knowledge feasible in the evolution of school leadership programmes. In local contexts, synergy with the schools and Ministry of Education helps to facilitate the process. More than two decades of school leadership research and practice suggest the capitalisation of such core aspects, as programme developers ride beyond the existing wave and create the next wave of seascape change.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine distinctive features that have surfaced in school leadership development programmes for more than two decades in Singapore.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws on information gathered from existing literature and the author's involvement in the programmes.\nFindings: - The Diploma in Educational Adminstration (DEA) programme and the Leaders in Education Programme (LEP), offered by the National Institute of Education of the Nanyang Technological University, primarily adopted the mentoring model and innovation model respectively. Irrespective of the models, evidence is provided to illuminate the co-creation approach as well as synergy with the schools and Ministry of Education that permeate both programmes.\nPractical implications: - Instead of discarding the past as obsolete, it is suggested that programme developers take cognizance of local distinctive features in leadership preparatory programmes and capitalize their strengths, in their attempts to generate the next wave of seascape change.\nOriginality/value: - Provides pertinent aspects of experience over a period of more than two decades of school leadership preparation in Singapore that could be of useful reference to practitioners and researchers in the field.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The joy of pain: A gloating account of negative electronic word-of-mouth communication following an organizational setback
|
[
"Sentiment analysis",
"Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM)",
"Gloating behaviour",
"Schadenfreude feelings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the current information age, individuals have become active content creators by expressing and sharing their thoughts, opinions and sentiments regarding products, brands, managers and firms (hereafter termed as commercial information) in online reviews, blogs, tweets and Facebook postings, collectively referred to as user-generated content (UGC) (Gvili and Levy, 2016). Therefore, UGC is an important means through which people express themselves and communicate with others online. It is what is produced in the moment of being social, including the widespread of negative information. Accordingly, the recent term \"infostorm\" refers to the sudden discharge of large quantities of negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) against an entity in online media networks. Like a viral infection or an avalanche, the number of infostorm contributors increases rapidly, ultimately resulting in a massive public attack that might threaten the good reputation of the commercial entity in question. A similar phenomenon referred to as an \"online firestorm\" relates to intensive NWOM in social media networks (Pfeffer et al., 2014), sometimes also termed cyberbullying, the \"nasty effect\" of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) (Cheung et al., 2008) or \"digital tsunami\" (Evans, 2016), \"echo chambers\" and \"Echoverse\" in marketing (Hewett et al., 2016). All highlight the pervasive presence of negative and sometimes vociferous, malicious and viral outrage expressions on the internet.\n2. Conceptual development: In the following section we argue that the feeling of schadenfreude might explain the frequent and strong inclination to share negative information (gloating behavior) about companies, products and brands. We argue that actively communicating about others' adversity (i.e. gloating) provides an outlet to the passive observation of others' adversity (i.e. schadenfreude).\n3. Study 1: 3.1 Purpose and procedure\n4. Study 2: 4.1 Purpose and procedure\n5. Study 3: 5.1 Purpose and procedure\n6. Study 4: 6.1 Purpose and procedure\n7. General discussion: Along the explosive growth of online UGC and the desire of managers to better utilize this space, it is important to understand the viral diffusion of such content and to identify senders and messages that might damage reputation. Despite the prevalence of negative sWOM and its increasing importance due to the emergence of online infostorms fueled by social networking, UGC and social media (in contrast to the rich extant literature on WOM in rumors, gossip, social contagion and public opinion formation), few studies have looked at the underlying motives that drive gloating behavior.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: Recent research on word-of-mouth (WOM) has presented consistent evidence on the importance of secondary WOM (sWOM) on online user-generated content (UGC) and on diffusion of positive and negative commercial information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what motivates consumers to spread, via electronic WOM communication, negative information about commercial entities adversity using malicious verbal narratives. Based on concepts related to the joy of pain (schadenfreude) and gloating behavior the authors propose a set of hypotheses designed to test two key moderators (perceived deservingness and entity's status) as well as the process of spiteful dissemination like content assimilation, dissemination time and duration.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research consists on a series of four studies using different research methods (surveys and experiments) and a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses.\nFindings: Results show that actively communicating about others' adversity (i.e. gloating behavior) provides an outlet to the passive observation of others' adversity (i.e. schadenfreude feelings). Results indicate that schadenfreude and gloating are linked to the perceived deservingness of a commercial entity and entity status (the tall poppy syndrome). Results also show that malicious feelings and gloating behavior cause consumers to disseminate information more widely, more rapidly, for a longer period and frequently distort its content.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings contribute to literature on WOM by introducing an approach that highlights the potential negative effects of WOM on the dissemination of commercial information that might harm the relevant commercial entity's reputation and goodwill.\nOriginality/value: This study illuminates the prevalence of negative rhetoric in WOM and supports the theory schadenfreude motives as a trigger for gloating behavior in the form of disseminating negative, malicious and intense WOM regarding commercial setbacks. This research is the first to examine and demonstrates that when it comes to WOM communication, schadenfreude feelings and gloating behavior might play a central role in the dissemination of negative information and the two constructs' role in understanding infostorms, the sudden flow of large quantities of negative WOM using strong gleeful exultation. This study is the first to examine these phenomena in the business setting.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
What are the causes and effects of a company's level of employee engagement? Updating an established engagement model
|
[
"Job characteristics",
"Job engagement",
"Organization engagement",
"Employee engagement",
"Skill variety"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Low employee engagement is becoming increasingly recognized as a systemic threat to the sustainable growth of organizations worldwide, since it erodes an individual's motivation to share innovative ideas and to be optimally productive. A research paper by Alan M. Saks (2019) revisits his earlier 2006 multidimensional study on employee engagement - both from an individual job engagement and a wider organizational engagement perspective - to determine whether its findings and model remain valid in the current world of work. Of particular interest is which job characteristics most successfully predict job engagement, and whether using single-item measures produces the most valuable insights for organizations. An updated model of employee engagement causes and effects is provided by the study, based on the original data from 102 employees and findings from other more recent studies. The results of this model will be compared with the results of applying the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) model to the engagement data.\nBuilding a robust path to engagement: Engagement refers to people's expression of their talents in a positive way that creates a sense of satisfying self-worth as they conduct their job role, since in doing so they become absorbed in it with energy and dedication. To buck the global trend of low employee engagement, companies wishing to boost their competitive advantage are understandably keen to leverage the core mechanics of engaging their teams.\nThe pervasive impact of skill variety: The study's results show that the factor that most reliably predicts job engagement is skill variety, and that the next most correlated factor for job engagement as well as organization engagement is the level of organizational support an employee perceives while carrying out their work. The psychological dynamics of engagement may mean that fallbacks beneath skill variety are the provision of autonomy and feedback, which can improve an employee's experience in scenarios where their work offers minimal skill variety.\nAchieving engagement through action: Beyond the fact that skill variety was revealed to be the only characteristic that strongly leads to job engagement, there is some complexity in comparing the results from the Saks (2006) study with those of other similar studies, due to directly incomparable multiple item and single item engagement measures. An example of this blurring of measures is that the Saks (2006) study combines both job engagement and organization engagement. Nevertheless we can update the Saks (2006) model by adding the additional engagement causes that have crystallized from subsequent related research, such as training and development, transformational leadership, and a shared positive mood, as well as the corresponding engagement effects of health and well-being, burnout, and task performance.\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: This research paper concentrates on updating the model of employee engagement formed by Saks in 2006. Based on subsequent studies the original model remains valid, but can be expanded by adding causal factors of engagement such as transformational leadership and a shared positive mood, as well as engagement effects such as health and well-being and task performance. Assigning intrinsically varied work that draws on a number of skills is a good starting point for managers who wish to stimulate employees toward optimal performance.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The conditions data model supporting building information models in facility management
|
[
"Facility management",
"Building information modeling",
"CDM",
"Conditions data model",
"Maintenance model",
"User interface for building"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Building Information Modeling (BIM) represents the process of development and use of a computer-generated model of planning, design, construction and operation of a building. The BIM is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility that has transformed the way in which a building is conceived, designed, constructed and operated (NBIMS-US(tm), 2015). Currently, BIMs are widely used in construction projects for quality control, time management and financial control (Li Juan and Hanbin, 2014). According to Azhar et al. (2015), BIM modeling supports real estate business and high-level management of the investment process. Once the construction project is completed, the general contractor supplies the BIM (COBIM, 2012) to a client. A client has the possibilities to introduce BIM in the post-construction stage. However, the BIM has been little used in post-construction actions, albeit with a growing number of exceptions (Parn et al., 2017).\nResearch method: The theoretical part of this research was based on a literature review. The purpose of the literature review was to gain an overview of current research and to identify gaps, to obtain a sufficient understanding of the subject and to define a precise new research topic.\nBuilding information modeling details needed for a conditions data model platform: Maintenance classes and surface materials.\nFacility management: The ISO 41011:2017 standard defines FM as an organizational function, which integrates people, places and processes within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of the core business. FM covers two primary areas: space and infrastructure (such as planning, programming, design, construction, lease, occupancy, maintenance, renovating, energy, environment, waste, workplace design, furniture, move and cleaning) and people and organization (such as reception, catering, hospitality, information and communication technology, office supplies, travel, car park, accounting and marketing).\nBig data in facility management: At present, big data is a growing trend. It has been observed and studied in several disciplines. Literature currently identifies big data as the \"next management revolution\" (McAfee et al., 2012); the \"next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity\" (Manyika et al., 2011); the \"next big thing in innovation\" (Gobble, 2013); the \"fourth paradigm of science\" (Hey et al., 2009); etc. Gartner (2018) defines big data as \"high-volume, high-velocity and high variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation.\" The literature also presents big data use cases and experiences in FM (Ahmed et al., 2017).\nResults of interviews: The thematic interviews\nPrinciples of the conditions data model: This section describes the principles of the CDM, which has been designed according to the interview findings. It introduces the underlying architecture of CDM, defines its core elements and lists the primary sources of information needed to use big data in FM.\nDiscussion: The approach of this research distinguishes from previous studies, as it examines the case involving the use of IT-systems from a number of vendors. In addition, the data have a lead role in the CDM, and IT solutions are supporting factors. The CDM enables the generation of a novel BIM-based ecosystem with standard rules for BIM use in FM. That will have an impact on the operating methods of the entire RE&C sector and may have significant financial implications.\nConclusions: The RE&C industry has long been looking for ways to get BIMs into use for maintenance and FM in general. Standards and guidelines emphasize the life-cycle importance of the BIM, but in practice, the BIMs have been used almost solely in design and construction. There have been serious obstacles to post-construction use. First, the size of the files has limited their processing through telecommunication networks. Second, the capacity of mobile devices used by property maintenance staff has been insufficient to use the models. The third obstacle has been the content of the BIM that has been poorly responsive to FM needs. Pioneer clients have sought to promote the issue through pilot projects, but the RE&C sector as a whole has not followed their lead. Everybody seems to expect somebody else to present a cost-effective and sensible solution for removing the obstacles.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to describe how building information model (BIM) and big data can be combined in the same interface for providing new value to stakeholders, such as the property owner and user, as well as property service and workplace service companies. The research presents a new concept, which shows how the BIM can be exploited efficiently during maintenance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Initially, existing facility management (FM) processes were investigated to find out how to digitize them and identify bottlenecks. Second, BIM's data content was explored to identify the information that could be used to streamline FM processes. Third, the potential of the active data measured in the building was evaluated. Finally, research was undertaken to find out how constantly fluctuating information can be combined with BIM objects and what kind of added value that combination could offer. The literature review was used to support the primary contribution. In addition, the research problems were described and the basics of the research were obtained by interviews. The author has interviewed 27 professionals from several stakeholders.\nFindings: The first finding is that the BIM can serve as a platform for building use, various services and management when it has been adequately generated during the planning and construction phases and enriched before being commissioned. The other essential finding is the theory of conditions data model (CDM), which is a technical environment that combines active data with BIM. The most important advantages of BIM in FM are as follows: * Building owner attains better user satisfaction, acquires better quality and smarter services, saves energy, ensures better indoor conditions and improves building profitability. * Service providers can develop and offer new services, speed up operations, save resources and generate more profits. * The occupant gets a better user experience, faster and higher quality services and better indoor conditions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The CDM enables to generate for the real estate and construction (RE&C) sector a novel BIM-based ecosystem with standard rules, instead of every individual operator developing his/her own unique solution for BIM use in FM. This will have an impact on the entire RE&C sector's operating methods and will have significant financial implications in the near future. Application of this research is limited to office buildings where indoor condition measuring is undertaken continuously and where the knowledge of the use cases of spaces is available. In addition, the proper BIM in the Industry Foundation Classes format must exist. The evaluation of the validity of big data is not discussed in this article. Visualization of data and content of user interfaces will be the topic of another article by the author. This article does not deal with intricate technical details, but crucial issues are defined.\nOriginality/value: The article presents a unique method for BIM use in FM. The theory of CDM (how to combine active data with BIM) is completely new and a similar solution has not been presented earlier. The theory of the presented method will be the crucial key for BIM use and will lead worldwide commissioning. Currently, the theory is under test in the practical pilot project. The results of the project will be published in the next article.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Economic development and health improvement: mutual support in the historical UK (1541-2001)
|
[
"Economic growth",
"GDP per capita",
"Health improvement",
"Life expectancy",
"Mutual support",
"The UK"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Health improvement has been fundamental to economic development from ancient times to today. While continuous economic development leads to the elevation of living standard which includes income increase, individuals have the ability to realize their desire for better health. In other words, there exists the relationship between health improvement and economic development that features mutual support. Research in health-related fields largely endorses this argument. For example, research by Mushkin (1962), Omran (1971), Preston (1975), McKeown (1976), and Chesnais (1992) sheds earlier light. Does research in other fields, particularly economics, share this opinion?\n2. Institutions for economic development and health improvement: 2.1 Institutions for economic development\n3. Scientific and technological attitudes toward economic development and health improvement: 3.1 Technological advances applied to economic development and health improvement\n4. Economic development supports health improvement: That economic development supports individual health improvement via nutrient intake has been well studied by McKeown (1976) for the pre-1871 UK and Fogel (1994) for the UK from 1790 to 1980. Our paper will focus on the support of economic development to organized health improvement, especially the public health campaign in the second half of the nineteenth century UK. Among all factors, financial support has been selected for demonstration.\n5. Health improvement supports economic development: Literature showing how much support health improvement gave to economic development in the historical UK is rare. Chesnais (1992) noted both population growth, a result of health improvement, and economic development in the UK in the two time periods, 1870-1913 and 1946-1973, enjoyed high rates of growth. Based on BMI change, Fogel (1994) estimated diet improvement, one key aspect of individual health improvement, accounted for 50 percent of the British economic growth from 1790 to 1980. Arora (2001) found that changes in health increased the pace of growth of ten industrial countries, including the UK (1871-1992), by 30-40 percent, altering permanently the slope of their growth paths.\n6. Slower and faster virtuous cycles between economic development and health improvement: The data of British GDP per capita between 1500 and 2001 are plotted in the lower curve in Figure 1. The index, in 1990 International Dollars, was compiled by Maddison (2003). The GDP per capita in 1700 was $1,250. In 1820, it rose to $1,706. It was $2,272 in 1848 and $3,332 in 1871. It reached $5,000 in 1915 and $10,000 in 1967. In 2001, it was just about $20,000.\n7. Conclusion: From the developmental path of economic growth and health improvement in the UK from 1541-2001, this paper has uncovered one point. That is, economic development supported health improvement in both individual daily life and in organized, usually municipal, form. Health improvement at both individual and organized levels supported economic development, although there is less literature to demonstrate this. The two-way supportive relationship between economic development and health improvement is grounded in historic evidence.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the mutual disruption and support of economic growth and health improvement in the last 500 years in the UK.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is a general review and it compares institutional development, public policy, technological advances and scientific discoveries in economic growth with those in health improvement.\nFindings: The paper finds the co-existence of slower economic growth and less increasing life expectancy from 1541 to 1871 and that of faster economic growth and rising life expectancy from 1871 to 2001. It is organized health improvement that effectively propelled economic growth in the time span of 1871-2001.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings may contribute to the literature on mutual enhancement between economic growth and health improvement.\nPractical implications: The findings may also provide implications to the policy makers how important organized health improvement is to economic growth.\nSocial implications: The findings show that when UK Government was leading in organized health improvement for the population, economic grown got propelled into a faster lane.\nOriginality/value: This paper is among the first to unveil that a socially responsible government has permanent impact on the paths of both economic and social growth. It has value to other researchers attempting to understand the mutual disruption and support of economic growth and health improvement in the historical UK.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Too many products? Reaching the next billion customers of the beauty market
|
[
"Brand portfolio",
"Brand dominance",
"Declining market conditions",
"Proliferation strategy",
"Retail panel data",
"Volume and value market shares"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In global settings, as companies struggle to satisfy a wide spectrum of customer needs, it has become imperative to offer a large variety of products. Whether termed a product line expansion, product proliferation or increasing product variety, this spatial notion seeks to \"fill\" or make a market space more dense (Connor, 1981). The firm rationalizes this move by considering product proliferation a market share-building strategy that contributes to its brand's dominant position. In the past decade, products in many industries have grown more similar and thus confronted companies and brands with a disturbing, complex competitive situation. Stronger pressures on margins meant top brand names had to work hard to defend their positions. Companies that experienced growth mainly did so by launching new types of products using the same brand name, in an attempt to minimize the risk of failure and save costs. Most of these moves were line extensions, with new products developed in an existing product category.\nConducting and evaluating a proliferation strategy in challenging market conditions: Covering every market segment within the cosmetics industry to respond to different customer needs is a strategic objective of L'Oreal, which it pursues through multiple businesses such as L'Oreal Paris, Lascad and Gemey-Maybelline-Garnier for mass market products. The latter represents \"the spearhead of the Group to conquer the next billion consumers\" (L'Oreal, 2012), so we focus on them and analyze the impact of product proliferation as practiced by L'Oreal Paris, Lascad, and Gemey-Maybelline-Garnier - that is, its consumer products division (CPD) on their market share in France. For each brand, the raison d'etre is \"to offer the best of cosmetic innovation available to the greatest number of people on every continent\" (www.loreal.com/brands/consumer-products-division.aspx). These brands are available in (mass) retail channels (e.g. hypermarkets, supermarkets, hard discounters, drugstores and traditional stores).\nAre proliferation strategies obsolete in market share analyses?: During the 2000s, internationalization of the brand portfolio and micro-segmentation due to new cosmetic ingredients drove the progressive creation and introduction of a new aggregate level in L'Oreal's brand architecture, internally called the \"franchise\". It combines a prerequisite of a line extension with the characteristics of line and brand extensions by creating a product subcategory within the existing line, through micro-segmentation. This fully new branded product line is endorsed by the original parent brand name. For instance, in the hair care market segment, the launch of the Total Repair 5 product line fell under the Elseve line, with the L'Oreal Paris brand name. This line features four products: shampoo, conditioner, masque and deep restorative masque.\nThe volume vs value dilemma: maintaining a dominant position: During our study period, the challenge for the CPD was twofold: grow but still maintain that which makes the offer perceived as unique across market segments. We decompose performance over 10 years in the hair care segment to determine how well it achieved each goal (Table I) (IRI, 2004, 2013b).\nDiscussion and implications: We have argued that proliferation strategies are less effective when market conditions are deteriorating and that they can harm brand dominance. Although pruning marginal products from a product line can bring substantial savings (Quelch and Kenny, 1994), the practice adopted by the three businesses that constitute L'Oreal's CPD instead sought to expand product lines, despite changing market conditions from growth to stability and decline.\nManagerial implications: The decision to extend the product lines no longer appears to be the result of a unilateral decision by the supplier; rather, it reflects a reversal of the balance of power between suppliers or manufacturers and their retail distributors, as well as an increased willingness to give priority to store brands. The pressure resulting from an optimization of the ranking assortment, for which the fundamental objective is to improve the financial performance of retail stores (Buttle, 1984), represents a central external influence on the proliferation of products. From a marketing and sales perspective (from the manufacturer's point of view), this development simply reflects supplier-retail distributor issues and challenges the relevance of models that assume demand rate is a function of the shelf space allocated to the manufacturer's products and its competitors' products (Gomez Suarez, 2005). The mechanical nature of the predicted effects - more facings leads to more sales, regardless of product relative perceived quality, without that the exposed product is intrinsically better than its competitors within and between ranges especially when the attributes of the offers are similar - emphasizes a potential limit of these models. Managers should pay attention to the fact that although they may be suitable for store brands, the extent to which they can predict manufacturer labels performance remains questionable. New models are likely to be developed.