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Investigating market value and intellectual capital for S&P 500
|
[
"Intellectual capital",
"Market value",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The competitive advantages of companies have been transferred from tangible assets to intangible assets - intellectual capital (IC). Even though IC is important for knowledge-based companies, inevitably, it has become essential in all companies. IC can enhance the market competitive advantage by governing knowledge, organizational technique, professional skill, customer relationship and experience. The sustainable profit for modern company is based on how to establish the knowledge and then transform the knowledge into capitalization.The reasons for rapid spread of affirmation and discussion in IC management are mainly from companies' perceptions of the increasing importance of intangible assets and the increased the weight of knowledge involvement in production manufacturing process. When transitioning from industrial economy to knowledge economy, which involves intangible assets, companies face the challenges of mobility, uncertainty and complexity. In the new business environment, companies need to learn and control IC.As Edvinsson and Malone (1997) point out, companies must build up their IC mainly in the following aspects:* visibility and measurement for intangible asset;* integration and workability of knowledge by knowledge sharing in the technology;* excavation and classification of the IC through specialized training and development and informational technological internet; and* raising the value of IC and then elaborating the financial and leverage functions by using knowledge rapidly and enhancing practical experience in profession and technology in order to commercialize the transformation.The manifestation of knowledge is not only on designation, copyright and information, but also comprises human resource, customer relationship and organizational system. The degree of knowledge integration crossing over the production and service has affected companies with unprecedented speed; therefore, it is inevitable for any company to become involved with the transition to the knowledge era.In the meantime, the critical point to evaluate the true value of company has been changed. Edvinsson and Malone (1997) have stated that in order for a company to be successful in the knowledge century it must be flexible in its organizational system, accommodate itself to the changing situation, and have considerable agility of composition. Drucker (1994) has stressed that the most important resource of a company's economic growth is its knowledge, collected from its employees, customers, and suppliers.Therefore, the distinguishing production and service features of the successful company are customer involvement in production designation and manufacturing, diversified specifications, and creation of linkages among producers, sellers and strategic alliance partners based on shared vision and mission.The managerial philosophy of the knowledge-based company is to have a different and nontraditional view of asset structure and employment. In the century in which research and development, manufacturing and selling all can be executed by strategic alliance partners or even customers, the number of accounting entries shown on the financial statements are no longer accurate for further analysis on current competitive capability or potential future profitability. This is why IC has been the source of long-term sustainable profitability and its effectiveness should be evaluated.Problem statement\nLiterature review: IC is associated with concrete representation of a company's real value. It controls the knowledge, experience, organizational technique, customer relationship and professional accomplishment, then draw out the hidden value for the company. The ascendancy and inferiority of IC directly reflect on the market's competitive competence for company, and can even affect investors' evaluations and perceptions of the company.Therefore, Adam Smith's 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, which initiated the classical school of economic theory, stated that a nation's wealth arises from tangible production factors, such as labor, land and capital. This theory is no longer meaningful in the modern knowledge-based economy and these tangible production factors are now applied to the law of diminishing returns. In contrast, according to the law of increasing return, when a company continually develops the IC infrastructure and investment, the market value of the company will appreciate and excess the book value several times since IC is the core differentiator and driver of a company. The following graph (Figure 2) created by Edvinsson (1997), clearly demonstrates the four phases of extended organizational intangible capital and market value creation development and investment.When a company invests in IC, the invisible beneficial result could exceed the cost saving; for example, increase customer satisfaction, streamline internal processes, and improve employee performance. What is not shown on the financial statements are invisible values of human resources, creativity, competence basis, information systems, organizational infrastructure, customer relationships, and research and development (Chen, 2002).Andriessen and Stem (2004) evaluated IC in the European Union in order to strengthen the position of its knowledge-based economy to be most competitive and dynamic and reach new strategic goal of sustainable economic growth with greater cohesion for its society, so-called \"Lisbon Agenda\". They defined IC as \"all intangible resources that are available to an organization, that give a relative advantage, and which in combination are able to produce future benefits.\"The research indicated that the greater investment in IC, the greater the IC asset. In addition, there is a strong relationship between human capital and structural capital. Finally, the high value of IC may not always create high productivity; however, low value of IC certainly leads to low productivity.Seetharaman et al. (2002) defined IC indicators as brands, competitive advantage, customer relationship, human capital, products, trade marks, research and development. In the USA and Europe, financial reports have been criticized for being inadequate and for concealing the true value of a company from its stockholders, financial analysts, and the evaluation process of acquisitions or mergers since the gap between financial report and market value of a company has been greaten by intangible IC.Firer and Williams (2003) investigated the relationship between a company's resource base (physical, human and structural capitals) and dimensions of corporate performance (profitability, productivity, and market valuation) in 75 South Africa companies. Using correlation and multiple regression statistical methods, they concluded that physical capital affects a company's performance although IC has become increasingly important in South Africa.Chen et al. (2005) investigated the relationship between IC and a firm's market value and financial performance. Their regression model evaluated the relationship between market value/book value ratio and value creation. Moreover, they examined the relationship between IC and the firm's current and future financial performance.The statistical findings supported a significantly positive relationship among IC, market value and financial performance. They also noted that IC could be indicative of future financial performance; predictors of research and development provide further information on structural capital because they have a positive relationship with profitability and market value for listed companies in Taiwan.As analyzed by Liang and Yao (2005), net income is the most significantly explanatory capability in market value of Taiwan information electronic company when examined on intangible asset, balanced scorecard and IC, respectively. Also, economic added-value and residual income are statistically supported in evaluating and explaining business performance. Moreover, the results are significant when a non-financial performance concept was applied to and tested on different market segments of upstream, midstream and downstream companies.The IC factors of 58 Fortune 500 companies were analyzed by Abdolmohammadi (2005) from 1993 to 1997, who found evidence that it is effective to employ IC disclosure on market value. The findings also showed that \"new\" economy sectors companies report on information technology and intellectual property and companies in \"old\" economy sectors companies report on partnership and brand as their IC.Tseng and James Goo (2005) categorized IC framework in term of human capital, organizational capital, innovation capital and relationship capital. They then examined the relationship between IC and corporate market value of a company based on three perspectives: IC, resource-based and finance. The research subjects were Taiwanese manufacturers and data were collected from a database and a survey. The result is a significant positive relationship between IC and market value of a company when methodologies of Tobin'Q, market/book value and value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC(tm)) were utilized.Bassi and van Buren (1999) investigated 500 US corporations and found a positive relationship between IC investment and financial performance. Know-how, customer knowledge, employees' expertise and process are all included in IC. If a company continued to invest on IC, it can improve its competitive advantage; nevertheless, if a company kept continuous efforts on services and products, there is a deferred effect on financial performance rather instead of an immediate short-term output.The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), Inc. has developed a model for IC management that groups measurement indicators according to IC and financial performance. IC measurement indicators are human capital, customer capital, innovation capital and process capital. Return on equity, EPS, ROA, market value, market share, new sales, revenue per employee, total shareholder return and growth rank in industry are financial performance measurements (van Buren, 1999).Formal evaluation processes and systems for IC management have been created and developed by several companies, but not every company is aware of the importance of these processes and systems. Because of the difficulty of precise definition, identification and measurement, IC is not fully shown on the financial statements. However, in order to increase the likelihood of future success, management should reform IC management to maximize the company's value.The importance of IC has been increasingly discussed and recognized. Table II summarizes the major definitions of IC.Ohlson model\nMethodology: Research design\nResults: Sample selection process\nConclusion: This study has shown the relationship of investments in IC in relation to the company's stock price. Nonetheless, IC is associated with a concrete representation of the real value of a company. It controls the knowledge, experience, organizational technique, customer relationship and professional accomplishment, then draws forth the company's hidden value.Both the superiority and inferiority of IC may have a strong impact on the competitive advantage of an organization. It may also have an effect on the perceptions of investors in regards to its long-term sustainability. Thus, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations which was published in 1776 and laud out the principles of classical economics, asserts that a nation's wealth could no longer take on as much meaning and importance today, when knowledge has a more central role. These concrete production factors are applied to the law of diminishing marginal returns. On the contrary, based on the law of increasing returns, when an organization constantly emphasizes its IC, its market worth will increase and exceed its book value several times over. It is important to realize that IC is a main driver of competitive advantage.Similar studies have been done to show the positive relationship among IC, market value, and financial performance. Chen et al. (2005) reported that there is a positive relationship between a company's IC and its current and future financial performance. Moreover, their research shows that a company's IC can be a strong indicator not only of its future financial performance but also the creation of economic value in the market. Chen et al. (2005) also noted that structural capital may be provided in the investment of research development that also contributes to market value and profitability.For US electronic companies, 47.1 percent of market value can be represented by financial assets; for the remaining 52.9 percent, this is explained by non-financial assets. Apparently, US electronic companies are more knowledge intensive and utilize more IC to create market capitalization.The first hypothesized relationship is between human capital and value creation of the company. Human capital is the knowledge that individual employees acquire and use to produce goods, services, or ideas. This study suggests that while IC indicators show a positive correlation between employee productivity and market price of the company, the results do not show a strong relationship to human capital and market price of a company.Second, the relationship between customer capital and market value of a company is considered. Customer capital is the value of a company's ongoing relationship with the people or organizations to whom it sells. A good relationship with customers, suppliers, and strategic alliances can determine a company's financial performance and success because it constitutes a value-adding resource in the supply chain. The results indicate that the IC indicators such as asset size, net income, and sales growth provide a moderating effect on the market value of the company.Third, the relationship between Innovation capital and market price is examined. Innovation capital refers to a company's revolutionary capability, innovative achievement, and potential build up of new product and service. Simply put, innovation is \"the application of knowledge to produce new knowledge\" (Drucker, 1993). In this study, R&D investments, net income, and asset size show a positive relationship with the market price of the company stock. The company's capability to innovate seems to be the most valuable capital linked to its competitiveness and constitutes a major determinant for the company's long-term survival.Fourth, the relationship between process capital and market value is discussed. Process capitals are working procedures, standardized methods or projects that can increase and enhance employees' efficiency and productivity. This can be seen through the company's specifications, manuals and intranet. Through these, the continuing process of knowledge- and experience-sharing of employees can be duplicated applicable and innovatively exercisable within the organization. The benefit of developing process capital is the ability to share and spread knowledge rapidly, to develop collective knowledge, to shorten the learning process, and to accelerate productivity of the human capital (Stewart, 1997). It is concluded that there is a positive relationship between the two variables and net income, asset size, and selling, general and administrative expenditure per employee all have a positive correlation to the two variables.Lastly, the relationship between IC and the market value of the company is described. IC is the core differentiator and driver of company in the era of the knowledge economy. The four dimensions of IC should be interactive, and create an even greater combined effect and market value for company. It is concluded that there is significant relationship between IC and market value of a company. The research results for US electronic companies show that while book value, employee productivity and advertising expenditures show a negative correlation, the net income, number of employees, R&D investment, and sales growth rate show a positive correlation between IC and market value. The previous discussion has established that book value is not a determinant in a company's market valuation but net income; employee productivity should be improved; and advertising expense could nullify the net income, then affect the market value for US electronic companies.In assessing the real value of a company, investors have to consider intangible assets, such as the human resources, skills, knowledge, processes, and innovation capabilities of an organization. With this shift from building tangible to intangible assets and resources, leaders and managers need to understand the changing marketplace landscape. Although IC and knowledge assets are difficult to discern and quantify, the results will nonetheless be reflected in the company's greater productivity, efficiency, and overall profitability.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to examine and answer the following research questions: how does the US electronic industry perform from an intellectual capital (IC) perspective? What is the relationship between IC and company market value in the US electronic industry? This study investigated the relationship between IC and company market value in the US Standard & Poor's 500 (US S&P 500) publicly traded electronic companies from 1996 to 2005.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The Ohlson model theory was reviewed and to form the research models. Secondary data were retrieved from S&P's Compustat for quantitative analysis.\nFindings: - When applying multiple regression technique to the research hypotheses, there emerges a positive relationship between IC and market value of the company. Apparently, US electronic companies are knowledge intensive and utilize IC to create their market capitalization.\nOriginality/value: - This is one of the first empirical researches that quantitatively examine the market value of US S&P's 500 electronic companies from IC perspective in the long-term.\n",
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The quantified-self archive: documenting lives through self-tracking data
|
[
"Documents",
"Documentation",
"Information behaviour",
"Digital archive",
"Small data",
"Data studies",
"Personal informatics",
"Quantified-self",
"Self-tracking"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The drive to capture and quantify aspects of the human experience has deep roots in Western culture. From the eighteenth century onwards, access to mass produced technologies (e.g. mechanical clocks and calendars) allowed people to measure, track, marshal and record time. With the mastery of time, came the impetus to account for and record how it was being used (Young, 2012). In the name of self-improvement and self-reflection, curiosity and boredom, the need to leave a legacy and a documentary trace, people have kept accounts, tallies, record books, logs, planners, diaries and journals to track the lived experience of body and mind, as well as to inscribe aspects of the external world.\nRelated work: Personal informatics\nResearch design and method: The research focused on understanding the long-term value of personalized collections of quantified-self records and people's understandings of why and how their data could be archived for posterity. In the process, the associated intellectual and design challenges of a digital quantified-self archive are explored. The following broad research questions helped to drive this inquiry:\nFindings: Self-tracking data and document ecosystems\nDiscussion and conclusion: This research joins the call to \"raise discussion about what we expect from data and what roles it should play in our lives\" (Elsden, Selby, Durrant and Kirk, 2016, p. 48). Journalist and Entrepreneur Gary Wolf (2010) tell us that:[...] when we quantify ourselves, there isn't the imperative to see through our daily existence into a truth buried at a deeper level. Instead, the self of our most trivial thoughts and actions, the self that, without technical help, we might barely notice or recall, is understood as the self we ought to get to know.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which self-tracking data have meaning and value in and after the life of the creator, including how such data could become part of the larger historical record, curated in an institutional archive. In doing so, the article expands upon existing shared interests among researchers working in the areas of self-tracking, human-computer interaction and archival science.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 18 people who had self-tracked for six months or more were recruited for the study. Participants completed a survey which gathered demographic data and characteristics vis-a-vis their self-tracking behavior. In-person semi-structured interviews were then conducted to ascertain the beliefs of the participants regarding the long-term use and value of personal quantified-self data.\nFindings: The findings reveal the value that people place on self-tracking data, their thoughts on proper modes for accessing their archive once it moves from the private to the public space, and how to provide fidelity within the system such that their experiences are represented while also enabling meaning making on the part of subsequent users of the archive.\nOriginality/value: Today's quantified-self data are generally embedded in systems that create a pipeline from the individual source to that of the corporate warehouse, bent on absorbing and extracting insight from a totality of big data. This article posits that new opportunities for knowing and for design can be revealed when a public interest rationale is appended to rich personalized collections of small data.\n",
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Manufacturing best practices: implementation success factors and performance
|
[
"Manufacturing systems",
"Best practice",
"Performance levels"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The quest for process improvement leads companies to benchmark their processes against others' processes to identify and transfer manufacturing best practices (MBP). MPB has drawn considerable attention by organizations worldwide. For example, UK productivity gap was found to be related to the poor adoption of MBP and UK companies are urged to adopt MBP (Leseure et al., 2004; Porter and Ketels, 2003). MBP' popularity could be attributed to the quest for world-class manufacturing (WCM) status by organizations worldwide. In fact, Voss (1995) describes WCM as a subset of best practices. Research-based evidence indicate that scores of manufacturing organizations are involved in benchmarking (Kumar and Chandra, 2001). However, there is also enough research evidence that the adoption rate of MBP is not as much as expected (Codling, 1998; Davies and Kochhar, 1999; Yeung et al., 1999). It is commonly agreed in the literature that while companies may acquire good ideas from others, these will not be transferred or adopted. This leads to the following research question:RQ1. What pre adoption factors do have an impact on the implementation success of MBP?\nBenchmarking and MBP: Although many types of benchmarking are available, the current study is focused on best practice benchmarking. According to Camp (1989), benchmarking is the search for industry best practices that will lead to superior performance. Spendolini (1992) defines benchmarking as a continuous systematic process for evaluating the products, services and work organizations that are recognized as representing best practices for the purpose of organizational improvement. Interestingly, the definition of best practice is not often explicitly given in the literature. According to the American Productivity and Quality Center (1993), best practices are leadership, management, or operational methods or approaches that lead to exceptional performance. Best practice is a fairly subjective concept and, depending upon the company, can have different meanings. Examples for MBP include synchronized scheduling, six sigma, and quick die exchange.\nContext of MBP: The context has an impact on the adoption of MBP. Based on the innovation management literature the context was separated into three elements:1. best-practice factors;2. organizational factors; and3. environmental factors (Kimberly and Evanisko, 1981; Rogers, 1983; Tornatzky and Fleischer, 1990).The best practice factors include codification, complexity, and compatibility. The organizational factors capture absorptive capacity, innovativeness of organizational culture, and existence of a champion. And, finally, the only environmental factor is perceived outside support.\nBest practice factors: Codification\nOrganizational factors: Innovativeness of organizational culture\nEnvironmental factor: External support\nMethodology: Data collection and sampling\nMeasure refinement and validation: Assessment of reliability\nDiscussion: Codification or the degree to which a best practice is well written down or mapped out was found to be a significant determinant of MBP implementation. From operations management perspective, these findings offer proof that tools such as process flow-charting and mapping are very useful.This study found that complexity is not an important factor in the implementation of MBP. One possible explanation for complexity being insignificant might be its correlation with absorptive capacity (r=-0.20). This suggests that companies may perceive a MBP less complicated when they have prior knowledge of it. However, this does not guarantee success in implementation since absorptive capacity was not found to have an impact on implementation success.The more that a MBP is consistent with an organization's business style and preferred work practices, the more likely it is to be implemented. Perhaps, the most important reason for this is that employee resistance to change will be minimized by adopting compatible practices. This claim is generally well documented in the management literature (March, 1981).The existence of an individual or individuals in an organization who have knowledge associated with MBP appears to have no impact on implementation success. One explanation for this is that professional services are commonly available for many MBP today. Also, the source of MBP for many of the companies in our sample is another unit in their own organization. When this is the case, the availability of help is a less questionable issue than when considering adoption of a MBP from a different company where availability of help is much more difficult to obtain.The existence of a champion also was also not found to have an impact on the implementation success of MBP. This fact may be related due to the fact that a champion's duty as a promoter declines once a decision to adopt is made (i.e. prior to implementation).Innovativeness of organizational culture is significantly associated with implementation success of MBP. Cultures, which are open to new ideas and encourage creativeness, would logically be more successful in implementation.External support is another variable that did not appear in the model and merits some attention. Its correlation with codification is very significant (r=0.39, p<0.01) and it also has a significant correlation with compatibility (r=0.31, p<0.05). The significant association between codification and external support suggests that help from the source of a MBP is more available when the tacit component of knowledge associated with the MBP is low. In other words, companies may choose to protect their tacit knowledge by not codifying MBP for the purpose of maintaining real or perceived competitive advantage. Similarly, they may not collaborate with others by sharing process knowledge. A significant correlation between compatibility and external support verifies one more time that compatibility has a broad meaning. Companies participating in this study believe that the MBP they intend to adopt are more compatible when they perceive that they can get help from their partners during implementation.This study also found that implementation success has a very significant positive impact on operational performance improvement. This means that if appropriately conducted, benchmarking is a very effective process improvement tool.\nConclusion: This study identified that codification, compatibility, and innovativeness of organizational culture were significant determinants of implementation success of MBP. On the other hand, complexity, absorptive capacity, external support, and the existence of champion were not found significant. These findings give important insights to practitioners regarding the impact of pre-decision factors on implementation success. It was identified that when decision-makers are making adoption decisions, they should also be aware of the next step, i.e. implementation. Relying on the factors that have an impact on the adoption decision is not enough since, without an effective implementation, the benefits of MBP cannot be realized. Since, this study targeted all types of MBP, its results are very general. The key factors that are influential in implementation success should be applicable to most MBP. This study also verifies that successful implementation would lead to performance improvement. It would seem reasonable to agree with her Scherier (1981) that without knowing the degree of success in implementation, performance improvement cannot be assessed.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to identify the pre adoption decision factors that have an influence on the implementation success of manufacturing best practices (MBP). This study also investigates whether successful implementation of best practices leads to operational performance improvement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey research based on 55 MBP was conducted. Regression analysis was employed to test the proposed relationships.\nFindings: - Codification, compatibility and innovativeness of organizational culture were found to have an impact on implementation success. On the other hand, complexity, absorptive capacity, external support and the existence of champion were not emerged as the determinants of implementation. It was also found that successful implementation would lead to operational performance improvement.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The sample size is a limitation to this study.\nPractical implications: - Knowing the significant determinants of implementation success, practitioners will make a better selection among competing MBP. Also, practitioners will also be able to utilize their resources better, because they will know what they should look for in each benchmarking visit. A positive significant relationship between the implementation success and performance indicated that benchmarking is an effective technique.\nOriginality/value: - This study is the first to explore pre adoption factors that may have an influence on the implementation of MBP. Davies and Kochhar reported that studies of relationships between MBP and performance in the area of manufacturing are limited. Therefore, this work also made a contribution to this under researched area.\n",
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Integral business transformation: a global case study
|
[
"Organizational restructuring",
"Critical success factors",
"Management strategy",
"Leadership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe power of integral business transformation: The power on integral business transformation lies in the ability to create, connect, and execute strategy on a day-to-day basis throughout the entire business system. We will share how we applied this approach to link strategy to execution across multiple business divisions in a global company. You will see the components of this approach, how it transformed a business, and how it was applied to create emotionally engaged customers and employees.\nEmotional engagement: Customer engagement is created and largely influenced by the consistent customer experience with products, processes, and people. Customer experience is created by satisfied emotionally engaged employees. Emotionally engaged employees is a result of an engaging culture created by effective leadership.\nIntegral transformation approach, the \"what\": Based on our experience of more than 25 years we have learned that in order to add value, organizations and people need to continually transform themselves and their business. This requires the ability to recreate the strategy connecting it with the key capabilities of the integral business system. Our primary focus is to facilitate the achievement of high levels of performance and fulfillment, which is a condition for business sustainability.The connection\nIntegral business transformation: the \"how\": Redefine strategy: key questions to answer\nBusiness case: From redefinition of the strategy to awareness of the implications\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to share an integral business transformation approach and to illustrate its application in a real case in the pharmaceutical industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This model has been inspired and developed after years of research, successfully working with different leading organizations in Latin America. Its main pillars are the identification of new rules of success and the awareness of the transformation implications. It links the strategy, the people, and the processes as a system in a new way which will respond better to the challenging and changing conditions of the environment. It allows for the creation of new relationships inside and outside the organization. This facilitates employee/customer engagement, results, and fulfillment as the basis for business sustainability.\nFindings: - Results indicate that the identification of new rules of success and the re-articulation of the system implies a transformation of the individuals as well as the organization in a connected way. The capability to do this generates business results.\nPractical implications: - Leaders must be aware of the implications in their role as context creators in which customer and employee emotional engagement occurs. Leaders also need to rearticulate the human and business system to discover and implement new rules of success as the key success factors for growth.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first time, according to the authors, there is sharing of the application of an integrated approach linking business and emotional issues which lead to performance and fulfillment.\n",
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MITIE's real apprentices earn real jobs: Training links the company's needs with those of the community
|
[
"Apprenticeships",
"Employment",
"Training",
"Services"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A service business that was undertaking a recruitment program, using the East London Business Alliance (ELBA) as a channel to recruit from public-sector job brokerages in east London, was frustrated with the amount of time wasted interviewing unsuitable candidates and training employees who failed their probation period.\nHigh risk of unemployment: The first scheme, which earned MITIE a Greater London award in the UK National Training Awards and an Edge Employers' Award, included the training of ten young people, chosen from a group of 384 17 to 25-year-old applicants from the London borough of Tower Hamlets, an area where many young people are identified as being at risk of falling into a cycle of unemployment.MITIE's business-services business provides mail, distribution and support services such as reception, switchboard and reprographics to such blue-chip organizations as Merrill Lynch, Linklaters, Morgan Stanley and the London Stock Exchange. It operates the real-apprentice scheme as a ten-week in-depth training program to give the learners the technical skills to be a basic reprographic operator and the soft skills to work on a corporate site.Jane James, employment-regeneration director for MITIE, an Investor in People organization, said: \"Reprographics is digital photocopying involving the manipulation of software to produce corporate brochures, analytical reports and so on. It comprises around 40 percent of our business-services offering. An experienced reprographic operator with two years' training would be a desktop publisher involved in design. As with any trade, salary is low in the initial stages. Without sustainable growth in this area of our workforce, we cannot increase production and therefore revenue. Our usual route of recruiting in this area was not sustainable. People were accepting these entry-level roles without understanding what reprographics entailed. This, coupled with travel costs, saw staff leaving within the first few weeks. We needed a system whereby we could see who had the attributes to be successful in this area before making offers of employment. Our objective would be a specialized workforce who would gel with our organization, develop with us in the long term, and so increase our productivity and revenue.\"The ten apprentices taking part were guaranteed permanent jobs if they met MITIE's criteria. As an added incentive, the best apprentice won a trip for two to Barcelona.\nThe training in detail: The first week of training was an introduction to customer care provided by Pitman Training and funded by Tower Hamlets council.MITIE then hosted an induction day, where the apprentices were given an introduction to health and safety, manual handling and customer service, and presentations on what MITIE expected from them during the course.They spent the following ten weeks working at several of MITIE's customer sites, including ABN Amro, Network Rail, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Skadden Arps and White & Case, as well as at MITIE's document-solutions center. During this time, the apprentices were given a series of modules on a fully-certificated reprographic training course developed by MITIE especially for the scheme.The following resources were provided to each apprentice:* business manager - to undertake appraisals and aptitude tests and give general guidance on corporate behavior;* trainer - to ensure that the training matrix was followed and to devise any action plans to ensure success;* operations team - part of the existing reprographic staff, to ensure that the apprentice executed his or her training in real operations; and* buddy - a dedicated member of site staff, to be a mentor for team involvement, corporate respect and all the soft skills associated with the business world.\"Everyone taking part was exceptionally supportive,\" said Jane James, co-ordinator for the program. \"In addition to our staff assigned to be trainers, our reprographic teams were enthused by the apprentices' motivation. Clients were keen to be involved in their progress.\"\nSoft-skills training initially a lot harder: She continued: \"The technical-skills training was easy. The training matrix ensured knowledge in loading, operating and maintaining equipment. The soft skills, such as customer service, personal presentation, team interaction and so on, were initially a lot harder. We had to stop being trainers/employers and be almost parents/mentors.\"The course cost MITIE PS69,800 to run, with the borough's Skillsmatch scheme contributing PS50 per week for each apprentice's travel and subsistence.\nResults exceeded expectations: Nine out of ten of the apprentices completed the course and ended up with full-time jobs - seven with MITIE, one with another local reprographic company and one in a clerical role with the Canary Wharf Group. The tenth apprentice had to leave the scheme for personal reasons.\"The achievements were overwhelming,\" said Jane James. \"These were young people who were never expected to achieve anything before. They left school with limited skills and a lack of self-belief ... All had a 'street attitude', but one thing they all shared was the desire to make something of themselves.\"Lorraine Barnet, managing director for MITIE's business-services business, said: \"This scheme far exceeded our expectations. We have surpassed our target of securing sustainable reprographic staff through a very cost-effective route.\"Julie Hutchinson, of the East London Business Alliance, commented: \"For disadvantaged communities, effective engagement with business is vital. The prospects for areas such as Tower Hamlets cannot be turned around without employers making investments and providing real access to real jobs. MITIE has given skills, resources, ideas and perspectives that have resulted in new and better solutions to local employment issues. This is most definitely a scheme to be celebrated.\"MITIE was awarded Morgan Stanley's Local Community Initiative Award for Employment in recognition of the scheme. ELBA also created a new award - the Employment Program Supporter of the Year - which MITIE was the first company to win.\nTrip to Barcelona: When the ten places were advertised, MITIE received 384 applicants. After an initial telephone screening, the applicants were reduced to 82, who were invited for an open day to find out more about the scheme. Literacy and numeracy tests further reduced the list to 20, who were given a tour of client sites in Canary Wharf. The final ten were then chosen in a final interview.During the site tour, one apprehensive would-be trainee said: \"I walk past Morgan Stanley every day. I never thought I would be good enough to walk through the front doors.\"He ended up winning the Barcelona trip as best real apprentice.\nThe future: Since the success of the first scheme, which ELBA declared a blueprint employment-training scheme to help with the economic regeneration of east London that other employers should follow, MITIE has run two other real-apprentice programs and is in the middle of training its fourth group of apprentices. The scale has expanded, with 27 apprentices being taken on in the current scheme and more of MITIE's clients, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, coming on board to support the scheme. While ELBA is now encouraging other companies to run similar schemes, the future of the real apprentice for MITIE is to spread the scheme to different parts of the UK, recruiting apprentices for several of MITIE's other service divisions.\nNote: David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest editor, wrote this article.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to describe the award-winning real-apprentice scheme, run by support-services company MITIE, which has successfully linked the company's need for skilled mail and reprographic operators with the needs of young people in a deprived area of east London to gain meaningful work.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Details how the ten-week in-depth training program gives learners the technical skills to be basic reprographics operators and the soft skills to work with some of the capital's most prestigious businesses.\nFindings: - Explains that nine of the ten apprentices taking part completed the course and ended up with full-time jobs - seven with MITIE, one with another local reprographic company and one with the Canary Wharf Group.\nPractical implications: - Reveals that MITIE, which had previously struggled to recruit and retain basic reprographic operators through public-sector job brokerages, surpassed its target of securing sustainable reprographic staff through a cost-effective route.\nOriginality/value: - Describes how the scheme helped ten young people, who left school with limited skills and lack of self-belief, to make something of their lives. The success of the scheme was its ability to link the company's needs with those of the community.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Determinants of retail store network expansion via shop-in-shops
|
[
"Resource-based theory",
"Determinants of the choice",
"Intellectual capital perspective",
"Retail growth strategy",
"Shop-in-shops"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The presence of retailers within other retail stores via shop-in-shops is increasingly popular in both developed markets such as Europe, America and Japan (Misonzhnik, 2012; Jiang et al., 2014) and developing markets such as India or China (Jerath and Zhang, 2010; Basu et al., 2014), in sectors as varied as apparel, beauty, electronics or food (Fawkes, 2011; Veluet, 2015). Dating from the 1970s, the shop-in-shop format has gained momentum since the early 2000s, and is now repeatedly presented as an innovative option for retail store network expansion (Sorescu et al., 2011; Netmeyer et al., 2012; Gaupp and Kuhn, 2016).\nLiterature review and hypotheses: Description of a retailer-run shop-in-shop\nMethodology: We adopted a research design mixing a quantitative study (n = 170) and a qualitative study (n = 19). Mixed-methods research takes the advantage of integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches so that it provides a more complete and comprehensive understanding of the problem (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009). It allows the research to gain in breadth and depth (Creswell and Creswell, 2017). Thus, using a mixed methods research design allowed us to simultaneously test our nine hypotheses about the influence of marketing and company-related characteristics when adopting shop-in-shops and explore in greater depth the processes whereby these hypothesised relationships actually occurred. To ensure its reliability and validity, we designed our mixed methods research following the recommendations of Creswell and Creswell (2017, pp. 204-206).\nResearch results: determinants of the propensity to operate shop-in-shops: We used our quantitative findings to test the influence of marketing and company-related factors on shop-in-shop adoption, and our qualitative findings to interpret how and why these effects occurred.\nDiscussion and conclusion: The study aimed at investigating the determinants of retail store network expansion via shop-in-shops. To do so, we first examined the specificities of retailer-run shop-in-shops and applied the RBV and the IC theory to investigate the determinants of the propensity to operate shop-in-shops within branded retail networks. Then, we tested nine hypotheses with a mixed methods research design combining a quantitative study (n = 170) and a qualitative study (n = 19) on French retail networks. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first to: examine the issue of shop-in-shops run by retail networks that traditionally operate stand-alone branded stores; and to provide theoretical explanations, from a resource-based and IC perspective, to the key factors that differentiate retail networks that operate shop-in-shops from those that operate only stand-alone branded units. The originality of our approach also lies in our mixed methods research design, which included the development of a unique data set mixing marketing and financial information and gathering high-quality secondary data for French retail companies. This research contributes in five main ways to the understanding of an increasingly popular retail format.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Why do some retail networks operate shop-in-shops along with stand-alone units while others do not? Drawing on a resource-based and intellectual capital (IC) perspective as a broad theoretical lens, the purpose of this paper is to focus on retailer-run shop-in-shops and examine the determinants of their adoption.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To gain a comprehensive understanding of shop-in-shop adoption by retail branded networks, a research design mixing a quantitative study (n = 170) and a qualitative study (n = 19) was adopted to test nine hypotheses regarding these determinants of the adoption of retailer-run shop-in-shops and explore in greater depth the processes whereby they actually occur.\nFindings: The main findings show that intangible resources are major determinants of the choice to operate shop-in-shops while tangible resources are minor determinants. The more robust results of the analysis lie in the positive effect of own-label merchandise range, premium pricing strategy, positioning based on symbols, retail concept fast renewal and high sector specialisation on the choice to operate a shop-in-shop. The effect of financial constraints on the decision to expand via shop-in-shops is limited.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors emphasise the importance of marketing-related and company-related characteristics in differentiating the likelihood of retail networks to expand via shop-in-shops. These results lend support to the relevance of a resource-based and IC perspective in explaining the propensity of retailers to develop via shop-in-shops.\nPractical implications: The decision to operate shop-in-shops should depend on the extent to which intangible resources - the most important being retail positioning grounded in symbols, an own-label merchandise range, and a high retail branded network reputation - can be valued and enhanced. Expanding a retail network via shop-in-shops does not appear to be a financially constrained expansion strategy: it must be considered as a relevant first best strategy when an independent and young retail company has intangible resources to value but limited tangible resources.\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to channel management and retailing research in four ways. First, it precisely delineates the specific characteristics of shop-in-shops. Second, it provides theoretical explanations - based on a resource and IC perspective - of determinants that influence the choice of shop-in-shops. Third, it empirically tests the influence of marketing-related and company-related characteristics when adopting shop-in-shops. Fourth, it provides insights into how adopting shop-in-shops. To the authors' knowledge, the research is on the first to analyse theoretically and test the determinants for the choice of retailer-run shop-in-shops.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The initial impacts of Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) in England
|
[
"Energy performance certificates",
"Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards",
"Market impact",
"Valuers",