\nConclusion: From a macro perspective, understanding the structural evolution of industries is crucial to identifying the origins of profitable market leaders that can maintain their performance over time (Lenox et al., 2007). To the extent that the performance of a company like L'Oreal will be affected and then will affect the wider industry in mature markets, it seems legitimate to investigate which scenario is most favorable for maintaining a dominant position: changing the structure of the market by reducing (i.e. concentration) or increasing the number of brands (vs franchises) in the market. Although theoretically, a more concentrated brand environment would imply lower costs and thus lower prices, we must wonder whether leading brands - including those in L'Oreal CPD portfolio - really want to maintain the current market structure, in they do not necessarily pass their economies of scale on the final sale price. In this situation, we anticipate a high risk of inertia (Schmalensee, 1978), in that the existing brands do not differ enough on potentially relevant attributes, such that they get stuck in their market position and enter into a zero sum game. Moreover, considering the level of demand and the number of brands currently available, opportunities for volume gains appear limited. Academic research advocates disinvestment, rather than investment, as an important competitive move in declining industries (Ghemawat and Nalebuff, 1990), but does this reasoning really apply to interdependent market segments that rely on one another's resources and capabilities and that participate in the overall strategy of the firm? We leave these questions to further investigation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe the rationale behind and analyze the results of a strategy in regards to changing conditions and market share dominance. For more than 20 years, with the growth in available product varieties, product and brand proliferation have become increasingly evident in many consumer markets.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This article examines how three L'Oreal mass market businesses, i.e. L'Oreal Paris, Lascad and Gemey-Maybelline-Garnier (GMG), managed proliferation activities between 1988 and 2012 on their domestic market. Data were extracted from the information resources, inc. (IRI) Census and Sample Databases (retail panel data), and information was collected from internal sources and semi-structured interviews with top executives. Brand performance was assessed using panel data structure analysis, as recommended by IRI and Nielsen. Some data, as they remain confidential, were not included in the paper.\nFindings: The study reveals that when opportunities are lacking, demand is declining, and competition is fierce - the situation that marks most mature markets - a proliferation strategy actually can yield diminishing results and reduced brand dominance.\nResearch limitations/implications: Offering broader lines appears to generate confusion and to be counterproductive in relation to theoretical assumptions. Additional research on proliferation strategies is needed, particularly in declining market conditions, which implies diminished demand and market saturation due to increased competition and isomorphic practices.\nPractical implications: When deciding to extend product lines, managers should take into account competition and more qualitative factors than those included in the models developed by and for store brands. The respective positioning and marketing strategy (i.e. challenger and leader) of the brands involved have also to be considered.\nOriginality/value: Prior research on proliferation strategies has relied on strong assumptions such as increase in demand and unsaturated markets. Through these case studies, this article shows that making the shelf space denser affects brand dominance, particularly when market conditions change. These results challenge current thinking as, in facing internal and external contingencies, managers might think which scenario is most favorable for maintaining a dominant position: changing the structure of the market by reducing (i.e. concentration) or increasing the number of brands/products in the market.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Open government data (OGD) in six Middle East countries: an evaluation of the national open data portals
|
[
"Middle east",
"Open government data"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Open government data (OGD) is defined as the \"non-privacy-restricted and non-confidential data which is produced with public money and is made available without any restrictions on its usage or distribution\" (Janssen et al., 2012, p. 258). Of late, governments have been laying emphasis upon opening the data which were hitherto stored in silos. Governments engage in OGD initiatives to tackle complex socio-economic problems besides generating economic benefits (Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2013). Furthermore, users are benefitted by the analysis of the data sets (Surowiecki, 2004). It has been underscored that OGD initiatives help in public policy development as well. Open data sets are sourced from different domains, such as traffic, weather, tourism, business, education, safety, etc. OGD initiative helps in improving citizen engagement as well as the relationship between the citizens and the government. Finally, it is anticipated that OGD initiative promotes public accountability and transparency. However, OGD remains an emerging research domain and a lot of research relates to understanding the theoretical and conceptual dimensions in different contexts (Bertot et al., 2010; Charalabidis et al., 2011; Chorley, 2017; McDermott, 2010; Napoli and Karaganis, 2010; Serra, 2014). Contextually, a number of studies have been undertaken which are emphatic upon assessing the OGD policies (Huijboom and Van Den Broek, 2011; Nugroho et al., 2015; Rothenberg, 2012; Saxena, 2017a, 2017b; Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2013). In particular, there have been more studies in the developed countries and less in the developing countries. Also, the investigation of OGD in the Middle East countries has been few and far between (Elbadawi, 2012; Saxena, 2016; Saxena and Sharma, 2016; Saxena, 2017a; Saxena, 2017b). A systematic investigation of OGD initiative in countries outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is lacking and the present study seeks to plug the gap by probing into the OGD initiatives of six Middle East countries (Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and Jordan).\n2. Related research: OGD has been defined as \"data that can be freely used, re-used and distributed by anyone, only subject to (at most) the requirement that users attribute the data and that they make their work available to be shared as well\" (Ubaldi, 2013, p. 6). OGD is one of the ways in which the government has sought to forge ties with the citizens. OGD is a concrete evidence of the evolving phenomenon of \"open government\" which rests on three bases: transparency, participation and collaboration (Wirtz and Birkmeyer, 2015). As such, \"open government\" involves building collaborative bridges between citizens and government through the deployment of information technologies (Evans and Campos, 2013). By providing increased impetus to opening the data, OGD ensures that principles of transparency, reusability, standardization and updation are being adhered to.\n3. Research strategy: In this section, we will underline a brief description of the open data provision model (Sieber and Johnson, 2015) besides providing a snapshot of the six Middle East countries. Furthermore, as an exploratory qualitative study, we adopt the strategy of scanning the national OGD portals of the six countries. Implicitly, we will probe the websites of the six countries and such an investigation is a constituent of the documentary analysis strategy.\n4. Practitioner and social implications and limitations of the study: There are implications for the practitioners besides underlining social implications. At present, the OGD portals of the six countries underline that there are many barriers to re-use the data sets by different stakeholders. Therefore, it is important that steps be taken to adopt a more focused approach toward OGD adoption and implementation. Policymakers must ensure that OGD initiatives are furthered and improvised in their country and ministries and departments should be encouraged to provide more data (Yu, 2011). There should be an institutionalization of OGD initiatives and economic value generation should be the main aim of such initiatives (Zeleti et al., 2016). Rigorous commitment of the governments is required for the success of OGD initiatives. Performance metrics should be defined by the governments to ascertain the OGD vision and goals at regular intervals (Michener and Ritter, 2017; Rothenberg, 2012; Veljkovic et al., 2014). At present, the data sets are beset with a number of usage barriers. There should be a proper authority structure to administer the OGD planning and implementation and users should be provided the incentives to use the data sets and contribute to the same. This would ensure public accountability and transparency in the true sense (Gunnlaugsdottir, 2016; Wong and Welch, 2004). Citizen engagement is important for the running of a democracy and with a two-way dialogue and discussion; governments may be able to improve upon their services.\n5. Further research directions: Further studies are required to gauge the perspectives of the relevant stakeholders as to how user engagement can be increased as far as using the open data sets is concerned. Also, the quality of the data sets requires further exploration and this would require inputs from the policy makers and bureaucrats. It may be interesting to probe as to what are the challenges before these six Middle East countries as far as opening the data sets is concerned. Implicitly, the role of culture is important to appreciate the underlying reasons for secrecy and inertia in government (Wirtz et al., 2015). An evaluation framework for assessing the open data portals may be developed in forthcoming research wherein the major technical and socio-economic challenges may be investigated. Furthermore, it would be interesting to appreciate the manner in which the innovation and efficiency in availing public services may be derived in the long run. Given that transparency and public accountability are among the major aims of any OGD initiative, further research may be conducted to ascertain the extent to which these overarching goals are being realized in these countries. Finally, a comparative perspective may be drawn to appreciate the differences between the OGD policies of the developed and developing countries to draw lessons for the Middle East region.\n6. Concluding remarks: As deduced from the aforesaid, OGD initiatives in the six countries are \"data over the wall\" (Sieber and Johnson, 2015). Table IV summarizes the OGD portals across the six countries in line with the structural and functional characteristics identified by Afful-Dadzie and Afful-Dadzie (2017).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to do provide an overview of open government data (OGD) frameworks in six Middle East countries (Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and Jordan) and to underscore the barriers in using the open data sets.\nDesign/methodology/approach: OGD framework offered by Sieber and Johnson (2015) is deployed for the present purpose. Primarily, documentary analysis is being used for substantiating the study and the national portals of the six countries are investigated.\nFindings: In line with the frameworks chosen for this study, OGD initiatives across the six Middle East countries are at an emerging phase. All the six countries qualify for the \"data over the wall\" model as advanced by Sieber and Johnson (2015), wherein there are basic provisions of \"data aggregation.\" Furthermore, the data are incomplete and outdated, which serve as barriers in using these data sets for analysis and interpretation. Therefore, there are a number of barriers in using the open data sets. However, there are many prospects for using these data sets which would improve public accountability and transparency in the long run.\nPractical implications: Besides helping in improved decision-making, the governments may be in a better position to appreciate the relevance of adopting a robust OGD initiative in facilitating the economic growth of their country.\nSocial implications: This study is relevant for ensuring that citizen engagement is promoted and there is co-creation of public value.\nOriginality/value: Hitherto, OGD has been investigated in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) but the other countries in Middle East have not been investigated. This study selects six countries outside the GCC ambit and investigates the nature and scope of OGD initiatives in each of them apart from underlining the barriers in using the open data sets.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Developing trainee school teachers' expertise as health promoters
|
[
"Health education",
"Teachers",
"Schools",
"Public health",
"United Kingdom"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper describes the outcomes of an ongoing collaboration from 2007 between public health and teacher education departments at three higher education institutions (the Universities of Southampton and Brighton, and Brighton and Sussex Medical School) in South-East England. It is set in the context of an increasing national drive to embed public health and health improvement knowledge and skills in the \"wider workforce\", i.e. those whose primary roles are not to improve health but who have a potential to impact on health in the way that they deliver their work or interact with their client groups. During this time the National Healthy Schools Programme for England has almost achieved its goals of having every school in England engaged with its health promoting school programme (99 per cent) and is in the process of launching a new phase called the Enhancement Model (Department of Children, Schools and Families and DoH, 2009). In addition there has been increasing recognition of the importance of Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) (MacDonald, 2009), following consultation teaching PSHE will become a statutory requirement in all schools from 2011.St Leger (1998) has shown that teachers in Australian schools had little understanding and training in many health issues, let alone the complexities of the health-promoting school, and stated that professional development for teachers should be increased and be more rigorous (St Leger, 2004). However, progress on including knowledge and skills regarding health and wellbeing in the initial training and education of teachers entering the profession has been slow, both in England and elsewhere (Jourdan et al., 2008). As the authors state, factors affecting the way in which health promotion programmes in schools are implemented include teachers' perceptions of their role in promoting health and their belief in their effectiveness. There is some evidence that teachers who have received training in health promotion are more likely to be involved in health promotion activities in schools, and that personal competence and motivation have an effect on the amount of health promotion undertaken (Leurs et al., 2007). Other recent studies highlight the need for better understanding of teachers' knowledge, skills and attitudes and more adequate teacher training (Davidson, 2007; Marks, 2009). The international call for action for \"Schools for health, education and development\" (Tang et al., 2008) also recommends investment in building the capabilities of teachers to implement health promotion in schools. While continuing professional development to raise teachers' knowledge and skills regarding health promotion is important, the work described here is based on the premise that by equipping trainee teachers with the basics of these competencies in their initial training they will be more motivated to address health and wellbeing issues and better able to contribute to health promoting schools when teaching.This paper will describe:* the current policy background for public health development and health promoting schools in England;* a survey undertaken to assess the content of teacher training courses in the South-East of England in terms of their inclusion of knowledge and skills regarding health and wellbeing;* a longitudinal survey of trainee teachers in two institutions at commencement and completion of their one-year post-graduate teacher education course;* curriculum mapping of one initial teacher training course to explore health and wellbeing content in more detail; and* plans for a revised curriculum intervention to be evaluated in 2010.\nBackground: Public health workforce development\nPhase one: survey of teacher training courses in South-East England: Methods\nPhase two: longitudinal survey of trainee teachers in South-East England: Methods\nPhase three: curriculum mapping of PGCE course against the Public Health Skills and Career Framework: Methods\nOverall discussion: The survey of HEIs, and the more detailed mapping exercise of one institution's primary and secondary PGCE curricula, show that whilst some aspects of health and wellbeing are included in teacher training they are often dealt with in an atomistic fashion resulting in a programme that lacks coherence. As a consequence trainees may find it difficult to make the fundamental connections between health and education and therefore the importance of this in their future role as health promoters. This is of concern as the Government's policies and intentions are quite clear about the involvement of schools in increasing children's life chances by improving their health and wellbeing. This must include teachers' understanding of how health and education outcomes are inextricably connected, as well as enabling them to acquire the knowledge and skills to be effective health promoters and actively engage in that role. As St Leger (2004) states, health-promoting schools require teachers to embrace school-wide actions and community and health sector partnerships. This implies greater understanding not only of health improvement for individual behaviour change, but also public health competencies about population health, organisational and community change. In addition to continuing professional development, the inclusion of key public health skills in initial teacher training courses may contribute to fulfilling these expectations.Although our survey of trainee teachers is limited in relation to its representativeness, if we were to assume those who participated in the survey at both time points were in fact more interested in health, then the results we obtained highlight the need for changes in the existing curricula to an even greater extent. Poor knowledge of physical activity recommendations which remained the same at the end of the year, as well as \"bottom-of-the-list\" ratings given to nutrition in a few of the questions, suggest that these are areas which could be expanded upon in the health-related content of the curriculum, especially in view of rising child obesity trends. On the other hand, the small decrease at the end of the year in the number of trainees who agreed that the school environment affects students' food choices, as well as the slight increase in those who believe teachers have no influence on their students' health also suggests the perception among a few that it is beyond their scope to address such issues. As recognised by the trainees themselves, it is perhaps through better partnerships with parents that teachers can find their role as health promoters in schools, including the areas of physical activity and nutrition. The more recent development of opportunities for family learning provided by Extended Services, may provide a context for this, but students will still need to be prepared for this role. The reduction at end of the course in some attitudes about the trainees' role as health promoters and in the importance of inclusion in their training of health topics, such as physical activity, drugs, smoking, alcohol and nutrition, is of concern but may partly reflect the impact of trainees' exposure to the reality of the pressures facing teachers in day-to-day teaching.The PGCE course is only of nine months duration, of which four months are spent in placement schools. Providers of initial teacher education are funded on a single subject basis and are under pressure to respond to a range of separate initiatives, as well as preparing teachers once qualified to see the \"Big Picture\" of the school curriculum. This emphasises the importance to children and young people's learning experiences of cross-curricular learning and activities outside school; and highlights a number of overarching themes, which include health as well as diversity, sustainable development, and global citizenship for example. Addressing all these issues in the PGCE course is logistically difficult and points to the need for further development and modification of courses to instil a better understanding of the fundamental linkages between these dimensions and realistic expectations of the wider professional role of teachers and schools to promote children's health. A revised curriculum, including knowledge about the links between health and education, building skills and confidence in addressing health topics, and developing partnerships with support and resources available from health and community sectors, is being evaluated. However, it will be important for future research to follow a cohort of newly qualified teachers into the workforce to assess the longer-term impact of this training on their competence and confidence in health promotion, the impact of other factors such as school organisation and management and relationships with parents and to assess the training needs of existing teachers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report the outcome of an education and public health collaboration investigating the impact of adapted training to enhance teachers' potential role to promote child health and wellbeing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study was conducted in three phases: a survey of the health education content in universities in initial teacher training courses; a longitudinal survey at the commencement and completion of courses to capture trainees' knowledge, skills and attitudes towards health and their role in health promotion; and mapping curriculum content against qualified teacher standards and public health competencies.\nFindings: - Training about health varies largely between institutions. Trainees' knowledge levels remained low after training; ranked importance of key health topics - nutrition, alcohol, smoking, - decreased significantly; a majority thought that teachers and schools play an important role in health promotion, but significant increases were also noted in the minority who thought health promotion is not part of their remit (Phase 2).\nOriginality/value: - To the best of one's knowledge, similar work has not so far been reported. While teachers are in a prime position to influence child health, trainees require knowledge and skills to realise their public health potential.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analytic framework for interdisciplinary collaboration in inclusive education
|
[
"Collaboration",
"Interdisciplinary",
"Boundary crossing",
"Expansive learning",
"Inclusive education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Inclusive education policies in Western Europe and the USA require that schools accommodate equal opportunities for learning and development for all students (Norwich, 2002; Terzi, 2014), which means that mainstream secondary education has to be responsive to a variety of educational needs. Yet, secondary schools are not well prepared for this task (Hedegaard-Soerensen et al., 2018; Kozleski et al., 2013; Sharma et al., 2012; Waitoller and Kozleski, 2013). A means to close the knowledge gap is sought in enhancing collaboration between child support services and schools (Waitoller and Kozleski, 2013). Interdisciplinary collaboration is considered to be fertile ground for professional learning (Carlile, 2004; Engestrom, 2014). Both child support workers and teachers possess domain-specific knowledge. It is assumed that in crossing the boundaries of their respective disciplines, actors can share, translate and eventually integrate this knowledge (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011; Carlile, 2004; Daniels, 2011; Engestrom, 2010; Hedegaard-Soerensen et al., 2018). This article develops a heuristic model for analysing interdisciplinary learning in collaboration in inclusive educational settings. The contribution of the framework lies in its potential to arrive at a better understanding of the interrelated aspects in collaboration, and how collaboration processes can be shaped. Examples from a case study are used to illustrate the value of the framework.\nCentral concepts of social learning in interdisciplinary collaboration: Collaboration continuum\nIdentity and trust formation in interdisciplinary collaboration: Identity formation across bounded units\nAnalytic framework for interdisciplinary collaboration: Identity, trust and boundary crossing in relation to the collaboration continuum\nCase study: The empirical context, used to illustrate the use and merit of the framework, concerns two mainstream schools for secondary education in The Netherlands. In these schools, child support workers are part of a support team that is located at the school. This support team interacts with the teaching staff when students' needs exceeds beyond the capacities of the teachers. The school management supervises day-to-day operation of the support team. The data consist of individual interviews with support team members and focus group interviews with teachers. The focus of analysis was the perceived quality of co-work between the support team and teaching staff. Furthermore, the perception of management support for collaboration was taken into account.\nDiscussion: In interdisciplinary collaboration, professionals learn as they transfer, translate and transform knowledge across the borders of domains (Carlile, 2004; Engestrom, 2014). The analytic framework suggested in this article served as a heuristic model for getting a firmer grip on the complex processes of interdisciplinary learning in collaboration. As demonstrated, the framework helped to identify the level of co-work and the related levels of boundary crossing and learning in the two schools. In addition, the framework helped to unearth aspects in collaboration that can be influenced by participants and management. The school B case shows that trust and identity, serving as a catalyst for higher levels of boundary crossing, can be fostered by providing room for interaction, and by creating a trusting environment that accommodates learning.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic framework for studying interdisciplinary learning in collaboration between schools and child support services. The analytic framework connects the concept of boundary crossing with the social-psychological processes of trust and identity formation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is written from a theoretical point of view. Empirical research data from two schools are used to illustrate the use and merit of the proposed framework.\nFindings: The framework proved to be useful for identifying the level of co-work in the two schools. In addition, the framework helped to shed light on how the support for trust and identity formation by the school management aids interdisciplinary learning.\nResearch limitations/implications: The most essential feature of the suggested framework is its use of complex theoretical concepts. Examining each concept in detail would ignore the interconnected nature of concepts in the framework, as well as the fact that it is not yet known how this interconnectedness works. Therefore, the framework is based on a generalised use of the concepts.\nPractical implications: The contribution of the framework for practice lies in its potential to shed light on how processes in interdisciplinary collaboration can be shaped. The framework can be used to inform contextual interventions that seek to optimize collaborative structures.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to understanding the complex processes that constitute interdisciplinary learning in collaboration.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Principals' leadership behaviour: values-based, contingent or both?