"Asset management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The case for minimum energy standards in buildings\nIntroducing the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) regulations: MEES in England and Wales of investment stock were enacted in the Energy Act (2011); regulations were issued in 2015, following industry consultation, and were subsequently clarified and came into force for new lettings from April 2018. Existing lettings come into scope in April 2020 (domestic) and April 2023 (non-domestic).The extant minimum standard is an E (on an A-G scale), though the intention, enshrined in the Clean Growth Strategy (BEIS, 2017), is to increase the minimum standards progressively; at the time this study was undertaken, no planned trajectory had been announced. Since then the government has consulted on future options with a stated preference for the standards required to be raised to a B, which exceeds many new build specifications, by 2030 (BEIS, 2019d). There is a recognition that setting the bar so high could result in value disruption and \"stranding\" of assets (Muldoon-Smith and Greenhalgh, 2019).To balance the risks to the market with incentives to comply, the regulations provide both permanent and temporary exemptions. The former primarily relates to heritage assets, though there is no exemption for listed buildings per se and to temporary buildings. The latter refers to a tenant's refusal to grant consent for the landlord to undertake work; to lack of cost effectiveness using a seven-year payback formula for non-domestic property and a cap of PS3,500 cost for residential; or if the work would devalue the asset by 5% or more.Enforcement measures, with significant penalties for each breach, aim to provide a strong dis-incentive for non-compliance with fines of up to a maximum of PS5,000 for domestic property and PS150,000 for non-domestic buildings to be enforced by local authorities.In summary, the case for introducing minimum energy standards in rented stock in the UK is predicated on both national and international policies driving towards the goal of eliminating carbon from the built stock by 2050. It is acknowledged that it can only be a part of a suite of measures, given its restricted application scope. But currently MEES is the only mandated measure to positively drive buildings' energy efficiency. However, whether it will achieve its aims is not certain because it:impacts only a minority of the built stock (PIA, 2017), and even then, with some exceptions;is not strictly a carbon measure because it is based on the EPC and, by implication, relies on the accuracy of the EPC;relies on investor compliance and effective enforcement; anddepends on the levels of the planned trajectory.The anticipated impacts of MEES\nAims: The aim of the study, conducted over the summer of 2019, was to provide insight into the initial effectiveness of the MEES regulations by investigating:actions taken and planned by landlords either to work ahead of regulation and comply or to circumvent;the impact on market values viewed through the lens of practicing valuers; andthe extent to which the regulations would meaningfully contribute to the de-carbonisation of buildings agenda.Working method\nFindings: The findings are presented under a series of themes that arose from analysis of the transcripts. Brief quotations have been included but are not attributed to preserve anonymity.MEES: effective in raising awareness but not necessarily action\nMarket impacts: Investor strategies\nDiscussion and conclusions: Discussion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The paper investigates the initial impacts on asset management and valuation practice of the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) introduced in England and Wales from April 2018 for new lettings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper reports findings from a small-scale pilot study of valuers, asset managers, lawyers and building consultants. Interviews were conducted over the summer of 2019 and explored the impact on practice and market values and perceived links to the carbon reduction agenda. Data were analysed thematically manually and using NVivo software.\nFindings: Participants welcomed MEES but many had doubts about the use of energy performance certificates (EPCs) as the appropriate baseline measure. Compliance was perceived as too easy; further, enforcement is not occurring. Vanguard investors have aligned portfolios for carbon reduction; others have not. Lease practices are changing with landlords seeking greater control over tenant behaviours. Valuers reported that whilst MEES consideration is embedded in due diligence processes, there is limited value impact.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is limited by its small-scale and that the MEES regulations are not yet fully implemented. However, the research provides early findings and lays out recommendations for future research by identifying areas in which the regulations are/are not proving effective to date.\nPractical implications: The findings will inform investors, consultants and policy makers.\nSocial implications: Achieving energy efficiency in buildings is critical to driving down carbon emission; it also has economic and social benefits through cost savings and reducing fuel poverty.\nOriginality/value: Believed to be the first post-implementation qualitative study of MEES.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Rational and emotional factors of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in a business-to-business setting
|
[
"Structural equation modeling",
"Success factors",
"Industrial branding",
"Brand equity",
"Brand loyalty"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1.Introduction: In a business-to-business setting, manufacturers of industrial goods have to build an understanding of industrial buying decisions and cannot longer ignore the circumstances in which buying centers or single buyers find themselves[1]. In this context, a strong and unique industrial brand can be helpful to generate competitive advantages and increase financial performance (Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1998; Persson, 2010).\n2. Literature review: For the conceptualization of our examination model, especially one body of literature is of high relevance: brand equity research in a business-to-business context, which is basically built on customer-based brand equity. Although a large majority of brand equity research can be located in the field of consumer branding, the concept is also applicable to as business-to-business setting (Bennett et al., 2005) As a result, business-to-business studies are usually based on the conceptual structures used in customer-based brand equity models. These studies also indicate the existence and the importance of business-to business brand equity. According to the development in consumer branding, where studies primarily focus on the branding of goods, brand equity of business-to-business services is not widespread by academic scholars, although in recent years, it attracted more and more interest. Biedenbach (2012, p. 689) noticed: \"[...] the branding studies focusing on B2B services have a disproportionally marginal share compared with the studies of B2B goods\". Therefore, in the following, we are in line with the majority of researchers in the field of business-to-business branding who focus on the examination of several studies in the area of tangible business-to-business goods branding which are based on Aaker's brand equity framework.\n3. Research model and hypotheses: Brand equity research in a business-to-business context with its relation to customer-based brand equity builds a solid foundation for our proposed examination model. Aaker (1991, p. 16) mentions five interrelated categories of liabilities and assets which underlie brand equity: brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations and other proprietary brand assets. Factors of brand equity outcomes such as customer satisfaction and brand loyalty are usually chosen from both dimensions: perceived quality and brand associations. Against this background, Section 3.1 conceptualizes the rational exogenous constructs and their effect on customer satisfaction, whereas Section 3.2 concentrates on the relationship between emotional exogenous constructs and customer satisfaction. Finally, Section 3.3 conceptualizes the relationship between customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.\n4. Methodology and results: Our study uses data from a survey which was accessible online from November 2013 until February 2014. A total of 2,522 buyers of companies which are members of the German Mechanical and Plant Engineering Association were questioned via e-mail and telephone to take part in the survey. Participants were demanded to refer to a specific purchase of a capital good from a specific capital goods producer when answering the questionnaire, as the capital goods sector is extremely dominated by commoditization processes (Baines and Lightfoot, 2013), which results in a high importance of branding efforts (Alexander et al., 2009; Cassia and Magno, 2012). When the survey was completed, a total of 258 (response rate = 10.23 per cent) completed and usable questionnaires remained, which we used for the further analysis of the measuring models and effect relationships.\n5. Discussion and conclusion: The initial starting point of our paper was to derive and verify a comprehensive and integrative model containing both rational and emotional factors of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in the context of a business-to-business setting. As we outlined in our literature review section, such a complex model does not exist so far. With this assessment, we are in line with other academic scholars (Jensen and Klastrup, 2008).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Reaching customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in a business-to-business setting is still an area of rising interest to both researchers and practitioners. Compared to consumer branding, there is notably very little known about the success factors of industrial branding and how to convince buyers rationally and emotionally in business-to-business markets. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the success factors of branding in a business-to-business setting and analyze their performance impact on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 258 buyers of mechanical and plant engineering companies participated in an online survey. Data analysis was performed by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The results reveal that rational brand quality consists of the three dimensions, product quality, service quality and distribution quality, whereas consistent advertising style, brand image, country-of-manufacture image and salesperson's personality are dimensions of emotional brand associations. All dimensions positively influence customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.\nOriginality/value: This study offers a certain value compared to the relevant literature mentioned in literature review. Compared to a large majority of the papers, the integration of rational and emotional factors in an integrative and complex model implies novelty. For example, Davis et al. (2008) and Baumgarth and Binckebanck (2011) focus on specific exogenous factors in their studies, namely, brand awareness and brand image, respectively, sales force impact combined with product quality and non-personal communication. In contrast, Van Riel, Pahud de Mortanges and Streukens (2005), Chen et al. (2011) and Chen and Su (2012) conceptualized a more complex model but did not separate rational and emotional factors. Jensen and Klastrup (2008) were the only authors who made this separation, but they did not include well-known emotional success factors such as brand image or country-of-manufacture image in their research model. Furthermore, an endogenous causal chain representing an observable consumer behavior is missing. This paper fills this gap.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An evaluation of the impact of the office environment on productivity
|
[
"Office buildings",
"Productivity management",
"Management styles",
"Factor analysis",
"Social interaction"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1.1 Introduction: The drive for greater efficiency of property provision, and ultimately cost reduction, is further fuelled by a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)[1] report - Property in Business - A Waste of Space? (Bootle and Kalyan, 2002). The report claims that UK businesses are throwing away PS18 billion a year through the inefficient use of space. The report proposes that whilst property is often the second highest cost after wages, it is rarely on the boardroom agenda. Whilst Bootle and Kalyan (2002) establishes that PS6.5 billion a year can be saved by adopting new working practises such as \"hot-desking\", the main push towards new work methods is based on reduced costs, rather than new work methods to improve business performance.If the real estate or the facilities operations are to be seen by the organisation as more than a cost-cutting departments, then it is important to demonstrate performance metrics in more than cost-cutting terms. Ideally, the real estate and facilities departments should link their performance measurements to those of the organisation, thereby demonstrating the impact of the real estate and facilities on the performance of the organisation.When discussing the office environment this paper will adopt the terms, the physical environment and the behavioural environment. The physical environment consists of components that relate to the office occupiers' ability to physically connect with their office environment. The behavioural environment consists of components that relate to how well the office occupiers connect with each other, and the impact the office environment can have on the behaviour of the individual.\n1.2 Office productivity: The main body of literature that attempts to link office environments and productivity largely addresses the physical environment. Whilst there appears to be no universally accepted means of measuring office productivity, there does appear to be acceptance that a self-assessed measure of productivity is better then no measure of productivity (Whitley et al., 1996; Oseland, 1999, 2004; Leaman and Bordass, 2000).The attempts made to link the physical environment with the productivity of its occupants falls into two main categories: those of office layout and office comfort. The literature relating to the office layout appears to revolve around two main debates: those of open-plan verses cellular offices, and the matching of the office environment to the work processes. It could be argued that the open-plan debate has led to cost reduction, as the prevailing paradigm with regards to office environments. Also, matching office environments to work processes requires a greater understanding of what people actually do when in the office environment, which is still a subject of much debate. It must be noted that much of the physical environment literature reviewed lacked any theoretical framework, and where empirical evidence was provided the sample sizes tended to be relatively small: Leaman and Bordass (2000) and Oseland (2004) being notable exceptions.Research that attempts to address the behavioural environment tends to be at the theoretical and anecdotal stage, with little supporting empirical evidence, a notable exception being Olson (2002). However, there appears to be a growing awareness of the impact of the behavioural environment on occupants' productivity. Established in the literature review is the potential tension that can exist in the office environment between individual work and group work. If the office environment is to act as a conduit for knowledge creation, and knowledge transfer, then offices need to allow both collaborative work and individual work to coexist without causing conflict between the two.A wide range of papers, relating to office productivity, are collected together in Creating the Productive Workplace (Clements-Croome, 2005). The book is a valuable contribution to the office productivity debate, as it pulls together a number of leading authors' work into a definitive key text. The book summarises the current state of office productivity research with the chapters relating to the physical environment being more evidence based, and the chapters relating to the behavioural environment being more conceptual and anecdotal.\n1.3 Research approach: The main aims of this study can be summarised as follows:* develop a theoretical framework to represent office productivity, consisting of both physical and behavioural components; and* demonstrate that it is the behavioural components of interaction and distraction that have the greater impact on office productivity.The first dataset was obtained from a research project for a local authority research forum. The data were collected using a paper-based questionnaire survey. In total, ten local authorities took part in the research project, with responses from 26 offices. The actual number of respondents was 996 from a population of 4,338 office occupants.The second data set was obtained from the private sector, through a piece of contract research. This additional dataset provided an opportunity to test the findings of the first dataset. The data set was collected from one company consisting of four main buildings, which formed the company's head office. The total number of head office staff was 800. The data were collected using an online questionnaire with a response rate of 53 per cent, i.e. 422 respondents[2].\n1.4 Model development of office productivity: The data from both surveys were used as a basis to develop a model and subsequent statistical analysis techniques. Factor analysis was used as the main technique to develop an understanding of the underlying concepts of office productivity.To develop a further understanding and an appreciation of the application of factor analysis, then it would be beneficial to explore a few definitions.Definitions:It is a mathematically complex method of reducing a large set of variables to a smaller set of underlying variables referred to as factors (de Vaus, 1999, p. 257).Whilst this definition by de Vaus (1999) summarises the essence of factor analysis, it does not explain to the researcher the purpose of reducing variables to factors.Coakes and Steed (2001) confirm factor analysis as a data reduction technique, but extend this definition to include the identification of an underlying structure of the variables:Factor analysis is a data reduction technique used to reduce a large number of variables to a smaller set of underlying factors that summarise the essential information contained in the variables. More frequently factor analysis can be used as an exploratory technique when that the researcher wishes to summarise the structure of a set of variables (Coakes and Steed, 2001, p. 155).Coakes and Steed (2001) also propose the nature of factor analysis as being an exploratory technique to enable the researcher to establish an understanding of the underlying structure of the variables.The definition of factor analysis proposed by Hair et al. (1995) is probably more explicit than the previous definitions, as it explains how the underlying dimensions or factors are identified, i.e. by inter relationships (correlations) between the variables:Factor analysis is a generic name given to a class of multivariate statistical methods whose primary purpose is to define the underlying structure in a data matrix. Broadly speaking, it addresses the problem of analysing the structure of the interrelationships (correlations) among a large number of variables (e.g., test scores, test items, questionnaire responses) by defining a set of common underlying dimensions, known as factors (Hair et al., 1995, p. 90).Since the aim of this research is to develop an identification of structure, rather than develop predictive relationships, then this supports the use of factor analysis.Factor analysis was conducted on three separate data sets. They were the local authority data set, the private sector dataset, and finally a combined data set (Haynes, 2005). The results of the combined dataset can be seen in Table I.The application of factor analysis allowed 27 evaluative variables to be reduced to four distinct components. The components Comfort and Office layout represent the physical environment, and the components Interaction and Distraction represent the behavioural environment[3].Once robust components had been established the results of the combined data sets were exposed to further statistical analysis.\n1.5 Discussion of results: 1.5.1 Introduction\n1.6 Conclusions: This paper has analysed the supporting evidence for the hypothesis that it is the behavioural components that have a greater impact on perceived productivity than the physical components. The components interaction and distraction are constantly perceived as the components that have the most positive and most negative effect, respectively, on perceived productivity. The results are consistent in that they are repeated in all of the four work patterns analysed.The results for the individual process workers indicate that the physical components of comfort and office layout are not enhancing their productivity. If the individual process worker is to constantly work in the office environment then further consideration needs to be given to their physical needs. Alternatively, an opportunity exists to allow individual process workers to work flexibly away from the office environment. However, this approach would require an accompanying workplace culture.The group process workers are required to be constantly in the office since they work with other group members. It is therefore important to ensure that the physical environment matches the group process workers' needs. Further consideration needs to be given to increased individual control of the comfort systems and the provision of quiet private spaces. In addition, to ensure that the office environment works for the group process workers, office protocols need to be developed and managed.The concentrated study workers offer the most opportunity for flexible working. The results indicate an inefficient use of office space with the majority of concentrated study workers having a dedicated desk, even though they are not constantly in the office environment. A possible workplace strategy for the concentrated study workers would be hotelling. However, the concentrated study worker results indicate that when in the office environment they value interaction with other office workers. There is clearly a requirement for space to support both individual and collaborative work styles.The results for transactional knowledge workers indicate that this type of office worker requires the office environment to be adaptive. Effectively, this means an office environment that has a range of different settings, which allows the transactional knowledge worker to move around and match the office space to meet their specific needs. The results indicate a need for an environment that enables the social dynamics of interaction, thereby facilitating the creation, and transference, of knowledge.The findings in this paper have implications for the office manager, as there is clearly a requirement to proactively manage the behavioural environment. The optimum balance between interaction and distraction has to be reached, and this will require the adoption of office protocols (Sims, 2000; Brennan et al., 2002). The physical environment can also play a role in achieving the optimum balance, by creating different kinds of work space, such as collaborative work space and space for private individual work (Peterson and Beard, 2004). The proportions of space allocation will be very much dependent on the adopted work pattern within the office environment.This study serves to broaden the office productivity debate, by identifying the need for a greater understanding of the cultural elements (Turner and Myerson, 1998; Haynes, 2007b) and the behavioural components within an office environment (Nathan and Doyle, 2002; Haynes, 2007c).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to develop a validated theoretical framework for the evaluation of office productivity, which includes components to represent both the physical and the behavioural environment. It is proposed that by adopting such an approach, insights into the dynamic nature, or connectivity, of office environments can be established. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of the office environment on its occupants' perceived productivity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study's strength is that it is based on two sizable data sets. The data collected consists of data about the physical characteristics of the office environment and data pertaining to the behavioural environment.\nFindings: - Results are analysed for specific work patterns, to establish meaning and relationships. In all of the four work patterns evaluated it was found that interaction was perceived to be the component to have the most positive affect on productivity and distraction was perceived to have the most negative. It is proposed that the results in this paper will provide support for the hypothesis that it is the behavioural components of the office environment that have the greatest impact on office productivity.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This research establishes that to truly appreciate office productivity there is a need to further understand the behavioural environment. Whilst this research evaluates different work styles and office productivity, there is a possibility to extend this to investigate personality and team role types.\nOriginality/value: - This study establishes that it is the behavioural environment that has the greatest impact on office productivity. It demonstrates that it is the dynamic elements of the office environment, interaction and distraction that are perceived as having the greatest positive and negative influences on self assessed productivity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Ethical consumers: an exploratory investigation of the ethical food consumption behaviour of young adults in the North East of Scotland
|
[
"Ethical",
"Sustainability",
"Consumer",
"Behaviour",
"Food",
"Consumption",
"Organic",
"Supply chain",
"Vegetarianism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The exponential rate of population growth is not only increasing the global food demand but also exerting pressure on agricultural food production to meet the consumer's daily food and nutritional needs (Crist et al., 2017; Sala et al., 2017). Although the utilisation of resources and products plays a central role in driving the global economy, especially in contemporary society (Harari, 2011; Vantamay, 2018), the question is whether the environment can sustain the present rate of resource consumption. It should be noted that resource consumption has been intensified over the past 50 years by almost 190% leading to the production of waste that outweighs the absorptive capacity of the environment (Kostadinova, 2016). For example, about 89 million tonnes of food is wasted every year in the EU and could increase to 126 million tonnes per annum by the year 2020 if no drastic action is introduced (Baker et al., 2019).Also, the overconsumption of agri-food products is not only affecting the health of the planet but is also having negative effects on people's health. According to Sakadevan and Nguyen (2017), livestock production, especially meat and dairy products, is contributing around 17% to the overall carbon emissions. Other health issues such as obesity, heart problems and other health-related problems due to the dietary shifts are raising the health costs (Reisch et al., 2013). For example, the monetary value of obesity to Scotland is estimated to be about PS1 billion a year and may increase to about PS4.5 billion per annum by taking the broader economic cost into the equation.Considering that food consumption is related to behaviour (Kareklas et al., 2014; Pappas, 2016), any attempt to address food production and consumption issues should account for the effects of population growth and its associated consumerism. According to Harari (2011), consumerism has changed over the past years from focussing almost solely on the environmental issues towards a more conscious ethical consumption and social justice. Also, the increasing media coverage, coupled with the availability of alternative products (Pappas, 2016; Wang and Hao, 2018), is introducing a new way of thinking regarding resource consumption. In the United Kingdom, like the rest of other developed countries, consumers are driving the demand for ethical products, and the increasing demand for ethically produced commodities is gaining momentum, especially among young consumers (Fraj and Martinez, 2006; Kaufmann et al., 2012; Kostadinova, 2016). Further, the sales of ethical products are growing, and there is an opportunity to increase the current margin, especially with an understanding of what drives ethical consumption (Crist et al., 2017; Govind et al., 2019). For instance, the UK vegan population has considerably increased from 150,000 in 2014 to about 600,000 in 2019 (The Vegan Society, 2019). There was an increment of about 16% in ethical food and drink consumption, a significant increase since 2012, mainly due to the growing sales of vegetarian products (Ethical Consumer Research Association, 2018).Despite the positive outlook of ethical food products, such as organic and vegetarian products, there is no consensus regarding the motivations for ethical food consumption, and the present knowledge regarding why consumers behave the way they do is insufficient. While there are attempts (such as Han and Hansen, 2012; Kaufmann et al., 2012) to explain consumption behaviour, efforts are focussing extensively on personal and psychological factors, with inconclusive findings. According to Reisch et al. (2013), consumers consider organic products to be healthier than the inorganic counterparts while Birch et al. (2017) argued that concerns of chemicals in inorganic foods are influencing the consumption of organic products. Despite the quest for ethical food products, the mass production of conventional food products may overshadow their sustainability (Pappas, 2016; Peattie and Peattie, 2009).The renewed interest in sustainability (Vermeir and Verbeke, 2006), especially among young adults with the creation of a new dynamic movement of activism (Scarce, 2016), may encourage ethical food decision-making. With the recent sharp rise in local interest in the community of activism that is inspired by the activities of \"Extinction Rebellion\", the question is whether young adults, who are mostly the protestors across the world, ever contemplate their consumption behaviour, including their lifestyle choices. Considering that past studies (such as McCarthy and Liu, 2017; Vermeir and Verbeke, 2006) on green behaviours have segmented consumers using socio-demographics, especially age, this study seeks to explore food consumption behaviour of young adults.The goal is to provide insights and to understand how ethical food consumption behaviour is framed by young adults to address the issues associated with consumerism. With this understanding, it seems appropriate to conduct a small exploratory study to get a flavour of ethical food consumption behaviour of young adults. According to Rettie et al. (2012), the understanding of ethical consumption behaviour may reduce the challenges of promoting and marketing ethical food. Also, the study context is suitable for such an exploratory study considering that a large number of young adults come to the buoyant oil and gas community of the North East Scotland to study and work. As this population is attracted to the city by its oil and gas opportunities, the sample represents people who are considered to be unsustainable and unethical due to their involvement in the operations of the energy sector, especially oil and gas activities (Smith and High, 2017). Also, the study context is important for this exploratory study taking into account that the area is traditionally sensitive to the consumerist ideas due to its geographical location (Insight Department, 2015).\nMethods: To achieve the overarching goal of this study, perceptions of young adults were explored regarding their food consumption behaviour to explain the motivations and barriers to their consumption behaviour. This exploratory investigation is necessary considering the growing community of environmental activism (De Hoop and Jehlicka, 2017; Scarce, 2016), especially among young adults, across the world. As a result, the following research questions were addressed in this study:RQ1. What are the perceptions of consumers regarding ethical food products?RQ2. What influences consumer's decision-making process, including the consumers buying of ethical food products behaviour?RQ3. What are the strategies or interventions that can be introduced to promote ethical food consumption?The study adopted a qualitative approach to gain a deeper understanding of ethical consumption patterns by exploring how consumers perceive and make sense (Creswell and Creswell, 2018) of the world of food. Given that this is an exploratory study, an interpretive perspective, which is concerned with the understanding of individuals' perceptions and observations, interpretation of experiences, beliefs and opinions (Bryman, 2016; Guest et al., 2006), of young adults seemed appropriate.Consistent with the interpretive approach, semi-structured interviews were used to explore food consumption behaviour of young adults in the North East of Scotland. A purposive sampling method was adopted to recruit key participants based on their relevance to the research theme (Baker and Foy, 2003; Bryman, 2016) and in answering the research questions. Relevant participants who could contribute to the goals of this study were contacted by visiting locations that are known for ethical food products in Aberdeen. The study participants (such as vegans, vegetarians and organic food consumers) were self-identified as ethical consumers based on their consumption behaviour. By aiming to observe perceptions in a homogeneous community, 12 interviews are sufficient (Guest et al., 2006); however, ten in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted for this study (see Table 1).Although the interview process was discontinued at the saturation point, a sample size as used in this study was considered appropriate given the exploratory nature of this study, in that the interviews were sufficiently in-depth (with each interview lasted for about 60 min) and generated sufficient data to answer the research questions (Baker and Foy, 2003; Guest et al., 2006).Data analysis\nFindings: General perceptions\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study shows that motivations and barriers for ethical food consumption vary and there is no single definitive approach to influence consumer's behaviour although a combination of different factors (Figure 1) in designing a holistic intervention strategy may suffice. As presented in Figure 1, this study demonstrates that personal benefit is the main driver for ethical food consumption rather than the attribution of psychological traits. However, there is a possibility for interaction effects of personal benefit (such well-being) and psychological traits (such as self-identity and social norms) on ethical food consumption behaviour (Han and Hansen, 2012; Pham et al., 2019). According to Han and Hansen (2012), perception of self and other positive motivations can strengthen people's abilities to consume ethically irrespective of their psychological attributes. While studies (such as Pham et al., 2019; Kumar et al., 2016) have shown that consumers are more likely to act ecologically when driven by altruistic needs, the findings of this study show that motivations for ethical food consumption are less altruistic. According to this study, motivations for ethical food consumption are mostly egoistic values such as personal health and well-being. However, altruistic and egoistic values can simultaneously drive ethical food consumption behaviour based on consumer's belief systems regarding the importance (and implications) of ethical food consumption. This knowledge is fundamental when branding and marketing ethical lifestyle, especially when ethical food consumption is perceived to be outside the consumers' volitional control. The findings of this study are consistent with other studies (such as Birch et al., 2017; Pham et al., 2019) that consumers may prioritise their health over other motivations while paying more to achieve their personal goals.Also, consumers are often driven by self-actualisation that defines their self-identity in that ethical food consumption often describes consumer's identity as ethical. Consistent with Bandura's (1977) concept of self-efficacy, self-identification as ethical consumers may determine the tendency to consume ethical food products despite the difficulties in purchasing them. Although altruistic values contribute to the consumers' buying decision, the desire to be consistent in their personality and identity, such as vegans/vegetarians, suggests that their personal needs are prioritised over altruistic actions (see Figure 1). The findings are supported by previous studies (such as Birch et al., 2017; Kareklas et al., 2014) that consumers are more inclined to engage in ethical buying behaviour after fulfilling their personal and egoistic needs. Nevertheless, the study participants expressed a deep concern for the environment and animal welfare in that the killing of animals for human consumption is considered to be unethical and unacceptable and does not align with their personality traits.Moreover, the findings of this study show that the social contexts of food consumption are critical to ethical food consumption (see Figure 1) in that young adults tend to be influenced by their acquaintances, especially families and friends. The findings are consistent with Picket-Baker and Ozaki (2008), who reported a strong relationship between sustainable consumption behaviour and injunctive or descriptive social norms. While young adults feel motivated by the dominant social norms, knowledge and information (Figure 1) are crucial in their decision-making to purchase and consume ethical food products. If efforts of active information gathering are robust, using the correct medium, consumers will have sufficient knowledge about the impacts of food production and consumption on the whole ecosystem. Implicit and explicit knowledge about how the food industry works across the food supply chain, and the benefits of ethical production may increase consumers' awareness about the consequences of food consumption.While environmental knowledge contributes to ethical food consumption (Kaufmann et al., 2012), it may interact with contextual attributes when making consumption decisions. Consistent with the literature (such as Oke and Kruijsen, 2016; Vermeir and Verbeke, 2006), Figure 1 shows that reliable and precise information on ethical behaviours is imperative during the decision-making process. However, information to promote ethical food products should also focus on interventions that address the health and social benefits of ethical food consumption rather than the environmental benefits alone (Figure 1).Having demonstrated that the social context, especially family and friends, represents a key influence in consumption behaviour, there is a need for producers and retailers to incorporate some aspect of social consciousness in their operations, especially when promoting ethical food products. According to the findings, the marketing efforts of food producers, wholesalers and retailers are crucial in increasing the awareness of ethical products and contribute to how the responsibility for ethical food consumption is attributed. Although conventional marketing has been criticised for adopting wrong strategies, the concept of social marketing (Rettie et al., 2012) could be introduced to promote ethical food consumption and across its value chain. Considering that this study focusses on young adults, the Internet is an important medium that has a major impact on consumer's buying behaviour due to the growth of online marketing. The marketing strategies of ethical food products may be less effective and sometimes even result in undesirable outcomes if the strategy is perceived to be promoting economic agenda at the detriment of personal, social and environmental benefits. The major question is whether humanity can redeem itself by protecting the planet from the inevitable destruction due to the overconsumption of natural resources. While consumers may express a strong desire to consume ethically (Birch et al., 2017; Bray et al., 2011; Rettie et al., 2012), this study argues that the extent to which this consumption behaviour contributes to the idea of sustainability is another complex issue that is worth exploring.Although there is an increasing concern, especially among young adults, about the idea of sustainability, this study concludes that such concern may not necessarily translate to ethical consumption. It should be noted that the findings of this study are based on small, but adequate, sample size (Guest et al., 2006), further study is required, especially to explore the utility of the proposed model (Figure 1) in other contexts, and possibly with larger sample size. This could assist in developing a measuring instrument, including scales, items and hypotheses, in testing the validity and reliability of the model using a quantitative approach.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to explore the motivation as well as barriers for ethical food consumption behaviour by focussing on the food consumption pattern of young adults in the North East of Scotland. Considering the recent involvement of young adults in environmental activism, consumption behaviour of young adults in the North East of Scotland, an oil-based community, presents essential research interest to understand whether young adults often contemplate the consequences of their lifestyle.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors explored the perceptions of ten purposive recruited young adults using semi-structured interviews to understand factors underpinning consumer's decision-making towards ethical food products.\nFindings: The study reveals three key factors influencing ethical food consumption behaviour among young adults. The findings show that personal health and well-being are the main reasons why consumers engage in ethical food consumption. Also, it is observed that information facilitates decision-making by raising awareness regarding the social, environmental and health consequences of food production and consumption. Further, the findings show that situational attributes, such as product price and product availability, are creating dissonance when engaging in ethical food consumption.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to sustainability research and the ongoing debate on consumerism by exploring ethical food consumption behaviour and highlights the need to address situational challenges, such as product price and availability. The study suggests that interventions to address current consumption patterns should also emphasise the social and personal benefits of food consumption rather than the environmental benefits that have been the focus of prior research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
"Quality does not sell itself": Divergence between "objective" product quality and preference for coffee in naive consumers
|
[
"Perception",
"Preference",
"Coffee",
"Behavioural economics",
"Consumer studies"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Consumers' perception of food quality\n2. Methods: 2.1 Samples\n3. Results: The data from our two primary measures (quality identification and coffee preference) were cross-tabulated in a 2x2 matrix dividing consumers into four groups:\n4. Discussion: Contrary to our expectations, our field experiment showed that, by and large, naive coffee consumers were not able to detect quality differences in a blind test between two samples widely different in intrinsic quality (as defined from an industry perspective). Furthermore, many of the consumers who correctly identified the HQ sample actually preferred the LQ sample. Since price consideration were absent in this experiment, we conclude that perceived quality in isolation is not a strong driver of consumers' preferences - a conclusion supported by the limited proportion of variance explained by the probit regression model.\n5. Conclusions: This work has investigated consumers' perception of coffee quality (defined in terms of expert scores and retail price) and its relationship to preference from a behavioral economics framework. The main results obtained were that consumers were generally not able to recognize HQ coffee in a blind test; preferences for high vs LQ coffee were equally distributed; but among those who correctly recognized the HQ coffee, there was a tendency to prefer HQ.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Food quality is a multi-dimensional concept comprising both objective and subjective components. Quality as defined from an industry perspective usually relies on different instrumental assessment and on ratings of \"experts\" which may not necessarily align with consumers' perception of quality. The purpose of this paper is to deal with consumers perceptions of intrinsic quality in coffee from a sensory scientific and behavioral economic perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In a blind taste test (n=205), naive consumers tasted two cups of coffee and decided which they preferred. The two coffees varied greatly in their \"objective\" quality (based on expert grading) and retail value. Consumers were then revealed that one of the cups contained a coffee that was much more expensive than the other, and that they could get a free cup of their preferred coffee if they could correctly identify the most expensive one.\nFindings: The results showed that preferences were equally distributed among the high- and low-quality samples, and that consumers did not perform better than chance level in the identification task. These results suggest that current grading systems used in the industry may be poorly correlated with the way consumers actually experience coffee, and thus that quality inference in the marketplace is more likely influenced by external cues (e.g. brand, label and price) than to intrinsic product quality. Nevertheless, the results also show that consumers who correctly answered the identification task were also significantly more likely to prefer the high-quality sample. This tentatively suggests that better sensory expertise is correlated with a preference for higher quality, though future studies are needed to confirm the correctedness of this interpretation.\nOriginality/value: This work highlights the difficulty of objectively defining food quality, and the limited usefulness of experts' ratings widely used in the industry. Managerial implications of these findings, as well as implications for consumer policy, are discussed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Re-examining the financial development and poverty nexus: some international evidence
|
[
"Banks",
"Poverty",
"Stock markets",
"International evidence",
"O11",
"O16",
"I32"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The poor have always been concerned about income-generating activities, to meet their needs and increase their income. However, one of the main problems they face is the access to financing opportunities. Access to stock market (SM) has been restricted to companies' shareholders while access to credit is almost exclusive for a particular category of the population. Accordingly, the poor, incapable to provide collateral, are unable to invest. Therefore, the banking/SM system could play a central role for the poor to allow them to benefit from financial services.\n2. Theoretical background: Some studies have shown that FD may contribute to poverty reduction directly through a well-developed financial system and indirectly through economic growth (Odhiambo, 2009). FD can also help to reduce poverty by providing better access to financial services. Kpodar (2004) distinguished two direct effects of FD on poverty, which are the capital driven and the threshold effect. The capital-driven effect has been proposed by Keynes (1937) and developed by McKinnon (1973). It assumes that money and capital are complementary. McKinnon (1973) argued that even if financial instruments do not provide loans to the poor, they do provide profitable financial opportunities. The threshold effect is the second direct effect of Kpodar proposed initially by Kpodar (2004). The threshold effect, proposed initially by Kpodar (2004) assumes that, when the financial system is developed, it is possible that financial services spread to the poor. It is necessary that the financial system reaches a certain threshold of development allowing it to be more efficient and competitive in offering its services to the poor. FD allows greater access to financial services, generates more jobs and higher income, thus reducing poverty. Therefore, the underlying assumption is that the more the financial system grows, the more financial services extend and benefit the poor.\n3. Related literature: Several studies on the direct and indirect impact of FD on poverty are developed in the literature. Some researchers have attempted to study the direct relationship between FD and poverty reduction (Perez-Moreno, 2011; Ho and Odhiambo, 2011; Khan, Gill and Noreen, 2012). Some others have attempted to study the indirect relationship through economic growth (Jalilian and Kirkpatrick, 2002; Odhiambo, 2009; Ordonez, 2012). Other authors studied both the direct and indirect relationships, like Beck et al. (2007), Jeanneney and Kpodar (2008), Akther and Daly (2009) and Abdin (2016).\n4. The econometric approach and main results: 4.1 Data\n5. Conclusion: The aim of this study is to test the impact of FD on poverty by highlighting the role of banking and SM development indicators. To this end, we examined a sample of 138 countries over the period of 1980-2014. We also classified these countries in terms of GDP by using the Atlas method of the World Bank. Accordingly, we obtained four groups of countries, namely low, middle, upper-middle- and high-income countries.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of financial development (FD) indicators, namely banking and stock market (SM) indicators, on the household final consumption expenditure as a poverty index.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors study an international sample of 138 countries over the period 1980-2014. A series of estimation methods are used on different measures of bank-based and stock-based FD. Subgroups of countries, namely low, middle, upper-middle and high-income countries are also investigated.\nFindings: In the study, the authors concluded that FD fails to reach the poorest segments of each society in the international sample. For the selected subgroups of countries, the authors concluded that the impact of the bank and the SM indicators, on the poorest population segments, changes depending on, the estimated FD variables, the selected group of countries and the adopted estimation technique.\nPractical implications: The present study recommends appropriate economic and financial reforms, with focus on the roles of banks and SM roles to reduce poverty and stimulate channels that allow the poorest population to exploit from financial services.\nOriginality/value: This paper is the first of its kind to empirically examine, separately, the impact of banks development and SM development, on an international panel and subgroups of countries, using modern econometric techniques.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Factors affecting the use of wiki to manage knowledge in a small company
|
[
"Wiki",
"Knowledge management",
"Web 2.0",
"SME"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Wikis, a promising and widely used tool in the Web 2.0 arena (Andriole, 2010; Milovanovic et al., 2012), can be defined as web sites collaboratively created and developed by multiple users on a common platform and accessed through a web browser (Wagner and Majchrzak, 2007). They enable the collaborative publication of content: any user can create a new page but also add, edit or delete content uploaded by others. Commonly organized by topics and subtopics, where each topic is a different webpage (i.e. a \"namespace\") of the wiki website (Majchrzak et al., 2013b), wikis are made of two components, namely, the wiki technology and the social norms or principles enabled by the technology that are also referred to as the \"wiki way\" (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001). This latter is partly represented by technology itself and partly a shared code of conduct of the community of wiki users (Standing and Kiniti, 2011). Different from other repositories and document management systems, wikis have some peculiarities (Yeo and Arazy, 2012):\n2. Success factors of wikis as Knowledge Management systems: This section proposes a review of the current literature with the purpose to identify the main factors that can influence the successful implementation of wikis as KM systems. Several studies underline that Web 2.0 technologies are deeply affecting the way KM can be approached (Levy, 2009; von Krogh, 2012; Gardner, 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2013b). Various scholars argue that, thanks to the advancements in the so-called social media, KM systems and practices are speeding up their evolution from the \"traditional\" model of KM (i.e. monolithic, hierarchical, centralized and controlled) to new implementations based on collaborative sharing (Mujadi et al., 2006). In this respect, Levy (2009) affirms that social media are close to some \"ideal principles\" that represent the real nature of KM, i.e. free sharing of knowledge, information and data. The wave of change brought to KM by Web 2.0 technologies has induced scholars to coin terms as \"KM 2.0\" (Levy, 2009; Razmerita and Kirchner, 2011) or \"conversational KM\" (Wagner, 2004; Gonzalez-Reinhart, 2005; Kiniti and Standing, 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2013a). In a conversational knowledge creation, people generate and share knowledge through dialog with questions and answers (Hester, 2010).\n3. Research questions and methodology: The paper presents the results of an in-depth case study analysis of a wiki project in a small knowledge-intensive company: an information communication technology (ICT) services provider based in the Northeast of Italy. In detail, the study addressed the following research questions:\n4. The case study: 4.1 Company background\n5. The perspective of users: As said, the factors influencing the adoption and use of the wiki at the company were investigated from the perspective of knowledge workers, whose opinions were collected by means of interviews to different key users and through of a questionnaire submitted to all employees. In the following pages, a summary of the main results is presented.\n6. Discussion: What emerged from this empirical analysis provides an answer to the questions of section three. In particular, from the reconstruction of the history of the system, it was possible to understand why and how the wiki was designed and introduced in the company, while the interviews to two end-users and the survey allowed us to understand how much, in what way and by whom it is currently used, and what motivations and obstacles influence its use.\n7. Conclusion: Our analysis contributes to the research about the adoption and use of wikis as KM systems. By means of a direct investigation of the behaviours and opinions of individual knowledge workers, it takes into account a perspective that the literature has so far less addressed in depth.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper intends to present and discuss the findings of a case study analysis of the adoption and use of a wiki system by a small enterprise that is intended as a tool for managing the knowledge needed to successfully perform its business activities. The study aims at contributing to the still insufficient research on the factors influencing the use of new Web 2.0 technologies in small organisations to support internal knowledge management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study combines a qualitative and quantitative approach. The main unit of analysis is the wiki system of a small company, particularly its implementation and usage by the company's employees. Relevant information about the wiki was collected through six interviews to different company members, and by means of an online survey submitted to almost all employees. Interviews involved the CEO of the company, the system developers and two typical users. The survey was made through a questionnaire of 19 questions online administered by means of a popular free-access online poll website (freeonlinesurveys.com).\nFindings: Through the reconstruction of the history of the system, the study allowed to understand how the wiki has been introduced and is effectively used inside the case company. The findings of the study highlight that the wiki technology, being light and user-friendly, can be particularly suited for small companies. At the same time, they reveal that the successful implementation of such a system is not a spontaneous and automatic result, but requires a resolute support by top management, a good motivation of participating employees and a clear definition of purposes and ways of use.\nPractical implications: The findings of the study contribute both to the academic research, by making available to scholars further empirical evidence about the use of Web 2.0 technologies in small organisations, and to the practice, by providing some guidelines to managers of small companies who are attempting to adopt and use wikis to effectively manage their knowledge assets.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to the limited research about the adoption and use of wikis as knowledge management system, both in general and in the particular case of a SME. Furthermore, by investigating the behaviours and opinions of individual knowledge workers, it takes into account a perspective that the literature has so far neglected.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A visual tool for identity communication strategy
|
[
"Co-design",
"Identity communication",
"SME identity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Being able to communicate a clear identity to different stakeholders is crucial for SMEs and startups in today's world, which is characterised by accelerated innovation, growing competition and increasingly connected consumers. Defining an organisation's identity and managing its communication has become increasingly complex (Abratt and Kleyn, 2012; Avdiji et al., 2018; Balmer, 2008; Klaus and Maklan, 2007). Despite its complexity, identity communication is key for companies to define their purpose and how they communicate it to their various stakeholders. According to Sisodia et al. (2003), organisations with a clear purpose can outperform their competitors. Having a clear identity helps companies to differentiate themselves from competitors (Aaker, 1996; Kapferer, 2004). It is by developing and communicating a unique identity that an organisation makes its brand unique and conveys its distinctness (Srivastava and Shocker, 1991); used strategically, this guides brand decisions, guarantees the coherence of a marketing strategy over time, and should be associated with specific and limited core values that complement organisational values and culture (De Chernatony, 2001; Urde, 2003).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 The identity concept\n3. Research design: We followed a design science research (DSR) approach. Various scholars have argued that DSR is particularly tailored to help practitioners to solve problems that are complex and for which knowledge is still too descriptive (e.g. Gregor and Hevner, 2013; Mandviwalla, 2015; Peffers et al., 2007; Winter, 2008). A goal of DSR is to address problems faced by practitioners by developing different artefact types (i.e. constructs, models, methods and tools) that will help practitioners to address these problems (Hevner et al., 2004; March and Smith, 1995). This makes DSR a research paradigm that differs from the traditional social sciences paradigms (positivist or interpretivist descriptive research). Boland et al. (2008) noted that design is a well-suited approach to organisational problems, since both are recursive; they state that managers should adopt a design attitude that always allows space to improve the design. Holmstrom et al. (2009) noted that DSR is a good methodology when solving a management problem, since it allows one to bridge theory and practice.\n4. Conceptual model: We ran three design cycles. Each contributed to the tool's current version, as used by practitioners. We developed the tool following Avdiji et al. (2018), as shown in Table I. We first did a systematic literature review (Elikan and Pigneur, 2018a), which we then translated into a conceptual model (Elikan and Pigneur, 2018b). We then transformed this conceptual model into a visual tool by transforming the chosen elements into empty spaces into which the tool's users could ideate, prototype and test different options for each space. We did a systematic literature review to find the components and relationships of the underlying brand identity concepts in order to develop a brand identity ontology. We found 1,592 papers, applying inclusion and exclusion criteria to assess the papers' quality and to ensure that they defined the brand identity concept. We retained 55 papers; of these, we considered 25 elements useful for inclusion in the brand identity ontology. There are listed in Table III.\n5. Shared visualisation: three iterations: Once we found the elements of the conceptual model, we followed the second principle as stated in Table I and represented this model in a shared visualisation. To come up with the current used visual representation we went through three different iterations as illustrated in Table IV. Each iteration and its evaluation will be described hereafter.\n6. Directions for use: We developed this tool for use as a boundary object (Carlile, 2002), with some directions for use. These are techniques considered for joint inquiry (Avdiji et al., 2018; Bresciani et al., 2008), including: exploration, hypothesis generation and presentation. First, exploration: the tool and its use should stimulate practitioners and should guide them into inquiring, creating and exchanging ideas, insights and alternatives for solving a wicked problem. This is usually done by using the tool as a shared visual on which users use sticky notes, with each sticky note containing one idea. Second, once all these ideas are on the tool, users can develop, transform and evaluate these different ideas in order to select an alternative to further discuss solutions to a wicked problem. Third, in this process, there are some tangible elements (i.e. the sticky notes) that allow users to present and criticise techniques when discussing solutions.\n7. Discussion: Developing and maintaining a strong identity is essential for startups and SMEs (Merrilees, 2007; Muhonen et al., 2017). With a proper brand identity strategy, smaller organisations can improve their identity and the ways they communicate the value they create for their users and other stakeholders (Gehani, 2016). This would allow them to differentiate themselves from competitors (Aaker, 1996; Kapferer, 2012). It would also increase employee motivation as well as qualified candidates and bigger investments (Arendt and Brettel, 2010). These are vital for startups and SMEs, which may not have the resources to attract adequate qualified human capital. Further, having a consistent brand identity can help them to plan a coherent social media strategy and to have a coherent online image.\n8. Limits and concluding remarks: We began this paper by asking: How can we create a tool that helps startups and SMEs to co-design their brand identity? We addressed this question by demonstrating how we developed the Identity Communication Map. As Avdiji et al. (2018) noted, there are three design principles for developing such a tool (see Table II). We have sought to demonstrate how we applied these principles to develop our artefact; our preliminary evaluations indicate satisfactory results. We have demonstrated that, from a ten-page document, we could populate the whole tool. We tested the tool with the company, which told us that if they had used the tool, they could have avoided paying an external company to prepare this document for them. In our view, creating an identity, in-house, with different stakeholders in the company, has more than just a financial advantage.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Being able to communicate a clear identity to different stakeholders is crucial for SMEs and startups in today's world, which is characterised by accelerated innovation, growing competition and increasingly connected consumers. However, this can be a complex task for small organisations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a visual tool that supports entrepreneurs in SMEs and startups to collaboratively develop their identity communication strategy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper follows a design science research approach. The authors propose the design of a tool as well as some preliminary qualitative evaluations. The authors conducted three iterations between design and evaluation, where the results of the evaluations are implemented in the design.\nFindings: The authors demonstrate how to design strategic tools for allowing teams to co-design their identity communication strategy and present the tool. The authors also evaluate its use and find out through the preliminary evaluations that it could be easy to use and useful for practitioners.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper lays in the novelty of the tool and its development. Such a tool addressing identity communication strategy has not been developed with a scientific approach until now.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Highways Agency puts traffic officers in the driving seat: Two training programs help patrols to cut motorway congestion
|
[
"Traffic control",
"Motorways",
"Training",
"Quality awards"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Delays on England's motorway network are being reduced following the introduction of two award-winning training programs for Highways Agency traffic officers.\nThe traffic officer's role: Staff at seven regional control centers across England manage and monitor traffic conditions, provide information to drivers and dispatch traffic officers to motorway incidents. Traffic officers go on patrol looking for, or being directed to, problems such as debris in the carriageway. They also attend to broken-down vehicles, making sure the occupants are safe and that a recovery service is on the way.In addition, the traffic officers set signs and signals from their control rooms. Officers have powers under the Traffic Management Act 2004 to stop and direct traffic or temporarily to close roads. Traffic officers support the police by, for example, applying road or lane closures around an incident to allow them to investigate.The police are still responsible for managing major incidents and enforcing road-traffic offences but traffic officers help them by managing the safe clear-up after the accident so that traffic can get moving again as quickly as possible. They can also arrange for the removal of damaged or abandoned vehicles that are causing an obstruction.\"Traffic officers are not burdened with dealing with criminality, so they have time to deal with routine incidents and essential traffic management at more serious events alongside the emergency services,\" said Laura Bird, communications manager at the HA's Traffic Learning Center in Bristol.The Highways Agency claims that traffic officers have helped to bring about a 12 percent reduction in incident-related congestion, a 1.9-minute response-time improvement, a three-minute improvement in carriageway-clearance times and 44 percent more police time freed for tackling criminality.\nIncident-management training: The first training program, which leads to officers earning a Certificate in Traffic Management (CTM), has seen a 12 percent decrease in so-called \"incident-related congestion\" - and has been rewarded in the latest UK National Training Awards.Laura Bird commented:We wanted to give new recruits from diverse backgrounds the skills to perform a new role efficiently and safely in the live motorway carriageway. This role was the management of incidents with the specific target of making journeys more reliable on the strategic road network and bringing real benefits to customers by reducing the variability of journey times.Traditionally, police dealt with collisions, deaths and injuries on motorways, but their objectives related to dealing with criminality rather than reducing congestion, and in many cases traffic and police requirements contradicted each other, resulting in traveler dissatisfaction.Skills learned on the training program include attending, managing and leaving an incident by implementing 90 different operational procedures, emergency traffic management, health and safety, driving skills and basic first aid.The culmination of the program is the award of the CTM, a nationally recognized qualification.\"It is now a regular occurrence on motorways that protracted scene management is undertaken by Highways Agency officers,\" said Keith Bristow, Warwickshire's chief constable. \"This indicates the confidence that Warwickshire Police has in the competence and levels of training of Highways Agency staff.\"Jamie Carr, the HA's regional-operations manager for the North West, commented:The learning architecture developed by the Traffic Learning Center is excellent. The standards of competence that we witness among staff who have taken this journey demonstrate a consistency and quality in the training.\nActive traffic management: The second training program for traffic officers, which supports a new way of managing traffic on the busy M42, has also been recognized in the latest National Training Awards.All traffic officers in the West Midlands region have been trained to manage a seven-mile section of the M42 using a form of control known as active traffic management (ATM).\"ATM is a unique concept for managing traffic and is a major financial investment for the Highways Agency, of approximately PS100 million,\" said Laura Bird.ATM was introduced to give the HA a new tool to help to meet the target to make journeys more reliable by reducing congestion, providing drivers with better information and improving safety. \"It introduced a new system of technologies and road architecture to allow safe and controlled use of the hard shoulder during peak periods,\" said Laura Bird. \"ATM is cheaper than road widening, but provides similar benefits including increased capacity, reduced journey times, increased journey-time reliability, lower emissions and lower fuel consumption.\"However, traffic officers needed specific new skills and knowledge to become efficient in managing the section and technology safely. The officers on the road needed to be able to negotiate traffic jams to get to an incident, inspect the hard shoulder, use emergency refuge areas, recognize new signs and signals, and understand radio protocols.Control-room staff also had to be able to do CCTV inspection of hard shoulders and understand new technology systems for signal setting and radio protocols.\"Traffic officers could no longer rely on the hard shoulder as a relative place of sanctuary during some incidents and so their overall thinking and attitude when attending incidents on the ATM section had to be adjusted accordingly,\" said Laura Bird.On-road training consisted of an extended one-day workshop with a pass or fail knowledge check at the end, while the control-room training consisted of a three-day mock control-room-based course covering the new technology.Laura Bird explained:Traffic officers in the West Midlands manage an average of 2,200 incidents every week, some 440 of which occur on the ATM section. Since the introduction of ATM, the number of incidents requiring a response on the section has dropped by 50 percent.Jenny Moten, regional operations manager (West Midlands), said that among the important outcomes was \"the basic capability of my staff to add this new and high-impact tactic to our armoury of available tools in tackling congestion\".There were also benefits in cross-function team-working between on-road and control-room staff. \"For me this was a hidden benefit, but a great bonus with benefits that reach into other aspects of our work,\" she concluded.\nNote: David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest editor, wrote this article.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Details two training programs for Highways Agency traffic officers, which were recognized in the latest UK National Training Awards.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Describes the origins and outcomes of a training program that gives new traffic officers from diverse backgrounds the general skills needed to manage incidents on the motorway, and a second training program giving traffic officers specific skills to manage a new traffic system on a stretch of motorway in the West Midlands, where vehicles travel on the hard shoulder at busy periods.\nFindings: - Highlights Highways Agency claims that traffic officers have helped to bring about a 12 percent reduction in incident-related congestion, a 1.9-minute response-time improvement, a three-minute improvement in carriageway-clearance times and 44 percent more police time freed for tackling criminality.\nPractical implications: - Reveals that traffic officers are not burdened with dealing with criminality, so they have time to deal with routine incidents and essential traffic management at more serious events, alongside the emergency services.\nOriginality/value: - Describes how properly trained traffic officers are helping to cut delays on England's congested motorway network.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The great game of gotcha
|
[
"Petroleum products",
"Forecasting",
"Sensitivity analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Back in April 2008, the US Energy Information Administration issued an update to its Annual Energy Outlook, about where it thought oil prices would be headed for the rest of the year. And that was: pretty much nowhere.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to highlight the strategic irrelevancy of much prognostication in business.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper provides an opinion column.\nFindings: - This column shows how far off base recent government predictions of the price of oil have been, and compares this supposed miserable failure to similar (inevitable) failures on the part of the private sector. Single-point prediction is essentially a sucker's game; though it is demanded by outside authorities, and often must be supplied for tactical reasons, it should never be relied upon for strategic purposes.\nOriginality/value: - Exposes how pointless, from a strategic point-of-view, the mass of predictive effort in both private and public sectors can be.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Do characteristics of the board of directors and top executives have an effect on corporate performance among the financial sector? Evidence using stock
|
[
"Board of directors",
"Corporate performance",
"Oman market",
"Top executive management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Increasing attention has been placed in corporate governance in recent years because of the major corporation collapses that occurred, which included the following businesses and their period of collapse in alphabetical order; Adelphia in 2002, Arthur Anderson in 2001, Commerce Bank in 1991, Enron in 2001, Fanny Mae in 2008, Freddy Mac in 2008, Global Crossing in 2002, Goldman Sachs in 2007, Harris Scarfe in 2001, HIH in 2001, Lehman Brothers in 2008, Marconi in 2005, Northern Rock in 2007, One.Tel in 2001, Tyco in 2002, WorldCom in 2002, and Parmalat and Yukos in the U.S, European and other countries around the world. These corporations have been mentioned in several studies in literature such as (Al-Matari et al., 2012a, 2012b; Duke et al., 2012; Jackling and Johl, 2009; Obiyo and Lenee, 2011).\n2. Theories and hypotheses development: This section is devoted to providing an overview of the relationship between board of directors, executive management characteristics and firm performance by reviewing relevant studies about the relationship between the variables. This section guides future studies to contribute to literature by clarifying ambiguous relationships reflected through mixed findings of prior relevant studies.\n3. Data collection and models: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Results: This study employed the panel data method to examine the effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable, which is conservative accounting. The method has been used in accounting literature. More specifically, the study employed data from 2011 to 2017 and the STATA statistical software Version 16 was used to analyze data as it is deemed to be suitable for panel data regression.\n5. Discussion of result: As mentioned, this study carried out the cross-sectional time-series FGLS regression on the data and five of the proposed study hypotheses were supported by the results, while two were rejected. This section discusses details of the results.\n6. Implications of the study: This study succeeded in achieving its objective of determining the effects of board of directors and TEM on corporate performance among Omani listed companies in the MSM covering the years from 2011 to 2017. Notably, this study excluded non-financial firms. This section discusses the implications to theory, practice and policy-making.\n7. Limitations and suggestion for future researchers: This study has its limitations, with the first being its context and focus, which is the Omani financial listed firms. In this regard, other studies can concentrate on examining the variables relationships in other GCC countries. Second, the TEM characteristics examined in this study are limited to size, professional certificate, experience and accounting experience. Because the Chi2 (7) displayed in Table IX, is 42.74, there are other factors that have a likelihood to improve the level of corporate governance and as such, future studies should examine them and these include education, international experience, foreign member, government relationship, compensations, among others.\n8. Conclusion: This uniqueness of this study lies in its provision of empirical findings concerning the effects of BOD characteristics (size, non-executive members and meetings frequency) and TEM characteristics (size, professional certificate, general experience and accounting experience) and the corporate performance of Omani listed firms using data for the years 2011-2017. This study adopted two control variables and the FGLS regression to test the relationships among the independent and dependent variables. This study found board size, non-executive directors, general experience and accounting experience to have a significant and positive relationship with corporate performance, board meeting to have a significant and negative relationship with corporate performance, and finally, size and professional certificate of TEM to have no significant relationship with corporate performance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Consistent with the board of directors and top executive management's role in ensuring and promoting investments for economic development, this paper aims to examine Omani executive management's role in helping goals achievement in firms. This paper examines the relationships among the study variables, which are top executive management characteristics and corporate performance in the context of Omani listed firms, with the help of two control variables.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study focused on a unique context, a developing nation, Oman and its exchange market for the past seven years (2011-2017). In addition, the data were collected from annual report according to board of directors and top executive management variables, and the financial data were obtained from DataStream. The study used the panel data approach to test the relationships characteristics of board of directors, top executive management and corporate performance.\nFindings: Based on the obtained results, showed positive and significant positive relationships between some characteristics of top executive management and corporate performance, and significant negative relationships between others and the same. Specifically, board size, non-executive directors, general experience and account experience were in the former category, while board meeting was in the latter category. Finally, size and professional certificate of top executive management did not have a significant relationship with corporate performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study, like previous studies has some limitations such as sample, country, variables and years; therefore, at the end of this study, many limitations and suggestions for future research studies are provided. Moreover, the study findings can be used by the market to assist managers to enhance corporate weaknesses.\nOriginality/value: The focus of the study was placed on the top executive management and corporate governance of Omani listed firms that has implications for practitioners particularly concerning the top executive management role. Added to this, the study conducted an investigation of the integration between board of directors and top executive management, with corporate governance among Omani listed firms. The study also provided information that has implications to academics when it comes to board of directors and top executive management strategies to encourage consideration of the relationship to develop best practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The Big 4 in Bangladesh: caught between the global and the local
|
[
"Big 4",
"Bangladesh",
"Globalization",
"Emerging markets",
"Global professional service firms (GPSF)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Globalization remains one of the most contested concepts in the social sciences, with disagreement over, inter alia, when it started, who benefits/loses from it and what consequences it engenders (Guillen, 2001). There is, however, general agreement that globalization does exist, as evidenced by the influence of institutions and processes that operate on a global scale, such as financial markets, the World Trade Organization, War Crimes Tribunals, etc. (Giddens, 2002; Sassen, 2003). Arguments vis-a-vis the desirability of such institutions and processes can often be placed into one of two, polarized streams of thinking: the globophiles and the globophobes (Held and McGrew, 2007; Kellner, 2009). The former uncritically accept the spread of global institutions and processes as leading to greater democracy, freedom, happiness and wealth (Friedman, 1999, 2005). The latter see these processes as the imposition of western capitalist hegemony, further exacerbating wealth disparities, degrading the biosphere and undermining national sovereignty (Boyer and Drache, 1996). The position adopted in this paper is neither globophilic nor globophobic. Rather, we see globalization, following Kellner (2009), as \"a highly complex, contradictory, and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social relations that takes economic, political, social, and cultural forms\" (p. 3). Indeed, it is this complex and contradictory nature that renders globalization such an interesting object of analysis.\nGlobal Professional Service Firms: There is a growing body of literature that studies accounting's relationship to globalization (Barrett et al., 2005; Cooper et al., 1998; Gallhofer and Haslam, 2006; Gallhofer et al., 2011; Graham and Neu, 2003; Lehman, 2009; Samsonova, 2009; Suddaby et al., 2007). One set of arguments in this body of research has been that local traditions and rules are dismantled with the aim of achieving global uniformity. Suddaby et al. (2007), for example, examine the role of large accounting firms such as the Big 4 \"in the emergence of a transnational regulatory field in professional services\" (p. 333). In this sense, the Big 4 and other GPSFs are presented, not as mere products of globalization, but key architects of it as well (Morgan, 2009).\nSystem, Society and Dominance (SSD) Effects: In the broader literature on cross-national analysis of multinational firms, two distinctive positions can be distinguished. On the one hand, there are studies which emphasize the importance of globalizing trends, considering multinational companies (MNCs) as \"globalizing agents\" that are \"denationalising from their domestic origins in the course of developing genuinely global strategies of operation\" (Sklair, 2001, p. 48). These studies argue for the gradual removal of national diversity and increased homogenization of organizational practices. On the other hand, there are those which show a penchant for highlighting areas of diversity and heterogeneity when applied to the internationalization of firms (e.g. Whitley, 1992), leading to the celebration of diversity and, according to some commentators, the obfuscation of processes of power and domination (Willmott, 2011). While acknowledging the merits of these studies, scholars have argued that neither of the above mentioned approaches fully recognizes the complexity of real economies because the nature of work within modern multinational organizations is more complex than global/local and convergence/divergence dichotomies (Smith, 2008). In an attempt to transcend such polarization in the analysis of multinational firms, Smith and Meiksins (1995) elaborate an alternative theoretical perspective, namely, the SSD framework.\nThe socio-economic context of Bangladesh: Bangladesh separated from Pakistan in 1971 following a nine month long liberation war (Sisson and Rose, 1991). Immediately after its independence the Bangladeshi government pursued socialist policies for a brief period (Jahan, 1973) whereby it nationalized all its mills and factories, only to then reverse these decisions a few years later in 1975 following a military coup (Rahman, 1993). Since then, induced by international agencies such the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a private sector-led denationalization policy has been pursued leading to the privatization of major state owned enterprises (Boughton, 2001; Rodrik, 2006). In 1991 an ostensible parliamentary democracy was introduced following a political struggle (Rashiduzzaman, 1997), leading to a development strategy based on market economy principles. A series of reforms, including trade liberalization programmes, were introduced to improve the corporate governance and capital market structure in Bangladesh. During this period foreign direct investment (FDI) increased significantly from a meagre $3.2 million in 1990 to $1,501.6 million in 2013 (http://databank.worldbank.org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx, 22 June 2015). Although the Big 4 and other GPSFs have had a presence in the country since the 1970s, their visibility has increased in recent times with the prospect of steady economic growth (on average 6 per cent per annum) and Bangladesh aiming to become a middle income nation by 2021. Most of the economic forecasts by market analysts, such as Goldman Sachs, PwC, J.P. Morgan, Moody and Standard and Poor, point in this direction.\nResearch method: In order to explore the principal research objectives, a qualitative field study was undertaken between April 2012 and March 2013. We interviewed senior members of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh. Using personal contacts, the partners and managing partners of each firm were contacted and interviews arranged. The sample is skewed towards partners as it was perceived that they would have the most comprehensive overview of their firms' relationships with global and regional centres. The average duration of each interview was 50 minutes approximately.\nFindings and analysis: In this section, we report our findings on how the Big 4 have internationalized in Bangladesh; our analysis is informed by the SSD framework. We find that while the systemic and dominance effects have driven the Big 4 to enter the Bangladeshi market, these effects are mitigated by societal effects, which results in any global aspirations that the Big 4 might harbour being thwarted somewhat.\nDiscussion and conclusion: Overall, we can conclude, along with other studies that PSFs fail to be truly \"global\" (see Boussebaa et al., 2012; Muzio and Faulconbridge, 2013). What we offer beyond existing work is a novel explanation as to why this is the case. Both global and local factors explain the current status and work practices of Big 4 avatars in Bangladesh. Or, in terms of the theoretical framework employed here, the Big 4 in Bangladesh are caught between system, societal and domination effects. The legal requirement to sign off on audits in the name of local firms is clearly a societal effect. This does not constitute a protectionist mechanism so much as a cultural norm. After all, India, Japan and China also require this of Big 4 firms, yet for all intents and purposes the Big 4 are the Big 4 in those countries. Other barriers to greater integration offer a greater explanation of the somewhat tentative presence of the Big 4 in Bangladesh. Best practice guidelines, which are associated with domination effects, in terms of audit methodologies and HRM practices are only partially implemented in the local context. This is due to commercial barriers (e.g. the cost of software and training programmes) as well as deference given to local, cultural factors (societal effects) such as the seniority principle and the way in which networks of nepotism and patronage operate. In many ways, these scenarios are the product of a lack of systemic effect in the form of an already well-developed market for professional services in the country. Should there be more money to make, one would anticipate that the local firms would all move quickly to full membership status and that promotion processes, software packages and the training of personnel would similarly be brought more into line with global standards. Without the economic incentives to do so, it is unlikely that these things will change in the near future.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the work practices of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh with the aim of exploring the extent to which global professional service firms (GPSFs) can be thought of as being genuinely \"global\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: Interviews were undertaken with the vast majority of Big 4 partners in Bangladesh. These interviews explored a number of themes related to the professional service work context in Bangladesh and the relationship between local and global firms.\nFindings: The central finding of this paper is that although the Big 4 have a long-established presence in Bangladesh, local societal factors heavily influence the realities of work for accountants there. In most cases the Big 4 firms establish correspondent firms (instead of full member firms) in Bangladesh and tend to offer restricted service lines. Additionally, the paper identifies professional, commercial and cultural barriers to greater Big 4 involvement in the local market. Conceptually, the chief contribution of this paper is to explore how the effects of globalizing capitalism and standardised \"best practices\" in global professional service work are mediated through the societal effects of Bangladeshi society, resulting in the Big 4 having only a tentative presence in the Bangladeshi market.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings cast doubt on the extent to which self-styled GPSFs are truly \"global\" in nature. Future work examining the Big 4, or accounting more generally, in the context of globalization, would do well to pay greater attention to the experience of professionals in emerging markets.\nOriginality/value: Whilst there has been much work looking at accounting and accountants in the context of globalization, this work has tended to privilege \"core\" western empirical settings. Very little is known about professional service firms in \"peripheral\" emerging markets. Furthermore, this study extends the application of the system, society and dominance framework by mapping the interactions and dynamics of these three sources of influence in the setting of PSFs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Effectuation logic in digital business model transformation: Insights from Japanese high-tech innovators
|
[
"Transformation",
"Causation",
"Effectuation",
"Business model",
"Digital platforms"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Digitalization of distribution platforms provides new entrepreneurial opportunities for firms delivering and multihoming their digital innovations and content through various platforms to end-users (Belleflamme and Toulemond, 2016). However, to reach opportunities created by digital distribution platforms[1], firms have to adjust their operations by adapting their business to digital environments. Especially, if a firm is operating with traditional delivery channels, this may include several changes to a firm's existing business model. That is, we know little about how digital business models of high-tech firms change and evolve over the time when these firms adapt new technologies and adjust their business models to new digital distribution platforms.\n2. Theoretical framework: In this chapter, we first introduce the ideas of our background theories, effectuation and causation logics. Thereafter, we talk about business models and how they might evolve over time. This is followed by the presentation of changes in five different elements of business models that we apply in this study to better understand change and evolution of business models. In the end, we discuss platforms, distribution platforms and the concept of multihoming.\n3. Research method: This study chose qualitative method in order to understand the transition to digital distribution platforms and the evolution of the business model over time and the nature of such changes. That is, the research method guiding this study had to be suitable for understanding complex social phenomenon while providing an in-depth description of it in the context of a real-life environment over which the investigator has little or no control. According to these criteria, a qualitative multi-case study was selected (Yin, 2009). Instead of relying on a single-case study, multiple cases were selected not only to add general confidence to the findings but also as a way to gain deeper understanding and explanation of the observed phenomenon. That is, multiple instances of study help to understand how the specific conditions of each case findings may be related (Miles et al., 2014). The selected firms were chosen according to the following criteria: the firms were SMEs (from 5 to 180 employees), which helped to gather information as the top managers were accessible to the researchers, the sample firms included established firms ranging from about 10 to 30 years old making it possible to study changes in business model in the course of time, the firms used several digital platforms to deliver product(s) and related services and at least one representative from the strategic-level management of the firm was accessible to the researchers in order to facilitate access to key staff and information resources in the course of the interviews (Huber and Power, 1985). One firm was selected from a different niche in the software industry, making productivity software rather than video games in order to provide some contrast. The firms were reached through the first and second-degree networks of the authors. An overview of the case firms can be seen in Table I. All the case firms were from Japan, where digital transformation has an important role due to the large size of the markets for different digital services (OECD, 2017).\n4. Research findings: This section includes narratives of each case firm. The narratives identify instances of effectuation vs causation in the five central elements associated with transformation of digital business models. A change to an element of a business model is considered causational if made with planning and specific predictions about benefits to the firm. Changes are considered effectual if they were made with unclear or omitted predictions about the benefits to the firm yet were nonetheless employed in business improvement. Other indications of effectual logic include opportunistic exploitation of surprises, co-innovating with value partners, risk taking with resources, etc. (Sarasvathy, 2001). The various logics of changes in the case firms' digital business model elements are elaborated in Table III.\n5. Cross-case analysis: The case findings allow us to address the research question posed in the introduction:\n6. Discussion and conclusions: This qualitative case study makes notable contributions to the business model and entrepreneurship literature in the context of digital innovation providers. First, effectuation logic appears to have the most impact in the product/service element of digital business models as many of these moves fulfilled visionary goals and opened new areas of digital business. Successful moves often come about because the founders were under pressure to transform the firm toward more digital business or fulfill their own vision of possibilities enabled by digital technologies (see e.g. Yoo et al., 2010). This finding reveals the important role of effectuation in digital business model evolution related to fast and unpredictably changing digital technologies (cf. Austin et al., 2012; Dattee et al., 2018; Nylen and Holmstrom, 2019) where the outcome of the move is uncertain (cf. Sarasvathy, 2001, 2008). As the findings of this study reveal, the gaming firms (B, C and D) relied on effectuation logic for their most impactful products and for games in general (cf. Smolka et al., 2018) whereas Firm A followed effectuation logic only rarely, and not at all for its initial products and services. For entrepreneurship literature, the findings indicate differences in decision-making logics among digital innovators. This calls for more in-depth comparative studies on decision-making logics and specific reasons behind these logics in various industries creating digital innovations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study how digital business models evolve when entrepreneurs move to new digital platforms and how this evolution is related to effectuation and causation logics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study applies a multiple case study approach to investigate how digital business models change in small, Japanese high-tech firms providing their innovations through different digital platforms. To investigate digital business models, this study considers the elements that comprise general business models. The case firms were selected based on size, products and transitions from physical to various digital platforms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the key decision-makers from the case firms.\nFindings: The findings show that through digital transformation, the case firms' digital business models evolved by following effectuation logic as well as causal logic. All the firms employed causal logic when moving to new platforms, among other actions. The case firms used effectual logic with success for product development and adjustments to their network. Especially firms providing video games relied on effectuation for high impact products. Effectual logic did not play a role at all in changes to value delivery and had only little impact on revenue structures.\nOriginality/value: This research helps understand how digitalization of platforms and subsequent moves to newer digital platforms improve a firm by changing the business model elements through effectuation and causation logics. This research extends the understanding of digital business model transformation to a more granular level, business model elements.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A eulogy for a "bright future"
|
[
"Bright future",
"Education",
"Work",
"Save",
"Invest",
"Savings",
"Investments"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: We're told to sit up straight,\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This poem aims to present a reflection on the bigger picture of how powerless people are in reality to safeguard their own futures.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - It is a fictional poem.\nFindings: - The poet considers how outside forces devalue the traditional approaches people have taken towards trying to insulate themselves from life's storms.\nOriginality/value: - This is a unique attempt to look at how people are given a false sense of security regarding the methods people should adopt to safeguard themselves and their families against financial ruin.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Synchronicity of global construction cost indexes
|
[
"Construction",
"Estimating",
"Competitiveness",
"Vibration",
"International practice",
"Bidding",
"Construction cost index",