|
[
"Principals",
"Leadership",
"Values",
"Contingency theory",
"School principals",
"Professional values",
"Leadership behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research on school leadership stands accused of neglecting the influence of values on professional practice time and again (e.g. Hodgkinson, 1978; Richmon, 2003; Hallinger, 2011). Acknowledging that \"capacity building\" forms the essence of leadership (Dimmock, 2012, p. 18), the vital role values might play in this endeavour seems intuitively plausible: compared to administrative tasks, leadership activities are premised on individual judgements about preferable options to a markedly higher extent. They constantly necessitate choices among competing alternatives for resource allocation and deployment including one's own capabilities, and the leader's values might endow these choices with purpose, meaning and coherence (Begley, 2003; Campbell et al., 2003; Fullan, 2003; Harris and Johnston, 2010).\nTheoretical considerations, prior research and aims of the present study: An individual's values and their socio-cultural embedding\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Identifying professional value profiles\nDiscussion and outlook: In this paper an explanatory model of values-based contingency leadership was developed by drawing on the work of Day et al. (2001) and other researchers (see above). It was argued that professional values - i.e. conceptions of desirable modes, means and ends in coping with the demands of one's professional activity - modify contextual influences on leadership behaviour by informing the value holder about appropriate and expedient responses to contextual prerequisites. With regard to the framework's methodological implications, typological approaches were proposed in order to take due account of the idea that: the focus or breadth of value profiles might reasonably foster or hinder value-congruent activities; various contextual features together generate school-specific configurations of opportunities and constraints for action.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Concepts of values-based leadership posit that school principals' professional practice must be informed by values to ensure coherently purposeful activities. Contingency models stress the contextual dependency of professional practice and the need to match activities to local opportunities and constraints. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile both positions from an integrative perspective and to illustrate examples of \"values-based contingency leadership\" (Day et al., 2001).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Analyses draw on survey data from 56 German schools in order to relate professional values stated by the principals as well as organizational features of their schools to teacher ratings on leadership behaviour (n=910). Instead of scrutinizing singular variables in isolation, a typological approach serves to identify value profiles as well as organizational configurations. Analyses of variance are applied to examine the combined effects of both factors on leadership behaviour.\nFindings: Interactional effects in the sample indicate that contextual influences are not homogenous across differing value profiles of principals who operate under equal conditions. Descriptive patterns of leadership behaviour within each organizational configuration reveal how principals accentuate leadership activities according to their value profile.\nResearch limitations/implications: Due to the low statistical power of the small sample, findings are clearly exploratory in nature. However, replication and extension studies seem fruitful, as effect sizes of value-context interactions are consistent with theoretical assumptions and not artificially inflated by common-source variance.\nOriginality/value: This paper elaborates and exemplifies the moderating role of values in contextual influences on leadership behaviour. It also provides deeper insights into the content and structure of professional values advocated by school principals.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Home culture consumption as ambivalent embodied experience
|
[
"Consumer acculturation",
"Home",
"Embodiment",
"Long-term migration",
"Multi-modal methods"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Within consumer acculturation theory, it is a well-established insight that identity conflict and acculturative stress erupt as migrants negotiate cultural differences in a new host culture. Against this backdrop, home culture consumption - referring to practices of reconstituting familiar habits associated with the culture of origin and practices of re-inhabiting the homeland - has been predominantly framed as a resource for mitigating the stresses of migrants' encounters with cultural difference, enabling a renewed sense of cultural identity and embodied comfort (Askegaard et al., 2005; Bardhi and Askegaard, 2009; Kreuzer et al., 2018; Rojas Gaviria, 2012).\nTheoretical perspectives on home in migration: Our inquiry into how practices of home culture consumption are experienced by migrant consumers is situated within consumer acculturation theory. Following a brief review of the main assumptions of consumer acculturation theory and its key conceptual turns, we review the concept of home in migration and turn towards a resurgent focus on theories of embodiment in analysing practices and experiences of home culture consumption. This stream is particularly relevant for understanding migrant consumers' negotiations of home because home is not only a symbolic order or a physical place or a set of practices but also an embodied state of being-in-the-world. In particular, we discuss Dion et al.'s (2011) framework of ethnic embodiment as a useful way to understand the multi-layered modes of being-in-the-world, which influence migrants' consumption of their home cultures.\nMethod: Research context\nFindings: In the face of multiple bodily disorientations and re-orientations in migration, participants conveyed a wide range of practices of home culture consumption, which centred on reconstructing familiar objects, spaces and intercorporeal interactions. In addition to frequently reinforcing the already established potency of familiar food in symbolising cultural rootedness and evoking the comforting viscerality of being at home while away (Askegaard et al., 2005; Bardhi et al., 2010; Dion et al., 2011; Lindridge et al., 2004; Thompson and Tambyah, 1999; Ustuner and Holt, 2007), participants frequently pointed to the sense of comfort and bodily ease they experienced when conversing in their mother tongue, reinforcing previous insights about the importance of language in constituting ethnic embodiment (Dion et al., 2011). Participants also reconstituted familiar ways of inhabiting the spaces of everyday life with others. A sense of being at home in New Zealand was reinforced through the re-creation of familiar intercorporeal rhythms and rituals with family members, friendship networks, localised migrant communities, religious communities and the local neighbourhood. The active reinscription of remembered habits also occurred in the context of short-term visits to the culture of origin. Through homecoming practices, in which participants consumed food from home, re-experienced familiar bodily sensations and re-enacted habitual modes of intercorporeal interaction, participants carved out a sense of place and presence within their cultures of origin (Rojas Gaviria, 2012, 2016). By reinscribing familiar sensuous relations to material and socio-spatial environments, participants experienced a close interweaving between being-in-the-world, being-in-the-world with others and remembering being-in-the-world - in short, a sense of embodied anchoring.\nDiscussion: Embodied unmaking of home\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The consumer acculturation literature argues that reconstituting familiar embodied practices from the culture of origin leads to a comforting sense of home for consumers who move from one cultural context to another. This paper aims to extend this thesis by examining further dimensions in migrant consumers' experiences of home culture consumption.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper analyses data gathered through multi-modal depth interviews with Southeast Asian skilled migrants in New Zealand through the conceptual lens of embodiment.\nFindings: Building on Dion et al.'s (2011) framework of ethnic embodiment, the analysis uncovers home culture consumption as multi-layered experiences of anchoring, de-stabilisation and estrangement, characterised by convergence and divergence between the embodied dimensions of being-in-the-world, being-in-the-world with others and remembering being-in-the-world.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper underscores home culture consumption in migration as an ambivalent embodied experience. Further research should investigate how other types of acculturating consumers experience and negotiate the changing meanings of home.\nPractical implications: Marketers in migrant-receiving and migrant-sending cultural contexts should be sensitised to disjunctures in migrants' embodied experience of consuming home and their role in heightening or mitigating these disjunctures.\nOriginality/value: This paper helps contribute to consumer acculturation theory in two ways. First, the authors show how migrants experience not only comfort and connection but also displacement, in practices of home culture consumption. Second, the authors show how migrant communities do not only encourage cultural maintenance and gatekeeping but also contribute to cultural identity de-stabilisation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Nature of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in South Africa
|
[
"Interpersonal communication",
"Communication performance",
"Non-traditional procurement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Ensuring effective communication across all procurement typologies has been perceived as the panacea for ameliorating tensions, fragmentations and high-stake crisis situations that require previously autonomous individuals, teams and organizations to come together in a functional system and collaborate towards attaining a shared common goal (Fodor and Flestea, 2016; Xie et al., 2010; Khurana et al., 2011; Ibrahim et al., 2013; Sha'ar et al., 2017). Various research works have underscored the need to understand the communication challenges and communication performance in various procurement typologies in construction project delivery (see Emmitt and Gorse, 2003; Xie et al., 2010; Liu, 2009; Dainty and Moore, 2000; Gorse et al., 2006; Gorse and Emmitt, 2003; Xie, 2002). However, most of these existing studies have primarily focused on traditional procurement systems applied in construction project delivery. In recent times, non-traditional procurement models have increasingly gained acceptance due to their superior performance compared to traditional models in both developing and developed countries (Song et al., 2009; Xue et al., 2010; Bresnen, 2010; Chan et al., 2010; Kent and Becerik-Gerber, 2010; Hartmann and Bresnen, 2011). It has been suggested that non-traditional procurement models are continually evolving in response to changing market conditions in construction supply chains (Davis and Love, 2011; Kelly, 2011; Miller, 2009). However, from extant literature, there are evidence to suggest that, due to many factors, most benefits of non-traditional procurements have not been optimized (Hartmann and Bresnen, 2011; Morwood et al., 2008; Love et al., 2010; Davis and Love, 2011; Kelly, 2011; Xue et al., 2010).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 The South African construction industry (SACI)\n3. Research design and approach: Many research works on communication performance measures have notably adopted an a deductive and objective research approach through the use of questionnaire survey, drawing on the practical and theoretical experience and involvement in the communication process (see Thomas et al., 1998, 1999; Xie et al., 2000, 2010; Xie, 2002; Liu, 2009; Kwofie, 2015; Murray et al., 2000; Sonnenwald, 1996; Shen, 1992). In ensuring theoretical validity, this study adopted a quantitative design using a questionnaire survey to elicit primary data due to its suitability in assessing a research phenomenon objectively (Creswell, 2013; Fellows and Liu, 2008). The study adopted the communication performance measurement variables based on the Thomas et al. (1999), which has become a model tool for evaluating communication performance in the construction project delivery (in Table I) (see Thomas et al., 1998; Xie et al., 2000, 2010; Dawood et al., 2002; Xie, 2002; Liu, 2009; Kwofie, 2015; Murray et al., 2000). It must be noted that, in reality, construction communication can take the form of intrapersonal, interpersonal and organizational forms (Kwofie et al., 2015, 2017; Xie et al., 2010; Liu, 2009). However, Kwofie et al. (2015) and Xie et al. (2010) suggested the pursuit of assessing information composition and flow as a veritable way of generically evaluating communication performance. This approach is deemed as a pragmatic way of significantly making improvement in construction communication performance. Hence, the study adopted a generic way of assessing the nature of communication performance in non-traditional procurement as a foundation that will stimulate future studies focusing on the intrapersonal, interpersonal and organizational communication in non-traditional procurements.\n4. Results, findings and discussion: 4.1 Characteristics of profile of respondents\n5. Discussion of findings: The assessment of the communication performance in the interpersonal and organization communication among project teams in non-traditional procurement, based on the frequency ratings of the indicators, revealed results that are consistent with communication performance experienced in traditional procurement systems as well as those that are unique here in this study. Based on the overall assessment of very frequent to never occurring ratings, the findings reveal varying degrees of occurrence in the level of accuracy, timeliness, understanding, distortions, completeness, gatekeeping, protocols and barriers in the communication performance among the project teams.\n6. Limitation and future research: This study has some limitations that are worth noting in order to accentuate the findings and the inherent conclusions and generalizations. The study has accounted for the generic assessment of the communication performance in non-traditional procurement. However, what accounted for these performance could not be deduced and explained from the study. Even though the understanding is clear on the communication performance based on frequency of occurrence, it will be important to gain further insights into the factors accounting for these occurrences. Hence, further studies are required to explore both the human and technological factors that account for these occurrences in order to gain holistic insights into the communication performance in non-traditional procurement.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Non-traditional procurement is thought to offer enhanced benefits over traditional contracts. However, several factors significantly impacting the optimization of the benefits have been suggested. Even though effective communication is ranked high among these factors, not enough empirical insights have been given to the nature of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in construction project delivery. The purpose of this paper is to focus on understanding the taxonomy of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in the South African Construction Industry, given the centrality of communication to team effectiveness, performance, project success and managerial efficiency.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Adopting a deductive research approach, an empirical questionnaire survey was conducted drawing on the practical communication experience of project teams engaged in projects using non-traditional procurement systems.\nFindings: Using aggregated mean scores and inter-rater agreement index and Mann-Whitney tests, the results revealed inaccuracies, barriers and procedural challenges as frequently occurring in the interpersonal and organizational communication in the adopted non-traditional procurement systems. Additionally, untimeliness and distorted information were noted to be occurring occasionally, whereas incomplete communication, misunderstood information and gatekeeping rarely occurred. Lastly, protocol-related communication challenges were deemed to have never occurred in their interpersonal and organizational communication in their project delivery. In the assessment of communication performance, the less frequently occurring assessment indicator is a testament to good communication performance, whereas the frequently occurring indicator represents a poor performance in the communication.\nOriginality/value: This systematic approach toward understanding the taxonomy of the interpersonal and organizational communication performance in non-traditional procurement is very significant toward communication performance improvement in the industry. The insight given by the findings may help construction project practitioners to focus their attention on the necessary aspects of communication in non-traditional procurements to optimize their benefits over traditional procurement models.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Inverted totalitarianism in (post) postnormal accelerated dystopia: the arrival of Brave New World and 1984 in the twenty-first century
|
[
"Culture",
"Analysis",
"Society",
"Politics and political science",
"Social values"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. The acceleration of postnormal times: Ad absurdum ad infinitum to the death of the future: The leitmotif of modern times is its idea of progress, usually interpreted as \"change towards the better\", through the advances of science and technology. This notion of change as social progress represents a departure from the norms of pre-modern times when normality meant very little change from one generation to the next. As a matter of fact, in the mostly static societies of pre-modern times, change was usually viewed as something \"abnormal\"; hence, one could argue that the advent of modernity represents the true origin of Sardar's (2010) \"postnormal times\", and late modernity is more of a radical extension of the postnormal (perhaps into post-postnormal times); at any rate, regardless of how it is labeled, it is an era in which the idea of \"progress\" is challenged, discredited and mostly discarded while the whole concept of normality is stretched into absurdity. In post-postnormal times, nothing is what it appears to be, all explanations about \"reality\" are suspect, and anything is possible - ad absurdum ad infinitum. As O'Hara (1999) relates, in the postmodern perception of normality, truth is \"never more than an improvisation\" while chaos, rather than being \"unwelcome interludes between periods of stability\", has become episodic, yet constant, thus normalized. As the God of Progress gradually replaced the ancient God of Providence, ever-increasing \"change\" became the norm[1]. Even identity and ones' perception of \"reality\" is affected by this new norm, for \"reality\" is what you make it, and your identity as well is self-made rather than inherited; hence, identity and reality are constantly changing and evolving dynamically for the postmodern man/woman. As Wolin (2008, p. 28) exclaims: \"We are experiencing the triumph of contemporaneity and of its accomplice, forgetting or collective amnesia. Stated somewhat differently, in early modern times change replaced tradition; today change succeeds change\".\n2. The imaginary narrative and the emergence of inverted totalitarianism in the brave new world of \"1984\": Perhaps the greatest myth of all is the belief that all myths were abolished in the modern era; in reality, one set of myths was merely exchanged for another (one idol replaced by another). As Wolin (2008, p. 12) points out, Max Weber underestimated the staying power of credulity when he wrote that scientific rationalism and skepticism brought about \"the disenchantment of the world\"; in fact, Weber did not foresee that the technological achievements brought about by modern science would inspire the mythical rather than banish it. Especially in a land where the imaginary narrative took hold in its very origins (as a pure child of modernity, with no trace of pre-modern history or consciousness), in its very conception of itself - in a land that gave birth to Hollywood, twentieth century advertising and the media - incredible, sometimes dangerous, myths were planted in America's sense of identity and its role in the world.\n3. Power, chaos and the panopticon: Sardar (2010) rightfully characterizes postnormal times as an era beset by contradictions and chaos; however, the flip side of that coin is the way that power takes advantage of chaos and contradiction to transform and manage the masses, masking itself while doing so, as Foucault (1977) describes well, stating that \"power abhors a vacuum\". However, one could just as easily say that power loves a vacuum, for it is the vacuum that gives power the excuse it needs to realize its will in the world. And what exactly is the will of blind power if not to bring all under its authority? As Gregg (1994, p. 192) explains (in reference to Foucault, 1977), power is driven insatiably toward totalization and so rushes in irresistibly to fill a void. As in 1984, \"Big Brother is watching you\"; inevitably, it wants to create a \"panoptical society in which each member [...] is under constant surveillance\".\n4. Inverted totalitarianism in postnormal technological society: The social conditioning of inverted totalitarianism is not only a matter of governmental control that has taken place subtly and gradually over the course of time, but on a grander, deeper scale, it is also the inevitable consequence of the role of the accelerated expansion of technique in industrial civilization - one of the most overlooked, understudied and underestimated areas of concern, as it stealthily fashions and fabricates the consciousness of humankind from generation to generation, profoundly reshaping and transforming us in its mechanistic image. This process of mechanization, as an outgrowth of industrial civilization, conditions society to accept and submit to the inverted totalitarianism of the technological society without question, even without the capacity to question, as strongly as those in the ancient world did not dare question God, myths or the supernatural, as if the role of technique in technological society is a fundamental given, shaping our consciousness and worldview almost from birth, an absolute means and ends at the same time. That its ubiquity is so absolute is the very reason why so few are able to reflect on it, as difficult as it is for fish to recognize water, and yet those who do study this area offer profound insights on its totalizing effects on human nature and society over time[5].\n5. The role of propaganda: Since the advent of First World War, the American public has been the most propagandized people on the planet while its military-industrial complex has grown to monstrous proportions, with its footprint in almost every country in the world. As it has become virtually autonomous, with very little oversight or accountability, it is a parasitical entity that feeds upon the life blood of the world, at the expense of its own citizens, who give it consent because it is in their very conditioning to give it consent, due to a century of propaganda directed at them by the technocratic elite - \"the men who know better\" the technological imperatives of a well-greased war machine.\n6. The PAC man quest for happiness in the brave new world: However, the purpose of propaganda in the brave new world of post-postnormal inverted totalitarianism is not only to serve as an instrument to manufacture consent for war; rather, its overall dominant purpose is social conditioning for total conformity - that is, to manufacture normalcy, it must be able to manufacture human nature in the image of the one-dimensional PAC man, who is its ideal citizen. PAC man is one-dimensional because he/she assumes three basic \"needs\" to fulfill to be \"happy\":\n7. Prospects for the future in twenty-first century post-postnormal times: Gidley's (2010) hope is that, through development of imagination; somehow, we will be able to \"come to terms\" with the confusion and chaos of postnormal times and \"enable a richly diverse planetary pluralism\". Her strategy is to create \"new stories\" for the youth, so that they will believe in the future. However, while this is all fine and good, she seems facile about the chaos of post-postnormal times, not seeming to recognize that on its underbelly lies the smiley-faced inverted totalitarianism of Empire and its Big Brother Panopticon, which has at times been using, and at other times purposely generating, chaos as a means to power - to deconstruct and then reconstruct the world in its image, the image of the machine - to realize \"full spectrum dominance\" in the brave new world of \"1984\", with its PAC man values and the manufactured normalcy of its PAC man citizens.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to depict how the state of inverted totalitarianism is emerging in post-postnormal times and illustrate how it shares many of the same features of the totalitarianism depicted in the novels Brave New World (A. Huxley) and 1984 (G. Orwell). It also shows how a \"way forward\" is possible through a paradigmatic reorientation of \"well-being\" and \"happiness\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is based on literature within the field of futures studies, as well as relevant sources outside the futures field. It applies R Slaughter's critical futures and F Polak's method of social critique and reconstruction in its analysis of the state of inverted totalitarianism in post postmodern times.\nFindings: It finds that the technological society and the US empire (with its attendant corporatocracy, Panopticon and PAC man values) in post-postnormal times is drifting toward a state of inverted totalitarianism, which is remarkably beginning to resemble Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and G. Orwell's 1984.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is an essay and conceptual paper, so it is limited by its conceptual, philosophical nature and the author's interpretation of social phenomena. It could also include the latest research on the role that the manipulation of internet algorithms plays in the state of inverted totalitarianism. It could also include more reconstructive details.\nPractical implications: Sheer consciousness of the state of inverted totalitarianism and the need for social reconstruction should lead to a reevaluation of the meaning of the good society and how to realize it.\nSocial implications: Social critique and reconstruction are essential to the survival of any given society or civilization, as the groundwork for the emergence of wise foresight. The creative minority of a civilization must understand its predicament, the nature of its civilizational crisis, before it can even begin to understand and meet the challenge of the future.\nOriginality/value: The paper presents post-postnormal times as the back drop through which a state of inverted totalitarianism is emerging - a social dystopia that resembles the dystopias depicted in the novels, Brave New World and 1984. Inverted totalitarianism is shown to be an outgrowth of the technological society and the American empire (a corporatocracy and Panopticon increasingly global in nature). Freedom from this emerging totalitarianism begins with the realization of its existence and its given assumptions about the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness. The paper also posits social critique and reconstruction (as well as critical futures) as a fundamental method to deconstruct and reconstruct the paradigm that supports inverted totalitarianism.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Applying the concepts of simplicity and discipline for creating customers' value in a low contact services company: an exploratory study
|
[
"Service operations",
"Operations strategy",
"Low cost airline operations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Value creation is one of the determinants of sustainable business performance. To create values for customers, firms need to innovatively blend the right strategies and practices to churn out products and services that satisfy firms' customer base. For a budget airline, as an example, offering its customer cheap travel in the form of low price ticket while maintaining basic quality and flexibility is quite challenging. Essentially, for this kind of company, the question is how to find a balanced operations approach that rightly combines cost, quality and flexibility or even innovation in order to generate value for its customers.\n2. Literature review: This section will discuss operations flexibility in different contexts. It begins with the discussion of the rigid flexibility model. The discussion will be extended to a service context.\n3. Methodology: A case study method is used in this study. It is appropriate as, to the best of the author's knowledge; the model has not been applied to a service organization. In exploring the concept of simplicity and discipline and how they create values, I am looking at a set of the best practices and procedures utilized by AirAsia. Four employees at the executive and managerial level were interviewed. The author spent approximately two hours with the senior manager of Network Management Centre as all operations fall under his jurisdiction. Besides him, this study also obtained information from a technical service manager and two executives. The information collected from the staff is complementary to each other, ensuring the internal validity of the method. I prepared a set of open-ended questions to guide the discussion. When necessary, I made a follow-up call to the informants to ascertain the obtained information. The secondary information was taken primarily from AirAsia's website: AirAsia.com.\n4. Discussion of the findings: I suggest that excellent practices and procedures done at AirAsia characterize both concepts of simplicity and discipline, which in return help AirAsia in creating value for its customers. For example, the company decision to use one type of aircraft ensures its easy maintenance and training of staffs. The use of IT at the company helps the company plan the unplanned changes. The clever use of IT has enabled the control filter, as specified by Correa and Gianesi (1994) to function properly. It simplifies the booking, sales and checking-in procedures. Furthermore, the company has locked a partnership with its IT vendors for mutual benefits where AirAsia can constantly improve their system while the IT vendor learns to create innovative products according to customer requirements.\n5. Summary: It is proposed in this study that simplicity and discipline, the two dimensions in the rigid flexibility model could be used for creating customers' values. As for the dimension of simplicity, it can be induced that the best practices at AirAsia such as using the same equipment, simplifying the booking and sales through IT, simplifying the operations through limited choices of snacks and beverages, and simple organizational structure. These practices have created simplicity for its service operations. On the other hand, some practices and procedures that can be attributed to the discipline function; are the quality or excellence culture, training and development, performance measurement, and discipline of the staff. Overall, the best practices and procedures at AirAsia contribute to simplifying its operation and disciplining the system elements, contributing to its objectives of providing low budget travel for everyone.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The research aims to find and highlight the process, procedures, and practices at AirAsia that deem to fit the characteristics of simplicity and discipline in the original model for creating value in the forms of lower operations costs, which ultimately translates into lower ticket price for Airasia's customers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A case study method is used in this study. It is appropriate as; the model has not been applied to a service organization. In exploring the concept of simplicity and discipline and how they create values, at a set of the best practices and procedures utilized by AirAsia are being scrutinized. Four employees at the executive and managerial level were interviewed. The author spent approximately two hours with the senior manager of Network Management Centre as all operations fall under his jurisdiction. Besides him, this study also took information from a technical service manager and two executives. The information collected from the staff is complementary to each other, ensuring the internal validity of the method. The secondary information was taken primarily from AirAsia's website: AirAsia.com.\nFindings: It is suggested that excellent practices and procedures done at Airasia characterize both concepts of simplicity and discipline, which in return help AsiaAsia in creating value for its customers. For example, the company decision to use one type of aircraft ensures its easy maintenance and training of staffs. The use of IT at the company helps the company plan the unplanned changes. The clever use of IT has enabled the control filter, as specified by Correa and Gianesi to function properly. It simplifies the booking, sales and checking-in procedures. Furthermore, the company has locked a partnership with its IT vendors for mutual benefits where AirAsia can constantly improve their system while the IT vendor learns to create innovative products according to customer requirements.\nResearch limitations/implications: The result does not indicate that that Airasia's operational success is due to these concepts. Rather this article suggests that the concepts of simplicity and discipline, as proven to be successfully applied to manufacturing sector, could also be potentially applied to service organizations to helps firms create value, in this company in the form of low price ticket for affordable travel.\nPractical implications: Managers in a similar service industry could use the principles and practices proposed to potentially enhance its operations flexibility.\nOriginality/value: This research is important as for one to understand the main topics of operations flexibility in services sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Sustainability and organizational transformation: putting the cart before the horse? (part one)
|
[
"Change management",
"Sustainability",
"Organizational transformation",
"Corporate leadership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nOrigins of sustainability: The growth of developed nations since Second World War has escalated demand for finite global resources to the point where the future capacity for sustained development has recurrently come into open question. Most notably, Marion King Hubbert, a geoscientist working for Shell, proposed the \"Peak Oil\" theory that predicted a peak of oil production beginning in the USA that would spread towards other global oil regions (Hubbert, 1956). Shortly thereafter, the concepts of environmentalism, Earth Day and corporate social responsibility (CSR) were established following the publication of seminal works such as Silent Spring (Carson, 1962) on the environmental effects of pesticides, The Population Bomb (Ehrlich, 1968) and The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) on the impact of economic and population growth on finite resource supplies, and Small is Beautiful (Schumacher, 1973) which countered the prevailing notion that \"bigger is better\". The precept of CSR sparked heated debate over the responsibilities of businesses beyond their obligations to shareholders (e.g. profit maximization). In particular, Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman argued that organizations pursuing their best interests under the rules of free enterprise are the primary source of benefits to society and those only individuals, not businesses, could be socially responsible (Friedman, 1970). This two-part paper will explore this issue with potential solutions.\nAmbiguous interpretations of sustainability: Corporations are familiar with the socioeconomic aspect of sustainability through ongoing CSR and corporate governance activities. Voluntary corporate engagement in sustainability programs is often motivated by risk management (e.g. compliance) and by the notion that participation in sustainable activities yields improvements in corporate image (e.g. ethical, charitable, and philanthropic) and competitive advantages including customer loyalty. However, such advantages can be difficult to evaluate in terms of their economic value and therefore an assessment of these efforts is usually not attempted. Wide scale adoption of sustainability as a corporate strategy may be further hampered by the fact that a universally accepted definition of sustainability is lacking for certification purposes. Consequently, \"no one knows what it means but everyone does it anyway\" (Roston, 2012). Given the diversity of industries involved, and their unique individual concerns, a consensus regulatory standard of sustainability may not be possible as corporations seek their individual points of differentiation.\nSustainability value proposition: Innovation, anticipating change, and building organizational success are critical elements of corporate strategy and enterprise development. Integrating environmental management processes within the \"heart\" of their business model allows corporations to reduce inefficiencies (Burke and Logsdon, 1996) and provides them with difficult-to-imitate products and services that may serve as a foundation for competitive advantage (Hart, 1995; Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Sustainability also enables greater innovation by encouraging learning and inquiry among employees, offering access to alternate markets and opportunities to differentiate products while reducing risk management and agency costs and providing access to cheaper capital and improved labour costs (Ambec and Lanoie, 2008). Organizations that engage in sustainability as a cross-functional activity directed towards problem solving experienced better economic performance than those who approached sustainability for image-, market-, risk- and profitability-related dimensions alone (Hall and Wagner, 2012). Taken together, sustainability contributes to improved margins and increased revenue growth, which ultimately yields greater shareholder return and ongoing opportunities for business growth (Carroll and Shabana, 2010; Orlitzky et al., 2003). This finding points to the discrepancies between merely \"doing\" or \"bolting on\" what one \"thinks\" to be right or beneficial versus \"acting\" with the involvement of one's entire \"being\".\nSIDEBAR: consequences of data ignorance and inaction: To further grasp the concept of sustainability it is useful to forecast an extreme case where sustainability is lacking. Recent blockbusters in the computer animated film industry such as WALL-E (2008) and Avatar (2009) present two business cases (Appendix) that poignantly convey the potential socioeconomic and environmental repercussions of failing to implement sustainable corporate strategies. Both films argue for improved planning and action based on analytical research before business opportunities become exhausted and challenges escalate. Thus, sustainability offers corporations a means to control or predict the rate of change dictated by data concerning resource availability and thereby reduce the risk of encountering extreme \"Peak Everything\" scenarios depicted in cinema. Importantly, scientific data were suppressed or ignored by \"sluggish-thermostat\" leadership in both films. As a consequence, both WALL-E and Avatar appealed to outer space as a drastic transformational solution to dire socioeconomic and environmental problems created on Earth. This strategy may not be as far-fetched as the recent discovery of rich titanium deposits on the moon raise the possibility of operations to extract and exploit this valuable commodity (Klotz, 2011). Beyond the technical challenges and cost-benefit of a lunar mining expedition, there are numerous stakeholders who would need to be actively engaged prior to implementing such a mission. In addition to film and traditional media, the rapid growth of social media will play a major role in the communication of business activities and the future of sustainability.\nDeveloping the sustainability-based strategy: The term \"corporate self-greenewal\" (Shrivastava, 1993) emphasizes the idea that organizations need to address sustainability at all levels of business (e.g. marketing, supply chain management, human resources, IT, and so on). A less committed or a green-washing approach is too incremental to deliver meaningful change and is likely to damage the reputation of the firm and impact performance over the long run. Adopting a sustainability mandate at a strategic level requires a fundamental shift in mindset around three key elements: organizational purpose, value to society, and stakeholders.\nUndertaking transformation towards sustainability: Translating organizational change initiatives into measurable goals and tactics that engage and align employees along a common path is a difficult management challenge. Balancing and incorporating competing interests, values and constituencies along with human requirements and economic priorities are a significant undertaking (Buenger et al., 1996). Importantly, \"soft skills\" including communication with internal and external stakeholders, problem solving, and inspiring and motivating others outweigh \"hard skills\" including finance and accounting for the sustainability professional to champion transformational change (Willard et al., 2010). Changing corporate culture is at the highest stage of organizational development. Brown (2011) states \"Culture change implies a change in the basic values of the organization and in the hearts and minds of the individual employees\". \"The focus of OD is on improving an organization's self-renewal process so that managers can quickly initiate changes to the corporate culture to meet emerging new problems\" (Brown, 2011). However, Brown also concedes \"There is considerable debate over whether it is possible to change these deeply held values\".\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Global corporate strategies are revealing the boundaries of organizational capabilities and the limits of the natural resource capacity that is needed to sustain business operations. Sustainability has emerged as a strategic response adopted by many corporations to reduce resource dependency and consumption costs in an effort to secure existence as a going concern while also demonstrating corporate citizenship. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This two-part paper will present a review of recent findings relevant to sustainability and change management was performed in order to develop a better understanding of factors that may hinder corporate adoption of sustainability, the role of sustainability in transformational change, and the change management challenges involved in integrating sustainability within corporate culture.\nFindings: For a growing number of organizations, sustainability has recently been elevated from \"doing\" to the level of \"being\", which involves integration into their mission, vision and shared values. Corporate leaders and governing bodies play a critical role as champions in the implementation of sustainability for organizational transformation.\nResearch limitations/implications: The limited number of examples of organizations fully embracing sustainability at a vision level stems from the fact that most executives do not fully understand the issues and do not know how to devise the governance or strategies needed to adopt a more sustainable path. However, the research points to the fact that there is a recognized shortage of empirical research work specifically focused on sustainability change and effective business cases.\nPractical implications: Organization development practitioners have a significant role in helping firms implement sustainability-focused transformations.\nSocial implications: Given the economic, ecological and social imperatives, there is urgency for firms around the world, both big and small, to adopt effective sustainability strategies that add value for stakeholders while reducing resource demand.\nOriginality/value: The research points to the fact that there is a recognized shortage of empirical research work specifically focused on sustainability change including limited examples of effective business cases.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Influence of supply chain model on quality and safety control of table grape and performance of small-scale vinegrowers in China
|
[
"Table grape",
"Supply chain",
"Supply chain management",
"Food crops",
"Food safety",
"Quality control",
"Safety control",
"Small‐scale vinegrower",
"Performance",
"China"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Grape is one of the most popular horticultural crops in the world. Countries all over the world produce grapes and the import/export of grape products extends over borders, oceans and continents (Louime et al., 2007). It is estimated that the growing area and production of world grapes are 7.44 million hectares and 66.94 million tonnes respectively in 2009 (FAO, 2009).Although there are many species of grapes, they are mainly divided into two types:1. wine grapes; and2. table grapes.China's wine industry starts relatively late, and therefore China mainly produces table grapes. Table grapes account for 80 percent of the total grapes production in China (Zhai et al., 2007). According to the United States Department of Agriculture, China is ranked first in the world for table grapes production in 2008, with a total of 7 million tons (USDA, 2008). Table grape is a labor-intensive industry, it requires more hand operations than machine processing from example, planting, pruning to harvesting, grading and packaging. The consumption of table grapes in China has increased significantly in recent years due to both substantial increase in citizens' disposal income and enhancement of health consciousness. Table grape is a storehouse of numerous health promoting phyto-nutrients such as poly-phenolic antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, so its consumption is expected to increase further in coming years because of health promotion (Bianchini and Vainio, 2001; Kaur and Kapoor, 2001). China is a typical developing country and has the comparative advantage in labor-intensive industry, thus it becomes paramount important for China to develop table grape industry with appropriate strategy and technologies.China's table grape industry faces challenges because of the fast development of the national and international table grape markets and the more stringent requirements of consumers for food quality and safety (Luo, 2003; Ma et al., 2009). China is a failed exporter of table grape, although it is the largest table grape producer in the world. Recent food scares have increased consumer concern about safety of table grapes. As a result, quality and safety have become the major constraints for the further development of the Chinese table grape sector.Most recent studies about quality and safety control of table grape are developed from a technical perspective that is primarily applicable to large-scale growers. Some of the existing literatures focus on the disease and pest control (Karabulut et al., 2004; Bentley, 2009; Jacometti et al., 2010). Given the highly perishable nature of table grapes, the quality largely depends on freshness so that some studies focus on how to keep table grapes fresh (Deng et al., 2005; Romanazzi et al., 2008; Qin et al., 2010). There are also some literatures reporting how to enhance the quality of table grapes (Garcia De Cortazar et al., 2005; Serrano-Megias et al., 2006).The issue related to different models of supply chains for fresh produce has attracted attention of leading researchers in this field (for example, Hingley et al., 2006; Narrod et al., 2009; Moustier et al., 2010). Supply chain is defined as a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer (Stevens, 1989; Wong and Wong, 2007). The complex relationships and interactions among supply chain members, including growers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and so on, could have different effect on application of technology among small-scale farmers, which can result in different effect of quality and safety control. Reardon and Berdegue (2002) suggest that due to various constraints, some smallholders may find it difficult to adopt advanced technologies and hence unable to implement high-quality and high-safety standards, which in turn reduces their performances. Yet this is not always the case. It is evident from examples of technological and organizational arrangements that enable smallholders to adopt advanced technologies for cultivation and therefore gain access to high value markets (Boselie et al., 2003; Henson et al., 2005). Other studies, such as Narrod et al. (2009) have shown that institutional mechanisms, such as collective action, in a high value agriculture supply chain can play a key role in creating farm to fork linkages that can satisfy market demands for food safety while enabling small-scale farmers to remain competitive in markets with stringent food safety standards.Viticulture takes place mainly among smallholders who are vulnerable to the forces of markets, as is often the case for other produces in China (Xu et al., 2001; Tan et al., 2006; Deng et al., 2010). The small-scale vinegrowers dominate the table grape production system and hence constitute a very important part of the supply chain. Another critical challenge that China's table grape industry facing is that small-scale vinegrowers' performance presents high regional disparities due to different conditions of produce safety and quality (Zhai et al., 2007). In some places of China, small-scale vinegrowers' incomes fell off yet the yields of table grapes went up. Some vinegrowers increased yield blindly, however the quality of grape declined. Therefore, there was a fall in the price of table grapes and the growers' income fell off. In case some vinegrowers increased both yield and grape quality, but they cannot find buyers, thus their incomes also fell off. More seriously, in some cases, a few vinegrowers had to throw their produces away, because a lot of growers do not have their own storage facilities or access to storage facilities due to lack of funds. Consequently, growers have to forsake their grapes if they cannot find buyers and unable to access to storage facilities, which causes heavy economic losses for them (China Commodity Marketplace, 2002; Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, 2008). This is of concern since many of them are poor, and table grape, as a kind of high value crops, has traditionally offered them higher returns than other crops.Apart from application of technology, the model of supply chain has also been identified as a key factor directly affecting the smallholders' performance (Bolwig et al., 2009; Miyata et al., 2009; Bijman and Hendrikse, 2003; Hellin et al., 2007). It has been received more and more attention that the lack of market access has become a major obstacle faced by smallholders (Dorward et al., 1998; Stiglitz, 2002; Dorward et al., 2004), which means that it is necessary to make some market-related interventions in addition to focusing on production-related programmes. Existing literatures present wide-ranging evidence of the improvement of smallholders' profits with institutional support to solve marketing problems encountered by them (for example, Barham and Chitemi, 2009; Miyata et al., 2009; Moustier et al., 2010).A critical shortcoming of the existing literatures is their lack of analysis of impact of supply chain model on the quality and safety control and small-scale vinegrowers' performance in China. Taking a supply chain perspective, this paper, based on an empirically investigation, aimed to examine the influence of supply chain model on quality and safety control effect and small-scale vinegrowers' performance in the context of different table grape supply chains in China. The findings are particularly useful for government departments to better understand the table grape industry that is dominated by the small-scale vinegrowers and thus provide a basis for them to formulate appropriate industrial policies.