"Synchronicity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: International construction is one of the most attractive businesses that contractors expect to operate in the present era of globalization. According to the Engineering News-Record, the overseas contract revenue of top 225 international contractors has increased rapidly over the years from 2005 to 2016. With the pace of globalization, entering the international construction market and exploring business overseas have been instrumental for contractors to achieve business growth (Deng et al., 2014). Therefore, in addition to multitudinous competitors from developed countries such as the USA, UK, Japan and European countries, a growing multitude of contractors from developing countries are involved in the international construction industry (Low and Jiang, 2003).\nConceptual background: Construction cost indexes\nMethodology: Maximum variance formulation (MVF)\nFindings and discussion: Overall trends of global CCIs\nConclusions: Construction cost is a key competitiveness indicator that deserves much attention of contractors nowadays. However, the difficulty in owning a proper perception of construction cost is surfacing in the international construction context in which considerable contractors often fail to accumulate sufficient knowledge. In this study, a reference curve of CCIs is extracted to reflect the major trend of global CCIs, and the synchronicity degree of CCIs and the vibration degree of CCIs are calculated. The findings suggest that a significant synchronicity between global CCIs can be confirmed, the global CCIs have been rising, and the growth rate has become relatively stable over the past decades. It is worthwhile to note that subject to common factors, CCIs of different construction markets at the national level can be linked to each other. However, some specific factors may cause CCIs to vibrate in an economic entity.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the features and tendency of cost indices in the global construction setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data from 22 countries/regions are collected and analyzed using maximum variance formulation and Kendall rank correlation coefficient.\nFindings: It is found that global construction cost indexes (CCIs) have commonly maintained a steady increase for decades, and the CCIs synchronize with each other. Overall synchronicity and synchronicity of different countries pairs have increased with time significantly.\nResearch limitations/implications: The major limitation, however, is the availability of data: only 22 regions/countries are examined, the distribution of these regions/countries is imbalanced between different continents and various indices are adopted around the world, of which statistical methods are not same.\nPractical implications: The implication is that a better perception of CCIs enables contractors to have a robust estimation for bidding prices and to improve the efficiency of construction projects management. The research findings also provide a useful reference for those countries that have not established construction cost indices databases to forecast the tendency of domestic construction industries.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the overall body of knowledge by presenting the co-movement of global CCIs and measuring the changes of CCI synchronicity with time and in different countries pairs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
POA, HAC and never events
|
[
"Performance related pay",
"Hospitals",
"Consumer risk",
"Error management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Last December, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a jointly-sponsored listening session (CMS, 2008). This signaled the announcement of new pay-for-performance policies on hospital-acquired conditions in inpatient and outpatient settings across the entire USA. Essentially, providers would no longer be paid for services regardless of outcome; rather, CMS would deny payment on some billings. CMS adopted the National Quality Forum's list of \"never events\" (\"28 occurrences on a list of inexcusable outcomes in a healthcare setting... adverse events that are serious, largely preventable, and of concern to both the public and healthcare providers for the purpose of public accountability\" (Wikipedia, n.d.)).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to summarize recent developments announced by the USA's third-party payers, changing the basis on which they reimburse hospitals for services rendered. Outcome, not just service delivery, now matters more than ever.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper takes the form of a narrative review starting from public records of events which the author attended.\nFindings: - In 2006, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced an intention to investigate ways of using their purchasing power to promote reduction or elimination of serious and costly errors in the provision of health care services - costly errors that should never happen. In 2008, they announced their new policy. CMS will start denying payment of bills for service in cases where various adverse outcomes occur unless those complications are present on admission. This represents important leadership toward rewarding quality, but raises many important questions about operational details.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The impact and effectiveness of pay-for-performance initiatives need to be monitored as new initiatives become operational\nPractical implications: - Until recently, bills were tendered and paid regardless of quality of care. Leading hospitals and third-party payers are giving more attention to best practices for dealing with medical error, including not presenting a bill in egregious cases. Hospitals now also face denial of additional payment for treating complications where those complications are deemed preventable.\nOriginality/value: - Historically, financial disincentives diminished the monetary value of steadily improving the safety and quality of patient care. Now, healthcare providers are being put on notice by influential third parties that the payment formula is being corrected. That change has been announced, and responses are being debated, in a very public manner.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Creating value through cooperation: An investigation of farmers' markets in New Zealand
|
[
"Agriculture",
"Small enterprises",
"Distribution channels and markets",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Competitive advantage",
"New Zealand"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A recent phenomenon that has developed in a number of countries, including the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand has been the (re)appearance of \"farmers' markets\". While literature on the growth of these is limited, it is clear that they have emerged as a highly successful form of distribution for many small producers over the last few years (Fischer, 2004). By definition, this very success means that these markets have found a different way to create value from that being achieved by other food distribution channels. While theories of market exchange (e.g. Alderson, 1965; Bagozzi, 1974) demonstrate that value must accrue to both and sellers, the perspective taken in this paper is primarily the viewpoint of the seller. After reviewing the background to the growth in farmers' markets throughout the world (including our own data from New Zealand), we aim to examine how the organizers and stallholders of these markets perceive value is being created. In doing this we have drawn away from the traditional view of a dyadic exchange process between buyer and seller as the only way in which value may be created to include the idea of value being generated at a community level. While this idea is not entirely new (e.g. Tallman et al., 2004) it has provided an opportunity to integrate ideas across what appear to be distinct streams of literature including agricultural marketing, marketing channels and consumer behaviour.The farmers' market phenomenon\nMethodology: The first step in this research was to establish the whereabouts of markets selling food in New Zealand. Based on the assumption that all markets need some form of council licence to operate, all local councils in New Zealand were contacted. Out of the 75 local councils, 63 responded including all the councils covering the urban population centres except for Hutt City. From this a database of most markets in New Zealand was created and all organisers of the markets were contacted to obtain data regarding the size, location, times and days of operation and proportions of stallholders selling fresh food. New Zealand privacy legislation forbids organisers passing on names and other details of the stallholders so four main markets were then selected for in depth analysis by observation, interviewing organisers and surveying stallholders. These markets were the Whangarei Growers Market in Northland, The Hawke's Bay Farmers' Market in Hastings, The Village Growers' Market in Havelock North and the Otago Farmers' Market in Dunedin. The first three of these were amongst the first founded in New Zealand while the last was founded in 2003 and was included both for convenience and for contrast as a new market. The market in Havelock North is a seasonal market and operates only through six months over summer. All the rest operate throughout the year. Conflict with another research project involving the Otago Farmers' Market subsequently reduced participation from stallholders at that centre. In total, 53 responses were obtained from 106 stallholders contacted at all four markets.Information gathered from the personal interviews with the organisers of the four markets was used to provide background information to the responses provided by the stallholders. The organisers provided an assessment of the \"demographics\" of the overall nature of the market and the population of stallholders. They were also asked for their perceptions as to why traders and customers used the market and for any information they could offer concerning competitive responses to the establishment of the market. The content of these interviews is not reported separately in the results but has been used to support the discussion and interpretation of results - for example, the opinions reported in the discussion on possible cross-channel conflict.The stallholders themselves provided information regarding their own activities and cooperative behaviours. Stallholders were personally contacted at the market but could not be interviewed on site as this would have disturbed trading. Consequently, they were subsequently supplied with survey forms by mail. Organisers at the selected markets were interviewed personally while others were interviewed by telephone and/or e-mail. Interviews with organisers included overall material on the history of the market, regulations covering its operation and information on customers and trading patterns. Data from stallholders was gathered on the following areas:* business \"demographics\" - including product areas and length of time trading at the market;* reasons for trading at the market - including relative margins earned, access to other distribution channels;* perceptions of customers and customers motives;* cooperative activities undertaken;* competitive responses from other channels or suppliers; and* memberships and certifications for organic or other organisations.While a structured survey was required because of the way it was distributed, most questions were open-ended and allowed free responses, which was then coded as nominal variables. This allowed for as little prompting as possible in order to lead respondents to particular answers. The data was analysed in SPSS using frequency counts, crosstabulations with exact tests to overcome issues with some small expected cell sizes, and optimal scaling. The latter allows for principal components analysis of nominal data and it has been used in an exploratory way as a data reduction method. Named linkages were too sparse amongst the four diverse markets to build a network diagram of cooperating businesses so cooperation has been examined in terms of the number of linkages identified by each respondent and optimal scaling was also used to identify the underlying structure of cooperation amongst traders at the markets. The membership and certification information proved too basic to understand whether it represented a \"sleeping\" link or something more active and it has not been incorporated into the summary of cooperation given below.\nFindings and discussion: Characteristics of stallholders\nDiscussion and conclusions: Farmers' markets have provided new alternatives for small rural producers to obtain direct distribution to consumers over the past few years. The growth has been spectacular in several countries and this paper has examined how they may be creating value by looking at participation and cooperation amongst the traders at these markets in New Zealand. It is obviously a limitation of this research that the results have to be considered within the possible confines of the New Zealand food industry and it would be interesting to pursue equivalent research in other countries such as Australia, Canada or the UK that have experienced similar rapid growth in farmers' markets.Many markets are organised by local community trusts and almost by definition rely on a degree of interdependency among the traders. We identified a range of cooperative activities that analysis suggests fall into three broad categories relating to materials and costs, marketing efforts and the reciprocal manning of stalls. Some element of cooperation was identified by over 80 per cent of respondents and the number of cooperative activities generally increased the longer the stallholders had participated in the market. However, cooperation did not seem to vary according to the reasons traders gave for participating in markets. Neither was it possible to identify whether levels of cooperation influenced performance in terms of the margins earned at the market compared to other channels. Nearly all the traders used other distribution channels apart from farmers' markets and an interesting observation appears to be that the traders who relied on farm gate sales and other markets cooperated more than other traders who might have more cross-channel conflict. Such conflict is recognised by many traders and it is an interesting question as to whether this might inhibit some producers offering whole hearted participation in farmers' markets - something that might be reflected in less social integration and less cooperative activity.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Farmers' markets have provided new alternatives for small producers to obtain direct distribution to consumers over the past few years. The growth has been spectacular in several countries and this paper aims to understand this growth and how value might be created by looking at participation and cooperation amongst the traders at these markets.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey of farmers' market members was undertaken and findings are reported with descriptive statistics and exploratory analysis to profile aspects of cooperation amongst stallholders.\nFindings: - Over 80 per cent of the traders at the markets were involved in some form of cooperative activity, reinforcing the idea of markets as community-based activities with high levels of interdependence amongst participants. Cooperation could be identified in different categories and increased over the length of time trading at the market but could not be directly related to performance or the reasons traders offered for doing business at the market.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research was designed as an exploratory study and provides potential issues for further research as opposed to testing particular hypotheses.\nPractical implications: - The categorisation of cooperation methods offers traders ways in which they might seek to more formally organise joint efforts. Monitoring the degree of cooperation between traders and linking to performance would also provide the organisers of markets with a potential way of managing aspects of competitive advantage against competing food retailers.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first paper to examine value creation and cooperation in this context and it provides a potential base for working towards sustainable competitive advantage for farmers' markets.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Beyond virtuality: from engagement platforms to engagement ecosystems
|
[
"Engagement ecosystem",
"Service science",
"Engagement platform",
"IT in service",
"S-D logic"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The more high technology is around us, the more the need for human touch (Naisbitt, 1982, p. 52).\n1. Introduction: Improving our understanding of the role and implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in service has been identified as the top research priority for the progression of service science and managing service quality (Chesbrough and Spohrer, 2006; Ostrom et al., 2010). Information Systems (IS) and service scholars alike called for research at the ICT/service interface, to establish cross-fertilization between these two rapidly evolving fields (Meyronin, 2004; Raj and Sambamurthy, 2006; Hyotylainen and Moller, 2007). For example, Huang and Rust (2013) drew attention to the information-intensive nature of ICT-related service:\n2. Literature review: Engagement in service systems\n3. Illustrative case studies on transitioning EPs: Research objective and methodology\n4. Conceptual development, discussion, and implications: Conceptual development and discussion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Understanding the role and implications of information and communication technology (ICT) in service is the key research priority for service science and the management of service quality. The purpose of this paper is to address this priority by providing insights into the role of \"engagement platforms\" (EPs), physical or virtual customer touch points where actors exchange resources and co-create value. Despite an emerging body of literature that emphasizes the fit between engagement and technology-enabled service contexts, EPs remain ill-defined. Specifically, little is known about the particular types of EPs, their characteristics, and implications for the performance of service ecosystems and managing service quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: By drawing on two illustrative case studies, the authors investigate and theorize about the characteristics and dynamics of EPs in virtual/physical contexts, and identify if, how and to what extent configurations of EPs may enhance resource exchange within and across service ecosystems.\nFindings: By building on emerging research at the service/engagement interface, the paper introduces the notion of the \"engagement ecosystem,\" as a configuration of individual, mutually dependent EPs that represent specific interactivity-facilitative loci. The paper explicates the relevance of the model and highlight opportunities for future research in this emerging field of inquiry.\nResearch limitations/implications: The work addresses the call for research at the intersection of ICT and service science through development and application of the engagement ecosystem concept. The theorizing process draws on two illustrative case studies, and thereby provides a theoretical contribution and foundation for future research in this emerging area.\nPractical implications: The authors guide managerial decision-making regarding the implementation, adoption, and utilization of engagement ecosystems. Furthermore, the nature of \"engagement\" as a bridging concept implies that the work can help managers to operationalize service-centric thinking.\nOriginality/value: By showing how individual EPs form engagement ecosystems, the paper bridges theory and practice, and offers new insight in the realm of practical application of the S-D logic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Work-family conflict and individual consequences
|
[
"Work‐family conflict",
"Life satisfaction",
"Emotional exhaustion",
"Organizational commitment",
"Turnover intentions",
"Family life",
"Employees turnover",
"Job commitment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Work and family represent two important spheres in an adult's social life. Work-family conflict is a form of inter-role conflict in which role demands originating from the work domain are incompatible with role demands stemming from the family domain (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). Work-family conflict is often viewed as a bidirectional construct: Work-family conflict may occur when work interferes with family (i.e. work-family conflict); it also may occur when family interferes with work (i.e. family-work conflict) (Netemeyer et al., 1996). This distinction is important because studies have shown that the two types of interference have different antecedents and consequences (Frone et al., 1992; Kelloway et al., 1999; Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005; Netemeyer et al., 1996). Meta-analyses have revealed that high work-family conflict and family-work conflict were related to a wide range of work-related consequences (e.g. low job satisfaction, reduced organizational commitment, high turnover intentions), family consequences (e.g. low marital and family satisfaction), and physical and psychological health problems (e.g. depression and poor physical health) (Allen et al., 2000; Eby et al., 2005; Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005).Our literature review suggests two models that link bidirectional work-family conflict to individual consequences: the cross-domain model and the source attribution model. The cross-domain model proposes that interference from one role (e.g. work) makes it difficult for an individual to satisfy demands of the other role (e.g. family). Accordingly, the individual experiences greater distress in the role that receives the interference (Ford et al., 2007; Frone et al., 1992, 1997). The source attribution model suggests that an individual attributes the source of role conflict to the role that the individual believes caused the interference. Further, this model suggests that the individual will become dissatisfied with the role perceived to be the source of the conflict (Carr et al., 2008; Shockley and Singla, 2011).Current empirical support for these models is largely based on research that utilizes participants from countries with Western values (e.g. the US). Because the nature of work-family interface may vary along cultural boundaries (Luk and Shaffer, 2005; Ford et al., 2007; Spector et al., 2004, 2007), the extent to which predictions of the two models can be replicated among populations who espouse Eastern values, such as the Chinese, remains unclear.To start to address this gap in literature, building on the perspectives from prior studies (e.g. Aryee et al., 1999a, b; Yang et al., 2000), we argue that prioritizing work for family benefit is critical to understanding the nature of work-family interface among the Chinese. Specifically, when work interferes with family, a Chinese worker is less likely to attribute the source of interference to work because work is an important tool which is used to achieve overall benefit of family (Aryee et al., 1999a, b). Besides, role senders from the Chinese family are likely to support the individual's work priority behaviors because the behaviors are viewed as self-sacrifice made for the benefit of the family rather than a sacrifice of the family for the selfish pursuit of one's own career development (Yang et al., 2000).The central idea of this study is that how managers perceive work versus family roles is related to the associations between bidirectional work-family conflict and individual consequences. We propose that the cross-domain model is culturally neutral and, thus, works among Chinese samples. In contrast, we posit that a culture difference (i.e. prioritizing work for family benefits) may attenuate the effectiveness of the source attribution model among the Chinese, and, thus, some findings from Western cultures cannot be replicated in an Eastern one (i.e. China). To test our proposition, we explore the relationship between bidirectional work-family conflict and two health-related consequences (life satisfaction and emotional exhaustion) as well as two work-related consequences (affective commitment and turnover intentions) among Chinese managers.This study contributes to work-family research by investigating a deeper layer that explains how cultural differences are related to the associations between bidirectional work-family conflict (i.e. work-family conflict and family-work conflict) and individual consequences. Although prior studies have examined these associations among the Chinese (e.g. Aryee et al., 1999a, b; Lu et al., 2009; Spector et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2004), to our knowledge, our study is the first to underscore the validity of the two models (i.e. the cross-domain model and the source attribution model) for predicting the associations. By weighing the two mechanisms simultaneously in China, we can potentially deepen our understanding of the associations between bidirectional work-family conflict and individual consequences, and provide a different perspective on how to manage work-family conflict among Chinese managers.\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Work-family conflict\nMethod: Sample and procedures\nResults: Confirmatory factor analysis\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between two forms of work-family conflict - work-family conflict and family-work conflict - and individual consequences for Chinese managers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Participants of this study were 264 managers from Mainland China. The authors tested their hypotheses with structural equation modeling.\nFindings: - Work-family conflict was positively associated with emotional exhaustion. Family-work conflict was negatively associated with life satisfaction and affective commitment, as well as positively related to turnover intentions. Contrary to the research with samples of workers from Western countries (e.g. the USA), the study found that work-family conflict was positively associated with affective commitment and did not associate with turnover intentions for Chinese managers.\nOriginality/value: - Using the perspective of the Chinese prioritizing work for family benefits, the authors are the first to provide a preliminary test of the generalizability of the source attribution and the cross-domain models to Chinese managers. The paper's findings provide the preliminary evidence that the cross-domain model works among the Chinese because of its cultural neutrality whereas the source attribution model cannot be used to predict the associations between work-family conflict and work-related consequences.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Women doctors, on working with each other
|
[
"Women",
"Gender",
"Doctors",
"Relationships",
"Public service",
"Intra-gender dynamics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Internationally, the increase of women doctors and the feminization of the medical profession has been the subject of analysis and review. In Australia, although the medical profession has traditionally been male dominated, the number of women entering the Australian medical workforce is increasing. Women make up 36 per cent of registered doctors in Australia (Health Workforce Australia, 2012). The increase in women doctors also requires more women to work alongside each other and interact with each other in professional capacities. We enquire if this induces any emergent workforce and human relations related occurrences that require further attention. In this study, we focus our attention on the intra-gender work dynamics that women doctors experience and recognize in their professional lives. What do women doctors think about and encounter when working alongside each other? What includes their comforts and discomforts in working with each other in comparison to their male colleagues? While this line of enquiry is relevant to medical workforce and human resource management (HRM), there is limited knowledge on this subject in current literature for this profession.\nWhat do we know about women's relationships with each other?: Women's relationships and interactions with one another are complex and often conflicting. The equivocal nature of the literature surrounding women's perceptions and behaviours towards one another in a workplace setting provided further rationale to investigate this topic. In social and leisure settings, women form great bonds of friendship with each other (Green, 1998; Caldwell and Peplau, 1982), where the dynamics emphasize confidingness, intimacy, personal concern, emotional interaction, nurture and empathy relative to homogenous male friendships (Sapadin, 1988; Caldwell and Peplau, 1982). Women rated friendship amongst women higher in overall quality, intimacy, enjoyment and nurturance over cross-sex friendships (Sapadin, 1988) and are more inclined to display automatic in-group bias, where they instinctively prefer women to men, compared to same-sex preference amongst men (Rudman and Goodwin, 2004).\nMethods: The objective of this exploratory qualitative study was to look into and analyse the experiences and perceptions of women doctors on working alongside other women doctors in hospitals by using their original voice in presenting the findings. The study aimed to address the following research questions. What do women doctors think about working alongside each other? How do they describe the experience of working with other women in comparison to working with male colleagues? What are the dynamics that stem from working in an increasingly female work environment?\nFindings: What do women doctors think about working alongside each other? What includes their comforts and discomforts in working with each other in comparison to their male colleagues?\nDynamics of comforts and discomforts in working with other women: The interviews provided an intriguing mix of information that we have arranged into the themes (shown in Figure 1) and portrayed as the dynamics that influence women doctors' work relationships and interactions in hospitals.\nKey insights and conclusions: As an exploratory study, this research is fundamentally about \"dipping our feet in the shallow end of a potentially deep and uncharted pool; to test the waters\" in this specific profession and workplace setting. We identified that there are merits to investigating this topic and, ultimately, have managed to scope out some aspects that emerge from the increase work-related interactions between women doctors for further study. As authors, we set out to hear the voice of women doctors on this topic and to express it simply in their original voice. Many interviewees reciprocated intrigue for this topic, as it is a topic, which resonates deeply with their professional experiences. Some informally mentioned that these were issues that had been frequently \"discussed over coffee\" with colleagues. As such, a notable contribution of our research is, first, that the voice of their experiences is documented and disseminated. It then provides preliminary insight into uncovering how relationships and interactions with other women doctors can advance medical workforce and HRM as well as individual career outcomes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This exploratory study aims to explore the perceptions and experience of women doctors on working with each other and draw attention to their 'voice' on this issue. The equivocal and limited nature of relevant literature piqued our curiosity on how women perceive working with each other in work settings, particularly within the medical profession.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Twelve women doctors within Australian public hospitals were interviewed through semi-structured informal interviews to \"voice\" their experiences and views on the comforts and discomforts of working with other women doctors. Their responses were compared to literature to determine similarities and uniqueness of their experiences to women in other settings.\nFindings: Insights from the respondent's perceptions and experiences highlight several constructive and negative aspects of working alongside women doctors. Social and psychological constructs of being a \"woman\" and being a \"woman doctor\" as well as systemic/cultural issues of the medical fraternity formed how the women in this series of interviews perceived and related to the women doctors they worked with.\nResearch limitations/implications: This exploratory provides initial insights into the experiences of women doctors on working with each other. Many themes identified have been explored in other settings. Hospital as a workplace, presents many similar work dynamics when considering the work interactions of women in other settings. This study should be used to drive more rigorous enquiry and a larger sample size.\nPractical implications: The working relationships women build with each other influence individual careers and organizational outcomes. Understanding the dynamics that improve and hinder the development of constructive work relationships between women can strengthen women-focused managerial and organizational policies and practices.\nOriginality/value: The consolidation of literature coupled with the exploratory insights of this research contributes to a limited depth of existing literature not only in the medical profession, but in other industries and settings as well.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Ways of working between third sector organizations and UK universities: are we getting it right?
|
[
"Development",
"Universities",
"Organization development",
"Engagement and learning",
"Third sector",
"Social mission"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: How can we as a regional university help understand the business development needs of local third sector organizations?[1] This was the starting point for our relatively broad-based research agenda (beginning in 2012). In this article, we highlight interrelated themes and offer strategic advice and recommendations for third sector leaders. We also highlight educational issues that are important for UK regional universities in their support of local third sector organizations[2].\n2. Build your efficacy - share the burden, do not attempt everything on your own: Supporting third sector belief in social achievement and business success is essential. Many smaller third sector organizations feel they have insufficient business skills or expertise (in-house). Therefore, securing external support for business goals and key milestones becomes really important. Interviewees and focus groups highlighted the need for mutual engagement and mentoring. As one focus group participant noted:\n3. Partnership, or own the business skills yourself - which is more important: Many smaller organizations mentioned a lack of business skills and an inability to prioritize time for accessing support for funding or bid preparation. From an organizational development perspective, yes, there is room for business education and external support. However, we found several social entrepreneurs who did not like to \"own this responsibility\". Basically, they did not consider it their primary driver, or mission goal. As one informant noted:\n4. Develop your \"social mission\" and be \"business oriented\" - it is possible: Similar to the previous theme, we found that many third sector organizations feel they do not know enough about the \"business side of things\". As a consequence, personal tensions can emerge, borne out of frustration with daily life as a social entrepreneur/business person. Many practitioners want to feel creative and concentrate on their social, environmental, or community mission. Some feel constrained by the burdensome bureaucracies and daily chores of business life.\n5. Develop applied student projects - everybody wins (well mostly): Developing applied student projects (and placements) can be a really useful way for regional third sector organizations and universities to collaborate. However, applied projects can throw up unexpected surprises. Sometimes, despite best efforts, students can become overwhelmed, and active management on the part of a university staff supervisory team is required.\n6. Think about student volunteers - it is not a bad idea: Young people are great. Many universities have active volunteering programs, and it is something that students and third sector organizations gain a lot from. Participating students often learn (experientially) through student placement, or work experience, and it is good for their CV's. For the organization, there are benefits in terms of harnessing the intellectual enthusiasm and creative efforts of students.\n7. Your regional/local university should be there for you: Universities can be a focal point for information gathering and research dissemination among third sector stakeholders. They offer a \"neutral space\" to hold debates, symposia and conferences. Universities should act as research hubs and share their resources with local third sector organizations. Many UK regional universities get involved in specialist knowledge exchange, or third sector consulting activities (such as social return on investment projects) that may also be relevant to your organization.\n8. Concluding remarks: Going forward after the Brexit vote (2016), many regional universities will place a stronger emphasis on collaborative working, short-courses and research/knowledge exchange in the UK. The espoused roles of universities are to engage in high-quality teaching, research, and knowledge exchange. Increasingly, this should involve developing specialized courses, for example, business planning, how to apply for funding, understanding social return on investment, or investigating what \"sustainability\" means for the third sector.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer strategic advice and identify ways in which third sector organizations can work with United Kingdom (UK) universities for promoting business education and enterprise skills development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors' strategic advice is based on analysis of qualitative interviews, focus groups, interactive seminars/workshops, and working with third sector support agencies.\nFindings: Advice for third sector organizations includes the following points: build your efficacy - share the burden, do not attempt everything on your own; partner, or own the business skills yourself - you decide upon your strategy; develop your \"social mission\" and be \"business oriented\"; develop applied student projects - everyone wins; think about student volunteers; and local universities are there for you - check and see.\nOriginality/value: This is the first article of Development and Learning in Organization (DLO) to consider relationships between UK's third sector organizations and regional universities. The authors deal with important education, skills, and business development issues for the third sector. There are new opportunities in 2016 (and beyond) for universities to build closer relationships with their third sector communities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Knowledge management, the missing piece in the 2030 agenda and SDGs puzzle
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Sustainable development",
"SDGs",
"2030 Agenda",
"Knowledge management excellence model"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nSustainable development, the sustainable development goals column: \"How can global governance shape a transformation toward sustainability? How can a transformation toward sustainability shape new forms and strategies on global governance?\" (Stevens and Kanie, 2016).\nWhat about knowledge management?: For the KM side, Oliveira et al. (2010) stated that the interest in the KM is given because organizations seek a competitive advantage, where they know there is a globalized environment, with high competitiveness, constant change in customer demands and several other aspects. In this way, the most well-known knowledge conversion application is the knowledge spiral of Nonaka and Takeuchi (Nonaka and Toyama, 2008; Oliveira et al., 2010) that has the components of socialization, externalization, combination and internalization.\nConstruction of the knowledge management excellence model: In fact, the creation of a KMEM comes from an idea to create a model that can be used as an indicator, measurement and tool to spread the SDGs goals to all stakeholders; therefore, governments could shape easily a transformation toward sustainability using this model. As previously shown, one of the main challenges to reach sustainability is to operationalize the resolutions of the Brundtland Commission, in the same sense as Caiado et al. (2018) and Bergaglio (2017) stated, there are no specific and clear goals related to the growth of the world population and the new goals after 2030.\nKnowledge management excellence model applied to the sustainable development goals: When the KMEM is completed, the intention of this article is to show the importance of good a knowledge management. Thus, the 17 SDGs' information available on www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/, were read and based on that information, we started to sort and highlight what information is handed on each of the 8 dimensions compounded by 19 aspects of KM frameworks (Table I).\nLimitations: This study showed the construction of a Knowledge Management Excellence Model (KMEM) based on the relationship between the knowledge management frameworks of Oliveira et al. (2010) and the components of the Management Excellence Model by the FNQ (MEG). From this, the KMEM was applied in the 17 SDGs of the UN.\nFinal considerations, lessons learned and directions for further research: Almost all SDGs present the eight dimensions of KMEM; this indicates that there is a relationship between SDGs and a KM framework. In this way, the authors propose the opportunity to conduct more research or give the opportunity for further research, applying and complementing the information obtained in the following aspects:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to analyze some knowledge management (KM) frameworks that sustainable development goals (SDGs) can apply to such a challenging implementation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To accomplish this, a systematic scientific literature review was carried out about the KM concept. Searching, analyzing and collecting different KM frameworks were crossed and compared to achieve a standard KM framework list, based on the most important and relevant information collected.\nFindings: The study outlines how and which KM frameworks may be applied in an effort to reach the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDGs, so it can overcome the barriers and pitfalls related to the knowledge management use.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper shows some SDG areas that deserve future attention and deep implementation with KM frameworks.\nOriginality/value: With the enormous potential and vision of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), there is a barrier in its progress and development: the knowledge use, in both the local knowledge aspects and general knowledge management. This paper creates a Knowledge Management Excellence Model (KMEM) linked to SDGs, which will help and promote its use to educate and involve all those interested in meeting these goals.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Is personalization of services always a good thing? Exploring the role of technology-mediated personalization (TMP) in service relationships
|
[
"Relationship marketing",
"Trust",
"Customer loyalty"
] |
[
{
"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: Personalized service is often considered an unalloyed good. Adjusting and modifying the service, and making personalized recommendations, are simply considered a way to greater customer satisfaction. But, we ask in this paper, \"is personalization always good service? Does personalization always result in higher customer satisfaction and therefore help the service relationship?\"Service firms routinely practice personalization during face-to-face service encounters (Gwinner et al., 2005; Mittal and Lassar, 1996). They also increasingly use information technology applications to personalize products and services (Ansari and Mela, 2003; Winer, 2001) to develop longer-term, more personal relationships with their valuable customers. Despite personalization's strong intuitive appeal for service firms, we know relatively little about its role in delivering customer satisfaction and enhancing service relationships. Knowing how customers actually respond to personalization is of particular relevance to researchers and practitioners of service personalization.We explore this question within the context of the burgeoning area of technology-mediated personalization (TMP) - personalizing customer interactions and service offerings through information technology such as customer databases and applications software - and its effects on service relationships (Ball et al., 2006). Our research suggests that the effects of this type of service personalization may be more complex than previously hinted in the literature (Gilmore and Pine, 1997; Pine et al., 1995). Here, we make a distinction between personalization implemented by service representatives (e.g. Gwinner et al., 2005; Surprenant and Solomon, 1987) and TMP, or personalization through information technologies (e.g. databases, CRM applications, recommendation systems). In most cases, this is accomplished by an internet website interface. It is occasionally accomplished through telephone, in-person, or e-mail connections with a service representative. However, as we define it, the personalization aspect is driven by information technology. That is, if a human service representative is involved in customer transactions, his or her personalized recognition of, and personalized offers to, the customer are completely driven by a customer database and software, rather than information stored in that representative's brain. An individual customer service representative, in the case of TMP, has probably not dealt with the particular customer before and must rely on company records and software prompts to personalize the interaction and the offer. Under our definition of TMP, the representative is not allowed to go beyond the recommendations provided by the marketer's information system. While many personalization events using human service representatives will fit this pattern, many will not, and thus do not fall under the rubric of TMP.We expect technology-mediated personalization of customer interactions, particularly without human service representatives, to continue to grow and to become common in the future. Many on-line book-buyers, for example, are already familiar with personalized recommendations provided by Amazon.com, and many movie renters are already familiar with NetFlix.com's on-line recommendations. However, our extant knowledge of personalization effects is sparse. Thus, we focus on TMP because it is a growing and under-studied area, and it represents a strong opportunity to separate the effects of personalization itself from the effects of the personal relationship a customer might have with a service representative (Beatty et al., 1996; Price and Arnould, 1999). To audit the effects of personalization, we adopt the following theoretical perspective:* There are three types of personalization: interaction personalization, transaction outcome personalization, and continuity personalization.* Types of personalization induce patterned customer attributions to the firm on the dimensions of performance, benevolence, and value provision.* Customer attributions, in turn, affect relationship status variables such as satisfaction, value, trust, and commitment.The paper is structured as follows. We first review literatures of service research and relationship marketing for theoretical insights into personalization types, personalization effects, and relationship antecedents. Reviews will then be synthesized to develop a working perspective to auditing the effects of personalization. We then describe the methodology for data collection and analysis, and report research results by generating researchable propositions. Theoretical and managerial implications will also be discussed.\nLiterature review: What can we learn from previous work to better understand TMP? We expect that service research will offer insights into personalization dimensions and modifiers of personalization effects, and the relationship marketing literature will inform us on key relationship predictors and processes.Personalization in service research\nTMP dimensions and personalization effects: an integrated view: We suggest that:* the two types of personalization conceptualized in the service research literature can be usefully extended to TMP by adding a third type; and* the contingencies of personalization effects as discussed in service research and the relationship predictors and processes as reviewed in the relationship marketing literature can be integrated to form a working perspective of personalization effects in TMP, by adding an attribution process as a linkage.Three types of TMP\nMethod: To get some initial understanding about how customers actually respond to strategies of technology-mediated personalization and how customer responses may affect their commitment to service relationships, we conducted exploratory interviews (McCracken, 1988; Spradley, 1979) of a purposive sample of 22 customers, a qualitative technique that has found use in services marketing literature (Bettencourt and Gwinner, 1996; Seth et al., 2005; Suh et al., 2006).Informants were located through social connections as well as a recruitment email sent to the students taking marketing courses at a major Midwestern university. Before each interview, informants read and signed an IRB-approved Informed Consent Form. We also offered to pay $7 as a thank-you token for their time to participate.A semi-structured questionnaire was used in conducting interviews lasting an average of 50 minutes each. To make the research topic more comprehensible to our informants, we paraphrased TMP in our interviews. Informants were encouraged to talk about circumstances in which they were offered or delivered personalized products or services without having to attribute the personalization to a specific service representative. After the informant had given an account of a specific personalization practice, we proceeded to probe for more customer experience details and their actual or prospective responses. Following each interview, the researchers would meet and discuss emerging themes and allow further alteration of the interview questionnaire before proceeding to the next interview. For a list of our informants, see Table I (informants' names and other identifying information have been changed to ensure anonymity).Each interview was tape-recorded and then transcribed to text format. We obtained a total amount of data of 275 pages or 103,917 words. In data analysis, both authors read all transcripts carefully to identify personalization cases. Each identified case was then coded into one of the three categories (interaction personalization, transaction outcome personalization, and continuity personalization). Differences in classification were settled through discussion.For each case, an excerpt was then extracted from the interview transcripts. Excerpts were grouped according to their category. We independently read each excerpt of the categories and made judgments with reference to the three types of attributions. First, we asked three questions about positive attributions:1. Did the personalization incur positive performance inferences?2. Did the personalization incur positive benevolence inferences?3. Did the personalization incur positive value provision inferences?Second, three questions were asked of negative attributions:1. Did the personalization incur negative performance inferences?2. Did the personalization incur negative benevolence inferences?3. Did the personalization incur negative value provision inferences?Third, the summary mechanism was applied by comparing the previous two judgments to reach an estimate (positive, equilibrium, or negative): a surplus of positive attributions should lead to higher trust, relational value, satisfaction, and commitment. Comparison was made within and between personalization types to reveal patterns or regularities.\nResults and propositions: Interaction personalization\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications and future research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Despite the strong intuitive appeal of personalization (through employees or, increasingly, through the use of software applications), relatively little is known about its role in managing service relationships. This study aims to explore the burgeoning area of technology-mediated personalization and its effects on customer commitment to service relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A theoretical perspective based on integrated reviews of service research and relationship marketing is developed and used to guide the exploration of personalization effects with qualitative data.\nFindings: - Personalization is not always good enhancement to service: its effects have contingencies and vary across the categories. Continuity personalization seems to be a promising area for researchers and practitioners.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Personalization effects should be rigorously studied. Continuity personalization seems to offer a promising area for future research.\nPractical implications: - The intuitive belief about personalization is probably misleading. Whether or not personalization strategies help service relationships depends on their capacity to generate positive inferences on dimensions of performance, benevolence, and value provision. Out of the three types, continuity personalization offers a promising strategic option for managing ongoing customer relationships if well implemented.\nOriginality/value: - The counter-intuitive insights into personalization effects on relationship continuity address issues of theoretical and practical concerns.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Modeling failure types and failure times of turning and boring machine systems