\n2. Materials and methods: 2.1 Conceptual framework\n3. Results and discussions: 3.1 The classification of modern supply chain for table grape in China\n4. Conclusions and suggestions: China is the largest table grape producer in the world, however, its table grape sector faces some critical challenges. The quality and safety requirements of table grapes become the main factors that hinder the further development of table grape industry that is dominated by small-scale vinegrowers. In addition to technology factor, the model of supply chain is considered to be a major factor affecting the quality and safety control and small-scale vinegrowers' performance.Through fieldwork and empirical research, this study has identified the types of modern supply chains for table grapes in China: agribusiness-led model and cooperative-led model. The supply chain model has impact on the quality and safety control and small-scale vinegrowers' performance. Results revealed that both the agribusiness-led model and cooperative-led model supply chain are more efficient than the traditional one in quality and safety control and improvement of growers' performance. As a focal point of the two modern supply chain models, both agribusiness and cooperative play an important role in improving the control effect and performance.Managerial recommendations\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Table grape is one of the most important horticultural crops in China. However, quality and safety have become major constraints for the further development of the Chinese table grape industry, which is dominated by small-scale vinegrowers. Strategic partnership has been regarded as an effective mechanism to manage the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a supply chain model based on different strategic partnerships on the effect of safety and quality control and small-scale vinegrowers' performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The field survey was performed in seven representative districts in China, including Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Tianjin, Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces. A semi-structured interview was adopted as the data collection method. Both quantitative and qualitative data were generated and analyzed in this research. All quantitative analyses were conducted using EXCEL 2003 version and a comparative analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.\nFindings: - The results show that modern supply chains are more efficient than the traditional one in improving the effect of safety and quality control and small-scale vinegrowers' performance.\nOriginality/value: - This paper first identified different models of table grape supply chain based on different strategic partnerships, and then analyzed the impact of supply chain model on the effect of quality and safety control and small-scale vinegrowers' performance. It concludes with some policy suggestions relative to further development of the table grape industry in China.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Sales capabilities in the wine industry: an analysis of the current scenario and emerging trends
|
[
"Sales management",
"Sales capabilities",
"Wine distribution channels"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Successful wine businesses in the current market are those that can proactively adapt their processes, structures and capabilities to rapidly changing market conditions (Gilinsky et al., 2018). Sales capabilities, in particular, are among the top business capabilities that managers of wine businesses believe should be enhanced to reinforce their organisation's competitiveness (Gilinsky et al., 2018). This is not surprising given the extensive research conducted in other industries, which has provided abundant evidence of the positive effects of sales capabilities on performance (Krush et al., 2015) and highlighted the interplay between salesperson capabilities and sales management capabilities (Badrinarayanan et al., 2019).\nLiterature review: Sales capabilities and the wine industry\nMethods: Research context\nResults: The results for each of the two research questions established in the introduction of this paper are presented separately. The following section shows the findings related to RQ1, which relates to the most critical salesperson (Table II) and sales management (Table III) capabilities in the wine industry. Next, the findings for RQ2 identified through template analysis, illustrating emerging trends related to sales capabilities in the wine industry, are presented.\nConclusions: Sales capabilities play an increasingly relevant role in the performance of wine businesses. Nonetheless, research specifically examining sales capabilities in the wine industry is not extensive. This paper has contributed to filling this gap by providing an overview of the most relevant sales capabilities at the individual salesperson level and at the sales management level. In addition, the analysis highlighted four emerging trends related to managing sales capabilities within wine businesses: capabilities enrichment, capabilities balance, capabilities specialisation and capabilities acquisition process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although sales activities in the wine industry are becoming increasingly important, there has been little research on the sales capabilities in wine businesses. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by examining the most important salesperson and sales management capabilities and emerging trends related to the management of sales capabilities in the wine industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Empirical analysis based on an explorative research design was conducted in the Italian wine industry. Sales directors from 4 of the 30 largest Italian wine producers were interviewed. Textual data were analysed using template analysis.\nFindings: Analysis of the findings revealed the most important capabilities of salespeople and sales managers and identified four emerging trends related to sales capability management in the wine industry - capabilities enrichment, capabilities balance, capabilities specialisation and capabilities acquisition process.\nResearch limitations/implications: Given that only large wine producers in the Old World were interviewed, caution should be exercised before extending the findings to small and medium-sized players and to those in the New World.\nPractical implications: The trends identified in this study provide actionable insights for designing strategies to manage sales capabilities in wine businesses.\nOriginality/value: This was one of the first studies to address the capabilities of salespeople and sales managers and to provide an in-depth examination of sales capability management trends in the wine industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Greek fiscal crisis and repercussions for the property market
|
[
"Greek fiscal crisis",
"Greek property sector"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The financial crisis that unfolded in mid-2008 led to a dramatic increase of public debt in many advanced economies. During the recent years, we have seen the transformation of the 2007 US subprime mortgage loan market crisis into a sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone (Reinhart and Rogoff, 2009, 2010). Greece and other periphery EMU countries (Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus) were severely hit by the sovereign debt \"storm\" (De Grauwe, 2010).\n2 The main causes of the current Greek fiscal crisis: There is no doubt that running consistently widening public deficits in combination with declining external competitiveness played a decisive role on the deteriorating fiscal stance of the Greek economy. Increased public expenditure during the last decade, when Greece was experiencing high growth rates, has led to dramatic increase in borrowing requirements and high levels of accumulated public debt[1]. The lack of the necessary fiscal consolidation and the continuous false reporting of fiscal data have undermined the Greece's Government credibility. In mid-October 2009, the newly elected government announced the budget deficit for 2009 was estimated to be 12.7 percent of GDP, while the previous government was arguing in September 2009 that deficit would not be higher than 6.5 percent of GDP. The EU statistics agency, Eurostat, had retrospectively revised upward the Greek budget deficit for 2009 and this has been raised to 15.6 percent of GDP.\n3 The evolution of the Greek real estate market in light of the fiscal crisis: Published data by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (2013d) reveals that the Greek economy is in deep recession with the growth rate of GDP being -5.6 percent (measured in fixed prices, base year 2005) in 2013Q1 (in comparison to 2012Q1). This recession is reinforced by the existing negative psychology because the market participants are afraid of the not-yet-seen repercussions of the Greek debt crisis. Moreover, frequent changes to tax laws create uncertainty and reduce business confidence (Kalfamanoli and Vlamis, 2008). This is expected to affect negatively property transactions and, consequently, the companies engaged in the Greek construction sector, real estate services, etc. Also, the so-called \"objective values\"[5] of real assets for both urban and rural areas are to be reviewed upwards - sometime between now and 2016 - since they are unchanged since the year 2007. This might have a further negative effect on property transactions. Data that have recently been published by the Bank of Greece (2013b) shows that the number of real estate transactions continues to fall, from 74,586 in 2009 to 74,457 in 2010, 42,814 in 2011 and 29,584 in 2012 (Table II).\n4 Concluding comments: A number of factors have contributed to the fiscal crisis that Greece has been experiencing since October 2009. Some of these factors are endogenous; have to do with the structure of the Greek economy itself, the prolonged macroeconomic imbalances that the Greek economy faces and the credibility problem of macroeconomic policy. Other factors are exogenous; have to do with the implications of the recent financial turmoil, the functioning of the Eurozone itself and the timing of the response of Europe to the Greek fiscal crisis.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The aim of the paper is to present a review of the fiscal imbalances and debt crisis in Greece and identify the possible links with the recent developments in the Greek property market.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author follows a non-technical approach to discuss a number of factors that have contributed to the fiscal crisis that Greece has been experiencing since October 2009. The author critically analyses both the \"internal\" causes of the deteriorating fiscal stance of the Greek economy (that is the prolonged macroeconomic imbalances that the Greek economy faces and the credibility problem of macroeconomic policy) and the \"external\" factors that might have contributed to the Greek fiscal crisis (that is implications of the recent financial turmoil and the timing of the response of Europe to the Greek fiscal crisis). The author then studies the extent to which fiscal imbalances and the debt crisis have affected the Greek property sector.\nFindings: The analysis indicates that the current fiscal stance of the Greek economy and the Greek property market crisis are intertwined.\nPractical implications: The author believes that these results are useful, make a contribution to the existing knowledge and provide some evidence that current economic recession has a considerable adverse effect on the property sector in Greece.\nOriginality/value: One of the distinctive features of the paper is to critically discuss the direct and indirect effects of the prolonged macroeconomic imbalances on the Greek property sector. To the best of the author's knowledge, none of the existing studies in this area provides systematic treatment of the Greek fiscal crisis as a contributory factor in explaining the current crisis in the Greek property market.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Membership has its shareholder rewards
|
[
"Customer loyalty",
"Customers",
"Asset valuation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Just for fun, let us invent the perfect business. Let us see: How about an enterprise in which your customers pay you up front to create the business - including all your marketing costs - and at the same time lock themselves into buying from you for years afterward? That sounds pretty good.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Most business executives understand the importance of taking care of their best customers but they often limit their focus to engaging the left side of their customers' brains: the calculating side, paying attention to \"hard\" financial considerations such as level of discounts. In addition, executives should think about how they can engage customers' right/irrational/emotive side. One of the most effective ways to do this is to create a feeling among key customers that they are members of an exclusive club, building on the human need to affiliate. Humans want to belong to something, and preferably, something more sublime and more significant than ourselves. We want to believe that we are getting special access, special treatment, special handling - special something. Companies that can successfully tap into this left brain affiliation need will build extraordinary customer loyalty and long term value for shareholders. The author proposes four key strategies for companies considering going down this path.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this article, Jackson considers a number of case examples of businesses that have built loyal \"membership\" customers who can be relied upon to keep coming back in large part because of the affiliation benefits they feel with the companies that serve them. Examples industries cited in the article include the real estate, retail, airlines, car rental and consumer durables. The author then draws lessons that can be applied broadly across any business considering strategies to build loyalty among its best customers.\nFindings: - Companies should proactively engage with the left brain needs of their customers. This involves developing programs that differentiate the businesses' best customers, providing visible benefits that are not available to ordinary consumers. The programs should target softer benefits and affiliation needs as well as providing good customer value. Those companies that are able to build a sense of membership among their customers will achieve increased loyalty and shareholder value.\nOriginality/value: - Brand managers have always recognized how left brain thinking can overwhelm right brain hard cost-benefit considerations in product choice. This article extends that thinking beyond brand attributes to how customers and suppliers interact. It demonstrates how company leaders who successfully target humans' left brain affiliation needs in designing customer interactions can attract and retain customers much more cost-effectively than those who limit their focus to \"hard\" cost-benefit considerations. In doing so, they can build competitive advantage and long term shareholder value.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Thinking outside the box: a neuroscientific perspective on trust in B2B relationships
|
[
"First impressions",
"Trust",
"Distrust",
"Neuroscience",
"Approach-avoidance",
"SOR model"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"When you trust people, you have confidence in them - in their integrity and in their abilities. When you distrust people, you are suspicious of them - of their integrity, their agenda, their capabilities, or their track record. It's that simple\" (Covey, 2006, p. 5). The popularity of the book The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey shows the resonance of the concept of trust in practice. But is it really \"that simple\"? The past decades marketing scholars have racked their brains on the concept of trust. Specifically, within the B2B marketing domain, the concept of trust has dominated the scientific literature (Young et al., 2015). Despite these academic efforts, the concept of trust is wrapped in a cloak of controversy (Mandjak et al., 2012; Castaldo et al., 2010). The voyage of discovery towards the true meaning of trust has culminated in a heterogeneous pool of definitions and conceptualizations (Seppanen et al., 2007; Akrout and Akrout, 2011).\nB2B relationships and the relevance of trust: B2B marketing has a lot of similarities with B2C marketing, causing scholars to challenge the classic dichotomy (e.g. Fern and Brown, 1984; Wilson, 2000; Cova and Salle, 2007). However, both at the intuitive and the empirical level, differences between B2B and B2C marketing have been stressed, specifically with respect to buying behaviour. One of the typical differences between consumer and industrial buying behaviour is the number of actors involved in the buying process - industrial buying is mostly characterised as being multiperson, i.e. as consisting of purchase groups instead of individual buyers (Wilson, 2000; Jaakkola, 2007; Johnston and Lewin, 1996; Lilien, 1987). In line with this difference lies a difference with respect to the character of the buying process - industrial buying behaviour is considered to be more professional of character and more regulated by decision guidelines (Jaakkola, 2007). However, if professional equals rational, as implicitly suggested in the early industrial marketing literature, can be questioned (Wilson, 2000). The complexity of the decision being made and the accompanied risk involved is seen as a third difference between consumer and industrial buying - the industrial buyer frequently has to deal with a higher level of complexity, both in product and in process, than a consumer buyer (Webster, 1978; Coviello and Brodie, 2001). This results in another typical difference between consumer and industrial buying behaviour, namely the number and intensity of contacts between buying and supplying actors - industrial buying behaviour is typically seen as a collaboration between buyers and suppliers, so, as a buyer-supplier relationship (Hakansson and Snehotam, 1995). It is specifically this relational dimension that has been used to differentiate B2B from B2C marketing (Coviello and Brodie, 2001).\nThe concept of trust within the B2B marketing domain: With the transition from a transactional to a relational approach when describing business interaction, in which the IMP Group took a leading role, the concept of trust gained interest by many scholars. And it still does, considering the many publications on the topic in the three leading journals on B2B marketing (i.e. IMM, JBIM and JBBM) (see Figure 1). In the 1990s, the study of trust within a marketing context was, from a conceptual perspective, at its peak. Many articles published in that period (i.e. Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Doney and Cannon, 1997; Ganesan, 1994; Anderson and Narus, 1990; Anderson and Weitz, 1992; Moorman et al., 1992; Zaheer et al., 1998; Mayer et al., 1995; Moorman et al., 1993; Rousseau et al., 1998) still form the dominant shoulders on which the current scholars lean (see also Appendix). Definitions, conceptual models and measurement scales with respect to the concept of trust have accumulated (Akrout and Akrout, 2011), and scholars studied the nature and the role of trust in relation to many other input and output variables, on which is elaborated below.\nNeuroscientific perspective on trust: With the research focus of industrial marketers on the role of trust in relation to different output variables, examinations of the nature and development of trust are tasting defeat. Despite the enormous amount of research on the concept of trust, trust is often ill defined (Akrout and Akrout, 2011; Jiang, Shiu, Henneberg and Naude, 2013). As addressed in the previous section, industrial marketing scholars are wrestling with the different elements in which trust can assumedly be decomposed. In this section, it is investigated how a neuroscientific perspective can shine a new light on this deadlock. A neuroscientific perspective on the nature of trust, the trust-building processes and the mediating role of trust is described below (see Appendix 2 for a glossary containing the neuroscientific terms used in the text below).\nTowards a new conceptualisation of (dis)trust and trust building: The neuroscientific insights presented above are conceptualised in Figure 3. The figure is based on the stimulus-organism-response model (SOR), which sprouts from the psychophysiological framework for marketing research (Wang and Minor, 2008). SOR models found their scientific entry in the 1960s in the field of consumer psychology, and were the response to the input-output models in which the consumer was seen as a rational entity and perceived as a \"black box\" (Jacoby, 2002). Within an SOR model, it is explicated that a stimulus creates an internal reaction within the human being, or organism. This internal reaction has psychological antecedents and physiological consequences (e.g. increased heart rate or skin conductance). The internal reaction within the organism creates a response in the form of behaviour or behavioural intention. The application of SOR models in combination with an approach- or avoidance-related behavioural intention is rare within the field of industrial marketing: it has only been applied for conceptualising the impact of a specific type of stimulus, i.e. social cues (Zeeland and Henseler, forthcoming). Here the SOR model is used with the accentuation on the organism: what happens within the individual when he/she needs to make a trustworthiness evaluation with regard to a given stimulus?\nDiscussion: The field of neuroscience produces new insights every day. As Barack Obama (2013) said on the BRAIN Initiative: \"Now, as humans, we can identify galaxies light years away. We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears\". This paper showed that insights from neuroscience could enrich and broaden the existing industrial marketing literature. Every day the field of neuroscience is working on revealing the mystery of the brain, making new insights available that could be useful for the marketing science.\nConclusion and research agenda: Industrial marketing scholars studying trust have been inspired by the academic disciplines of business, management, economics, psychology and sociology, and in doing so have exhibited a cognitive approach on the concept of trust. They use, to a great extent and for a good reason, the same strong shoulders on which they lean in many directions and positions. In this paper, these shoulders (e.g. Rotter, Morgan and Hunt, Doney and Cannon) have been presented. It could be argued that industrial marketing scholars regarding the concept of trust tend to think within a big box, and that this box is black. In other words, most studies on trust are based on the same, cognitive way of reasoning, in which the processes that occur within the human individual are being ignored or under-investigated. That is not necessarily problematic, but by thinking outside the box new thoughts on trust might arise.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The concept of trust suffers from conceptual confusion. The current perspectives on trust within the B2B marketing domain could be visualised as a big box of which the borders are defined by the disciplines marketing, economics, psychology and sociology. The purpose of this paper is to enlarge the box by introducing neuroscientific insights on trust to the B2B marketing domain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: By a literature study on neuroscientific insights on trust, this paper examines how neuroscience can help to solve existing problems within trust research and how it can address problems that otherwise might not be considered.\nFindings: The neural coordinates of trust not only show that trust entails cognitive and affective elements, but also that these elements are so intertwined that they cannot be completely separated. What can and should be separated are the concepts of trust and distrust: the neural coordinates of trust are clearly different from the neural coordinates of distrust. Furthermore, there are personal differences in the ease of trusting others, which are not only caused by previous experiences but also by differences in resting patterns of frontal electroencephalographic asymmetry and by differences in hormonal state.\nResearch limitations/implications: Specifically, the neural difference between trust and distrust might shape the future research agenda for trust research within industrial marketing. It is likely that the process of distrust goes quick, whereas trust comes more slow. This is reflected in the dual processing theory, which is seen as a paradigm shift in the psychology of reasoning.\nOriginality/value: New perspectives and directions for trust research are presented. The distinction between trust and distrust is connected to approach- and avoidance-motivated behaviour, which is highly relevant for deepening the studies on trust within industrial marketing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Director's remuneration and correlation on firm's performance: A study from the Indian corporate