|
[
"Markov processes",
"Failure (mechanical)",
"Reliability management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Frequent breakdowns of few critical machines (horizontal boring machine and lathes for turning) were one of the major contributing factors for schedule overrun of rolls (both cast and forged) in a Roll manufacturing organization located in eastern India. The failures of the machines were broadly of two types namely, mechanical failures and electrical failures. Mechanical failures were the ones, which occurred due to malfunctioning or breakage of the mechanical parts. Electrical faults of the machines were caused due to problems of electrical origin such as, circuit failures, fuse wire blown off etc. A link between these two types of failures was distinctly possible. For instance, overflow of voltage could lead to fast rotation of the motor and consequent breakage of a bearing. Again, a mechanical failure could trigger an electrical due to unbalanced load in the electrical circuit.The problem was taken up with a view to explore the possibility of predicting the failure type given that a particular type of failure has occurred already in a machine and also the time to next failure so that necessary proactive actions could be arranged beforehand to prevent the loss caused because of the break down of the machine. The critical machines considered here for analysis were: Machine nos - 2 (Horizontal Boring Machine), 4 (Centre Lathe), 5(Centre Lathe), 40 (CNC Lathe).\n2. Data availability: The data for the last two years were collected on the type of the failures and times to failures, and also on the loss hours caused by each failure for each of the four-machine system. The holding times and waiting times are computed from the time of failure by subtracting each failure time from the base time period (taken as 1 January 2005 00:00 a.m.). Thus the data set was of the form {(Xn,Tn),n>=1} where is the index of the failure, Xn is the failure type: {0 for Mechanical and 1 for Electrical at the nth failure, and Tn denotes time to nth failure i.e.; the nth change of the state (detailed data are given in Tables I-IV). {Xn,n>=1} was a sequence of zeros and ones, indicating the types of failures in a chronological order.\n3. Testing for random occurrences of failure types: To know whether the observed permutation was one of random arrangement of zeros and ones, the test for randomness {Xn,n>=1} was done using the asymptotic distribution of the total runs (of each type) denoted as a random variable R (Fraser, 1957). Under the null hypothesis H0: the arrangement of 0's and 1's is not random.R is asymptotically normally distributed with mean: Equation 1 and variance: Equation 2 The null hypothesis H0 of dependence is rejected a% at level of significance if: Equation 3 where ta/2 is the upper a/2 point of the standard normal distribution.3.1 Machine-specific run test results\n4. Modelling the failure types with Markov Chain: Since the occurrence of the failure types of each of the four machine systems could not be treated as random (based on runs test), it was decided to model the data on failure type of a machine with a k - order time homogeneous Markov Chains models (Dharmadhikari and Deshmukh, 2002; Paranchych and Beaulieu, 1996).4.1 Determining the order of Markov Chain Model\n5. Conclusion: * The data failure types (mechanical or, electrical) of each of the four machine systems could be successfully modelled by second order time homogeneous Markov chain.* The data on times to failures of each machine system could be successfully modelled by a second order time homogeneous Markov Chain with bivariate distribution function.* Based on simulation it was found that, in general, the predicted failure types (by the fitted model) matched with the observed failure type in majority of cases. Likewise, the predicted failure times of each machine system which could be obtained using the conditional probabilities also matched observed failure times in overwhelming majority of cases.* Thus, once the past two failure types are obtained, appropriate transition probability matrix may be used to predict the next failure type. Also, suitable matrix of probabilities may be used to predict the time of occurrence of the next failure given the occurrences of last two failure types and the next future failure type obtained from above.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to model the occurrences of successive failure types and times to failure of the two repairable machine systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Historical data on failure types and time to failures of the given machine systems (4 nos) were gainfully used. Second order time homogeneous Markov Chain models were used to characterize the occurrences of the two broad failure type, namely, mechanical and electrical, after having found that the occurrences of failure types were dependent. Second order time homogeneous Markov Chain with Bivariate Distribution function (M2BVD) was used to model the times between successive failures {Tn, n>=1} for each machine system.\nFindings: - It is possible to apply the theoretical framework of Markov chain models to the accumulated data on failure types and failure times of any repairable system, which provide a wealth of information on the systems and are often left unused.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The framework used in the study can be improved to accommodate multiple failure types and failure times of any repairable system to the extent that a more accurate prediction of these two variables and a better estimate of the system reliability are available.\nOriginality/value: - The models for failure types and failure times of the given machine systems would be of immense use to the maintenance crew for predicting the future failure types and failure times of any given system and subsequently organizing and fine-tuning their state of preparedness.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Response to S. Voelpel et al., "The tyranny of the Balanced Scorecard in the innovation economy," Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 7 No. 1, 2006, pp. 43-60
|
[
"Balanced Scorecard",
"Performance management",
"Strategic management",
"Innovation",
"Empowerment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Voelpel et al. alleges several deficiencies with the Balanced Scorecard that cause it to be inadequate for innovative companies in today's global and networked economy. In this document, we correct the substantive misrepresentations made by Voelpel et al. within the article.\nAlleged problem number one: \"First, the BSC is a measurement tool that is relatively rigid. The four perspectives are the main categories, according to which key success factors are defined. In consequence, the BSC tends to force indicators into one of the four perspectives.\" (Voelpel et al., p. 50.)Kaplan-Norton, The Balanced Scorecard (1996), pp. 34-5, in a section explicitly entitled, \"Four Perspectives: Are These Sufficient?\":The four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard have been found to be robust across a wide variety of companies and industries. But the four perspectives should be considered a template, not a strait-jacket [emphasis added]. No mathematical theorem exists that four perspectives are both necessary and sufficient. We have yet to see companies using fewer than these four perspectives, but depending on industry circumstances and a business unit's strategy, one or more additional perspectives may be needed.As an example of a company that added a fifth perspective to capture its strategy, we illustrated, on page 35:[A] chemicals company ... wished to create an entirely new perspective to reflect environmental considerations ... They insisted that outstanding environmental and community performance was a central part of that company's strategy and had to be an integral part of their scorecard.Also, returning to our experience with hundreds of enterprises around the world, and especially those identified for membership in the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame, none of them found the four perspective framework to have been forced upon them. They found it to be robust and flexible for describing and communicating their new strategies.Voelpel et al. illustrate the apparent \"rigidity\" of the Balanced Scorecard with a description of the failure of Encyclopedia Brittanica, a company that was unable to adapt its business model to changing technology. But Encyclopedia Brittanica was not a Balanced Scorecard user, so its use as evidence that the BSC leads to rigid or tyrannical thinking is inaccurate and misleading.\nAlleged problem number two: \"Second, the BSC creates a static-ism that tends to struggle with the challenges of highly competitive and changing world. ... it limits any further activities and initiatives that might go beyond the originally-set targets.\" (Voepel et al., p. 51.)Kaplan-Norton, Strategy-Focused Organization (2001):p. 315: Employees who [now] have a clear understanding of the existing strategy, because of the communication and alignment processes ... , may innovate and find new and unexpected ways to achieve high-level strategic objectives or identify variations in the strategy that open up new growth opportunities.p. 316: If followed too rigidly, however, this process [initiative rationalization using Balanced Scorecard measures] could stifle emergent strategies from arising. ... For example, the team was enthusiastic about one proposed initiative that scored low on the screening procedure. Rather than reject the proposal because it failed on the scoring criteria, the team reflected on what was attractive to them about the proposal. The team concluded that the proposal actually had caused them to consider a new strategic opportunity that was not currently on their Balanced Scorecard. They not only accepted the initiative but changed a scorecard measure to reflect the insights from their discussion. In this way, the management meeting allowed the new initiative to modify the strategy and the scorecard. This is excellent \"double-loop\" learning; using the management meeting to reflect on the assumptions behind the strategy and being prepared to modify the assumptions and the strategy to reflect an idea that had emerged from within the organization.Following these paragraphs, on pages 316-319 of the Strategy-Focused Organization (2001) book, we describe how two companies, Chemical Bank and Store 24, updated their scorecard based on what they learned from the external environment and the implementation of their strategies. We introduced these two mini case-studies as follows:Organizations find that up to 25 percent of the measures change every year, reflecting the learning that is taking place. The original strategies of the previous measures were not wrong. The evolution was caused by the organization reaching another level of sophistication around its strategy (p. 318).The Store 24 case study concluded:The company introduced an innovative strategy, tested it in real time, learned what aspects of the strategy were not working, and adapted and modified the strategy based on what it had learned. (p. 319).We have always advocated that companies use the Balanced Scorecard as an opportunity to learn and adapt their strategies to changing knowledge and economic conditions, and be responsive to new ideas emerging from within the organization.\nAlleged problem number three: \"Third, the external innovative connectivity of an organization is hampered by the BSC, which is mostly an internal document; this is a critical limitation in its ability to account for the external environment and systemic linkages. ... It widely ignores the needs of an interlinked and highly networked innovation economy in which companies co-evolve and where competition is partly giving way to co-opetition.\" (Voepel et al., p. 51.)Kaplan-Norton, Strategy-Focused Organization (2001), p. 208 in a section titled, \"Integrating External Partners\":Linkages between organizational units also arise when integration occurs across corporate boundaries - for suppliers, customers, out-sourced services, and joint ventures [emphasis in original]. Companies such as JP Morgan Information Services and Caltex - a joint venture between Texaco and Chevron - have implemented Balanced Scorecards to define the performance model for the relationship. This enabled them to define how outsourced services and joint ventures could create new value, not just lower costs. No new principles were involved to develop scorecards for these external relationships. The external linkages had the same structure and served the same purposes as the linkages within the organization already described in this chapter.On the role for co-opetition, see the following passages from Kaplan-Norton, Strategy Maps (2004):Complementors are neither suppliers nor customers of the company, but they create great value through their selling of compatible and valuable products to the company's customers, or through their purchase of additional services from the company's existing suppliers. For example, the more than 20,000 companies and 5 million programmers that write application programs for the Microsoft operating system are complementors of Microsoft ... United Airlines and American Airlines, while highly competitive for their airline passenger customers, are actually complementors for suppliers, such as Boeing. By coordinating their purchase commitments, they enable Boeing to achieve a scale economy sufficient to develop a new generation of aircraft....Complementors provide a key source of sustainability for system lock-in strategies. Complementors provide valuable products and services that require customers to use the company's proprietary product or standard. Measures such as number of complementors and sales of complementors' products and services to customers quantify this objective. To succeed with a system lock-in strategy, companies must develop a capability to influence people who are not employees and assets that it does not own.On incorporating other external relationships in the scorecard, see the chapter in Kaplan-Norton, Strategy Maps (2004) \"Regulatory and Social Processes,\" pp. 163-91, on the importance of reflecting community relationships and social investments into a company's strategy map and Balanced Scorecard. The chapter concludes (p. 190):Many companies today recognize that achieving excellence in environmental, safety, health, employment, and community practices are part of long-term value creating strategies. At a minimum, achieving good regulatory and social performance is a long-term objective that enables companies to maintain their franchise to operate in all communities where they wish to make, market, sell and distribute their products and services. Beyond just complying with local regulations and expectations, however, companies that excel in critical regulatory and social processes can enhance the company's reputation among customers and investors, and also help to attract and retain valuable employees who take pride in their company's role in improving the environment, the workplace, and communities.\nAlleged problem number four: \"Fourth, yet another limitation of the BSC is the way that it deals with knowledge creation, learning and growth ... (p. 54) Innovation, a key factor to intellectual capital, ... appears [in the BSC] to be a routine process rather than a creative endeavor by skilled employees throughout the company.\" (Voelpel et al., p. 53.)The Balanced Scorecard does not treat innovation as a routine process. Strategy Maps contains an entire chapter (pp. 135-56) to highlight the strategic importance of innovation process, a process that we explicitly distinguish from routine operating processes. We open the chapter (p. 136) as follows:Sustaining competitive advantage requires that organization continually innovate to create new products, services and processes. ... Without innovation, a company's value proposition can eventually be imitated, leading to competition solely on price for its now commoditized products and services. ... Product innovation is a prerequisite for participation in some dynamic, technologically based industries ... Exceptional innovation capabilities determine the industry leaders.The chapter contains an extensive analysis of the innovation process, including potential objectives and measures that innovating companies can use in their strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards. We conclude that chapter as follows (pp. 154-5):Innovation processes can be the most important processes that an organization performs to sustain competitive advantage. In this chapter we identify high-level objectives and associated measures for four Innovation processes: * Identify opportunities for new products and services * Manage the research and development portfolio * Design and develop the new products and services * Bring the new products and services to marketDespite their importance, innovation processes, however, often receive far less management attention than the more visible, repetitive, and predictable operating and customer management processes. All organizations, regardless of strategy, should strive to have at least one innovation objective on their strategy maps. And for companies following product leadership and system lock-in strategies, performance on innovation processes can be the most decisive for their success.Voelpel et al. allege that we ignore the importance of skilled employees performing a creative endeavor for innovation. Yet in Strategy Maps (p. 152), we write:Clearly, innovation would be impossible without deep expertise in the underlying science and technology for new products and processes. Innovative companies need scientists and engineers with the appropriate education and experience in the organization's fundamental technologies. The competency requirement can shift over time as new science and customer segments appear. In the pharmaceutical industry, the scientific requirements have shifted from chemistry to molecular biology and computational genetics in the search for new drugs. In software, computer engineering skills that developed superb but highly proprietary architectures may be worth little as customer preferences shift to open architecture software. So companies must be continually alert to the mix of skills required to develop the next generation of products and services.\nAlleged problem number five: \"Fifth, and finally, the BSC is grounded in a mechanistic mindset. ... The predominant mindset connected to the application of the BSC is that of mechanistic and linear thinking, making it difficult to deal with an interconnected and networked world.\" (Voelpel et al., p. 54.)We highlighted the importance of using the Balanced Scorecard dynamically to adapt strategy, objectives, and measures to the changing environment, early in our writings. Consider Kaplan-Norton, \"Using the Balanced Scorecard as a strategic management system,\" Harvard Business Review (January-February 1996), p. 84 (within a section titled \"Feedback and Learning\"):Most companies today operate in a turbulent environment with complex strategies that, though valid when they were launched, may lose their validity as business conditions change. In this kind of environment, where new threats and opportunities arise constantly, companies must become capable of what Chris Argyris call double-loop learning - that produces a change in people's assumptions and theories about cause-and-effect relationships.This point is reinforced in Chapter One of our first book, The Balanced Scorecard, p. 17:Managers must ... engage in an intense dialogue to review market conditions, the value proposition they are delivering to targeted customers, competitor behavior, and internal capabilities. The result may be to reaffirm belief in the current strategy but to adjust the quantitative relationship among the strategic measures on the BSC. Alternatively, the intensive strategic reviews may reveal that an entirely new strategy is required, a double-loop learning outcome - in light of the new knowledge about market conditions and internal capabilities. ... this process of data gathering, hypothesis testing, reflection, strategic learning, and adaptation is fundamental to the successful implementation of business strategy.Rather than the Balanced Scorecard being \"mechanistic\" and \"linear,\" we feature how managers must adapt the scorecard to an uncertain environment, and be treated as an element in a dynamic strategy management system.In Strategy-Focused Organization (p. 311), we describe how to embed the Balanced Scorecard into dynamic simulation models:The model ... quantified the magnitudes and delays between changes in a driver variable and estimated changes in outcome variables and explicitly incorporated feedback loops across measures and perspectives.While few companies have, to date, extended the linear hypotheses in their strategy maps into a dynamic, nonlinear simulation model, we have continually believed this is a natural extension to the Balanced Scorecard for companies with extensive data bases and strong analytic capabilities.\nThe \"Systemic Scorecard (SSC)\": Voelpel et al. conclude their article by suggesting that companies abandon the Balanced Scorecard and replace it with their own creation, a \"systemic scorecard (SSC).\" The seven Kaplan-Norton Harvard Business Review articles and four books provide many examples of actual companies excelling at each aspect of developing a Balanced Scorecard and implementing it with the five strategy-focused organization principles. We established the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame to allow practitioners and academics to learn from the successes of enterprises around the world that have adopted the Balanced Scorecard management system. In contrast to this public documentation of realized success with the Balanced Scorecard, Voelpel et al. offers no examples of a company that has implemented its SSC and found it to be useful.In summary, the Voelpel et al. article violates fundamental principles of academic scholarship by making allegations that ignore or misrepresent writings that are available in well-known articles and books, some of which, but not all, have been included in the article's reference list. Apart from inadequate reading of the existing literature, the authors encourage companies to abandon an approach whose success has been publicly documented in several hundred enterprises around the world for their new model, which they themselves have apparently neither documented nor tested in a single company.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this response is to refute Voelpel et al.'s five proposed explanations about why the Balanced Scorecard fails to support innovation and employee empowerment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Provides quotes from published articles and books by Kaplan-Norton that directly contradict the positions taken by Voelpel et al.\nFindings: - Voelpel et al. failed to read or systematically ignored the relevant literature before writing their article.\nOriginality/value: - This response confirms that enterprise leaders can continue to adapt and use the Balanced Scorecard to facilitate the implementation of their new, innovative strategies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Organisational career management in the UK retail buying and merchandising community
|
[
"Retail",
"Organisational career management",
"Buying",
"Merchandising",
"United Kingdom"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The bulk of careers research has moved away from organisations towards the individual perspective but the organisational viewpoint is still important in order to provide a context for these more fashionable views (Baruch and Peiperl, 2000). In light of this, the present study aims to contribute to the body of work associated with organisational career management (OCM) in practice. In a manner reminiscent of several other authors (Baruch, 1996; Baruch and Peiperl, 2000; Garavan, 1990; Iles and Mabey, 1993), OCM techniques are studied to see how often they are used and by whom, to find out how buyers and merchandisers feel about them and to better understand the barriers and constraints surrounding their use.The retail sector was chosen for the research primarily because there has been little previous study of OCM technique usage within this sector despite an annual turnover in the UK of PS285 billion in 2009 and a UK workforce of 2.9 million[1]. Ian Cheshire, when chief executive of B&Q, talked about how the increasingly complex, demanding and sophisticated retail industry means that it can offer even more exciting career opportunities than ever before[2]. Broadbridge (2003) reported that career progression was UK students' third strongest influence (out of 12) amongst those choosing to pursue career opportunities in retail, so how careers are managed post-entry is likely to have important consequences. As if to prove the point, Broadbridge (2007) surveyed 286 retail managers and found that a lack of mentors, of own career strategies, and of career guidance all featured prominently in the list of problems managers had encountered in their career to date. This applied to both men and women (Broadbridge, 2008). Similarly, Booth and Hamer (2007) found that low satisfaction with \"development and career building\" was one of a number of significant predictors of labour turnover at store level. James et al. (2011) have recently reported that career development and promotion prospects were a significant predictor of employee engagement amongst a large sample of retail workers, even after controlling for a number of other factors such as supervisor support. Furthermore, this applied to all age groups except those aged 66 or more. As in other areas of the economy, then, careers and their management have important consequences in the retail sector.We could not locate any literature that specifically deals with the use of OCM techniques in the retail sector. However, as well as evidence that career issues matter (see above) there is also sectoral evidence that human resource (HR) policies (which can embrace OCM) are related to organisational performance. Jones et al. (2006, 2010) found that HR policies, including developmental talks and feedback, made a significant difference to performance of branches of a Finnish retailer. Altinay et al. (2008) found a clear association between employee empowerment and training on the one hand, and sales growth on the other, amongst small service businesses. Nevertheless, it appears that there is not just one right way of meeting human resources challenges in retail and service environments (Blount et al., 2005). Much depends on company strategy and culture, and market conditions.Specifically, the buying and merchandising (B&M) community was targeted because, to the authors' knowledge, OCM techniques have not been studied amongst them before. Yet these are important people for their employers. They often work with, and influence, many areas of the business. They are responsible for recognising what the customer wants and operationally responsible for sourcing, selecting and allocating these products. This often involves complex decisions and operations (see for example Desai et al., 2010). The management of their careers is, or should be, a matter of concern to their employing organisation. Also, and more pragmatically, the first author's contacts within this area afforded access to respondent organisations.This study aims to improve understanding of OCM technique usage within the B&M function of the UK retail sector, i.e. the extent to which they are used, how buyers and merchandisers feel about them and what perceived barriers exist to their use. It is intended that HRM specialists within retail organisations will find these insights useful when considering their OCM strategy.\n2. Organisational career management: The concept of \"career\" has undergone significant change in the last three decades and these changes have led to a radical shift in how careers are managed. Kanter's traditional concept of the bureaucratic career is considered by many to be outdated with a move away from hierarchical, linear and organisationally-bound models to more fluid approaches based on building skills and knowledge within more integrated personal and professional lives (Cohen and El-Sawad, 2009). This move towards more fluid careers has led to disagreement over the role of the organisation versus the role of the individual in managing them (Greenhaus et al., 2008; Hall, 2002; Hirsh and Jackson, 1996). Hirsh and Jackson (1996) suggested that there is a place for organisational career management, albeit to a lesser extent than before. In a similar vein, Hall (2002) emphasised the importance of individuals \"owning\" their careers and stated that whilst employers cannot control an employee's career any more, they can put processes in place that allow the organisation to help employees develop and manage their own careers (see also Lips-Wiersma and Hall, 2007; De Vos et al., 2009). Organisational desire to help employees develop within the retail industry is evident online, where prospective graduate B&M trainees can view a list of 35 major retailers who are willing to offer \"structured employment and training lasting between one and three years. During this time the company will provide feedback, guidance, monitor your progress and generally guide you through your career development\"[3].The benefits of OCM to organisations are usually claimed to be increasing the effectiveness of employee development and deployment, the sharing of knowledge and skills, and (if done well) the anticipation of future human resource requirements (Creed and Hood, 2009; Kidd et al., 2004; Mayo, 1991). OCM can also be seen as a way of attracting and retaining high performers because they will believe that their employability is being maintained and opportunities for them within the organisation are likely to be good. On the other hand, HR and other managers often worry that OCM will equip, and perhaps motivate, employees to leave the organisation (Gutteridge et al., 1993; Ito and Brotheridge, 2005). Although less often considered, individuals may also have some concerns. For example, they may feel as if they are telling the organisation things about themselves that they would rather not tell. They may worry that organisational requirements will take precedence over their own development, or that OCM techniques will be administered in an incompetent or biased fashion. Nevertheless, it seems that organisational and individual efforts at career management can work in complementary ways (Sturges et al., 2002).OCM techniques and their usage\n3. Method: Research questions and design\n4. Results: RQ1. How widely are OCM techniques used?\n5. Discussion: RQ1. How widely are OCM techniques used?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to improve knowledge of how organisational career management (OCM) techniques are used within the UK retail buying and merchandising (B&M) community.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using quantitative research methods via an online survey of B&M managers across 30 UK-based retailers, this study explores the extent of OCM technique usage, buyers and merchandisers' evaluations of such techniques and the barriers to using them.\nFindings: - Internal job posting, performance appraisal for career development, induction, PDPs and competencies were the most commonly used. The most consistently favoured techniques were training/educational opportunities, career-planning workshops, PDPs, induction and fast-track programmes. In comparison to other studies, respondents perceived OCM techniques to be relatively unfair and identified the main barriers to their use as time/budget constraints, unsupportive management, poor technique development/implementation and poor employee attitude/ understanding.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study provides useful direction for retailers by recommending that they implement an OCM strategy that can be realistically carried out with the resources available, encourage a wider appreciation of OCM within the overall business strategy and attempt to determine the reasons for any perceived unfairness of OCM techniques within their organisation.\nOriginality/value: - This study provides comprehensive information for use when considering OCM strategies. In particular it provides previously unavailable insight into OCM technique usage within the retail B&M community and is unique in its exploration of the perceived barriers to using such techniques in addition to measuring their usage and capturing perceptions surrounding their use.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Strategy and structure configurations for services within product-centric businesses
|
[
"United Kingdom",
"Product‐centric businesses",
"Competitive strategy",
"Organizational structure"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Services are becoming a key driver of market differentiation and revenue for historically product-centric businesses (PCBs) (Brechbuhl, 2004). Many researchers highlight the importance of services to PCBs (Gronroos, 2000; Kotler, 1999; Michel et al., 2003; Porter, 1998). Neu and Brown (2008) provide three reasons why PCBs enter the services markets. First, companies see more attractive market opportunities from services than tangible products, if the latter are approaching commodity status. Second, customers are focusing on core activities, with non-core activities being outsourced in the form of services that can potentially be provided by their product suppliers. Third, many PCBs have developed highly valued services which contribute the most customer value within their portfolios of resources and capabilities. However, this increasing focus on services (or \"servitization\", Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988) has created new challenges for PCBs, including how to refine organizational structure for services (Brechbuhl, 2004). Neu and Brown (2005) advocate corporate structures which manage products with related services to maximise synergies, whilst Gebauer et al. (2006) advocate independent services organizations in order to facilitate services-led growth. The ambiguity in the literature on PCB organizational design suggests that this is an area requiring further investigation.This study contributes to discussions on PCB organization design by considering PCBs from a wide range of sectors, compared to previous studies which have been more narrowly focused, e.g. the information technology (IT) sector (Neu and Brown, 2008). This approach is valuable because although products differ across sectors, supplementary services can be very similar (Lovelock, 1994). This research does not therefore just include PCBs supplying complex products and systems (CoPS) (Acha et al., 2004); defined as products with high unit costs, low volumes and a high degree of customisation of the components. It also includes other products such as chemicals and metals (Appendix Table AI), in order to help assess whether product characteristics have an impact on structure decisions. The term strategic business unit (SBU) is used in this study and means sub-PCB organizational unit that has profit and loss (P&L) responsibility for an area of business and is responsible for sales. The research aims of the study were to determine which strategy/structure configurations are appropriate for PCBs undergoing servitization and to explore how these configurations might evolve in light of changes to services strategies.The results suggest that when services are designed to enhance the differentiation of a PCB's own products then combined product and services SBUs are most important. For PCBs seeking services-led growth setting up an independent services SBU is often appropriate, either with full P&L responsibility or as a virtual business. However, when services become the pre-eminent component of a PCB's business (i.e. future product sales growth is limited) then customer-focused SBUs addressing customer or market segments are suitable.In the remainder of the paper, relevant concepts concerning PCB strategy and structure are identified from the extant literature and a theoretical framework created; the research's methodology is set out, which is followed by the results from this study and discussion in light of previous research. Managerial implications, research limitations and possible future research are reviewed.\n2 Theoretical framework: The need for organizational structures to be linked to corporate strategies has been extensively covered in the literature. Chandler (1962) notably believes that organizational structure follows strategy, whilst Porter (1998) emphasises that a company's generic strategy generally translates into different organizational structures. These views are echoed by Galbraith (2002) who identifies a link between a firm's strategy and organizational model, whilst Gebauer et al. (2010c) conclude that PCBs need specific strategy-structure configurations to succeed with each services strategy. Companies therefore need to create internal alignment among their organizational factors, such as strategy and structure, so that they \"fit\" the conditions in the external environment (Neu and Brown, 2008).2.1 Services strategies\n3 Methodology: A comparative research design was employed to answer the questions using semi-structured interviews (Bryman, 2008). This design was chosen because of the exploratory nature of the study, seeking inter-relationships between services strategies and organizational structures. Companies were selected to take part in the research through a non-probability stratified purposive sampling approach (Kemper et al., 2003) across 11 sectors, with this research focused on their activities in the UK. Companies were large (all had a global turnover of over PS1 Billion per annum) and were involved in \"manufacturing\" as defined by the UK's Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) of Economic Activities (2003). Suitable companies were identified as those that emphasised their service offerings, with this attribute assessed through analysis of company web sites. A senior manager, within the company's services organization, was identified and contacted initially by post or e-mail, with a telephone follow-up if necessary. In total, 22 companies and in three cases, two separate divisions of companies took part in the research. This gave a sample of 25 organizations, with the initial interviewees often providing intra-company recommendations for a second interviewee, enabling 40 managers to be interviewed in total (20 from sales/marketing, 20 from operations). Anonymized details of the companies and number of interviewees by sector are shown in Appendix Table AI. All companies approached agreed to take part in the research, although not always the first person contacted in each company. Interviews took place over a six-month period, predominantly in a face-to-face environment (31/40), with each interview lasting about an hour.The preliminary questions for the interviews were set out in an interview guide (King, 2004) and were based on relevant ideas from the literature. For example, it was important to determine the role of services within each company (e.g. defend or grow - Auguste et al., 2006) and more specifically which services strategy was being adopted. The focal questions centred on organizational structures for services and how these supported the strategy, together with the advantages/disadvantages of the chosen structure. When the organization of services within the corporate structure had changed the reasons were explored. The interview guide was pilot tested on two managers who did not form part of the final study, with some minor changes made to questions in light of these interviews. Issues related to reliability and bias are important for qualitative interviews (Bryman, 2008), with interviewer bias reduced by limiting interventions during the conversations and interviewee bias alleviated through stressing that data would remain anonymous so that conversations could include potentially confidential information. Equally, interviews were recorded and a transcript returned to each interviewee for validation, with about half making minor changes to their transcript. This approach to data collection also provided strong support for the internal validity of the study through the researcher being able to access interviewees' knowledge and experience (Bryman, 2008), with it possible to test casual relationships during the interviews (Saunders et al., 2007).Interpretation of the data was facilitated through using NVivo 7 (QSR International) by analysing interview transcripts and thematically coding the data based on the main themes and subthemes (Bryman, 2008), which were modified, if appropriate, after analysing each transcript (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Michel et al. (2003) emphasise the importance of thematic analysis (i.e. theme by theme and frequency) for business-to-business marketing environments. The final thematic coding structure was reached after an analysis of further transcripts brought forward neither new codes nor relationships, i.e. theoretical saturation was reached (Bryman, 2008). The coding structure was based around PCB services strategies and organizational structures, as outlined below.\n4 Results: PCBs were observed to utilize three main organizational structures to exploit the services opportunity: combined product and services SBUs for when services are used to differentiate products; independent services SBUs when the intention is to grow services revenue; and customer-focused SBUs addressing distinct market sectors or customer groups. In each case, the SBU had P&L accountability and responsibility for sales. Results are presented within the strategic framework proposed by Raddats and Easingwood (2010) and are shown in Table I.4.1 Services engagement and extension\n5 Discussion: 5.1 Theoretical contribution\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to investigate how product-centric businesses (PCBs), operating in a business-to-business environment, configure their organizations to align services strategy with structure. PCBs are companies whose businesses were historically based on the products, rather than services, they sold.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A UK-based study was undertaken which comprised 40 interviews with managers in 25 PCBs from 11 sectors.\nFindings: - The main parameter which determines the appropriate organizational configuration for services within the PCB's structure is strategy. A new framework is developed from the empirical research which identifies a number of PCB configurations, based on PCBs' services strategies (services engagement, extension, penetration and transformation) and organizational structures aligned to strategic business units (SBUs), i.e. combined product and services, independent services and customer-focused. The framework is used to show how organizational structure changes in response to changes in strategy. For certain strategies, the degree of product differentiation (services engagement) and future product sales potential (services transformation) also plays a part in determining strategy/structure configurations.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Future research could confirm and compare the effectiveness of the identified structural configurations.\nPractical implications: - Managers in PCBs can identify appropriate organizational structures based on their services strategies and products. They can configure organizational design in light of evolving strategies that enable services-led growth.\nOriginality/value: - The paper presents a large pan-sector study of organizational design for services as it related to PCBs, providing a new framework through which appropriate strategy/structure configurations can be identified and investigated as services-led growth takes place.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Impactful engineering education through sustainable energy collaborations with public and private entities
|
[
"Sustainability",
"Higher education",
"Collaboration",
"Spain",
"Climate change",
"Energy",
"Partnerships",
"Catalonia",
"Wind power",
"Renewables",
"Engineering curricula"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Increasing fossil fuel prices, climate change and electricity demand will continue to be important societal concerns in the years and decades to come. Sustainable energies are sources of energy consumed at insignificant rates in comparison with their supply. On the other hand, clean energy is any form of energy obtained with environmental harmless and non-polluting methods. Sustainable clean energies have the potential to minimise environmental impacts, including waste production, and increase social welfare based on current and future needs (Panwar et al., 2011). Sustainable clean energy sources offer an opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thus mitigate climate change through replacing fossil fuel-based energy sources.\nThe climate change challenge and the role of universities: The role of universities to climate action includes understanding of climate change and how mitigation actions can be done. Leadership of universities regarding research and educational programmes is essential. However, adaptation and planning should be encouraged by politics by developing laws and actions that allow engagement of society. Rigidity of institutional structures, lack of facilities and resources and perception or lack of empowerment to make changes can be important barriers that should be overpassed. The institutions that govern natural resources and public goods are a deep driver of barriers and limits to adaptation (Barnett et al., 2015). Academic institutions are suggested for overcoming hindering factors as risk management and sustainability planning processes by developing adequate professionals (Iyer-Raniga and Andamon, 2016). The higher education sector can act as a leader in building institutional resilience at the local scale (Kautto et al., 2018). The importance of climate change has influenced the educational activities of universities, not only with respect to STEM studies. Climate change and sustainable development require buy-in and input from different institutions that embrace diverse topics within different degrees including economics, law, agriculture, politics and health.\nEngineering education and sustainability: Overview and programmes\nEngineers, education and sustainability at the University of Girona: Laying the foundations in the classroom and laboratory\nUsefulness of this case study regarding other universities: The research here developed can be adapted to other universities or high level education centres that are placed outside of big cities and have a strong relationship with country land. Policies have a strong influence on land use because land use planning and regulations restrict how land can be managed. Most of sustainable energy resources are related to the countryside, so land uses could augment existing weaknesses and create new ones as biodiversity loss and food sovereignty. Considering land use concern, contact with local public entities is proposed as a starting point to begin partnership because opinion of local people is relevant. The contribution of this paper is connected to how private and public partnerships with local entities may have a strong influence on the learning outcomes of students in the sustainable energy topic.\nConclusions: Synergies between universities and external entities must be explored. Contacts with local institutions become essential because local sustainable resources and social needs are aligned with the Sustainable Development. The partnership between the Ordis Council and the University of Girona has provided support for developing the use of the sustainable energy sources. A network for local sustainable development has been established and new partnership entities have been contacted which allows the collaboration and future research. Within this context, the Ordis Council is aware of the quality of life of their citizens as well as the influence towards their attitudes. For these reasons, divulgation of results among citizens is an important challenge.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to report on a case study concerning the development of sustainable energy partnerships involving engineering faculty and undergraduate students at the University of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Faculty were motivated to seek partnerships with public and private entities in the local area for the purposes of realising mutually beneficial outcomes. The educational programmes of future engineers, when sustainability is considered, are analysed. Education for sustainable development has to include multidisciplinary active learning as a desirable competence. Active learning can be obtained when problems are based on real life because they are most motivating for students. Constructive alignment component is obtained because learning objectives are linked with learning activities related to the needs of public and private entities.\nFindings: Through the provision of technical expertise, the adoption and success of renewable energy projects was facilitated on the one hand, while final year undergraduate students benefited in terms of hands-on experience in helping to bring these projects to life, drawing on the knowledge and skills they had acquired throughout their degree programmes. These works are addressed to students by faculty members with the aim of developing and promoting renewable energies. Outcomes from partnerships surpassed expectations; not only were different benefits realised as were initially hoped for, but this success led to partnerships being sustained over time.\nOriginality/value: Fossil fuel-based energy systems are associated with a myriad of negative environmental and social externalities. It is difficult to overstate the importance of transitioning towards alternative low carbon energy sources for climate change mitigation which are less centralised compared to the status-quo for energy security and energy independence. By actively facilitating the development of decentralised renewable energy sources in Catalonia, the projects reported herein are of significant value in social environmental and educational terms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The importance of constituency management