|
[
"Board of directors",
"Remuneration",
"Executive pay dispersion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The concept of remuneration in modern economic theory has evolved from the \"principal agency theory\". Corporate governance is needed when there exist two problems. One is that of agency problem or conflict of interest, and secondly, transaction costs to control the agency problem.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Factors affecting the director's remuneration\n3. Empirical procedures: 3.1 Research hypothesis development\n4. Conclusion: The paper studies various research papers and literature on corporate governance, directors' remuneration and their relation to the firm's performance. As mentioned previously, there have been studies on various aspects like composition of compensation package, impact of stock option, etc. It was observed that most of the studies were done outside India, and also very few studies were done in emerging markets barring a few on Chinese (Chen et al., 2010) and Malaysian firms (Abdullah, 2006). This paper focused on studying the effectiveness of the boards and whether the huge remuneration given to the board of directors made any difference to the performance of the firm. It studied the impact of the increased remuneration on the intrinsic and extrinsic value of the firm.Table VI\n5. Scope for further research: The changes after the Satyam fiasco were implemented two years prior to the time of study. Thus, the effect of the changes in disclosure norms of Clause 49 could not be studied in details. There is a scope of further study in that area. Also, the present study involves only six Bombay Stock Exchange-listed companies; the study could be further enriched by analyzing a larger sample of companies and also doing a comparative analysis of the periods before and after the changes were implemented with respect to Clause 49.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of directors' remuneration on the firm's intrinsic and extrinsic value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper provides a brief review of the literature on directors' remuneration and identifies the current knowledge on the relationship between profit sharing or directors' remuneration and the firm's performance. In addition, correlation analysis between the directors' compensation and various parameters measuring the firm's performance is done.\nFindings: From an investor's viewpoint, the performance indicators indicated no significant relation of the increase in the firm's performance with the increase in directors' remuneration. But, from the accounting viewpoint, there exists a positive correlation between the two. Therefore, the directors' remuneration adds to the intrinsic value of the firm, but does not contribute significantly to the extrinsic value of the firm.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research could encompass a larger sample of companies. Also, a comparison could be done for the companies for periods before and after the modification of Clause 49 post-Satyam fiasco. The present study is done after a short period of the modification to the Clause 49.\nOriginality/value: The study provides a unique examination of remuneration of the board of directors and the firm's performance. It studies the impact of the directors' remuneration and its impact on firm's performance. The study encompasses an exhaustive analysis for the emerging market, namely, India. The research studies 40 companies, which are unique from each other and explores the relation. It explores four parameters studying both the intrinsic and extrinsic values of the firm.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
When can B2B firms improve product innovation capability (PIC) through customer participation (CP)? The moderating role of inter-organizational relationships?
|
[
"Customer participation",
"Inter-organizational relationships",
"Relationship commitment",
"Product innovation capability",
"Dependence structure",
"Relational capability"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: New product development (NPD), including new product innovativeness and speed to market, has been increasingly becoming a critical aspect of business strategy in the business to business (B2B) setting (Chang and Taylor, 2016; Dong and Sivakumar, 2017). Customer participation (CP), denoting the extent to which the customer is involved in the firm's NPD process (Fang, 2008), has long been considered necessary for successful product development (Dong and Sivakumar, 2017; Lin and Huang, 2013). However, two major research gaps exist in extant academic discussions about customer participation and innovation.\n2. Theoretical background and conceptual model: CP is defined as the extent to which the customer is involved in the firm's NPD process (Fang, 2008). It includes three dimensions: information sharing, responsible behavior and interpersonal interaction (Yi and Gong, 2013).\n3. Research hypotheses: 3.1 Customer participation and product innovation capability\n4. Research methodology: 4.1 Sampling and data collection\n5. Results: As shown in Table IV, both the main effect and moderating effects are tested using a four-step hierarchical moderated regression analysis. Model 1 includes the control variables alone. In model 2, the independent variable is added. In a similar vein, the moderators are tested in Model 3. Model 4 has the interaction terms of strandardized values of CP and five moderators. Concerning the multicollinearity problem, we also examine the variance inflation factors (VIFs) of the main variables in each regression model. Results show that VIFs are well below three, significantly less than the acceptable criterion of 10 (Neter et al., 1996), thus indicating that multicollinearity is not a problem in our study.\n6. Discussions: 6.1 Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: When can B2B firms improve product innovation capability (PIC) through customer participation (CP)? The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this interesting question by providing a framework to interpret how interorganizational relationships (IORs), including customer relationship commitments, firm's relational capability and bilateral dependence structure moderate the relationship between CP and PIC.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey is conducted among 376 business to business (B2B) firms located in mainland China. Six hypotheses on how IORs moderate the CP-PIC relationship are examined using hierarchical regression analysis technique.\nFindings: The empirical research reveals that CP positively impacts PIC of B2B firms, which will be strengthened when either customer affective commitment, supplier's relational capability or total interdependence is high. In addition, the relationship between CP and PIC weakens as customer's calculative commitment or interdependence asymmetry strengthens.\nOriginality/value: This study enriches customer participation literature by highlighting the PIC outcomes of CP and examining the complex and contingent roles of the buyer-supplier relationship in moderating CP's impact upon PIC.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Supermarket price wars: Why managing absence is critical
|
[
"HR",
"Line managers",
"Absence",
"Food retail"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe cost of low prices: Fierce competition has become the norm for the vast majority of firms in today's business world. But few will experience the same level of intensity as those operating within the UK grocery retail sector. The fight to retain or increase market share is an ongoing one. Major players Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisions seem perennially engaged in price wars. The massive impact in recent years of European chains Aldi and Lidl has only served to further heighten the prevailing competitiveness.\nLine managers and absence management: In the past, this responsibility would largely be down to a firm's human resources (HR) department. But the tendency nowadays is for line managers to undertake a growing number of people management tasks. However, many feel particularly negative towards absence management because they:\nCould prevention be the best way forward?: Desiderius Erasmus once famously remarked that prevention is better than cure. It appears that UK supermarkets might be the latest to take the words of the renowned Dutch scholar on board. Top leaders within these entities are waking up to the possibility that a flexible approach to managing absence could pay dividends.\nComment: The review is based on \"Managing attendance at work: the role of line managers in the UK grocery retail sector\" by Hadjisolomou (2015). Fascinating insight into the rigorous policies used by leading UK supermarkets to manage worker absenteeism is provided by Hadjisolomou. The increasing responsibility of line managers in this area is extensively explored and the negative impact of this centralized approach on them is noted. Of particular significance to practitioners is the revelation that stores which have empowered line managers to use greater flexibility and discretion with regard to employee attendance report considerable falls in absence levels.\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: Fierce competition has become the norm for the vast majority of firms in today's business world. But few will experience the same level of intensity as those operating within the UK grocery retail sector. The fight to retain or increase market share is an ongoing one. Major players Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisions seem perennially engaged in price wars. The massive impact in recent years of European chains Aldi and Lidl has only served to further heighten the prevailing competitiveness. Giving customers the lowest possible prices is the mutual goal of these retailers. Supermarkets aren't charitable organizations though. Something has to give. And that something is invariably costs. Most companies follow a similar approach in striving to make their operations leaner. Strict control of labor costs is the preferred way of attaining this objective.\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"
}
] |
E-commerce retail of extra virgin olive oil: an hedonic analysis of Italian SMEs supply
|
[
"Distribution channels",
"Small- to medium-sized enterprises",
"Country of origin",
"Oil",
"EC",
"Home shopping"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The world olive oil market is extremely complex and constantly evolving. Currently, global olive oil supply is still concentrated in few traditional producer countries (Spain, Italy, Tunisia and Greece), which are also the largest consumers. However, the market share of some new competing countries such as Australia, Chile, Argentina and Maghreb countries is rapidly increasing (Anania and Pupo D'andrea, 2007; De Gennaro et al., 2009). Olive oil consumption is growing in global scale also outside the traditional production area (Mediterranean countries) and consumer preferences, in general, are shifting towards higher quality products (Pupo D'andrea, 2007).\n2. An overview of EC B2C in the food sector: EC refers to the transactions of goods and services carried out through computer networks[1] (internet or other systems). This method of buying and selling products is becoming increasingly popular for both consumers and businesses. Between 2004 and 2012, the percentage of individuals aged 16-74 who made purchases online in the European Union (EU) grew from 20 to 44 per cent. In 2012, the number of EU companies[2] involved in e-sales was 15 per cent (5 per cent in Italy) and the percentage of turnover from e-sales amounted to 14 per cent of the total turnover (6 per cent in Italy) (EUROSTAT, 2012). However, the contribution of EC on total EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is still modest, amounting to roughly 3 per cent in 2010 (European Commission, 2012). The European Commission aims to double e-sales and the share of EC on GDP by 2015 (European Commission, 2012). For this reason, in the frame of EU strategy \"Europe 2020\", some actions were promoted within the \"Digital Agenda for Europe\" initiative in order to create the Digital Single Market by 2015 (European Commission, 2010).\n3. The Italian olive oil supply chain: Italy has a leading role in the global olive oil market: it is the second largest producer after Spain; the largest consumer (followed by Spain and the USA), the largest importer (followed by the USA) and the second largest exporter after Spain (Pupo D'Andrea, 2007, De Gennaro et al., 2009). Despite the large domestic production (approximately 545,000 tonnes as annual average of 2008-2011 period), Italy has a structural deficit in foreign trade due to the high domestic demand as well as export flows.\n4. Empirical analysis: hedonic price of Italian EVO e-tailing: 4.1 Hedonic price model\n5. Conclusions: This study is based on a survey of the quality and retail prices of EVOs (a total of 667 references) sold online directly from manufacturers to consumers through virtual stores (169 total) of Italian SMEs (farms, mills and bottlers) located in all the main olive-growing areas of the country. The aim was to analyse the relationship between the price of EVO and its main quality attributes, in B2C EC channels. For this purpose, a specific hedonic price model was built and estimated.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the price of extra virgin olive (EVO) oil and its main quality attributes, in the specific case of business-to-consumers electronic commerce (B2C EC) channel. The final objective is to provide useful insights for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) interested in online selling of EVO.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A hedonic price model was estimated considering the following attributes: packaging, cultivar composition, organic certification, oil extraction method, origin certification and localization of selling firms. A survey was performed in 2012 considering 169 virtual stores of SMEs (farms, mills and bottlers) located in all the main Italian olive-growing areas. A data set of 667 references was used to estimate the implicit prices of considered attributes.\nFindings: The EVOs sold through virtual stores are highly differentiated on the basis of several quality attributes among which the most important is the certification of origin (protected denominations of origin/protected geographical indication). Therefore the firm location could generate considerable advantages or disadvantages in adopting a B2C EC strategy.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future researches should develop a comparison between the premium prices and costs associated to each attribute in order to find the best product differentiation strategy. An accurate analysis about the implementation and management costs of EC systems as well as an examination of interactions between online and offline sale channels is needed. It would be useful to compare the manufacturer direct sell business model with other business model.\nOriginality/value: Few studies applied the hedonic price model to analyse the retail olive oil market. Nevertheless, no studies have analysed the market of EVO sold in virtual shops.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Financial disclosure practices among Malaysian local authorities: a case study
|
[
"Case study",
"Malaysia",
"Local government",
"Financial disclosure"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This study investigates the processes of financial disclosure among Malaysian local authorities (MLAs). Financial disclosure refers to \"any deliberate release of financial information, whether numerical or qualitative, required or voluntary, or via formal or informal channels\" (Gibbins et al., 1990, p. 122). Studies investigating disclosure practices in the public sector have mostly focussed on the incentives for disclosure of financial information (e.g. Perez et al., 2008; Laswad et al., 2005); or on disclosure quality (Robbins and Austin, 1986). There is, however, paucity of studies that examine the organisational, social and environmental context within which financial disclosure occurs (Gibbins et al., 1990; Adams, 1997; Hopwood, 2000; Carpenter and Feroz, 2001). Those which have sought to address this issue have approached it from outside the context in which disclosure decisions are made by analysing financial reports, surveys or websites and speculating how the factors they study might have affected financial disclosure decisions (e.g. Garcia and Garcia-Garcia, 2010). Who makes particular disclosure decisions and the range of influences on this decision process is an empirical question that this study seeks to answer.\n2. Literature review: Public sector financial disclosure studies can be categorised into two broad themes. The first consists of those which have been concerned to identify the use and users of government financial reports (e.g. Steccolini, 2004; Tooley et al., 2010b). The second consists of those which have sought to identify the contextual factors that inform financial disclosure decisions (e.g. Laswad et al., 2005; Serrano-Cenca et al., 2016, Garcia and Garcia-Garcia, 2010; Styles and Tennyson, 2007).\n3. Malaysia local government context: Malaysian local government represents the third tier of government and is the \"government closest to the people\" (Phang, 2008). MLAs consist of municipalities, city councils and district councils. These councils perform the same functions. City councils have a population of at least 500,000 and revenues exceeding RM100 million and are headed by mayors. Municipal councils have a population of at least 150,000 and revenues exceeding RM20 million. These are headed by a president. District councils are the smallest with populations under 150,000 and revenues less RM20 million. These are also headed by a president (Hazman, 2006 cited in Ghani and Said, 2010).\n4. Theoretical framework: This study employs Gibbins et al. (1990, 1992) framework of financial disclosure. This framework is adopted because, as seen in the literature review above, there is paucity of studies focussing on the internal processes and activities associated with financial disclosure. This framework, which is derived from a private sector corporate context, is suitable for use in the public sector because of its emphasis on understanding processes of disclosure[5]. A higher understanding of the processes of disclosure contributes to a better understanding of the processes through which public sector organisations are held accountable. The model is also germane in the context of the developments that have sought to obliterate the differences between the public and private sectors, known as NPM (Hood, 1995). Within NPM, local governments are being constituted as markets (e.g. Nyamori, 2009) and a greater focus is placed on financial reporting as a means to accountability, what Guthrie et al. (1998) call \"accountingization\" (see also Hood, 1995).\n5. Research methods: Gibbins et al.'s (1990, 1992) disclosure framework was used to partly frame the research questions, and to interpret the data. The data were collected from five MLAs case study organisations using 26 interviews over a period of four months from May to August 2010. The case studies consisted of one city council, three municipal councils and one district council. The five field sites were selected purposefully in order to obtain a mix of local governments of different characteristics in terms of size and organisational form (Table I, Panel A shows MLA category, revenue and population)[7]. This mix of local authorities with different sizes were chosen because prior literature (e.g. Allen and Sanders, 1994) posits that size influences disclosure practices. The study employed the explanatory case study method[8]. This approach enabled the researchers to understand the subjects' own description of social reality and the meanings that inform their actions (see Yin, 1989). Scapens (2004) argued that the explanatory case study is normally used when the researcher is attempting to explain observed accounting practices.\n6. Research findings: The data reveal a web of relations between antecedents, issues, disclosure structure, external mediators, disclosure position and disclosure output that are difficult to disentangle as neatly as done in Gibbins et al.'s (1990, 1992) framework. We have therefore divided them into three broad sections, though even within these sections, other disclosure variables intrude - which is expected with our methodology. The next subsection analyses the relationship between antecedents, disclosure position and disclosure output.\n7. Discussion and conclusion: The primary purpose of this study was to understand and explain the financial disclosure processes in MLAs, employing Gibbins et al.'s (1990, 1992) framework as an interpretive lens. The study reveals that financial disclosure in MLAs is influenced by both external and internal antecedents. The managements' view on how disclosure should be practiced, mayor/president preferences, previous disclosure practices and the number and experience of accountants were some of the internal antecedents of disclosure. Though previous studies (e.g. Allen and Sanders, 1994) have revealed the significant and positive role of the CFO in financial disclosure, our study reveals how professionals - including accountants - managers and politicians, especially the mayor/president, affect financial disclosure. Our study, however, adds a further insight, which is, that financial disclosure may be affected by the experience of the person of the mayor/president, which possibly enables them to navigate through different political interests. The study lifts the veil on the venerated position of the accountant in financial disclosure and shows other players to be perhaps more influential.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand and explain the financial disclosure processes among Malaysian local authorities (MLAs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Employing semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 26 members in five case study organisations, and interpreted using Gibbins et al. (1990, 1992) framework of financial disclosure.\nFindings: The study finds that financial disclosure is influenced by a hierarchical structure consisting of accountants, the Financial Accounts Committee, the mayor and other managers. The decision to disclose or not disclose was influenced by how sensitive the issue was. External auditors and mediators influenced both the identification of issues, disclosure position and disclosure output. Though there are many laws governing financial accounting, MLAs opportunistically chose to apply the Federal Treasury Circular largely because the external auditors used it.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study contributes to the literature by illuminating who makes disclosure decisions, what influences these decisions and how. The study reveals hitherto un-researched contextual factors that affect disclosure, namely, religion and external auditors and the opportunistic choice of which laws and regulations to apply in financial disclosure. Future studies might want to apply this approach in other contexts to see what we can learn from them.\nOriginality/value: Using case studies in the study of financial disclosure provided valuable insights into the complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon of financial information disclosure. The application of Gibbins et al. (1990, 1992) framework in the public sector and in Malaysia is novel.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The relationship between entrepreneurial intent, gender and personality