|
[
"Customers",
"Marketing",
"Brands",
"Corporate strategy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Building and managing a rock-solid reputation has never been more critical to a company's success. Bad press, damaging rumors, and public outrage have plagued a number of well-known firms in recent years, wreaking considerable havoc on their bottom lines. Recovering from a major image setback can cost millions of dollars in lost market value and business opportunity, not to mention the defection of valued employees and customers. As a result, many firms are today taking a fresh, urgent look at creating and sustaining a positive public reputation - a process we call constituency management.\nConstituency management: now more than ever: We define constituency management as the process of identifying, prioritizing, and engaging constituents to positively influence and shape their perceptions, behaviors, and actions toward the interests of the company. Constituency management has always been critical in industries such as energy, forestry, and healthcare whose growth is highly dependent on the approval of regulators, NGOs, community groups, and other interested parties. But a variety of contemporary social and economic factors combine to make reputation a more critical - and fragile - asset than ever before.The explosion of information technology has revolutionized people's ability to gather and share information (or misinformation) instantly from anywhere in the world. Companies must be more alert for the ways in which individuals and groups take advantage of technology to advance their own agendas. The new information technologies make brand and reputational assets more expensive and time-consuming to earn and much easier to lose. They also make firms' operations far more transparent to potential critics and enemies. These trends will only accelerate in the future.The growing world population is putting more strain on natural resources, which in turn is fostering greater environmental awareness. Consumers and governments are increasingly eager to preserve precious resources - and to rein in or punish the firms that they perceive as abusing those resources. Established environmental groups' ability to communicate violations throughout their \"networks\" of interest is already having enormous impact on business operations and profits. Even smaller, less organized groups are adopting the sophisticated techniques of their larger, more aggressive counterparts to aggressively fight firms that they view as enemies of their cause.Mounting interest in social issues as people begin to recognize that governments cannot be counted on to solve social problems means that more and more activists now expect wealthy corporations to play a greater role - philanthropic and otherwise - in making the world a better place. For corporate leaders, achieving financial targets will be viewed more favorably when evaluated against their firm's commitments to social change and environmental responsibility.\"If you want to create a business that truly inspires loyalty and commitment from your employees, customers, and others, you need to appeal to more of their human values than just the economic ones,\" notes MIT's Tom Malone in The Future of Work. The long-term loyalty of employees and customers is increasingly linked not only to their interest in taking home a paycheck or purchasing a product, but also to their feelings about social and environmental issues. Alignment between the vision/values of leaders and the vision/values of employees and customers is becoming a greater component of corporate success.The quickening pace of technological development is shortening adoption curves and forcing more frequent adjustments to strategy: changes in products and services; marketing to new sets of customers and prospects; dealing with new and unfamiliar constituents; and more. Managing strategic risks has become more important, because the opportunity for missteps is greater. In highly complex organizations, one business unit's failure to manage a constituent issue can have serious implications for another business unit operating nearby.The fast-expanding universe of products and services means that consumers increasingly buy companies, not just products or services. The reputation of the company behind a product or brand has become a key factor in many buyers' purchase decisions. As a result, it is no longer enough for companies to offer quality products and services; they must also be viewed as good corporate citizens. For example, Nike's questionable labor practices in Pakistan caused many of its long-time customers to reconsider their perception of the company as avant-garde and socially \"with-it\" - and, in some cases, to stop buying its products. For these people, a trip to the shoe store means choosing not only a sneaker, but also a worldview. Companies that fail to live up to social expectations risk disenfranchising even their most ardent loyalists.The rise in strategic corporate partnerships and alliances (to drive growth and open markets) requires that firms have a clear understanding of their relationships with key constituents in order to avoid damage to their individual and collective reputations. A company that shares control of its reputation with others is at greater risk for compromising that reputation and must carefully weigh the risk before committing to an alliance. For instance, Oracle's bid to acquire PeopleSoft has been met with opposition from a number of stakeholder groups, including PeopleSoft employees, shareholders, associated customers, developers, and VARS. The two companies are seen as having very different \"core ideologies\" and reputations, a fact that many stakeholders fear may produce a troubled marriage.Another example: when defective Firestone tires were found to have caused a number of accidents involving Ford vehicles, both companies suffered damage to their reputations. Denial and finger pointing marked their initial responses to the problem. Eventually, Ford accepted responsibility, although its public dispute with Firestone continued for several months. In such a high-stakes business, one has to wonder why neither company had developed in advance a plan for responding to such a situation. Today's strategic business relationships demand that great care be taken to understand the reputational assets of all parties, so that potential problems can be identified and addressed before they happen.\nThe benefits of constituency management: In today's volatile social and business climate, all public and private firms must anticipate closer public scrutiny and pay more attention to their reputational assets than ever before. It's no surprise that the conference board reported in their 2002 Corporate Citizenship survey that \"more and more companies are accepting corporate citizenship as a new strategic and managerial purpose requiring attention.\"Wal-Mart, for example, has long done a superb job of satisfying its target customers; its enormous buying power allows it to offer a wide range of merchandise at very competitive prices. But the social rationale that underlies Wal-Mart's license to operate is not just about customers and discounts. As the company has grown, it has found itself having to engage with a broader range of constituents on issues like employee discrimination and the offshore sourcing of goods - issues that have produced negative publicity for the retail giant. As a result of such public pressures, Wal-Mart is making new efforts to better understand and engage all of its constituents: not only customers and shareholders, but also employees, community groups, government officials, and the public at large. The firm recognizes that its future license to operate and grow depends in no small part on how it is perceived by this wide array of constituents.\"What we have found is that there is a different group of stakeholders today that are important,\" Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr recently told attendees of a Manhattan retail conference. \"And that is a person who's not familiar with Wal-Mart stores; they're not familiar with what we stand for. So their view of Wal-Mart stores is what they read in the newspaper and what they see on TV. We have decided it is important for us to reach out to that group.\"Whether Wal-Mart succeeds in this effort will depend largely on how the company approaches it. Does it see constituency management as a temporary necessity that can be abandoned once it gets its critics off its back? Or does it embrace constituency management as opportunity to identify, engage, and address ongoing issues that are of long-term importance to the company? If it adopts the latter view, it will discover that constituency management can provide significant benefits to an organization. The most important: the opportunity to optimize the corporate strategy and reputation by removing barriers to growth and limiting the downside impact of undesirable events and circumstances.Constituency management can also lead to other benefits, including:*Helping to reduce the cost of doing business.*Speeding up the opening of new geographic markets.*Reducing time to market (by removing regulatory/legislative barriers) for specific products.*Paving the way for the expansion of existing operations. *Increasing the opportunities to adopt emerging technologies and capitalizing on new scientific discoveries.*Optimizing the fit between regulatory/public policy and the company's mode of operations.*Optimizing franchise rights.*Shaping how competition evolves in existing markets.And when viewed as an opportunity to engage rather than confront, constituency management can transform adversarial encounters into collaborative solutions. Last year, for example, the nation's highly competitive wireless providers agreed to join together with the federal government to discuss ways to implement a nationwide wireless 911 call system. Their willingness to work together to identify key issues and develop solutions resulted in a plan of action that will soon be reflected in improved emergency services for wireless subscribers throughout the USA.In this case, cooperation and collaboration served as a stimulant for new ideas and won out over the adversarial atmosphere that could have derailed the process. The providers' proactive efforts reduced the downside possibility of a dictated government solution - a solution that might have been more expensive, less timely and, ultimately, unsatisfactory to some or even all of the parties.\nHow healthy is your constituency management program?: Shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, rescue workers rushed into a Starbucks store near the World Trade Center in search of water to treat shock victims. To their surprise, Starbucks employees told them they had water for sale, but none to give away. Only when the rescuers came up with $130 out of their own pockets were they allowed to walk out with three cases of bottled water. When the story broke in the press and spread (like wildfire) on the internet, public outcry and customer boycotts ensued. The damage took months to repair. A strong brand had suffered a serious setback in just a matter of hours.Damage to corporate reputation can be self-inflicted, as in this case. Or it can result from the perceived misdeeds of an entire industry or sector, such as tobacco, fast food, or \"big oil.\" Either way, a daily drumbeat of headlines testifies to the number of companies that have been seriously hurt in recent years by the failure to engage their constituents.Even respected brands like Starbucks and Nike have felt the wrath of public opinion, despite their long-standing efforts to project a strong sense of public awareness and social responsibility. What went wrong? What should have been done differently? To what extent were their problems avoidable? How could they have minimized the negative impact to their shareholders, brands, and reputations through a more comprehensive constituency management program?In broad strokes, companies can take a more proactive approach to managing their reputation by:*working to better understand how they and their sector are perceived;*more carefully defining how they wish to be viewed in the future;*aligning their assets and resources to optimize reputation-building activities and behaviors; and*engaging stakeholders in ways that will improve the social rationale for both themselves and their sector.One major prerequisite: any constituency management program must reflect corporate sincerity in dealing with stakeholders. Constituents can sense when they are being dealt with unfairly or when the firm is trying to gloss over key issues. In fact, the word \"manage\" is somewhat misleading; it falsely suggests that companies can cynically manipulate their constituents' attitudes and behavior. A more accurate word, one that signals a more collaborative approach, is \"engagement.\" Developing and building effective relationships requires a willingness to engage with, listen to and learn from constituents. It also requires that companies be able to walk their talk when it comes to corporate ideals and aspirations.Johnson & Johnson's response to the Tylenol poisoning incident of 1982 is well known but worth revisiting in this context. Because the company suspected that tampering had caused the deaths of seven Extra Strength Tylenol users in the Chicago area, it could have simply denied responsibility. Instead, it chose to recall millions of bottles of the drug at considerable cost to the company. The result: J&J was able to salvage both its own reputation and that of a valuable brand. Tylenol (now in tamperproof bottles) was successfully relaunched within three months; within a year, it had regained nearly its entire pre-incident market share.J&J's response was not a hastily conceived and implemented reaction to circumstances, but a natural outgrowth of long-held company values that put its responsibility to its products' users above all else. These values, which are literally enshrined in a 300-word \"credo\" of company business principles, form an integral part of J&J's corporate brand.Alignment with corporate brand intent is in fact a key to successful constituent management. We believe that companies should set and manage reputational goals based on the aspirational corporate-brand attributes they intend to own in the minds of their target constituents. Why? Because firms with clearly defined and well communicated corporate brand intentions find it easier to ensure alignment and effective implementation of the corporate business strategy.Corporate branding can be defined as the unique and differentiating ways a company aligns its organizational assets and resources to meet the needs of its customers, prospects, and key constituents in a way that positively influences them toward the company, its products, and services. When desired corporate brand attributes are used as an influence to guide the activities and behaviors of the firm, it is more likely that the firm will meet or exceed the desired experiences of its customers and constituents - and, over time, build both brand equity and longer-term reputational assets.\nClear, concise guiding vision: On the other hand, companies that lack clear \"brand intentions\" to guide their internal and external actions and behaviors will find it more difficult to implement effective constituency management programs. A clear, concise guiding vision and mission for the business and the brand forms the core of most successful companies. In their \"Corporate Citizenship\" survey, the conference board states that, \"nearly 90 percent of corporate managers report that their companies have a citizenship goal as a part of a statement of core business values or business principles\"[1]. It also adds that, \"while traditional corporate relations, community affairs, and contributions programs predominate, an emphasis on a broader citizenship approach - including the environment and sustainable development - is emerging as the new model.\"There are several other keys beyond brand alignment to designing and implementing a successful constituency management program.Make an adequate investment\nNote: 1. 1 A total of 87 percent of CEO's surveyed report citizenship goals incorporated into their core values or business principles - goals in place an average of 14 years.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Today, many companies manage their corporate reputation in a reactive or ineffective way. Bad press, damaging rumors, and public outrage over corporate scandals has impacted a number or organizations' bottom lines as of late.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - With case studies and real-company examples, we show the reader how a negative reputation can be the demise of a company, and how managing a company's constituents holds the key to the success of a positive reputation.\nFindings: - Unfortunately, too many companies are still coming up short in this critical arena. Some remain more reactive than proactive, waiting for a crisis to hit (by which time it is too late) before investing seriously in a constituency management program.\nPractical implications: - Constituency management is the answer for managers who are looking for a way to grow through optimizing corporate strategy, building brand equity, and addressing key corporate issues. And, it is not just about enhancing reputation; it is about the bottom line.\nOriginality/value: - Companies that proactively invest in a constituency management program rather than waiting for a crisis to hit will ultimately have more control over their reputation, and their company's value to investors.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
An analysis of the debt-equity structure of leading hotel chains in India
|
[
"Capital structure",
"Debts",
"Financial performance",
"Management ratios",
"Hotels",
"India"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: One of the major issues encountered by fund managers today is not just procurement of funds but also their meaningful deployment to generate maximum returns. Sources of funds are generally the same across all businesses but then why is it that some businesses are able to do better than the rest. If the logic of outstanding performance is a viable business idea, then why is it that some companies still fail to achieve success even with ample funds and the right business idea? The above discussion clearly implies that there is something beyond financial success of business besides great ideas and good geographic presence. Capital structure is one of the important determinants of a firm's success. This paper aims to analyze the capital structure of select hospitality companies in India and how this has had an impact on their overall profitability. There are theories in financial management that propound the relationship between capital structure and valuation of firm. While those propositions focus more on the theoretical aspect, this paper has gathered financial information of select firms and attempted to establish a relationship between capital structure and financial performance.\nMethodology: The paper is based on secondary data collection of Indian Hotels. The paper analyses capital structure of eight leading hotel chains in India. \"Leading hotel chains\" for the research includes hotel chains whose turnover surpassed Rs. 100 crore (1 crore=1,00,00,000) as per the 2006 financials. The financial of ITDC and ITC, two of the renowned chains' for 2006 were not available. These companies were substituted by Taj GVK and EIH Associated Hotels to expand the scope of the study.Consolidated financial results of the hotels were taken for the analysis but for Taj GVK and EIH Associated Hotels standalone results had to be used as they do not prepare consolidated results. The logic of taking consolidated financials is to eliminate the impact of intra-company transactions. Such transactions inflate turnover and profits in the parent and group companies' financials but are eliminated as a whole after consolidation is done. This ensures better view of the company's overall performance. Financial information was downloaded from Capital line plus database. Numerous ratios were computed and the companies were ranked.Secondary data included information like Issued Capital, Reserves and Surplus, Loan Funds - both secured and unsecured, total interest cost, turnover and Earnings Per Share (EPS). The ratios which were computed are as follows. The definitions of these have been sourced from Khan and Jain (2004).Interest coverage ratio (ICR)\nLimitations: The financial data for the hotels selected for the study is as on 2006. The idea was to pick up the latest available figures for the analysis but it was not possible to pick up all such hotels. ITDC had a turnover of Rs. 181.69 crores for 2005. It is owned by the Government of India but has been sold to private companies as per the ensuing process of disinvestment. The latest financials available for the company were for 2005 hence, it was not selected for the study. ITC Hotels had a turnover of Rs. 212.14 crores for the year 2004. It merged with its parent company ITC in the year 2005, making it difficult to obtain its 2006 financials. These hotels were not considered for the study. However, to overcome this problem, the sample size of the study was enlarged to include Taj GVK Hotels and EIH Associated Hotels.Second, the study focuses on debt and equity and its impact on the ROE. However, there could be other qualitative factors like market share, economies of scale, inherent efficiencies and the long-term strategies which may have helped in shaping up the current financial position of the firms. Since this was outside the scope of the study, the same have not been analyzed. If these factors are combined with the results of the current study some interesting outcomes may be seen.\nManagerial implications: The study besides rating the hotel chains has also highlighted the growth strategy each of these companies should adopt. The recommendations for growth strategy are based on the current financial structure and the performance of these companies as discussed above.It can be concluded that while leverage seems to be working well for few category of companies, it is affecting some others negatively. Based on the debt-equity and ROE relationship, Taj GVK can be said to be the best performer in the industry followed by EIH. Asian Hotels is the third best performing company followed by EIH Associated Hotels. While Hotel Leela Venture and IHCL are one of the best operational chains, they are not generating very high ROE as compared to the other hotels in the industry. Companies that are moderately geared i.e. in the range of gearing ratio of 50 percent - 85 percent have been able to generate a good ROE. For example, Taj GVK, EIH and Asian Hotels. IHCL has had major setback due to very high borrowings and does not fall into this category. Low-geared companies and very highly geared companies need to work on improving their ROE by either increasing or reducing their debt-equity mix respectively. A case in point, is Oriental Hotels, Bharat Hotels, Hotel Leela Venture and EIH Associated Hotels.The preceding discussion should leave no doubt that both high and low debt-equity ratio (Gearing Ratio) are not desirable. Although financing is a very subjective decision and is a function of multiple factors, a firm that is operating above the break-even point (a point of no profit, no loss) and has assured profits should always introduce debt in its capital structure. The overall debt for a company can always be in the range of 30-40 percent of the total capital structure, the balance should comprise of capital and reserves and surplus. An ideal mix of debt-equity would be the one, which would ensure maximum ROE. It would not only enable a firm to magnify returns to ordinary shareholders but also make sure that the inherent risks are controllable.Based on the above discussion, future expansion plans for individual hotels have now been suggested. Hotel Leela Venture, EIH and IHCL have low share capital but high reserves and debt in their capital structure. For any future expansion, these companies should either use their accumulated profits or issue fresh capital. The issue of fresh capital would help control their gearing ratio and reduce the risk perception of the investors. This could help in improving their ROE.Asian Hotels has a balance between equity funds and debts. Further expansion can be funded through raising proportionate amount of equity and debt. This would ensure the gearing levels are well within limits and the expansion needs are met without affecting the ROE.Taj GVK has low debt and high equity in the capital structure. For future growth, the company can aim to increase its gearing level by issuing more debt. Some increase in debt would not affect its overall ROE.Oriental Hotels and Bharat Hotels are low geared. In future these companies can increase the debt proportion in the overall capital structure to benefit from leverage. This is more so in the case of Oriental Hotels, which has almost negligible debt in the capital structure. Both these companies are not really benefiting from leverage in their current form.EIH Associated needs to increase its share capital and reserves. While reserves would increase in due course, for future expansion, the company can issue fresh share capital and reduce its excessively high gearing ratio. This could have a positive impact on its ROE.Another related aspect that needs to be considered in debt-equity mix is the peculiarity of the Indian Hotel Industry. In the Indian scenario, promoters usually prefer to maintain a low share of equity capital and invest their money by way of a subordinate debt in the hotel projects. This benefits them in two ways - one, they start getting early returns on their debt. Two, this helps them in getting good tax incentives which is a saving for the company. Subordinate debt appears in the balance sheet as an unsecured loan. This is one reason why most of the companies have reported a higher proportion of debt in the capital structure.Keeping this arrangement in mind, a useful method of finding the performance of the hotels would be by computing new ROE taking unsecured loans also as a part of the Net Worth. The numerator is PAT and the denominator is Net Worth plus unsecured loans. The results and the ranking of the new ROE have been presented in Table VI.The findings of Table VI confirm the previous findings of the study. The companies that generated the highest ROE in the industry are also the highest scorers in the new ROE. These companies have been able to generate good returns for the shareholders even when their performance was assessed by including subordinate debt as part of the net worth.However, one known fact is that ROE is never considered a sufficient benchmark for appraising a company's performance. If shareholders' wealth maximization were the prime objective for all corporates, then market capitalization would be a more realistic barometer of the overall performance. Keeping this in mind, Table VII consolidates data on the market price of shares for the companies under study. The market capitalization has been ranked to adjudge top performers in the industry.Since the shares of Bharat Hotels are not being traded in the market since March 2003, no data was available for the same.Table VIII summarizes the movement in stock prices over the last five years. The table in addition to Table VII would help in interpreting the second important aspect of financial strength of companies which affect investors' decision making-the performance in the stock market.It can be seen that Leela Ventures, Taj GVK and EIH Associated Hotels have had the maximum increase in share prices from 2002-2006. This partially explains why Hotel Leela Ventures and Indian Hotels despite a low ranking in ROE are still popular companies for investors. Leela Ventures has had the highest appreciation in the share value over the past five years and Indian Hotels has the biggest market capitalization as on 31 March 2006.It can be concluded that the results of market prices and market capitalization clubbed with ROE can provide useful information for the company's overall performance. For listed companies, performance in the stock market is more vital than its scores on ROE. For such companies market price data should be considered in addition to ROE to categorize a company as a good or bad performer. A company that offers a good appreciation in share value is certainly a preferred company by an investor, even if the ROE is not very great. The same tendency is becoming evident in the analysis done above.Managers should be careful while using stock market data to comment on the company's performance. It is advisable to use such information for a period of time than at a point-in-time. Taking data for a period of time would alleviate the effect of cyclic depressions and booms in the stock market. Interestingly, for unlisted companies where no market price data is available, ROE is still the best and is the most reliable tool to determine the financial performance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The article seeks to evaluate the capital structure of leading hotel chains of India to examine the role of financing decision in the overall performance of companies. It aims to analyze the debt-equity structure of these hotels, try to discover the industry benchmark and scrutinize how capital structure plays a momentous role in the company's overall growth.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is based on financial data collected on leading hotel chains in India. The consolidated financial results of the hotels have been considered for selecting these hotel companies.\nFindings: - From the financial perspective, capital structure is one of the most important determinants of a company's sustainable growth. Leverage seems to be working only for a few companies, whilst affecting others negatively. Firms that have been moderately geared have been able to generate a good return on equity.\nPractical implications: - The paper would be of specific use for top and middle level management of the selected hotel chains to reassess their capital structure for enhanced financial performance. For the hospitality industry in general, it would divulge best financial practices in terms of debt-equity mix and would assist in fixing on better financing decisions.\nOriginality/value: - The findings of the research are pertinent for the industry, as no explicit study in this area has been conducted in the Indian context. More so, because it focuses on the high turnover segment of the industry which captures the major market share in the business, it would beg the question - \"Does being big always mean being better?\"\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Models for predicting default: towards efficient forecasts
|
[
"Financial crisis",
"Efficiency",
"Credit risk",
"Empirical analysis",
"Predicting default models"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Keeping in mind the recent financial crisis, we address the usefulness of existing default prediction models and the relevance of the information they consider. Defaults are extremely rare events: their prediction models aim to identify defaulting firms and alert agents not to finance them.\n2 Literature review: This section examines the construction of several credit risk models that are available in the literature and their tests of predictive accuracy.\n3 Data and methodology: We use accounting, market and macroeconomic information to compare the models, analyzing all non-financial firms in the intersection of the CRSP and compustat databases (accounting and market data) between January 1990 and December 2010. The sample of quarterly observations contains 328 actual defaults, bankruptcies or liquidations from 10,439 firms.\n4 Methodology: This subsection explains the three methods implemented to compare the default prediction models: discrete hazard-rate models, intra-cohort analysis and power curve tests[5].\n5 Results: 5.1 Information content\n6 Conclusions: The recent financial crisis started in the mortgage market of the USA and expanded globally, causing the failure or intervention of the largest financial institutions. Packages of fiscal and monetary aid were implemented, and major changes in legislation were introduced. The US Congress enacted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which tries to mitigate systemic risk, empowering a Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to act as the systemic risk regulator. Basel III expanded the scope of the incremental risk capital charge from default risk to both default risk and credit rating transition risk. An extended suspicion on the predictive power of default forecasting models was spread.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess and compare the forecast ability of existing credit risk models, answering three questions: Can these methods adequately predict default events? Are there dominant methods? Is it safer to rely on a mix of methodologies?\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors examine four existing models: O-score, Z-score, Campbell, and Merton distance to default model (MDDM). The authors compare their ability to forecast defaults using three techniques: intra-cohort analysis, power curves and discrete hazard rate models.\nFindings: The authors conclude that better predictions demand a mix of models containing accounting and market information. The authors found evidence of the O-score's outperformance relative to the other models. The MDDM alone in the sample is not a sufficient default predictor. But discrete hazard rate models suggest that combining both should enhance default prediction models.\nResearch limitations/implications: The analysed methods alone cannot adequately predict defaults. The authors found no dominant methods. Instead, it would be advisable to rely on a mix of methodologies, which use complementary information.\nPractical implications: Better forecasts demand a mix of models containing both accounting and market information.\nOriginality/value: The findings suggest that more precise default prediction models can be built by combining information from different sources in reduced-form models and combining default prediction models that can analyze said information.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Consumers' perception of risk: the case of beef purchases in Irish supermarkets
|
[
"Supermarkets",
"Brand names",
"Risk assessment",
"Meat",
"Ireland"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For supermarkets in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the strategic importance of own label or retail brands is crucial. In addition to the commercial advantages accruing to supermarkets, consumers prefer the guarantee of a retail brand in comparison to the risks associated with buying from lesser-known manufacturers' brands (Baltus, 1997). However, the economic benefits resulting from the success of own brands is offset by an increase in the level of risk associated with product failure for those retailers who invest in own brand products (Hornibrook and Fearne, 2001; Collins, 2002). For retailers, the impact of adverse consequences is not just confined to the product category but affects the overall retail brand, and consequent market share (Thompson, 1999). In UK and the Republic of Ireland supermarkets, sales of fresh beef are almost exclusively sold under the retail brand, either from the fresh meat counter, or as pre-packed products in the chilled cabinets. The success of retail brands in the fresh beef category could depend upon a deeper understanding and recognition of consumer's perceptions of risk, and ensuring products possess the required attributes (Zwart and Mollenkopf, 2000).Both theorists and practitioners have called for marketing strategies to be adopted by industry that aim to reduce perceived risk (Murray and Schlacter, 1990; Sweeney et al., 1999; Mitchell, 1992). Retailers who can offer the lowest-risk products and stores will have a significant competitive advantage over their rivals (Mitchell, 1998). A clearer understanding of consumers' risk perceptions is required if consumers' perceptions of risk can both respond to and influence the strategies adopted at both firm and industry level (Yeung and Morris, 2001).In Ireland, beef safety and quality have emerged as two key issues during the 1990s. Since these issues span the entire supply chain, and also fall under the remit of public health, a significant number of government support agencies have been involved in the restructuring and development of the Irish beef industry. In response to these market issues, various supply chain partnerships have emerged, initiated by retailers and typically involving processors and producers, the objective being to increase information along the food chain (Musgrave Group plc, 2003). However, such supply-driven initiatives need to be assessed in conjunction with demand-led consumer behaviour. From a consumer perspective, confidence may have been eroded as a result of the turbulence in this sector; therefore an investigation into how risk is perceived by beef purchasers, as well as their coping strategies for dealing with risk perceptions warrants investigation.\nThe market for beef in Ireland: The Irish grocery industry is highly concentrated, with the food retail multiples accounting for 58 per cent of the Irish grocery trade, and of this the two major multiples (Tesco and Dunnes) accounting for 46 per cent (Collins, 2000). When the symbol groups' share is added, the multiple/symbol group retail concentration is about 90 per cent. It is estimated that the key symbol group, Musgraves, who supply Supervalu and Centra stores, command approximately nearly one quarter of the grocery trade, therefore, the three retail groups - Tesco, Dunnes and Musgraves - account for about 70 per cent of the total Irish grocery trade. However, this high concentration is not as apparent in beef sales, where recent studies have noted that in Ireland, independent butchers account for about 60 per cent of beef purchases (Riordan, 2000; McCarthy and Barton, 1998). It appears that many consumers are willing to engage in a separate purchase activity for beef due to the personal relationship they have with their butcher. McCarthy and Henson (2002) note that many consumers trust their independent butcher with regard to quality. However, the remainder of the population who purchase their beef at a supermarket do not depend on the independent butcher to solve their beef requirements, and similar to the UK, fresh beef in Irish supermarkets is primarily sold under the retail brand.Mannion et al. (2000) suggested that the factors influencing consumer choice of beef were sensory, safety, healthiness, leanness, freshness and origin. Given that a growing segment of the market perceived red meat as a relatively unhealthy, expensive product that lacked versatility and convenience, the decline in market share observed in the early 1990s is not surprising (Co-op Ireland, 1994; McCarthy, 2001). Interestingly, McCarthy and Henson (2003) note for the Irish beef customer, quality related risks (financial and performance) were as important as safety. However, this study did not specifically examine the views of the pre-pack beef customer - those customers who buy their beef pre-packed from supermarkets' chilled cabinet. Given the strategic importance of the pre-pack offering and the substantial investment being made by many retailers in supply chain partnerships in order to maintain customer confidence, an assessment of the degree to which their pre-pack customers perceive and cope with risk is merited. Therefore, this study is concerned with understanding pre-pack consumers' perceptions of risk associated with beef in the Republic of Ireland.\nTheoretical framework: Product attributes that are not immediately obvious to both buyers and sellers, such as food safety and eating quality, are subject to imperfect information. For example, the availability of information depends on the nature of product attributes. Beef attributes such as colour or type of cut are search attributes, and purchasers can establish the nature of such an attribute before purchase through examination or research. Taste is an experience attribute that can only be determined after purchase. However, credence attributes such as animal welfare or organic production cannot be determined even after purchase and consumption (Weiss, 1995; Roberts et al., 1996). Food safety can be classed as both an experience and a credence good or attribute, depending on the severity of the symptoms, and the time lag between consumption and the consequences. The provision of information has the potential to change some experience or credence goods into search goods.Perceived risk theory was initially used by marketing researchers to understand the effect on consumer behaviour of making purchase decisions under such conditions of imperfect information (Bauer, 1967), in which a consumer attempts to identify buying goals and match such goals with product or brand offerings (Cox, 1967). Cox (1967) and Cunningham (1967) first described perceived risk as comprising two components: uncertainty and adverse consequences. Total or overall perceived risk for a specific product is a combination of the fixed component, product category risk (PCR), and the variable component, product specific risk (PSR) (Dowling and Staelin, 1994). Both the probability and outcome of each purchase event is uncertain, and so differs from the economic view of risk, which implies that a decision maker has a priori knowledge of both the consequences of alternatives and their probabilities of occurrence (Dowling, 1986). Other researchers note that risk perception is shaped more by the severity of the consequences than the probability of occurrence (Slovic et al., 1980; Mitchell, 1998; Diamond, 1988). Yeung and Morris (2001) explain that food safety risk is particularly associated with such phenomena, known as the \"dread\" factor.In addition to the two principal determinants of perceived risk - uncertainty and adverse consequences - researchers have proposed that the consequences from a purchase can be divided into various types of loss - financial, performance, time, physical and psychosocial (Dowling, 1986; Mitchell, 1998). Financial risk is defined as a net financial loss to a customer; performance risk are those consequences associated with a product that does not perform as expected, and time risk is associated with loss of time and effort associated with achieving satisfaction with a purchase. Physical risk relates to the possible harm or danger to an individual or others. Psychosocial risk is a combination of social and psychological risk as advocated by Mitchell (1998), combining possible loss of self-image or social embarrassment resulting from a purchase.According to the theoretical model, if perceived risk exceeds the tolerable level, then a number of risk reducing strategies will be invoked, including seeking information. Information can both increase certainty that the product will not fail, and reduce possible adverse consequences if it does not meet buying goals (awareness of refunds, product exchange, compensation, etc.). Sources of information can be classified as either marketer dominated communication channels (the product, pricing, packaging, promotion, advertising, etc.), consumer dominated channels (friends and family, own experience) and neutral information sources (government, media, consumer reports) (Figure 1) (Cox, 1967; Schiffman and Kanuk, 1994; Mitchell and McGoldrick, 1996).This study is concerned with:* identifying and assessing the importance of individual buying goals;* the nature and importance of perceived risk of the beef category; and* the type of information considered as most useful in managing such risks for purchases of pre-packed beef.\nMethodology: Previous qualitative research (McCarthy and O'Reilly, 1999; McCarthy and Henson, 2002) and quantitative research (McCarthy and Henson, 2003) identified many of the perceived risks and risk reduction behaviours associated with beef in Ireland. However, previous studies had not specifically examined the perceived risks of a particular segment of the population, namely those who buy pre-pack beef from supermarkets.Survey instrument design\nFindings: The overwhelming majority of respondents showed a degree of loyalty to the three major retailers, with 99 per cent using Dunnes, Tesco or Supervalu for the majority of their food shopping, and for a period of time in excess of three years (61.5 per cent).Buying goals\nConclusions: The main aim of this paper was to investigate the perceptions of risk of beef purchasers who buy pre-pack beef from supermarkets. The results confirm that for these particular beef purchasers, food safety and health issues are still the main concerns regarding beef purchase and consumption. However, perceptions of risk are reduced through loyalty to supermarkets, confirming that the investment by retailers in supply chain policies and strategies has paid off in terms of reducing customers' perceptions of risk associated with food safety. These findings differ to those of McCarthy and Henson (2003), who note that for Irish beef customers financial and performance risks were highest followed by safety, but are consistent with findings for the UK (Hornibrook and Fearne, 2001). The 2003 study investigated the difference between supermarket and independent butchers' customers, but did not distinguish between pre-pack customers and over the counter customers. It is possible that those who chose pre-pack beef are those placing greater importance on safety, while those who place greater emphasis on financial and performance related factors purchase their beef over the counter. This view is supported, in part, by McCarthy and Henson's finding that the importance of performance loss is greater for the independent butcher customer than the supermarket customer.Given the clear negative relationship between product and process attributes, the results confirm that the majority of consumers do not consider production issues at the point of purchase. This may be due to a number of factors, including the distancing of consumers from farming and production. However, it may also be that consumers reduce their perception of risks associated with production issues through loyalty to the retailer. The results also confirm that consumers view the most important losses as those involving possible harm or danger to themselves or to others, followed by avoiding a net financial loss. Price is therefore important, but not at the expense of food safety.\nRecommendations: For consumers, credence attributes such as food safety are associated with higher levels of perceived risks associated with the beef category due to the nature of the adverse consequences, namely physical. For retailers, a more focussed approach to marketing beef could include strategies based upon understanding particular aspects of perceived risk. In particular, the results noted that for those consumers with children, information designed to manage the risks associated with food poisoning may be helpful. The findings also identified that there was an opportunity to develop more prepared, convenient and higher added value products for men, in order to manage time risk. In addition, the results also show that older consumers are more willing to spend time shopping and cooking, and therefore more traditional cuts of beef could be specifically promoted to this particular market segment. For policy makers, government initiatives designed to improve the flow of information along the beef supply chain should take account of consumers' perceptions of risk, notably the losses associated with individual physical health, which are still at the forefront of consumers' perceptions.Finally, the clear link between the importance of achieving buying goals and the level of perceived risk confirms that an understanding of perceived risk is particularly necessary for retailers following an own brand strategy in general, and for beef in particular.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - For supermarkets in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the strategic importance of own label or retail brands is crucial, with sales of fresh beef almost exclusively sold under the retail brand. Given safety and quality issues, this study seeks to understand pre-pack consumers' perceptions of risk associated with beef in the Republic of Ireland.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Building on previous qualitative research, and using a survey methodology and adopting a perceived risk theoretical framework, face-to-face interviews with purchasers of pre-pack beef from supermarkets were conducted in Cork, Waterford and Limerick.\nFindings: - The results confirm that for these particular beef purchasers, food safety and health issues are still the main concerns. However, perceptions of risk are reduced through loyalty to supermarkets, confirming that the investment by retailers in supply chain policies and strategies has paid off in terms of reducing customers' perceptions of risk associated with food safety.\nResearch limitations/implications: - One limitation of the research is that perceptions of risk and coping strategies are specific to the product category; therefore, results cannot be generalised to other categories.\nPractical implications: - The findings demonstrate that a more focussed approach to marketing beef could include strategies based upon understanding particular aspects of perceived risk.\nOriginality/value: - A deeper understanding of consumers' risk perceptions and risk reducing strategies is necessary as consumers' perceptions of risk can both respond to and influence the strategies adopted at both firm and industry level. In particular, an understanding of perceived risk is particularly necessary for retailers following an own brand strategy in general.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Online learning for social justice and inclusion: The role of technological tools in graduate student learning