|
[
"Gender",
"Personality",
"Entrepreneurship"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Entrepreneurship is a driving force for economic growth in many countries (Carree et al., 2002) and has profound effects on growth at the national level, especially in countries with high income per capita (Van Stel et al., 2005). Women entrepreneurs establish a significant portion of self-owned businesses, diversify the economic landscape and are the fastest growing group of small business owners (Kelley et al., 2017; Verheul et al., 2006). Nevertheless, women are underrepresented in entrepreneurship and face unique obstacles to self-employment (Center for Women's Business, 2009; Guzman and Kacperczyk, 2019; Pew Research Center, 2015; Verheul and Thurik, 2001). Given the underused economic potential of women entrepreneurs, research and theory has attempted to understand and rectify the gender gap (Verheul et al., 2006). Because much research on entrepreneurship relies on samples of men, generic entrepreneur descriptions are often masculine, a preconception that some researchers and theorists have rejected (Ahl, 2006; De Bruin et al., 2006; Gupta et al., 2009; Henry et al., 2016). As these and other authors have suggested, building a more nuanced understanding of women's experiences in self-employment could bolster representation of the diverse set of approaches to entrepreneurship.\nLiterature: Conceptual and empirical work has focused on identifying individual differences in the personality profiles of entrepreneurs. Recent work has suggested that a diverse set of personality traits is tied to entrepreneurship entry (Obschonka and Stuetzer, 2017). Across a large literature, the Big Five traits of extraversion and openness (McCrae and Costa, 1989; Obschonka et al., 2013; Schmitt-Rodermund, 2004; see Kerr, Kerr and Xu for a review), as well as more specific traits such as risk-taking, self-efficacy, proclivity for improvisation and ambition have been found to be elevated in entrepreneurs (Baum and Locke, 2004; Brandstatter, 2011; Fillis and Rentschler, 2010; Nwankwo et al., 2012; Rauch and Frese, 2007; see Obschonka and Stuetzer, 2017 for a review). Furthermore, high extraversion, openness, risk-taking, self-efficacy and proclivity for improvisation have been tied to entrepreneurial intent (Brandstatter, 2011; Hmieleski and Corbett, 2006; Pihie and Bagheri, 2013; Schmitt-Rodermund, 2004; Segal et al., 2005; Zhao et al., 2010). Indeed, personality traits have been shown to have a larger influence on entrepreneurial intention than situational factors (Yukongdi a nd Lopa, 2017). Many of these same traits have also been found to differ between men and women - gender differences in risk propensity, trait-like motivations to obtain power over others, neuroticism, conscientiousness and extraversion are well-documented (Dovidio et al., 1988; Schmitt et al., 2008; Zhou et al., 2014). Therefore, we incorporate a personality approach to understanding gender differences in entrepreneurial intent.\nStudy aims: In this study, we assessed a broad set of personality traits previously established as important in entrepreneurial intent. We also assessed personality traits that have been found to differ by gender. We began by testing the overlap among these traits by using factor analyses to assess whether traits cohered into factors. We tailored specific hypotheses regarding gender and intent after constructing these factor scores. We then examined whether the personality factor scores differed by gender and intent to become an entrepreneur. Our goal was to assess whether personality traits related to entrepreneurial intent among women can be identified.\nMethod: Study procedures were approved by the university institutional review board before data collection began. All research participants completed informed consent. Data were gathered as part of a larger study that included measures not discussed here (Freeman et al., 2018).\nResults: Participants from psychology and business school sources were combined for analyses (tests were conducted to assess whether findings were parallel). An independent samples t-test showed that women (M = 1.56, SD = 0.50, n = 126) were less likely than men (M = 1.31, SD = 0.47, n = 70) to endorse intent to become an entrepreneur, t(194)= -3.43, p < 0.01, where responses were 1 for entrepreneurial intent and 2 for no entrepreneurial intent. Sample sizes varied slightly because of missing data on specific measures.\nDiscussion: The goal of this study was to consider the gender differences in personality traits that might guide the pursuit of entrepreneurship. We hypothesized that personality differences between men and women, particularly on personality characteristics relevant to entrepreneurship, might help explain differences in entrepreneurial intent. We first discuss personality traits that were tied to entrepreneurial intent across genders, and then turn to the gender differences.\nConclusion: Theoretical and practical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in personality traits of people with and without entrepreneurial intent to assess whether women who intend to become entrepreneurs exhibit particular tendencies that can be fostered.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Participants completed an online battery of well-established questionnaires to cover a range of personality traits relevant to entrepreneurship and gender. Participants also answered items concerning intent to become an entrepreneur. A factor analysis of personality traits produced four factors (esteem and power, ambition, risk propensity and communal tendency, the latter reflecting openness and cooperation, without hubris). The authors constructed four parallel regression models to examine how gender, entrepreneurial intent and the interaction of gender with intent related to these four personality factor scores.\nFindings: Participants who endorsed a desire to become an entrepreneur reported higher ambition. Women with entrepreneurial intentions endorsed higher levels of communal tendency than men with entrepreneurial intent. Those without entrepreneurial intent did not show gender differences in communal tendency.\nResearch limitations/implications: Current findings suggest that men and women who intend to become entrepreneurs share many traits, but women with entrepreneurial intent show unique elevations in communal tendencies. Thus, a worthwhile locus for intervention into the gender disparity in self-employment would be providing space and acknowledgement of prosocial motivation and goals as one highly successful route to entrepreneurship.\nOriginality/value: Given the underused economic potential of women entrepreneurs, there is a fundamental need for a rich array of research on factors that limit and promote women's entry into entrepreneurship. Current findings indicate that personality may be one piece of this puzzle.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Linking knowledge sharing, competency development, and affective commitment: evidence from Indian Gen Y employees
|
[
"India",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Competency",
"Affective commitment",
"Millennials",
"Gen Y"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the present knowledge economy, organizations derive competitive advantage by developing and retaining their workforce. More so, the contemporary workforce is characterized by high workforce diversity represented by employees of three generations namely Baby boomers (1946-1960), Gen X (1961-1980) and Gen Y (1981-2000). Organizations, therefore, are facing a serious challenge to effectively manage this multigenerational workforce, particularly in emerging markets such as India (Tymon et al., 2005). The challenge is further compounded by the fact that by 2030, 75 per cent of the global workforce will comprise Gen Y, thus shifting the focus on the young generation, that is, Gen Y (Naim and Lenka, 2016). In addition to the ever-increasing representation of Gen Y in the workforce, the imminent retirement of Baby boomers makes the case of Gen Y even more compelling. To an estimate, by 2020, India alone will host roughly 464 million Gen Y employees, with an average workforce age reaching 29 years (Rajendram, 2013).\nTheoretical framework and hypotheses: Knowledge sharing\nResearch methodology: Data collection and sampling\nData analysis and results: For the present study, data analysis was conducted using SPSS and AMOS software. The structural equation modeling was used to empirically test the given hypotheses.\nDiscussion and implications: The paper investigates the relationship between knowledge sharing, competency development and affective commitment in the context of Indian Gen Y employees working in software organizations. Knowledge sharing is the cornerstone of knowledge management and conceptualized as a process that occurs in a social environment involving the exchange of information through interactions among organizational members. (King, 2007). The process of knowledge sharing encompassing collecting and donating knowledge both explicit and implicit forms, create avenues of competency development among Gen Y employees (Naim and Lenka, 2016). Gen Y employees have dominant growth needs and are enticed by initiatives that foster their competencies and individual effectiveness. In addition, global competition is forcing organizations to continuously develop their workforce to stay sustainable and offset any future contingencies. Gen Y employees are relatively inexperienced and seek opportunities to learn the best practices of their organization. The changing nature of psychological contract (new deal) has further reinforced the significance of competency envelopment, because Gen Y employees assume full ownership of their career development and desire continuous development, flexibility and employability rather than job security (Festing and Schafer, 2014). Consequently, Gen Y members are circumspect of losing their jobs anytime; hence, they strongly value learning and developmental opportunities to equip themselves for future roles (D'Amato and Herzfeldt, 2008).\nLimitations and suggestions for future: This article provided empirical evidence on the relationship between knowledge sharing, competency development and affective commitment of Indian Gen Y employees. Nevertheless, there are limitations that are worth being mentioned. The first limitation of the study lies in its relatively small sample size and cross-sectional nature. This study was carried out in software industry of India, which may be different from that of other countries, particularly the Western ones in terms of organizational culture, market dynamics and governmental regulations. Hence, it limits the generalizability of the study. Therefore, it is recommended to replicate this study in a different country, preferably employing a larger sample. Future research is encouraged to confirm our suggested relationships, because self-reported surveys are poor to establish cause-effect relationships. Importantly, quantitative research design has its obvious limitations so future studies should employ qualitative methods such as focus interviews to examine the results of this study. Further, it may not be a complete investigation because management perspective is not examined. Therefore, future research should interview both HR managers and Gen Y employees to validate the study results. This study will pave the way for future research work in this domain, which should use longitudinal research design. Investigating the role of organizational culture and top leadership might be a valuable addition to this stream. Likewise, researchers should identify whether explicit or tacit knowledge sharing has a stronger effect on competency development.\nConclusions: This study was aimed at exploring a knowledge sharing-based strategy to foster Gen Y employees' affective commitment. Results point out that the outcomes of knowledge sharing (i.e. competency development) have influenced affective commitment of Gen Y employees. It indicates that, if sharing knowledge is successfully implemented encompassing explicit and implicit knowledge, such as routine tasks, best practices, past mistakes, success stories and factual documents, it will positively contribute to competency development. The more the employees involve in knowledge sharing, the greater the degree of strength of employee competencies.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The present study aims to explore knowledge sharing to evoke affective commitment of Gen Y employees through competency development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research uses cross-sectional survey to collect primary data. A questionnaire is developed based on extensive review of literature. A sample was obtained from Gen Y employees (born between 1980 and 2000) working in software organizations in India. In total, 582 completely filled, usable questionnaires were obtained.\nFindings: Results indicate that knowledge sharing has a positive effect on competency development of Gen Y employees, which in turn, positively predicts affective commitment. Furthermore, this would result in the enhancement of employee competencies and eventually, the generation of affective commitment.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study was limited to the software development professionals working in Indian organizations Therefore, researchers should test the research model further in other industries preferably in a different country.\nPractical implications: The more knowledge assets are shared in the organization, the higher the enhancement of employee competencies will become. To evoke emotional attachment of Gen Y employees, an organization must implement learning and development interventions\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to knowledge management literature, particularly knowledge sharing by exploring its possible linkage with employee attitudinal outcomes through empirical data. This also happens to be an empirical study to investigate Gen Y employees' commitment in Indian context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The reliability of currency and purchasing power parity conversion for international project cost benchmarking
|
[
"Performance measurement",
"Data envelopment analysis",
"Purchasing power",
"International construction",
"Coefficient of variation",
"Cost conversion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Successful project management has long been communicated in terms of delivering projects on time, within budget and to the required standard of quality (Ebbesen and Hope, 2013). There are other performance indicators as well, including risk management, innovation, stakeholder satisfaction, value for money, environmental impact, defect minimization, conflict avoidance, team development and continuous process improvement (Toor and Ogunlana, 2010). Nevertheless, project cost is normally a key performance indicator for all projects, and therefore features prominently in benchmarking exercises aimed at identifying best practice (Bryde and Robinson, 2005; Tabish and Jha, 2012). Benchmarking concerns drawing valid comparisons between projects. In the case of cost, benchmarking is complicated by differences in scope, quality standard, timing and location (Atkinson, 1999).\nLiterature review: Whenever the performance of the construction industry is called into question, the immediate reaction and rightly so, is to attempt to benchmark performance against other countries. This can be done at the level of an item of work, a trade, a project, a contractor, a geographic region or an entire industry (Chan and Chan, 2004).\nMethod: Langston and Best (2005) first used coefficient of variation (CoV) as the test to determine which international PPP method was the most appropriate for construction cost comparison. They compared general PPPs produced by UBS and the World Bank, as well as USD currency conversion and the Big Mac Index. They found the latter was as good as any other method in some cities, but not in others. Hong Kong was a case in point, where the price of the Big Mac was about half of its expected value. This highlighted that the hamburger is not really a standard commodity across the world, but if one could be found there would be some confidence that its use in international cost comparisons would be superior to more costly and time-consuming methods. Large discrepancies were also found between the more established indices, particularly over the accuracy of the ICP data for Bangkok. Exchange rates were generally more volatile and displayed the greatest dispersion, suggesting that PPPs were more appropriate for use in practice.\nResults: In the first instance, average construction prices for various building types in each city, expressed in both USD and PPP terms per square metre of gross floor area, are used to determine CoV. Table III shows these building types and computes the CoV across all 23 cities for each. Of the 27 building types listed in Turner and Townsend (2013), 25 of them (i.e. 93 per cent) have a CoV that is lower for citiBLOC PPP than USD conversion. Furthermore, all but one of these values has a CoV between 20 and 50 per cent.\nDiscussion: Cities investigated in this paper form three clusters on the basis of their citiBLOC-adjusted prices, defined as expensive, mid-range and good value. In each cluster, the lowest CoVs are found to arise from the citiBLOC PPP. The highest CoVs are for currency-adjusted prices, with the exception of the first cluster where the price of a Big Mac in Hong Kong is such a significant outlier that it causes the Big Mac-adjusted PPP to have a higher CoV. Nevertheless, this price is correct and perhaps is a result of a strategy by McDonalds to sell more hamburgers into this market. Ignoring Hong Kong, Big Mac-adjusted prices seem quite reasonable, although on balance the composite-adjusted PPP is the second best method.\nBenchmarking construction projects: Langston (2013) demonstrates the application of reliable cost conversion to construction project benchmarking for high-rise buildings in both Australia and the USA completed between 2003 and 2012. He uses construction efficiency (CE) and construction complexity (CC) as two important KPIs to understand the building procurement process. The technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA) is considered as an appropriate method for assessing the impact of multiple performance measures and to determine the best practice \"frontier\" in construction (e.g. Chiang et al., 2012; Horta et al., 2012). His findings are used here as an illustration of the link between technical cost conversion and its ultimate application to project benchmarking.\nConclusion: Construction project costs between countries cannot be compared reliably using currency exchange rates, as this fails to take account of the local cost of living. The citiBLOC PPP uses a standard basket of ten construction items, comprising notional 50 per cent material, 40 per cent labour and 10 per cent plant, to calculate PPP values in each city. The average price of items in the standard basket for a particular city is then divided by the average price for a base city to calculate relative PPPs. When benchmarking international project cost performance, making relative cost comparisons between cities in different countries is necessary. PPP is the correct methodology to apply.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Project cost is normally a key performance indicator for all projects, and therefore features prominently in benchmarking exercises aimed at identifying best practice. However, projects in different locations first require all costs to be expressed in equivalent units. Failing to do this leads to erroneous and unreliable results. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Applying international construction as the focus for the study, cost data from 23 cities worldwide are compared using a range of methods including currency conversion and purchasing power parity (PPP). Coefficient of variation (CoV) forms the test for identifying the method with the lowest volatility.\nFindings: It is found that purchasing power is the preferable theoretical base for international cost conversion, and currency conversion (frequently used by practitioners) is not recommended. The citiBLOC PPP method has the lowest CoV across the data set and therefore more closely reflects the Law of One Price that underpins the concept of PPP.\nOriginality/value: This research highlights the importance of a valid cost conversion methodology to properly understand the comparative performance of projects. Its application to benchmarking is demonstrated using the data envelopment analysis method.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Understanding the contract structure for mango and empirical analysis of its determinants
|
[
"India",
"Factor analysis",
"Contract arrangement",
"Contract attributes",
"Vertical coordination",
"Mango value chain"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Contractual agreements are commonly used means for overcoming uncertainty in transactions and for minimizing the transaction cost involved in business relationships. A contract is an instrument that outlines the mutually agreed upon rules (and expectations) as to how fundamental elements such as risk, rewards and decision rights of business will be allocated in the transaction relationships among the contractors and the contractees (Sykuta and Parcell, 2003; Sykuta and Cook, 2001; Paulson et al., 2010). A contract may be explicit with little or no role for implicit understandings, or it may be completely implicit (Hueth et al., 1999). Cheung (1970) defines a contract as partial transfer of rights from contractee to contractor, such as leasing or hiring, and it embodies a structure comprising stipulated terms and conditions. Such contractual arrangements are increasingly becoming important for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural supply chains (Tsoulouhas and Vukina, 1999; Sykuta and Parcell, 2003; Vavra, 2009; Lu et al., 2010), where uncertainties and transaction costs are very high. Contracts in agriculture are used for allocation of risks among different players in the supply chain - owner of a resource transfers risks to someone else in lieu of reduction in his/her share of total profits generated in the chain (Knoeber, 2000).\nMango production in India: Mango is considered as the king of fruits. With total production of 18 million tonnes which is more than 50 per cent of the global production, India is the largest producer of mango in the world. In India, mango production constitutes about 22 per cent of the total fruit production in the country. Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for area under mango cultivation in India, stands at 3.9 per cent during 2000-2001 to 2013-2014, whereas for mango production it is 4.3 per cent during the same period. UP is a leading state for mango production in the country, with magnificent orchards of world famous Dussehri, Chuasa and Langda varieties. The state contributes about 23 per cent share in total mango production in the country which has been growing at compound rate of 5.1 per cent annually during 2000-2001 to 2013-2014. In spite of huge domestic market for mango consumption within the country, the export of mango and mango pulp experienced a significant growth of more than 10 per cent annually during the last decade (Table I).\nLiterature review: Previous studies have indicated that contractual arrangement in agriculture has undergone various phases of its development based on contracting criterion such as sharing of risk and rewards, resource sharing and the level of participation in production and marketing of agricultural produce. Contractual structure in agriculture varies with the crop, technological development, the extent of market development and the socio-economic environment (Eswaran and Kotwal, 1985). The process of development of contracting has resulted in three distinct forms of agriculture contract structure: tenant-based contracting, market or product-based contracting and vertical coordination and integration. Next, we briefly discuss these three forms of contract structure.\nConceptual framework and research hypotheses: Marketing of mango fruit is done using various institutional systems: contracting, corporate farming, online marketing, producer owned company, spot marketing in market yard, etc. Mango being a highly perishable fruit requires timely picking, careful handling, sound packaging and quick and safe transport for realization of better prices. Most mango orchards in the state of UP are small and marginal in size. The orchard owners do not possess risk bearing ability needed for managing and marketing of the produce. They like to transfer all or most risks associated with managing and marketing to third party who is better able to bear the risks. Therefore, contracting becomes the most commonly used institutional arrangement of marketing of mango in the area under study. In most mango contracts in UP, the orchard owner transfers most management/operational risks and all marketing-related risks to the contractor. The framing of contract, hence, depends on the type and extent of management/operational risks being borne by the orchard owner and the contractor respectively. Historically, majority of mango contracting in the state of UP has been relational in nature. The reason for such system of contracting may be high amount of uncertainty involved and information asymmetry existing between the parties involved. Trust developed between the orchard owner and the contractor over the years plays a crucial role in the contract structure. Most mango contracts are oral and, therefore, informal in nature with no provisions for legal support. These contracts are performed under mutually convenient terms and conditions to the orchard owners and the mango contractors.\nData and methods: Survey data\nResults and discussion: Profile of the surveyed mango contractors\nConclusions and policy implications: In this paper we analyze various contract attributes which significantly influence the decision-making process of a mango contractor while designing and entering into a contract. The findings of the study show that mango contracting in the study area is primarily done based on a relational model. We have studied 22 attributes of mango contracting which broadly cover nine factors related to the orchard owner, the orchard and the contract management mechanism. The stage of contracting - pre-flowering or post-flowering - is one of the crucial decisions in mango contracting as the extent of risk transferred from orchard owner to the contractor varies significantly across these two stages. It is found that contactors who prefer pre-flowering contracts pay significantly higher attention to contract management attributes. On the other hand, those contractors who normally enter in contract once the mango trees have flowered, are more likely to pay attention to the orchard-related features.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure of contractual arrangements in mango orchards and factors affecting the mango contract design in India.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study is based on personal structured questionnaire survey of 83 contractors in one of the major mango growing areas in India. A snowball sampling approach was adopted to select suitable respondents for the study. Descriptive statistics have been computed to understand the contractor's response on contract attributes. Factor analysis was used to categorize the contractors' responses on various attributes of the mango contract. Further, a logistic regression model has been developed to determine the factors affecting the contract decisions.\nFindings: The study identifies nine aspects of mango contracting covering orchard owner, orchard and contract management characteristics. Further, a logistic regression model has been developed to assess the factors affecting the contractor's decision on the time of entering into mango contracting, i.e. pre-flowering or post-flowering stage. Regression analysis results clearly indicate that contractors who prefer pre-flowering contracts pay significantly higher attention to contract management attributes. On the other hand, those contractors who normally enter in contract once the mango trees have flowered are more likely to pay attention to orchard-related features.\nPractical implications: Specifically, the results have implications for contract terms, contract efficiency and effectiveness and overall performance. Finally, the study provides suggestions for a future research agenda to analyze mango production contracts.\nOriginality/value: Though contracting in mango growing is a common phenomena, there is limited analysis on identifying the key contract attributes and factors affecting the contract structure.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Promote the price promotion: The effects of price promotions on customer evaluations in coffee chain stores
|
[
"Service quality",
"Food quality",
"Moderating effect",
"Customer characteristics",
"Coffee industry",
"Price promotion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Price promotions are common strategies for attracting consumers and increasing sales in the food service industry. Price promotions are \"reduce the price for a given quantity or increase the quantity available at the same price, thereby enhancing value and create an economic incentive to purchase\" (Raghubir and Corfman, 1999). Companies usually use consumer promotions to increase trials, attract brand switchers, motivate price-sensitive buyers, encourage repeat usage, or provide added value (Huff and Alden, 2000). It is widely accepted that short-term price promotions can generate tangible extra sales immediately, presumably due to increased numbers of buyers, some of whom companies hope will be converted into repeat buyers (Ehrenberg et al., 1994). Thus, it is important to understand the long-term effects of price promotions, including their influence on consumer product evaluations and repeat-purchase behaviors. A positive product evaluation may help to retain consumers and encourage repeat purchases, whereas a negative evaluation may reduce consumer purchasing behavior when the promotion ends.\nTheoretical framework: Concepts of perceived quality evaluation\nMethods: Instrument development\nResults: Sample profile and descriptive information\nDiscussion: Although the effects of price promotions on customer evaluations have been studied in various settings, the findings have been inconclusive. The current study provides evidence that Starbucks' price-oriented promotions positively affected customer quality and satisfaction evaluations and further influenced repeat-purchase intentions. The results disagree with the findings of previous research of Campo and Yague (2008) and Martinez and Guillen (2006), but are consistent with that obtained by Villarejo-Ramos and Sanchez-Franco (2005). They suggest that the negative effects of price promotions on consumer evaluations found in other research may not hold for a leading brand in the coffee industry, such as Starbucks. Starbucks is now the leading brand with high awareness and brand evaluation in Taiwan coffee chain stores market. It sells a relatively high-priced drinking coffee compared with other chain coffee stores. A previous study found that high-tier brands may benefit more than low-tier brands from price promotions (Lemon and Nowlis, 2002). Some studies have also shown that the adverse effects of price discounts on customer evaluations are diminished in regard to a brand with high awareness (Lin et al., 2009) or high quality (Grewal et al., 1998). One possible explanation for this finding is that customers may consider the price-promoting activities of Starbucks to be after-sale customer services rather than price discounts. Existing customers may see price promotions as a reward or incentive, and therefore increase their brand evaluations (Villarejo-Ramos and Sanchez-Franco, 2005). Therefore, customers showed favorable brand evaluations, including positive food and service quality perceptions. Price promotions were observed to have a slightly higher influence on food quality evaluation than on service quality in the study. They also showed a direct and indirect influence through service and food quality on satisfaction. The possible reason is because Starbucks provides a counter service and some guests order drinks and/or food to takeout. Therefore, price promotions may have a stronger impact on food quality evaluation and further influence customer satisfaction. The result provides evidence that offering quality drink and food is particularly critical for creating customer satisfaction when promotional activities are implemented in coffee chain stores. Maintaining consistent food and drink qualities is suggested to operators of coffee stores during the promotion period.\nLimitations and conclusions: A major limitation of the current research is the sampling frame. The study sample was a convenience sample, and the study was conducted in an urban area, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Furthermore, the research was cross-sectional and not longitudinal. There is inevitable uncertainty about the long-term effects of price promotions. A longitudinal study would help to further identify the effects of price promotions in the long run.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The authors empirically evaluated the effect of price promotions on customer quality evaluations and repeat-purchase intentions in coffee chain stores. The moderating role of customer characteristics in this process was also investigated.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Consumers in 12 coffee chain stores were surveyed and 488 usable questionnaires were obtained. Relationships in the test model were examined using structural equation modeling techniques. A multiple-group solution was used to test the moderating effects of consumer characteristics.\nFindings: The results of structural equation modeling analyses suggested that price-promotion activities at Starbucks in Taiwan had a favorable effect on customer quality evaluations and positively influenced repeat-purchase intentions. The moderating effects of consumer characteristics were partially supported. Whereas sex showed no significant moderating effect, consumption frequency did demonstrate a moderating effect.\nPractical implications: The results indicate that existing customers may see price promotions at Starbucks in Taiwan as a reward or incentive, and thus lead to an increase in favorable evaluations. The findings provide a new perspective that may encourage those involved in the marketing of coffee chain stores to manage price promotions in a more strategic manner by considering customer characteristics.\nOriginality/value: The effects of price promotions on brand evaluation remain controversial and may vary among product categories. Additionally, most studies regarding price promotions have used an experimental approach, and few studies of price promotions in the coffee industry have been reported. The study is among the first to empirically examine the effects of price promotions and the moderating role of consumer characteristics in the process at coffee chain stores.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Strategic sourcing management's mindset: strategic sourcing orientation and its implications
|
[
"Resource-based view",
"Strategic sourcing",
"Grounded approach",
"Qualitative data analysis",
"Service dominant logic",
"Strategic sourcing orientation",
"Structural equation modeling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Literature broadly describes strategic sourcing (SS) as a process that directs all sourcing activities toward opportunities that enable the firm to achieve its long-term operational and organizational performance goals (Kocabasoglu and Suresh, 2006; Lawson et al., 2009). This study investigates the mindset (orientation) of SS top management, which influences their SS decisions and processes. Despite the prevalence of SS in contemporary literature and press, little attention has focussed on the managerial philosophy that drives it.\nTheoretical background: SSO\nMethodology: Qualitative data: focus group\nDiscussion of findings: A theoretically grounded conceptualization of SSO derives from both four focus-groups and extant literature, underpinned by a SDL inspired RBV. The systematic literature review corroborated that the four orientations (learning, performance, planning, and relational process) that emerged in the qualitative data analysis. The four lower-order orientations represent operant resources that manifest SSO and interact, thereby reinforcing each other in enabling the firm to produce efficiently and/or effectively valued market offerings. To draw conclusions about the overall construct, empirical analysis must occur at the construct level instead of the dimension level (Madhavaram and Hunt, 2008). Therefore, we empirically test the resultant SSO, using data collected from 174 top sourcing executives, to validate the empirical contributions of the proposed SSO framework. According to Table III, all correlations were significant and in the hypothesized direction (positive).\nConclusions and implications: This research defines and empirically tests the concept of SSO; underpinned by the SDL and RBV and using a mixed methods approach that relied on both focus groups and questionnaire data. The results provide strong support of the proposed SSO construct, which acts as an antecedent to SS reputation that, in turn, leads to enhanced supplier management and, consequently, performance.\nLimitations and directions for future research: As in any research project, the choices we made in this study imply limitations in the interpretation of our results. First, potential researcher bias is always a threat to the validity of interpretive findings, which may render plausible other interpretations of the data (Randall and Mello, 2012). Second, because we conducted open-ended interviews during our focus groups, participants exerted more control over the process, although we were wary of allowing participants to take interviews too far afield. Third, we based the qualitative data on a sample of top sourcing executives of 41 best-in-class companies and the quantitative data on a sample of 174 top sourcing executives among members of the ISM. This approach might favor the inclusion of better-educated purchasing professionals and larger organizations. Further, we were unable to rule out possible spurious effects. While all the constructs were validated, there is still the possibility that an underlying construct might affect our model. Future research into SSO could attempt to disentangle the effects of other possible explanatory variables.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Recently, focus in strategic sourcing (SS) has shifted from the exchange of tangible goods toward the exchange of intangibles, such as specialized skills, knowledge, and processes. The purpose of this paper is to aim to delineate the domain of, and operationally test, strategic sourcing orientation (SSO); a management philosophy directed at identifying and meeting the needs and goals of SS.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a mixed-methods research design and underpinned by a service dominant logic (SDL) inspired resource-based view (RBV), the authors first use the qualitative input of 41 top sourcing executives in four focus groups to derive four first-order \"orientations\" (learning, performance, planning, and relational-process) that were found to reflect SSO. Second, the authors propose a theoretically grounded operationalization of SSO derived from the qualitative data and extant literature. A sample of 174 top sourcing executives was used to test the proposed SSO and its impact on SS reputation, supplier management, and performance outcomes.\nFindings: The results indicate strong support for the theorized SSO and its impact on SS reputation and supplier management, and, consequently, on performance outcomes.\nOriginality/value: While many firms encourage a culture to enable SS to realize enhanced performance, research has failed to provide a holistic account of this orientation. This study employs a mixed-methods research design to conceptualize and operationalize such orientation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A systemic perspective on school reform: Principals' and chief education officers' perspectives on school development
|
[
"Schools",
"Education",
"Leadership",
"Educational innovation",
"Finland"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Comprehensive schools around Europe, Finland included, are currently faced with numerous multidimensional educational reforms concerning all levels and actors of the schooling system. In Finland three major pedagogical comprehensive school reforms have been launched since the 1990s, initiated mainly by politicians and administrators. The most basic and possibly the most challenging reform consisted of a shift from viewing the teaching-learning process primarily as a transmission of knowledge, to viewing teaching as focused on active and collaborative knowledge construction. The second reform consisted of decentralization of school administration, which was shown, for example, in the replacement of the National Curriculum by a set of fairly general goals approved by the Ministry of Education, with the responsibility for curriculum planning shifted to the grass-roots level of communities and single schools. The most recent of the pedagogical school reforms, implementation of undivided basic education, aims to support pupils in their learning path through the various transitions of their school career from pre-school to ninth grade and even upper secondary school or vocational education (Finlex, 1998; Ministry for Education, 1998, 1994, 2004).The Finnish school system represents a Scandinavian approach for political decentralization and local accountability of school administration. The new school legislation made municipalities fairly autonomous in arranging primary- and secondary education. The legislation offers only general aims for the reform while the responsibility for the reform implementation is up to the single municipalities and schools (Aho et al., 2006; Johnson, 2006; Moos and Moller, 2003). Accordingly principals and chief education officers play a key role in translating the reform into local educational practices and structures that requires intensive collaboration between the groups. Moreover principals and chief education officers need to sustain the reform implementation in schools and municipalities by supporting teachers' in their professional development and by enabling generation of pedagogical innovations at root-level school work (Stoll et al., 2006). This means that perceptions and strategies adopted by principals and chief education officers have a substantial effect not only on each other, but also on the way the local board of education operates (Kanervio and Risku, 2009). Therefore it is of the most importance to understand how these local educational leaders perceive the ongoing reforms.The research project\nThe study context: Characteristics of Finnish comprehensive school system\nTheoretical framework: School system as a systemic entity\nStudy design: Participants and data collection\nResults: Principals' and chief education officers' approaches to the reform\nDiscussion: The results showed that there was variation in principals' and chief education officers' approaches to developing undivided basic education. Both groups had quite positive and convergent views about the core aim of the reform, which provides a good base for the reform implementation. However, while pedagogy was emphasized most often as a core of developing undivided basic education by the principals, the chief education officers viewed technical and financial factors more often as a core of the reform. A reason why pedagogy was more often referred to as a core of the reform by principals than by chief education officers may be that the professional horizon in which they operate is slightly different, though complementary. For instance chief education officers are expected to construct a structural frame for schooling in the district in addition to pedagogical issues. They are also responsible for holding to the budget set by the local council. Principals on the other hand are more involved with the pedagogical practices of their school on a daily basis and hence have a different kind of professional horizon. Accordingly chief education officers often face the kind of accountability demands in their work that may lead them to interpret the reform as yet another government's way of forcing them to cut down on the expenses of education by making \"managerial\" reorganizations.This suggests that despite common ground in terms of the aims perceived by the principals and chief educational officers, there is also a need to construct a more coherent and shared theory of change (Fullan, 2001) both within and between the groups to promote a sustainable (Hargreaves and Fink, 2004; Earley et al., 2002) reform process. This calls for shared meaning making both on district- and school level not only on the aims of the reform but also on what should change. Going to scale, especially in theory-based change, is affected by the degree of consistency in the value basis and beliefs, but it also requires attention on the normative and procedural structures of the district-wide context (McLaughlin and Mitra, 2001). Otherwise there is a danger that the reform is reduced to a series of reactions and counter-reactions instead of proactive and sustainable school development work. Inconsistent leadership that does not take all the levels of the system into account may be reflected in pupils' learning paths, for instance causing unpredictable changes in class-structures or, on the pedagogical side, teachers' uncertainty of what instructional choices to make.Further investigation of chief education officers' and principals' perceived means to bring undivided basic education about showed that pedagogical means to promote the reform were emphasized most often both by the principals and chief education officers. A reason why both groups emphasized pedagogical means to promote the reform is that in Finland principals and chief education officers often have similar educational backgrounds (Kanervio and Risku, 2009). Yet another less obvious reason for this may be that pedagogy is ultimately seen as \"someone else's\" territory. For example, chief education officers may assume that principals and teachers who are closer to the pedagogical practices take a greater responsibility for achieving the goal of the reform. This in turn may result in the responsibility of pedagogical innovations being \"drained down\" in the system: from chief education officer to principal, from principal to the professional community, and finally from the teacher community to the responsibility of a single teacher. Paradoxically this may hinder the possibilities for constructing a coherent, shared pedagogical theory that is identified as a central precondition for successful school reform by many scholars (e.g. Fullan, 2003b; The Hay Group, 1999; Anderson and Togneri, 2005). Although both principals and chief education officers emphasized pedagogy as a tool to promote the school development there was also variation both within and between the groups. Moreover principals' and chief education officers' perceptions on how the change can be brought about were more vague than their perceptions about the aims of the reform. This verifies Fullan's (2001) argument, that educational leaders and administrators are often explicit about what should change while the ideas of how the change should be brought about are vague and implicit (Anderson and Togneri, 2005). A reason for this is that the development processes are often multilayered, complex and implicit, and hence harder to identify and put into words. This on the other hand causes problem in translating the aims into the sub-goals and into school practices, especially if there is no time and if no constant effort is put into negotiating about the pedagogical implications or constructing the map of change in the context of application during the development work (Earley et al., 2002; Resnick and Glennan, 2002).To conclude, the lack of alignment within and between principals' and chief educational officers' perceived theory of change as well as changing in terms of developing undivided basic education provides challenge for district level collaboration in reform implementation. These gaps in the perceptions within and between the groups also easily lead to misunderstandings and destructive frictions in district level development work, which may compromise the reform implementation.The implications for leadership of school development\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study aims to gain better understanding of the perceptions comprehensive school principals and chief education officers have about the implementation of school reform and the means they use to facilitate the development of such.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This research project was carried out using a systemic design research approach. Open-ended questionnaires provided the data for the study and these were completed by educational leaders operating in local school districts.\nFindings: - The results demonstrated that pedagogy was emphasized most often as the core of school reform by principals but chief education officers considered technical and financial factors more often as the critical core of educational reform. Nevertheless, both groups had quite similar ideas on how to promote school development.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The findings reflect the Finnish educational system and capture only two levels of leadership within the system. Future research ought to focus on studying school reforms within different school systems as a complex of correlated events, processes, strategies, interactions and qualities.\nPractical implications: - To be able to achieve a successful and sustainable school reform more attention must be devoted to creating and activating collaborative learning environments, not only for pupils and teachers, but also for educational leaders at all levels of school administration.\nOriginality/value: - The study adds to an understanding of the often-mentioned gap or conflict in perceptions and beliefs between different actors in an educational system.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
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