|
[
"Technology",
"Diversity",
"Multicultural society",
"Online learning",
"Graduate education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Graduate coursework delivered through online learning continues to grow (Allen and Seaman, 2017). In the disciplinary field of education (K-12, library science and higher education) wherein we work, there remains a dearth of research regarding student experiences, pedagogical practices and the employment of technological tools in online courses. Such limitations within the research stymie our understanding about how graduate students in education-focused programs experience online learning environments, how faculty think about the integration of technologies outside the confines of learning management systems (LMS) and how we achieve important outcomes within graduate preparation programs. This paper arose in response to such limitations in the research literature, combined with a desire to explore and understand a particularly important outcome of our academic program: how graduate students in fully online courses come to understand and explore the topic of diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. This paper contributes to the research and discussion of graduate student education in online settings. The limitations and possibilities of engaging an online graduate course focused on diversity, equity and social justice are examined through the lens of technological tools and the pedagogical possibilities of asynchronous and synchronous modes of content delivery.\nTheoretical background: This study utilizes two framing conceptualizations: Mishra and Koehler's (2006) theoretical conceptualization of technology and its impact on pedagogical practices, known as the framework of TPACK; and critical digital pedagogies (Collin and Brotcorne, 2019; Morris and Stommel, 2018; Papendieck, 2018). Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue that educators have undertheorized the relationship between technology, pedagogy and content. It is not enough to simply introduce technology into the educational environment; we must think thoughtfully about how technology is used and its relationship with content knowledge and pedagogical practices (Herring et al., 2016). Critical digital pedagogy argues that technology is neither neutral nor value free and should be examined through how technologies perpetuate social inequities in patterning and (re)producing dominant modes of relationality. Put differently, digital technologies manifest in perpetuating dominant attitudes, assumptions and agendas to crystallize particular ways of knowing and being in the (online) classroom (Papendieck, 2018).Digital technologies have their own imperatives, limitations and affordances. Digital technologies constrict particular types of pedagogical and content choices and open possibilities for new decisions. What we might do easily in a traditional face-to-face classroom can sometimes become challenging or impossible in an online learning environment. Conversely, digital technologies might afford us new opportunities for content delivery and pedagogical choices not available in analog classroom spaces. Faculty must have awareness, knowledge, skills and understanding of various digital technologies' affordances. What possibilities do the digital technological tools offer, open or constrict for content delivery or student-faculty and student-student engagement? As Mishra and Koehler (2006) state, \"knowledge about content, pedagogy, and technology is central for developing good teaching\" (p. 1025).It is necessary for faculty to understand the reciprocal relationship between content, pedagogy, knowledge and technology, particularly in online learning environments. For example, in thinking about the relationship between content and technology, faculty need to question how the content of courses on equity, diversity, social justice and multiculturalism might be changed through incorporation of particular technologies or delivery through online LMS; or, in thinking about pedagogy and technology, how might particular technologies change pedagogical strategy?The TPACK framework has been utilized by researchers to explore the effectiveness of online instruction and student experiences in online courses of various types across various disciplines (Doering et al., 2009; Harris et al., 2009). The framework is of particular importance in this study as we sought to better understand the relationship between facets of teaching and learning about diversity, equity, multiculturalism and inclusion in a fully online environment.Critical digital pedagogy works against instrumentalist and deterministic views of digital learning (Collin and Brotcorne, 2019). Vital to the work of critical digital pedagogues is examining relationships. Similar to the sociocritical approach advocated by Collin and Brotcorne (2019), we view relationships occurring on multiple levels: between teacher and student; between student and student; between user and technological tool; and also through political, social and historical relationships of power, particularly flowing through privileged and oppressed social identities. Thus, while TPACK opens space for thinking in particular ways about tools, pedagogy and content knowledge, critical digital pedagogy challenges our assumptions that pedagogical choices, tools or content knowledge being discussed are neutral and value free. In combination, TPACK and critical digital pedagogy open space for critical examination of how a course on diversity, equity, multiculturalism and inclusion for graduate students, taught fully online, might perpetuate or challenge social (in)equity for college student educators.\nMethodology: This study utilizes a qualitative case study design (Johnson and Christensen, 2012) focused on the experiences of graduate students who enrolled in a fully online section of one required course, Diverse College Students. Our graduate preparation program implemented this fully online course during Fall 2014 as part of the required curriculum for students pursuing a Master's in Higher Education Administration. Following institutional review board approval, we invited all students (n=60) who had enrolled and completed the online version of this course by the end of Spring 2016 term to participate in the study. Interested participants completed an online consent form and online demographic questionnaire. Ten students completed the demographic questionnaire and interview process.Research question\nFindings: Technological tools\nDiscussion and future research: The varied nature of student responses to discussion forums in this study aligns with considerations and questions that should arise for online faculty as discussed by Mishra and Koehler (2006) in their TPACK model, and research that has been previously conducted on strategies for effective incorporation of discussion forums in online learning environments (DeNoyelles, 2014). However, students in this study have mixed responses to the impact of traditional learning management-based discussion forums. While these spaces seem to work for some students, others found the spaces distracting or disengaging. Critical digital pedagogues Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel (2018) have challenged the utility of controlled dialogs in LMS such as Blackboard, noting the false and unnatural nature of such technologically mediated discussions. Further, traditional discussion forums, with their often logocentric format, privilege particular ways of communicating. Students in this study seemed to note that not having access to communication cues - such as non-verbal body language or tonal cues - might distract from their learning about critical topics engaged in a course such as this. Thus, faculty teaching online courses should think critically about the role of the discussion forum. This study seems to suggest that for some students, online discussion forums create a critical space of reflection and might be necessary to advancing understanding and skill development, while for other students, discussion forums are distracting, inauthentic or establish inequitable power relationships that hinders learning of critical consciousness (Morris and Stommel, 2018).New technological tools used in conjunction with traditional learning management-based discussion forums may offer opportunities to reach a variety of learners and offer differing levels of engagement. For example, since this study began, one of the authors has experimented with requiring students to record and upload video responses to discussion forums. There are also new tools available that feel more authentically dialogic, such as VoiceThread (Brunvand and Byrd, 2011; Gillis et al., 2012) that operate within many LMSs, or Slack, which operates outside of LMS. This study did not specifically focus on these new video and discussion forum experimentations since they were incorporated after the students in this study completed the course. While such technologies are promising, it is also vital to view their incorporation into courses with critical digital insight. For example, asking questions such as what types of corporations control the technology; how the technology protects user privacy and data; or whether the technology functions in multiple languages, with capabilities for accessibility (i.e. closed captioning, multiple languages). The use of new technological tools to foster dialog and communication is an area in need of much future research.However, we have each experimented with new ways of incorporating such technologies in our courses focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. Video responses can be incorporated by asking students to record a 5-7 min response to particular prompts, or to record responses to other students' posts. Video responses open up non-verbal communication signals that some students in our study discussed as missing through traditional logocentric discussion forums. Through video, tone of voice, eye contact, facial and body expression are more aptly captured and potentially enhance our understanding of what a person is saying through their response. Slack operates much more like a Twitter or social media platform. Thus, the space feels less constrictive than most LMS discussion forums, opening up student engagement through shorter responses. Faculty can post multiple questions over the course of the week, asking students to respond to each thread, and providing points based on level of engagement. We encourage more research on these emerging technologies, their possibilities and limitations for engaging students in dialog and their utility in reaching important outcomes of skills and attitudinal dispositions needed for socially just and inclusive educators.This leads to an important point regarding faculty knowledge of technology and overcoming the limitations of most LMS (Mishra and Koehler, 2006; Morris and Stommel, 2018). Faculty should feel comfortable with utilizing technological tools outside the structured online learning space. In this study (Researcher 1) utilized a course-specific Google+ Community as an additional space for student and faculty interaction, and we both utilized various synchronous tools, such as Zoom Video Conferencing or Google Hangouts, in order to facilitate discussion, dialog and engagement with the course topics. Students in this study responded well to these additional technological tools which enhanced their learning about the course topic and added a level of synchronicity that the participants stated should be enhanced in future iterations of the course. Faculty teaching online need knowledge of technological tools, and a willingness to experiment with how those tools may enhance or detract from learning about multiculturalism, equity, diversity and inclusion. Experimentation, strategizing against technological distraction and a willingness among the students and faculty to (re)think technologies and their impact on pedagogical practices continues to be vital, particularly for this course topic. This aligns with Mishra and Koehler's (2006) discussion of the TPACK framework, and also with Morris and Stommel's dialog on the importance of \"play\" in the online learning environment. Moving outside traditional LMS-restricted tools might provide space and time for deconstructing the relational limitations of traditional LMS.Additionally, students in this study suggested that learning about diversity, inclusion and social justice online necessitated some level of synchronicity. This finding adds an important element to our understanding about the online learner. It is assumed by many faculty that online learners desire completely asynchronous learning environments. Our study suggests otherwise. While we each incorporated varying levels of synchronicity into our course, most participants in this study described the opportunity of engaging in real time, either with other students in the class, with the faculty member, or with the full class, as important to their engagement and learning about social justice and inclusion. We need more research about the role of synchronicity in online learning - from student attitudes toward synchronicity; to how faculty create effective synchronous learning environments utilizing a variety of increasingly complex digital technological tools; to what pedagogical strategies are best delivered synchronously, particularly in courses focused on diversity, inclusion and social justice. As Morris and Stommel (2018) discuss, we need to put the \"human\" back into online learning. Critical pedagogues recognize that the relational capacities of online learning can be difficult to accomplish. Fostering a breakdown in traditional hierarchical structures (i.e. teacher-student, assignment-assessment), which are often built into the logics of most LMS, might be facilitated through greater experimentation with synchronicity. We need to better understand synchronous digital learning tools, their impact on students, and how synchronicity impacts faculty engagement, work load, and success.While this study is limited in generalizability, participants suggest that diversity, equity and social justice courses can be effectively delivered online. Our larger study (Eaton and Montelongo, Under Review) outlines additional factors influencing student learning of this topic in online spaces, particularly the role of faculty in creating engaging and critical spaces. We each used the ACPA and NASPA (2015) Professional Development Competencies to structure aspects of the course. Specifically, the Social Justice and Inclusion Competency discusses the importance of college student educators understanding the role of oppression and privilege in educational environments; educational practices that lead to equitable and inclusive environments; and the importance of developing a lifelong approach to dismantling systemic educational inequality, advancing leadership, engaging in community action and viewing oneself as an agent of social change.Each of our individual sections of the course focused on these important outcomes in varied ways (engaging with different technologies and pedagogical approaches). In this study, we sought to understand how students experienced particular pedagogical approaches and technological tools toward the important ends laid out in the ACPA and NASPA Social Justice and Inclusion competency. While our study lends some insights toward the achievement of such ends, particularly related to activities or discussions students remember as impactful, we recognize the limitation of our study in reaching more conclusive positions about long-term impact. Thus, we advocate further research into how digital technologies and online learning impact short and long-term engagement in inclusive, socially just educational practices. This may include longitudinal studies of students who have completed diversity or social justice courses online, or more targeted case studies, quantitative analyses and observations of organizational change.\nConclusion: In this study, online graduate students who were enrolled in an online course addressing social justice and inclusion in higher education were interviewed to reflect on their learning experiences. We found that for this specific course, Diverse College Students, a completely asynchronous learning environment is not advisable. Diversity courses typically provide students challenging material that demand reflection and feedback. Technological tools, when applied with pedagogical intent as described in Mishra and Koehler's (2006) TPACK model, can enhance the learning for students enrolled in online social justice and inclusion courses. Faculty teaching courses focused on social justice and inclusion in online settings are encouraged to provide synchronous learning opportunities. This study adds important insight to our understanding of graduate student experiences, online learning, and teaching about social justice and inclusion.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the online pedagogical practices and technological tools that influenced the attainment of skills and knowledge associated with professional multicultural competence in a graduate student online course focused on social justice and inclusion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This qualitative case study includes a total of ten student participants. Two theoretical orientations guide the study. Mishra and Koehler's (2006) model of technological pedagogical content knowledge is provided to understand the reciprocal relationship between content, pedagogy, knowledge and technology in online learning environments. Critical digital pedagogy (Morris and Stommel, 2018) provides insights into challenging the neutrality of technological tools and focuses on relational capacities of online learning environments. Initial coding by each researcher was reduced to thematic codes focused on technological tools, course content delivery, asynchronous and synchronous pedagogical strategies.\nFindings: Data analysis revealed technological tools such as discussion boards, video, video conferencing and synchronous opportunities influence student engagement and learning. Further, findings reveal that the nature of online education itself - specifically asynchronocity - functions as both a distraction and possibility for online learning in multicultural education courses. Students in this study revealed the value of opportunities to engage synchronously in online learning environments. Instruction without such opportunities was disadvantageous to the learning of skills and knowledge associated with multicultural competence.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is not generalizable to the experiences of all online students and only provides a small cross-section of online graduate students enrolled in a required diversity course at one institution.\nOriginality/value: There is a dearth of research focused on teaching courses in diversity, equity, social justice and inclusion in fully online environments, a gap this study begins to fill. The study also enhances the authors' understanding of graduate student education.\n",
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Gender equality in employment in Saudi Arabia: a relational perspective
|
[
"Intersectionality",
"Saudi Arabia",
"Gender equality",
"Equal opportunities",
"Muslim women",
"Multilevel framework"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Gender equality in employment is a topic of increasing interest for researchers and practitioners worldwide (e.g. Al-Asfour et al., 2017; Teelken and Deem, 2013). However, Arab countries have been greatly understudied since conducting research in the Middle East has been found to be difficult (Lages et al., 2015), especially when studying complex issues such as gender equality (Kalliny and Benmamoun, 2014). Saudi Arabia has a population exceeding 28 million and a sizeable GDP of $1.756 trillion (CIA, 2017). The country is known to have major gender gaps not only in the workplace but also in wider society. According to Global Gender Gap Report (WEF, 2017), Saudi Arabia is one of the most gender unequal countries in the world and is ranked at 138 out of total 144 countries reflecting high gender gaps in economic and political empowerment. For instance, wage inequality for similar work shows that women are worse off by at least 40 per cent and women's labour market participation is only 21 per cent against 80 per cent for men (WEF, 2017). While the country has experienced significant improvement in terms of female literacy rate in recent decades (96.5 per cent of male and 91 per cent of female adults are literate), progress in female economic activity has been somewhat slow. While Saudi women are now better qualified than men, this has not translated to women's participation in paid work. The female to male ratio in terms of labour force participation rate is 0.26 (WEF, 2017). Generally characterised as conservative, Saudi Arabia is a complex society where norms, values and traditions are influenced by ultraorthodox Islamic teachings as well as a highly patriarchal local culture. While Islam is the state religion, formal and informal laws and practices are equally affected by local Bedouin culture and tribal customs. However, despite some recent changes in legislation and efforts to improve gender equality (e.g. with respect to women's right to vote and right to drive), women continue to experience barriers to equality in employment. If organisations want to tap into this potential labour force and if the government wants to use this asset to develop its economy, more insights into the lived experiences of female employees in this country are needed. This paper offers some of these insights. Drawing on in-depth interviews with female Saudi employees, the paper provides an integrated understanding of the key challenges Saudi women face in the course of their employment.\nRelational perspective of gender equality: Syed and Ozbilgin's (2009) relational framework, consisting of macro-societal, meso-organisational and micro-individual level factors, was used to capture the complex interplay of factors affecting gender equality, or lack thereof, in Saudi Arabia.\nMethodology: The empirical study seeks to develop a contextual understanding of multilevel issues of equal opportunity facing women in Saudi organisations. Below we provide more information on the sample, procedures and the analysis of the data before presenting our findings.\nFindings: The study highlights a number of interconnected multilevel issues that characterise the employment experiences of female workers in Saudi Arabia. The interviewees highlighted diverse issues such as the social power of wasta, the notions of female modesty, family honour, gender segregation, discrimination and harassment at work, intersectionality of gender with family role and social class and the aspects of individual agency and resilience. Table II provides an overview of the key themes that emerged from the data. While the findings are structured per level, it is important to stress the interrelated nature of the different factors identified.\nDiscussion: This study sought to examine the extent to which multilevel issues of equal opportunity are manifested in employment experiences of Saudi women. Drawing on 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Saudi women, we used a relational perspective to better understand and analyse the complex and interrelated nature of the societal-, organisational- and individual-level factors that influence gender equality.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine gender inequality in Saudi Arabia by using a relational perspective that takes into account the interrelated nature of the multilevel factors that influence this phenomenon.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 21 in-depth interviews with female employees in Saudi Arabia were conducted and analysed using a thematic analysis.\nFindings: The findings show how the interplay of factors on macro, meso and micro levels influences equal opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia, such as religio-cultural factors, the social power of wasta, the notions of female modesty and family honour and issues related to gender segregation, discrimination and harassment at work. Moreover, Saudi women's experiences are varied on the basis of social class, family status and other dimensions of individual identity, adding to a growing body of intersectional research. The paper highlights the role of male guardianship system as well as the intersection of gender and class in pushing gender equality forward.\nOriginality/value: This study stresses the interrelated nature of the multilevel factors that affect gender equality and highlights the important role of individual agency and resilience.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The impact of food traceability system on consumer perceived value and purchase intention in China
|
[
"Food traceability system",
"Perceived value",
"Purchase intention",
"Consumer expertise"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Food safety is one of the major problems currently facing the world (Han et al., 2015), and also a critical problem in China because of numerous food scandals in recent years (Liu and Niyongira, 2017). These include the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, and the 2011 discovery that meat from Shuanghui Group, China's largest meat supplier, contained a forbidden chemical (clenbuterol hydrochloride). Thanks to increasingly stringent legislation and the continuous advancement of information technology used in monitoring and inspecting food at all stages of the supply chain, the food industry is now facing more stringent quality control standards and procedures (Al-Tal, 2012). Nevertheless, food safety incidents continue to occur (e.g. bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Listeria monocytogenes incidents); thus, consumers have a serious crisis of confidence in the food industry. These events illustrate the importance of product safety and quality management in the food supply chain, which is also the main goal of the food traceability system (FTS) (Aung and Chang, 2014; Bosona and Gebresenbet, 2013).Previous studies argued that the lack of government regulation, information asymmetry among stakeholders and manufacturing management negligence are causative factors in food safety incidents (Hussain and Dawson, 2013). Information asymmetry in particular often leads to consumer anxiety, uncertainty and reduced confidence (Chen and Huang, 2013). Therefore, it is essential to provide consumers with more effective food-related information to restore their confidence (Van Rijswijk and Frewer, 2008). Compared with traditional food labels, the FTS breaks the information limit of simple paper labels for food information (Buaprommee and Polyorat, 2016), and enables the ability to provide food safety and quality information to consumers through technologies such as devices, barcodes and radio frequency (Aung and Chang, 2014).At present, there are many studies on how FTS guarantees food safety and quality, including the general framework of the FTS (Regattieri et al., 2007), technical implications and development status (Opara, 2003), the application of individual agricultural products or FTS (Bosona and Gebresenbet, 2013) and food supply chain management (Aung and Chang, 2014). There are studies that use traceability system as an innovative technology, exploring the extent of consumers' awareness and acceptance about it and how it affects their willingness to buy (Chen and Huang, 2013). Many studies use the traceability system as the cost input of the business, discussing whether consumers are willing to pay an additional price for food in a traceable system (Choe et al., 2009). However, little research has examined the role of perceived value in the FTS in the Chinese consumer context. Similar to many other developing countries, China is in the early stages of implementing an FTS, and because detailed information comes at a cost, there is no consensus on the information content that should be recorded in the FTS (Jin et al., 2017). Therefore, it is important to determine the perceived value of FTS options for consumers.In addition, marketers should provide consumers with a reason to choose or purchase their products (Kuo et al., 2009), for example, by enhancing perceived value (Lim et al., 2014). Consumer perceived value of a product is a reflection on the performance of the provider in delivering the product offering to its target customers (Slater, 1997). Hence, an understanding of consumer perceived value of traceability food is imperative to better understand consumer expectations with regard to the traceability of food, which, in turn, aids in the formulation of better informed marketing strategies for traceable food producers and marketers (Lim, et al., 2014). However, there has been a dearth of research on the relationships between FTS, perceived value and purchase intention.Accordingly, to address the gaps in the existing marketing literature, this study investigates the factors that drive consumer perceived value and its impact on consumer purchase intention towards traceable food (Chen and Huang, 2013; Choe et al., 2009; du Plessis and Gerrie, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to examine how FTS affects consumer perceived value, and consequently how perceived value affects purchase intention. We also examine what features of FTS influence consumer perceived value. This may help firms to develop more effective information on FTS. In addition, we use consumer expertise as a moderator in our research. According to the involvement theory, the traceable knowledge that consumers have out of their own needs and interests will enhance the impact of FTS on consumer perceived value (Chaudhuri, 2000; Zaichkowsky, 1985).Our study makes several key contributions to both theory and practice. First, this study constructs a model of consumers' willingness to purchase traceable foods. By drawing on current research and based on the involvement theory and customer value theory, we analyze the FTS, perceived value, consumer expertise and purchase intention in a unified framework, which enriches the antecedent variables and improves the theoretical model of traceable food purchase intention. The outcomes of this study provide insights into consumer perceived value and intention to purchase traceable food. Second, exploring the traceable food consumption behaviour paradigm is of great significance for guiding food firms to formulate reasonable strategies to attract consumers to purchase, and promoting the sustainable and healthy development of the food industry, ensuring food quality and safety.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Food traceability system\n3. Research hypothesis: 3.1 FTS and consumer perceived value\n4. Methods: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Results: Figure 2 illustrates the full path diagram of the final structural equation model. The overall goodness-of-fit for this measurement model was acceptable (chi-square = 214.722, DF = 98, p = 0.000, CMIN/DF = 2.191, IFI = 0.944, CFI = 0.942, RMR = 0.038).Overall, FTS showed statistically positive effects on consumer perceived value (see Table III). The safety (b = 0.156, p < 0.05) of FTS showed no significant positive effects on perceived value. Thus, the results do not support H1c. However, the information quality (b = 0.254, p < 0.05), perceived reliability (b = 0.195, p < 0.05) and product diagnosticity (b = 0.246, p < 0.05) of FTS showed significant positive effects on consumer perceived value. Thus, the results support H1a, H1b and H1d. Also, perceived value showed statistically positive effects on purchase intention (b = 0.958, p < 0.001), and the results support H2 (see Table III, Figure 2).In order to test the moderating effect of consumer expertise on the relationship between FTS and perceived value, Table IV presents the results of the ordinary least square (OLS) regression analyses.Firstly, we hypothesized in H3 that consumer expertise positively moderates the relationship between information quality, safety and product diagnosticity of FTS and perceived value. Table IV shows that, in the third step of the regression analysis, the interaction term was found to be significant and positive (b = 1.982; p <= 0.05), (b = 2.591; p <= 0.05), (b = 2.183; p <= 0.05). However, consumer expertise negatively moderates the relationship between the perceived reliability of FTS and perceived value (b = -2.189; p <= 0.05), and contributes to a significant change in the variance explained (change in: R2 = 0.399, F = 4.982). Accordingly, there is full support for H3.\n6. Discussion and conclusions: 6.1 Theoretical implications\n7. Limitations and future research: While this research has made significant contributions to research and practice, there are limitations that need to be considered when interpreting its findings.First, the empirical analysis of this study is based on data from 238 consumers in four provinces in China. While it is generally representative of China, it is not a comprehensive index of national FTS consumerism issues, and the food supply chain and consumer characteristics of China are unique in numerous respects. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct cross-regional and cross-cultural comparative studies. Second, this study is a static snapshot of consumer behaviour relative to traceable foods, and consumer behaviour itself is constantly changing over time. In future research, it is necessary to further carry out a continuous investigation on stable samples, so as to analyze the dynamic process of traceable food consumer behaviour and reveal its inherent regularity. Finally, further investigation is needed to examine the effect of consumer perception of FTS value on their actual purchase behaviour or the price they would like to pay for traceable food.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Based on the involvement and customer-delivered value theories, this paper proposes a comprehensive framework with which to examine the relationships between food traceability system, consumer perceived value and purchase intention. The study also investigates the moderating role of consumer expertise in the relationship between food traceability system and perceived value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Survey approach is the primary data collection tool, through which a total of 238 useable responses were obtained. Structural equation modelling is employed to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables.\nFindings: The findings show that the information quality, perceived reliability and product diagnosticity of food traceability system affect consumer perceived value, and the perceived value and purchase intention are positively associated, while consumer expertise acts as a moderator on the relationship between food traceability system and consumer perceived value.\nOriginality/value: This study sheds light on how consumer perceived value of food traceability system can enhance their intention to purchase traceable food. It contributes to the theory of customer-delivered value and involvement as well as traceable product marketing strategies. From a managerial perspective, guidelines are provided for traceable food producers and marketers to implement reasonable strategies to attract consumers to purchase and promote the sustainable development of food industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Benefits and Barriers: Case study of a government technology-mediated group mentoring program
|
[
"Design and development",
"Mentoring",
"Communication technologies",
"Organizational learning",
"Employee development",
"Learning processes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This case study examines a group mentoring program that took place in a provincial government ministry in British Columbia, Canada. The program aimed to address staff, team and organizational learning needs to break down divisional barriers and foster knowledge sharing across the organization. Program delivery was through meeting, communications and collaboration technologies already in use in the organization. The research question asked how mentors' and mentees' experiences and perceptions could identify strengths and areas for improvements to the program.\nGroup mentoring definitions and benefits: Mentoring can be a relationship between a mentor and mentee, or it can be a group experience. Like individual mentoring, group mentoring fosters individual development, but it also brings together multiple experts (mentors) and multiple learners (mentees), often in a group setting (Carvin, 2011), and usually \"to achieve specific learning goals\" (Zasloff and Okurowski, 2012, p. 53). This study examined a \"many-to-many\" group mentoring program, in which a group of mentors guides a group of mentees (Huizing, 2012, p. 38), with 91 mentors and 285 mentees.\nEfficacy of technology in group mentoring: Group mentoring programs can be delivered using communications and collaboration technologies (Carvin, 2011; Emelo, 2011b), proprietary mentoring software (Francis, 2009; Primack et al., 2012) and teleconferencing and video conferencing (Economides, 2008). Communications technology facilitates interaction among people with different cultural backgrounds (Carvin, 2011), from different parts of an organization or in different locations (Emelo, 2011b).\nProgram design: Selection of topics\nResearch methods: Data were gathered through a post-program survey and interviews. All mentees were sent an email invitation to participate in an anonymous online survey. The survey asked respondents to rate their satisfaction with their group mentoring experience. Following the survey, interviews were held with selected mentors and mentees to gain an understanding of their experiences. The interviews were semi-structured, 35-60 minutes long, conducted by telephone and audiotaped. The audiotapes were transcribed verbatim. The researchers conducted a thematic analysis of the interview data.\nSurvey findings: Of the 285 mentees, 151 responded to the survey (53 per cent response rate). In all, 87 per cent of mentees rated their learning experience as slightly effective to very effective, and 87 per cent of respondents found that their learning was enhanced by the interactions with mentors. Interestingly, respondents rated their interactions with other mentees as almost as important to their learning (83 per cent), which suggests that a supportive and collaborative learning environment was established (Economides, 2008).\nMentee interview findings: Benefits of group mentoring\nMentor interview findings: Personal and organizational benefits\nDiscussion and conclusions: This case study investigated a many-to-many group mentoring program in a government setting. It described the design of the program and mentees' and mentors' satisfaction and experiences. Despite extreme organizational churn, the program successfully met its stated objectives to address staff, team and organizational learning needs. It also fostered relationships that crossed divisional and geographical barriers, which increased knowledge sharing throughout and across the organization (Economides, 2008; Friday and Friday, 2002), passing on key organizational knowledge as large numbers of employees near retirement (Kranz, 2010).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to describe the design of a provincial government ministry group mentoring program and examine mentees' and mentors' experiences in the program.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 151 mentees rated their satisfaction in a post-program survey. The survey was followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 10 mentees and 11 mentors.\nFindings: In all, 87 per cent of mentees rated their learning as effective. Benefits to mentees were relevance of the learning, and senior leader/mentors use of current issues, events and personal stories. Delivery through a combination of Web conferencing and collaboration technologies was most effective. Mentors learned from mentees and other mentors. Regular and full mentee participation was an identified issue. In addition, not all mentoring teams worked well together.\nResearch limitations/implications: The selection criteria favored participants who had a positive experience. Including more participants who were disengaged or less active may have revealed what inhibited full engagement. Complex underlying systemic and cultural issues negatively affected mentee participation and mentoring team effectiveness. It is unclear whether this was caused by intrinsic or extrinsic barriers. Further study could shed light on how to address participation issues.\nPractical implications: Selection criteria favored highly active participants who had a positive experience. Including more disengaged or less active participants may have revealed barriers to full engagement.\nSocial implications: Despite a context of extreme organizational churn, this program delivered cost-effective and engaging learning to a large number of employees. Recommendations are made to further strengthen the program.\nOriginality/value: This contextually grounded case study will be useful to those who plan to implement a group mentoring program.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Social media engagement behavior: A framework for engaging customers through social media content
|
[
"Social media content",
"Engagement",
"Facebook",
"Dual processing theory",
"Uses and gratifications theory"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the attempt to build online engagement among consumer groups, marketing practitioners are investing heavily in social media. Facebook's growing dominance of digital is well known; in 2017, Facebook accounted for 23 per cent of total US digital advertising spending. In 2018, Facebook is expected to take $1 of every $10 spent on all advertising - digital and non-digital combined (eMarketer, 2018). However, most of the investment into digital strategy appears largely wasted, with an average of only 0.07 per cent of Facebook fans interacting with a brand's post (Gayomali, 2014) and up to 61 per cent of consumers stating that they do not see social media as a place to interact with brands (Ritson, 2011).\nCustomer engagement through social media: The emergence of social media platforms precipitated a paradigm shift in online customer behavior, altering the way customers interact with each other and with brands. In particular, social media's interactive properties have transformed consumers from passive observers of content to active participants who now actually create vast quantities of content through their online conversations, interactions, and behaviors (Malthouse et al., 2013). Central to this shift is the concept of customer engagement, which recognizes that customers co-create value through these interactions (Bijmolt et al., 2010). Social media influence the degree to which customers engage with an organization, and the customer's level of engagement both affects and is affected by the organization's approach to customer relationship management (Malthouse et al., 2013). Consequently, organizations are challenged to adjust their relationship marketing strategies to incorporate the role of social media and focus on building customer engagement. As such, this research directly contributes to theory and practice in the fastest growing area of marketing expenditure.\nCategorizing social media content: uses and gratifications theory: UGT is an approach to understanding why and how individuals use media to satisfy specific needs (Katz and Foulkes, 1962). The theory addresses how individuals choose media that satisfy their needs, allowing them to realize gratifications such as knowledge enhancement, entertainment and relaxation, social interaction and reward or remuneration (Ko et al., 2005). UGT was one of the first perspectives to consider the role of the audience in media choice, suggesting that individuals actively search for, identify with, and use media to fulfill specific gratification needs (Ku et al., 2013).\nRational and emotional message appeals: Message appeal design has been considered largely in traditional media contexts, with numerous studies suggesting that advertising and creative message appeals can be organized as either rational (also referred to as informational or utilitarian) or emotional (also referred to as affective or transformational) (Wu and Wang, 2011). Rational messages are thought to be processed intellectually while transformational messages appeal to the psychological characteristics of the target audience (Laskey et al., 1989). While many authors argue that emotional message appeals are more effective in engaging consumer than rational appeals, the findings are inconsistent and conflicting, and have been based on static traditional media settings (Aaker and Norris, 1982; Aaker et al., 1986; Batra and Ray, 1985; Shimp, 1981; Golden and Johnson, 1983; Liu and Stout, 1987). The static traditional media setting differs from a social media context in that social media allow for dynamic and real-time interaction between message senders and receivers.\nConceptual model and hypothesis development: This examination draws on dual processing theory to explain how social media content making rational and emotional appeals leads to active and passive SMEB. The dual processing theory demonstrates how thoughts are processed in two ways (Kahneman, 2011). The central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought. System 1 is an implicit, automatic and unconscious process usually associated with strong emotional bonds included in the reasoning process. System 2 is a more explicit, controlled and conscious process, often subject to judgments and attitudes (Kahneman, 2011). This study does not seek to measure the processing of an individual. Rather, it utilizes dual processing theory consistent with previous literature, where the theory has underpinned research examining why consumer actions differ when exposed to different information (Kahneman, 2011; Swani et al., 2017), including in economic literature, where it is used to explain how information processing affects decision making and economic behavior (Alos-Ferrer and Strack, 2014). System 1 processing results in fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, and unconscious behavior, while System 2 processing leads to slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating and conscious behavior (Kahneman, 2011).\nResearch context: The data set used to explore the relationships depicted within the conceptual model above was derived from the Australian wine industry. As wine brands compete to attract and retain consumers, many are embracing social media to reach their consumers and communicate their brand experience, quality, and personality. Social media has been found to be particularly effective among wine consumers, as word of mouth is an important driver of wine sales (Leigon, 2011). An additional socialization aspect also characterizes social media, where consumers exchange information and encourage others to try different wines (Wilson and Quinton, 2012), especially as a majority of consumers are well educated in wine, rely on a wide range of information for decision making, and frequently seek to learn more about wine (Bruwer and Li, 2007). The market also contains enjoyment-oriented social wine drinkers, who consume wine for social occasions and tend to buy wine they have purchased before with limited information (Bruwer and Li, 2007).\nMethod: This research consisted two phases. The first phase comprised a quantitative content analysis of social media content and SMEB. The second phase of the method involved using multivariate linear regression analysis to test the aforementioned hypotheses. Prior to the emergence of accessible big data, scholars collected consumer information through sources such as browser cookies, click-stream analysis and membership cards (Malthouse et al., 2013). Now, easily accessible social media data allow researchers to access disparate and significant new sources of behavioral data.\nResults: The hypothesis tested by multivariate linear regression is the joint effect of the set of independent variables on the set of four dependent variables (SMEB). The multivariate tests indicate a significant effect for all content types and three of the five extraneous variables (brand, month of year, day of week) on SMEB when the four measures of active and passive SMEB are considered collectively (Table V). With respect to the other variables in the model, the number of words contained in a post and time of day it was posted showed no evidence of a significant relationship with the collective four measures of active and passive consumption (number of words: Wilks' L = 0.998, p > 0.05; time of day: Wilks' L = 0.996, p > 0.05).\nDiscussion: Implications for theory\nConclusion: This paper examined customer engagement in a social media context and developed a conceptual framework that draws upon the theoretical foundations of uses and gratification theory and dual processing theory to initially categorize social media content and examine how these message appeals influence the intensity (i.e. active or passive) of receivers' SMEB. Using information gathered through a quantitative content analysis of social media content, multivariate linear regression analysis was used to investigate the relationships between content types (informational, remunerative, entertaining and relational) and the four types of engagement behavior (consuming, liking, sharing and commenting). The results of this research demonstrate that the effectiveness of different types of social media content have varying effects on social media engagement behavior. Subsequently, this study extends knowledge of how brands can strategically facilitate engagement behavior in the social media domain. The findings demonstrate how social media content can be strategically designed to influence the occurrence of passive and active SMEB.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Organizations are investing heavily in social media yet have little understanding of the effects of social media content on user engagement. This study aims to determine the distinct effects of informational, entertaining, remunerative and relational content on the passive and active engagement behavior of social media users.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Facebook Insights and NCapture are used to extract data from the Facebook pages of 12 wine brands over a 12-month period. A multivariate linear regression analysis investigates the effects of content on consuming, contributing and creating engagement behavior.\nFindings: Results reveal distinct effects of rational and emotional appeals on social media engagement behavior. Rational appeals in social media have a superior effect in terms of facilitating active and passive engagement among social media users, whereas emotional appeals facilitate passive rather than highly active engagement behavior, despite the social and interactive nature of the digital media landscape.\nResearch limitations/implications: Results contribute directly to understanding engagement and customer experience with social media. Further theoretical and empirical examination in this area will aid in understanding the dynamic nature of the levels of engagement within social media.\nPractical implications: Findings provide managers and practitioners with guidelines and opportunities for strategic development of social media content to enhance engagement among consumers in a social media forum.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the first to empirically examine the construct of social media engagement behavior. It extends the utility of dual processing theory to demonstrate how rational and emotional message appeals result in online engagement.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A regression-based algorithm for frequent itemsets mining
|
[
"Data mining",
"Questionnaire",
"Software industry",
"Regression",
"Frequent itemset mining",
"Ordinal/continuous data"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Mining associations from transaction data set is a basic topic in the data mining research field. One of the most commonly used methodologies is frequent itemset mining (FIM). The items with high frequency are identified as frequent items.\n2. Related works: There are two major parts in current data mining research area. One part aims at reducing the computational redundancy, while another part of research is dedicated to improving the interpretability of mined rules.\n3. Regression pattern model and RP-Miner: 3.1 RP-Miner algorithm\n4. Discussion: From the experiment results, the associations showed the relationship between the questions, which could play a positive role in policy improvement. For instance, from the association {1-2}, it can be obtained that \"applicants' satisfaction to the exam\" is affected by \"the rationality of the exam.\" In specific, the higher the applicants' satisfaction with the exam result from increases in the effectiveness of the rationality of the exam. Therefore, the relevant departments should consider the difficulty of the examination and increase the division of the exam to talents to improve their satisfaction on the exam. From association {8-5,6,7}, it can be seen that \"applicants' satisfaction with the examination syllabus\" is influenced by \"the environment of talent employment,\" \"setting of examination subjects\" and mostly affected by \"the rationality of evaluation of talent mode.\" Therefore, improving the \"applicants' satisfaction with the examination syllabus\" is the first task to increase the rationality of evaluating the talents. That is, the exam method must be more practical and should conform to the expectations of the examinee. At the same time, \"applicants' satisfaction with the examination syllabus\" is also influenced by the \"environment of talent employment\" and \"setting of examination subjects.\" It can be speculated that if \"the environment of the talent employment\" has some improvement and the \"examination subject setting\" is increasing more scientifically, the \"applicants' satisfaction with the examination syllabus\" will increase. In the view of China's development planning, it encourages the development of the information industry and internet-related industries, and the demand for related talents is increasing (Xu et al., 2018). Numerous studies focus on the industries and the related talents. Therefore, all aspects of the examination should become more scientific. Therefore, the \"applicants' satisfaction to the examination syllabus\" will still be enhanced even if other satisfaction remains unchanged.\n5. Conclusions: In this paper, we propose a regression-based algorithm named RP-miner. The RP-miner uses two test indicators (F-test and t-test) to extract associations, which changed the methods of FIM mining associations through min-support and min-confidence. The F-test and t-test set up the confidence interval from the whole data set to evaluate whether the associations are significant.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Frequent itemset mining (FIM) is a basic topic in data mining. Most FIM methods build itemset database containing all possible itemsets, and use predefined thresholds to determine whether an itemset is frequent. However, the algorithm has some deficiencies. It is more fit for discrete data rather than ordinal/continuous data, which may result in computational redundancy, and some of the results are difficult to be interpreted. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this gap by proposing a new data mining method.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Regression pattern (RP) model will be introduced, in which the regression model and FIM method will be combined to solve the existing problems. Using a survey data of computer technology and software professional qualification examination, the multiple linear regression model is selected to mine associations between items.\nFindings: Some interesting associations mined by the proposed algorithm and the results show that the proposed method can be applied in ordinal/continuous data mining area. The experiment of RP model shows that, compared to FIM, the computational redundancy decreased and the results contain more information.\nResearch limitations/implications: The proposed algorithm is designed for ordinal/continuous data and is expected to provide inspiration for data stream mining and unstructured data mining.\nPractical implications: Compared to FIM, which mines associations between discrete items, RP model could mine associations between ordinal/continuous data sets. Importantly, RP model performs well in saving computational resource and mining meaningful associations.\nOriginality/value: The proposed algorithms provide a novelty view to define and mine association.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Microfinance and microenterprise performance in Indonesia: an extended and updated survey
|
[
"Microfinance",
"Microenterprise performance",
"Money separation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Debates abound and longstanding on the effects of microfinance on microenterprise performance; see, for example, Barnes et al. (2001), Chen and Snodgrass (2001), Copestake et al. (2001), Dunn and Arbuckle (2001), Kondo et al. (2008), and Crepon et al. (2011) who argue for a positive relationship and Adams and Von Pischke (1992), Olson et al. (2003), Davis (2006), and Bateman and Chang (2012) who argue that microfinance may not really matter for performance.\n2. Brief literature review and hypothesis development: In this section, we develop our hypothesis with respect to each independent variable based on extant literature. With regard to those included in the Atmadja et al. (2016) study, we summarise the literature review and restate the hypotheses since we concur with them - for details, we invite the reader to peruse that study, which can be found in Atmadja et al. (2016). With regard to the three new independent variables - microcredit scheme, gender, and money separation - we develop our hypothesis based on a brief review of the literature. Essentially, H1-H3 below are those adopted from the Atmadja et al. (2016) study and H4-H6 are developed in this study:\n3. Research method: 3.1 The survey\n4. Empirical results and discussion: Since the dependent variables are ordinal (i.e. 1 for decrease, 2 for about the same, and 3 for increase), the ordered probit is appropriately applied for analysis purposes. Table III presents the estimation results of the models using the group lending scheme subsample. This is to address the first study objective. In the table, the estimation results of Atmadja et al. (2016) is also restated. The equation used in Atmadja et al. (2016) is applied to estimate the 2,014 female samples.\n5. Policy implications: Considering the above findings, the first implication that can be drawn is that microcredit per se might not enhance microenterprise business performance. Results using both the 2010 (Atmadja et al., 2016) and the 2014 data (this study) consistently show that microcredit negatively affects microenterprises' business performance. Parker (2009) points out those entrepreneurs are often unable to distinguish between consumption and business financing decisions. This argument is also supported by our study that respondents who strictly separated money for business and household expenses performed better in business. Hence, the lack of self-discipline or inability of micro-entrepreneurs to adequately manage finances might be a key factor, suggesting the important roles of business and financial management skills for microenterprise success. To enhance business performance, micro-entrepreneurs should not only be provided with easy access to finance but also be equipped with sufficient abilities to appropriately manage their business. For example, evidence from Tanzania shows that enterprises whose owners received business training performed better than those that did not (Kuzilwa, 2005). Our study highlights that training, mentorship, advisory services (in marketing, business and management), as well as networking services, should ideally complement microcredit; alternatively, as has been suggested by Karlan and Zinman (2011), lenders should carefully monitor the use of the loans. In addition, the most current study of self-employed business owners in developing countries conducted by Campos et al. (2017) suggests that a psychology-based personal initiative training approach, which inculcates a proactive mindset and focuses on entrepreneurial behaviour, might also be considered complements of microcredit in boosting microenterprise business success.\n6. Conclusion: Essentially, this study attempts to mitigate the limitations of a recent study by Atmadja et al. (2016), which apparently was the first to test the effect of microcredit on the performance of microenterprises in the case of Indonesia and finds a negative relationship. The limitations of that study, based on a survey of women microenterprises undertaken in 2010 in Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, included relatively small sample, lacked heterogeneity, and focussed only on women. The present study is based on an extended and updated survey of microenterprises in Surabaya - with a larger, more heterogeneity sample, and includes men-owned enterprises.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the small, women micro-entrepreneur dominated and heterogeneity limitations of the Atmadja et al. (2016) study. The sample is much larger, includes more men and is more heterogeneous, which allows deeper insights and more meaningful explanation of the relationship between microfinance and microenterprise performance in the case of Indonesia, including the effects of gender, lending scheme and money separation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used a survey of 556 respondents across five microcredit providers in the city of Surabaya using an updated instrument. Ordered probit is used to analyse data.\nFindings: Microfinance may not matter for microenterprise performance in the case of Indonesia. Additionally, microcredit schemes (individual vs group) and gender may also not matter for performance, but money separation might have some influence.\nPractical implications: Non-financial factors such as human capital, spousal involvement, and money separation should be considered as important factors for improving microenterprise business performance in Indonesia, with less focus on microcredit per se.\nOriginality/value: This study provides further evidence that microfinance may not matter for microenterprise performance in the case of Indonesia, a populous middle income country with a very long history of microfinance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Social responsibility by Australian football clubs in the 1890s
|
[
"Stakeholders",
"Social responsibility",
"Annual general meetings",
"Australian football",
"Digitised newspapers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper examines the Social Responsibility (SR) by Australian football clubs during the late nineteenth century. The concept of SR emerged in the 1950s (Carroll, 1999) as a forerunner to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its application to businesses in the 1970s (Leoni, 2017). While SR reporting is now common in many organisations, there have been a limited number of historical studies in the management literature. Historical studies that have emerged have found evidence of SR dating back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in small family businesses (Leoni, 2017) and large public and private companies (Hoffman, 2007; Morf et al., 2013; Procter, 2014; Husted, 2015; Jammulamadaka, 2016; Prieto et al., 2017; Corker, 2018). Absent from the historical management literature are investigations of SR amongst sporting organisations, even though some contemporary research exists (Walters, 2009). Sport is rich in context for the study of management theory and lends itself well to SR-related research (Seifried, 2014). Thus, this paper aims to contribute to the literature that highlights SR from the context of a sporting organisation, and findings have the ability to reinforce the history-of-management thought perspective on SR, which espouses that current approaches are oftentimes products that have evolved from the past conceptualisations (Evans et al., 2013).\nSocial responsibility and stakeholders: The study of SR had its formal origins in the 1950s and the work of Howard Bowen's (1953) Social Responsibility of the Businessman (Marens, 2008). However, \"the seeds of SR emerged thousands of years ago and have grown with the evolution of commerce\" (Evans et al., 2013, p. 9). Acknowledging that the past exists in a reciprocal relationship with the present, Evans et al. (2013) noted that some of the ancestries of SR started with the Code of Hammurabi drafted in 2250 bc. SR was also advanced in the medieval times and during the Renaissance Age (Evans et al., 2013). Moving on to the Industrial Revolution, there was much evidence to support the importance of businesses addressing SR, particularly towards the human element of the labour force. Many instances exist demonstrating greater responsibility to workers. For example, between 1800 and 1825, it is reported that a Welsh textile mill owner introduced shorter working hours, provided decent housing for workers, stopped child labour in factories and provided education opportunities for employees and their children (O'Toole and Vogel, 2011). The focus on labour is evident throughout the UK and extended to other countries, for example, Jammulamadaka (2016) reported evidence of work practices in Mills in India in the early twentieth century that were informed by notions of custom and fairness and which resulted in flexible hours, socially acceptable wage outcomes and work sharing for employees.\nSocial responsibility in sport and sporting clubs: While Walters (2009) reported that there has been little academic analysis of the role of sport in the context of SR and social activities, there has been a growing adoption and implementation of SR related practices in the past 20 years (Breitbarth et al., 2015). Sport occupies a unique role in society, and research has shown it can have a greater impact on various issues than the SR initiatives by commercial organisations (Babiak and Wolfe, 2006; Smith and Westerbeek, 2007). In particular, the popularity and global reach of sport ensure that these social activities have mass media distribution and communication power (Smith and Westerbeek, 2007).\nAustralian football and football clubs: Australia's indigenous code of football - commonly known as Australian football began in 1858 when members of the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) formed a club to stay fit during the winter (Blainey, 2003). The first Australian football clubs were founded by amateurs who paid to play the \"noble\" and \"gentlemanly\" game largely for enjoyment and camaraderie (Cordner et al., 2007). In the 1860s informal games in Melbourne pitted clubs in suburbs against each other. Later clubs began to compete for trophies, and thus some prestige. Fierce rivalries often developed in the 1870s, and large crowds attended games (Blainey, 2003; Cordner et al., 2007).\nMethod: To explore how major Australian football clubs practiced SR in the late nineteenth century, a qualitative approach was undertaken through examining the narratives of AGMs reported in The Suburban newspapers. While annual or stand-alone reports today largely provide information about SR activities, thorough investigations through football club archives, libraries and via club historians, revealed that most Australian football clubs in the country's major league do not have copies of these for the time-period of this study (Halabi et al., 2016). Empirically, AGMs have shown to be a useful forum for promoting transparency and upholding accountability (Carrington and Johed, 2007). Historical research has also demonstrated that AGMs were an important medium for putting forward financial and social information (Maltby, 2004; Corker, 2018).\nResults: Players\nThe community: The wider community are regarded as a major stakeholder of sporting clubs in contemporary research (Trendafilova, et al., 2013; Smith and Westerbeek, 2007), and there is evidence of this connection in football clubs in the 1890s. The community was openly invited to football games, charity events and also the AGM.\nLadies: While men occupied positions of status in football clubs, women \"kept the structure in working order\" (Senyard, 1995, p. 87; Hess, 1996). The AGM narratives acknowledges the social contribution made by women and the clubs gratitude in helping them achieve their objectives.\nDiscussion and conclusion: While SR did not exist in Victorian Australia in the formal sense, this research has shown that the characteristics of SR were evident in Australian football clubs. Football clubs engaged in many SR activities that benefited stakeholders and the surrounding communities. There has been a lack of historical recognition of what might be called SR practices by football clubs and this study contributes to the historical management literature of which there is very little linking any notions of SR with early Australian football clubs (Pascoe, 2003).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the social responsibility (SR) by Australian football clubs during the late nineteenth century. While there has been some contemporary research linking SR with sporting clubs, there is a dearth of such studies in the historical context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses a qualitative approach and in the absence of annual reports, relies on The Suburban newspaper narratives of club annual general meetings (AGMs). The National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation programme was used which is a unique archive in management research.\nFindings: Even though it was well-known that football provided a social outlet for watching games, this paper found clubs also engaged in a number of SR-related activities that benefited many stakeholders and the surrounding communities.\nOriginality/value: Deficient in much of the history of Australian football is the SR that clubs displayed to their stakeholders. This paper lengthens the historical SR literature for sporting clubs, and provides rich and detailed evidence of SR. While Australian football club histories continue to highlight winning teams, premierships and major personalities, their SR contribution is also significant and extends to the foundation of the game.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The political roots of health insurance benefit mandates
|
[
"Health insurance",
"Interest groups",
"Benefit mandates",
"Health providers",
"D72",
"I13",
"I18"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: health insurance mandates: Benefit mandates restrict the kinds of plans that private health insurance companies can offer by requiring them to cover certain conditions or procedures. Benefit mandates should not be confused with individual mandates (which require individuals to buy health insurance) or employer mandates (which require employers to buy health insurance for their workers) that are now well-known due to their inclusion in the Affordable Care Act. Most commonly, benefit mandates require insurers to cover a specific procedure (such as prostate cancer screening tests) or disease (such as diabetes). It is also common for mandates to require coverage of certain types of providers, such as nurse-practitioners or naturopaths. Occasionally, mandates specify whom insurance plans must cover. Table I gives some examples of common mandates.\n2. Previous work: many questions, few definite answers: Previous work on state health insurance benefit mandates lacks a consensus on many key issues. Of the two review articles on the subject, Jensen and Morrisey (1999) focus on the problems with mandates, while Monheit and Rizzo (2007) focus on their benefits. Kowalski et al. (2008) and Bailey (2013a) find that mandates significantly increase insurance premiums, while LaPierre et al. (2009) find no significant effects, and Gohmann and McCrickard (2009) find that different kinds of mandates can significantly increase or decrease premiums. Gruber (1994b) finds that mandates do not reduce the number of individuals with employer-based health insurance, while Jensen and Gabel (1992) and van der Goes et al. (2011) find that they do. Kaestner and Simon (2002) find that mandates do not affect employment, while Meer and West (2011) find that they do. It is possible that the mixed results in the literature stem from the study of short time-periods, while the true effect of mandates changes over time. The literature's only unanimous finding is that mandates that target an identifiable group (based on gender or age) have significant negative wage effects on that group (see Gruber, 1994a; Lahey, 2012; Bailey, 2013b, 2014).\n3. Hypotheses: Why are mandate laws passed by state legislatures? We consider three broad reasons: interest groups, ideology, and institutions. In this section, we lay out hypotheses for which interest groups, ideologies, and institutions will lead to more mandates being passed, and which will lead to fewer.\n4. Data and empirical strategy: 4.1 Data sources\n5. Results: 5.1 Main specifications\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Interpretation\n7. Conclusion: We find that the political strength of health care providers, which we measure using the number of doctors per capita and the amount of political contributions by health care providers, is a major factor leading to the passage of health insurance benefit mandates. We find that political contributions by health insurers reduce the number of mandates states pass. Political parties and mandate review boards appear to have no effect. Our findings suggest that concentrated interest groups are the strongest drivers of change in mandate legislation. We hope that future research on the effects of mandates will incorporate this information by using our measures of the political strength of health care providers as instruments, rather than continuing to assume that mandates are passed randomly.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: As of 2011, the average US state had 37 health insurance benefit mandates, laws requiring health insurance plans to cover a specific treatment, condition, provider, or person. This number is a massive increase from less than one mandate per state in 1965, and the topic takes on a new significance now, when the federal government is considering many new mandates as part of the \"essential health benefits\" required by the Affordable Care Act. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use fixed effects estimation on 1996-2010 data to determine why some states pass more mandates than others.\nFindings: The authors find that the political strength of health care providers is the strongest determinant of mandates.\nOriginality/value: A large body of literature has attempted to evaluate the effect of mandates on health, health insurance, and the labor market. However, previous papers did not consider the political processes behind the passage of mandates. In fact, when they estimate the laws' effect, almost all papers on the subject assume that mandates are passed at random. The paper opens the way to estimating the causal effect of mandates on health insurance and the labor market using an instrumental variables strategy that incorporates political information about why mandates get passed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Destination food research: a bibliometric citation review (2000-2018)
|
[
"Destination food",
"Systematic review",
"Bibliometric analysis",
"Co-citation networks",
"HistCite software"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Eating is one of the most fundamental tourist activities (Okumus et al., 2018). For many destinations, such as Milan, Paris, Osaka and Hong Kong, good food and authentic culinary experiences are promoted to attract tourists (Horng and Tsai, 2012a; Lai et al., 2018). Because gastronomy is a very important aspect of tourism development, destination food research is increasing globally (Okumus et al., 2018). In the beginning, researchers focused on studies of tourist motivation (Andersson and Mossberg, 2017), attitudes (Bjork and Kauppinen-Raisanen, 2016a, b), satisfaction (Lee et al., 2017) and destination image (Leung et al., 2011). At present, researchers have extended their studies from tourist experiences to the development of food tourism strategies (Fuchs and Reichel, 2011). Because individual researchers focus only on a particular area, there is a lack of research that treats destination food at a macroscopic level, either in terms of exploring core knowledge in this field, i.e. research hotspots, or in describing developmental trends. Therefore, a systematic review is needed for researchers to obtain core knowledge which can help them become familiar with and obtain an overview of this field. Furthermore, this review also effectively explores some research topics of interest. This study thus aims to fill gaps in the research by (1) presenting the core content of destination food research and (2) identifying development trends within destination food research.To achieve these research objectives, a citation network was first compiled to find highly cited articles (HCAs) after collecting and classifying articles published in hospitality and tourism journals. Then, content analysis for each article was conducted to explore the research schemata of destination food research. The next section explains the research methods. Next, the results are reported and discussed. Then, future research directions are recommended. Finally, the conclusions, implications and limitations are presented.\nMethodology: This bibliometric analysis comprised four steps: data retrieval and selection, systematic classification, citation network analysis and content analysis. Bibliometric analysis was employed as a quantitative approach to systematically classify published articles in terms of journal title, themes of the article, publication year, author names, institutions and countries, author numbers, collaboration type and nature of the article (Okumus et al., 2018; Rey-Marti et al., 2016). All selected articles were subsequently imported into HistCite software to analyse the outputs and citations, dominant journals and prominent authors (Radler, 2017). This methodological approach has been widely adopted by tourism and business researchers.Data retrieval and selection\nResults: Classification of articles by journal and year of publication\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the knowledge infrastructure of destination food research based on a systematic literature review. This bibliometric analysis involves authors, institutions, countries and co-citation networks and discloses trending developments in the field.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study is based on 176 articles published in hospitality and tourism journals during the period 2000-2018 and bibliometric data downloaded from the ISI Web of Science. This review applies bibliometric analysis, citation network analysis and content analysis to examine the structure and networks of destination food knowledge so as to provide destination food researchers with a reference guide to the context, methods and focus of previous studies.\nFindings: The findings demonstrate the development and trends of destination food research. This is the first study to address the limitations of prior systematic literature reviews by applying network analysis to reveal the interrelated structures and properties of the destination food research domain.\nPractical implications: Practitioners can also discover trends in the design of development strategies, as well as identify extended themes that may be integrated with research in the field of destination food at present.\nOriginality/value: As a summary of key characteristics, this report is a useful reference guide to previous studies for researchers. This study presents core content about the destination food field and identifies development trends within destination food research. Based on the results, further research directions are provided.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Barriers to energy efficiency and the uptake of green revolving funds in Canadian universities
|
[
"Canada",
"Universities",
"Sustainability",
"Energy efficiency",
"Barriers",
"Revolving funds"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Worldwide, 30-40 per cent of all primary energy is used in buildings (UNEP, 2007). Universities are 60 per cent more energy-intensive than commercial offices and more than twice as energy-intensive as manufacturing premises (Sorrell et al., 2004). As improving energy efficiency is considered one of the fastest and most cost-effective methods to achieve global greenhouse gas emission targets; can play a role in spurring economic growth (IEA, 2012); and promotes cost savings, environmental protection, better public health and economic sustainability, Canadian universities are improving their energy efficiency. Wright (2009) did find, however, that Canadian university presidents and vice-presidents consider \"Energy Issues\" to be seventh among key issues facing their university in the next 10 years, behind other infrastructure issues such as \"Physical space/building expansion\" and \"Maintenance of existing buildings\".\nBarriers to energy efficiency: There is strong evidence that universities are committed to sustainability and energy efficiency. Wright (2009) interviewed presidents and vice presidents of 17 Canadian universities and found that all believed universities could model sustainability and lead by example in the way they conduct their business and operate physically. The study also found that 9 of the 17 universities interviewed foresee making sustainability a top priority at the university, but many suggested that their answers were conditional on political will, financial support and governmental support. Only 3 of the 17 universities interviewed stated sustainability will never be a priority. Respondents identified the top two concepts most related to a \"sustainable university\" as physical greening and reduction in energy consumption.\nMethods: Decisions concerning financial investments in energy efficiency measures are the responsibility of university executives and senior technical managers. While other members of the community might occasionally influence such choices, they are rarely if ever responsible for making them and for implementing the resulting projects or programs. For this reason, a random sample of 14 universities located throughout Canada was selected, with one additional university pre-selected for convenience, to interview decision makers with roles such as \"Head of Facilities and Services\", \"Lead Engineer\" or \"Energy Manager\", using both qualitative and structured questions. Interviews with 15 universities were arranged, representing a response rate of 75 per cent. The cross-sectional sample of universities interviewed is outlined in Table II. Due to resource constraints, a larger sample was not selected. For some measures, the responses of small and mid-sized universities are combined for more appropriate comparison with the larger university sample.\nResults: The current capacity for energy efficiency projects at universities was measured. Table III indicates respondents agreed, scoring 3.5 on average, that a wide range of measures with paybacks less than four years could still be implemented at their university. Universities scored much lower, 1.9 on average, when asked if they were running out of energy efficiency projects to implement. These results indicate consistency in responses; universities are not at full capacity in implementing energy efficiency projects. There was general agreement that paybacks for electricity and gas projects were worthwhile; however, payback periods for water scored low in both Quebec and Alberta. Given the low cost of water in these provinces, respondents indicated \"We don't pay for water\" (Anonymous A, 2011) and \"water projects are for sustainability reasons, not ROI\" (Anonymous B, 2011).\nProcess for funding and implementing energy conservation projects: It was found that 60 per cent of universities interviewed employ an energy manager at their institution. Table VIII outlines that this includes six of the eight large universities and three of the four mid-sized universities interviewed, while none of the three small universities interviewed employ an energy manager, citing staffing limitations.\nRevolving funds: Participants were sent an information document on revolving funds to ensure base knowledge on their operation. Based on interview responses, only 2 of the 15 universities interviewed currently administer a green revolving fund, 40 per cent have a portion of their annual budget committed to energy efficiency improvements and 33 per cent commit energy cost savings from efficiency improvement to future projects in some form.\nDiscussion: The results offer a curious contradiction. Though respondents scored \"Access to Capital\" as the largest barrier (3.4) to energy efficiency on average, and though respondents agree (4.0) that revolving funds are an effective method to address capital funding constraints, and that revolving funds may be an effective method to implement energy conservation projects at their university (3.6), only 2 of the 15 universities interviewed and 7 out of the 98 universities in Canada are known to currently implement revolving funds as a tool to address this barrier. The discussion below investigates these issues, and also outlines why large universities, on average, responded close to neutral to the statement that a revolving fund may be an effective method to implement energy conservation projects (2.9).\nConclusion and recommendations: The results of this study indicate a wide variation in progress on the operationalization of energy efficiency among Canadian universities. Though all universities are implementing energy efficiency projects, the process to implement these projects, the resources and funding available to do so, vary.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the barriers to the implementation of energy efficiency projects in Canadian universities, including access to capital, bounded rationality, hidden costs, imperfect information, risk and split incentives. Methods to address these barriers are investigated, including evaluating the efficacy of revolving funds.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Senior administrators of 15 Canadian universities were interviewed, making use of both structured and open-ended questions. As university executives and senior technical directors are responsible for investment in energy efficiency at Canadian universities, these individuals were the focus of our study.\nFindings: The results offer a curious contradiction. While \"Access to Capital\" was found to be the largest barrier to energy efficiency in Canadian universities, and while respondents agreed that green revolving funds are both an effective method to address these capital funding constraints, and may be an effective method to implement energy conservation projects at their university, only 2 out of the 15 universities interviewed and 7 out of the 98 universities in Canada currently make use of a green revolving fund. A general reluctance at Canadian universities to formalize processes to prioritize energy efficiency limits the associated benefits of mechanisms such as revolving funds to institutionalize energy efficiency and reduce long-term energy use.\nPractical implications: To provide insights into barriers to energy efficiency in universities and methods to address them, including the efficacy of revolving funds.\nOriginality/value: This research is one of the first to investigate the efficacy of revolving funds to confront barriers to energy efficiency. The findings, implications and recommendations are valuable to organizations, university administrators, researchers and practitioners implementing energy efficiency measures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Politicians' use of Facebook during elections: Use of emotionally-based discourse, personalization, social media engagement and vividness
|
[
"Politics",
"Social networking sites",
"Elections",
"Aristotelian persuasion",
"Social media engagement",
"Vividness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Electoral campaigns have taken advantage of new technologies since radio and television facilitated the spread of campaign messages more effectively and efficiently through the airwaves and enabled candidates to engage with large numbers of voters (Towner and Dulio, 2012). During the last few years, social networking sites have also been integrated into political campaigns because they enable politicians to promote themselves freely and to communicate interactively with the electorate and to disseminate information freely without the interference of traditional media and have become semi-public and semi-private spaces where politicians can involve users in online personal encounters (Gunn and Skogerbo, 2013; Quinlan et al., 2018; Russmann and Svensson, 2017) because characteristic features of these online spaces facilitate the dissemination of information. Users can redistribute a piece of information by sharing it, acknowledge it by liking it and they can interact with other users by commenting on a post. These three features have transformed social networking sites into powerful tools in political communication (Larsson, 2017b). Therefore, the use of social networking sites in electoral campaigns has become a necessity in recent times (Justinussen, 2015) developing into an alternative information source for user-generated content (English et al., 2011) that has become portable, personal, participatory, pervasive and linked (Rainie, 2017). The importance of social media as a platform for the dissemination of information has become evident in recent years. According to a recent Pew Internet survey, 65 percent of adults reported using social networking sites (Perrin, 2015) and Facebook reported in its last company report that the number of active daily users has grown from 526m in March of 2012 to 890m in December of 2014 (Facebook, 2014).\nLiterature survey: This study examined three concepts that appear as central elements in the study of social networking sites as political platforms:\nMethodology: Prior to the content analysis of the posts collected, we classified the ten party leaders into four groups: right wing (Bennett, Liberman and Netanyahu), left wing (Herzog, Livni and Galon), center (Lapid and Kahalon) and ultra-religious (Dery and Yishai). The classification of the leaders into political wings was based on the politicians' own identification with a particular political wing. That is, politicians in Israel refer to themselves as right, left, center or ultra-orthodox. This classification into political wings aimed to make it easier for international readers who are probably not acquainted with internal Israeli politics to understand the study's findings.\nFindings: In order to present results, we classified the ten pages of the political leaders into four groups: right wing (Bennett, Liberman, and Netanyahu), left wing (Herzog, Livni, and Galon), center (Lapid and Kahalon) and ultra-religious (Dery and Yishai). The classification of each political leader was based on the politician's own identification with a specific political wing and it was aimed to make it easier for international readers who are probably not acquainted with internal Israeli politics to understand the study's findings. The first section presents each group's activity on Facebook.\nDiscussion: The current study aimed to understand different patterns of the use of social networking sites by Israeli politicians during an election period by examining the nature of information dissemination on the site such as the language of persuasion used, focusing on emotionally based discourse and elements of personalization, as well as the role that social media engagement and vividness levels play in the political discourse on these sites. In line with the arguments that the emotional dimension of rhetoric is an increasingly vital part of contemporary political communication (Brader, 2005), findings show that in the 2015 election, Israeli politicians used an emotionally based approach in their personal social networking sites pages, based on the use of the pathos element of persuasion to form an affective alliance with their potential voters. This was particularly salient with right wing politicians who showed a higher rate of use of the pathos element than center and left wing politicians. These results echo prior studies that examined the use of Facebook by Israeli politicians in the last two general elections (Bar-Ilan et al., 2015; Samuel-Azran et al., 2018) study about the 2013 Israeli election in which the pathos element also prevailed in the political rhetoric mainly by trying to create an emotional bond with potential voters, and by presenting a positive image of the audience. As Serazio's (2014) study posited, politicians have turned to emotionally based discourse as a persuasion strategy because \"you have to figure out a way of really disassociating yourself from politics to try to get their attention in the first place\" (p. 751). This finding supports prior research in which politicians from different countries used social media to bring audiences to identify with them through the creation of a bond between them and the audience (Erikson, 2008; Keat, 2012; Samuel-Azran et al., 2018; Williams and Gulati, 2007) or through the creation of fear (Bronstein, 2013). Two of the features of Facebook highlighted by Larsson (2017b), acknowledge (like) and interact (comment) facilitate the developing of these alliances by creating a new political arena in which the public can interact directly with the politicians and express their support or their antagonism toward them and their politics facilitating fundraising. Justinussen (2015) noted that the 2012 Obama campaign was based mainly on emotions and while the majority of the posts focused on Obama's personality, they focused more on the symbolic and affective aspects of political communication than on political argumentation and issue-oriented campaigning. Xue (2014) found similar results when examining the Facebook pages of Japanese politicians and claimed that they rarely contained actual discussion of political issues that could trigger negative reactions. Regarding the possible relationship between the theme identified in the post and the use of Aristotelian language of persuasion, the salience of the pathos element is evident again and it is highly used by the politicians to post information in areas such as economy, society and security issues.\nConclusion: The use of social networking sites in Israel is one of the highest in the world. In all, 94.3 percent of people with internet access use social networking sites (StatCounter, 2017) for information and resource sharing (Bezeq, 2017). Findings from this study show that the adoption of social networking sites as political platforms has also become popular in this country and it reflects the interactive, open and free nature of this media that has contributed to their development as a new type of political podium that allows politicians to produce a different kind of political communication. This new type of political communication is personalized, focusing on the politician's personal life and character. Instead of using these sites as platforms to disseminate their ideas, plans and strategies, it aims to create and maintain affective alliances with the public, by presenting politicians as approachable \"normal people\" with family lives and hobbies that audiences can identify with. That is, the audience react and become more engaged when they are exposed to emotionally based content and they feel a connection with the politician. Social networking sites have created an open and direct channel of communication between politicians and the public that has changed the way people perceive political leaders.\nImplications of the study: This study contributes to the existing literature on the subject by proposing an interesting methodology for the study of online behavior by combining four different elements of the use of Facebook as a political platform during election times. These different elements highlight different aspects of this use such as the discursive elements and the language used in the posts, the different types of information presented such as video or pictures and the response that the information posted triggered in public. The combination of these elements emphasizes the social implications that the prominence of social networking sites as political platforms have had on the changing ways by which politicians communicate with their audiences and the type of information they disseminate.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the use of Facebook by Israeli party leaders during an election period by examining four elements: the type of Aristotelian language of persuasion; the level of online engagement measured by three different types of feedback: likes, comments and shares; the use of personalization elements as engagement strategies; and the vividness features used in the post (text, photographs and video).\nDesign/methodology/approach: All of the posts from the Facebook pages of ten Israeli party leaders were collected for 45 days prior to the 2015 general elections. The number of posts, likes, comments and shares in each post were captured and the data were analyzed looking for elements of Aristotelian persuasion and of online engagement with the users.\nFindings: The dominance of pathos was a salient element in the data demonstrating the politicians' need to create an affective alliance with the public and it was the element that resulted in a higher number of likes, shares and comments. Only a few relationships were found and these do not point to a clear relationship between multimedia use and social media engagement. The interactive, open and free nature of social networking sites contributes to their development as a new type of political podia that allow politicians to produce a different kind of political communication. Instead of using these sites as platforms to disseminate their ideas, plans and strategies, politicians focus their interactions with the audience on the creation and maintenance of affective alliances.\nOriginality/value: The study contributes to the existing literature on the subject by examining four characteristics of the politicians' personal profiles on social networks simultaneously while most of the past studies have focused on only one or two of these characteristics.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Assessment of rework cost of selected building projects in Nigeria
|
[
"Additional work",
"Building projects",
"Rework",
"Rework cost",
"Variation",
"Nigeria",
"Buildings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The doctrine of time is money appears to be well entrenched in the psyche of almost all construction industry clients (Love, 2002). It was further stated that to satisfy the requirement of time (completion on time or earlier) a plethora of non-traditional procurement methods have emerged in the market place, which has resulted in design and construction schedules being compressed and construction commencing before the final design is completed. The construction industry has been as far back as nature itself and unlike many manufacturing industries, is concerned mostly with one-off project. The importance of the construction industry is not limited to the difference measures of economic development alone, slumps or upsurges in its activities, have a high multiplier effect on almost every phase in the social and economic structure of the nation. It has been concluded that the high cost of house ownership in Nigeria and other housing problems of the lower income groups are results of defects in the construction industry (Ibironke, 2003).Construction projects involve a long-prediction cycle and input of multitude of participants. Hence, it is therefore associated with errors that lead to rework. In Nigeria, constructions projects are known for over-running their initial cost-limit which invariably also mean it out of initial time schedule. Love and Edwards (2004) concluded that time-delay and cost overruns are among the most common phenomena in the construction industry. Aje (2008) opined that a wrong choice of contractor by the owner may not only lead to disputes between client and contractor, but also contribute to waste of resources. The main problems that have been detected are little interaction among design and construction, and among the specialist; this situation compels the following phase to work on incomplete designs. The consequences are sub-optional solutions, lack of constructability and a great number of change orders. Rework takes its name from defects identified in design or construction process. Also, when certain part of a building constructed or under construction fails to meet the client's requirement due to quality deviation or error in the design and the work has to be done again to conform to project the document leading to waste of material and labour be term rework. Rework has been identified as one of the problems of performance of Nigeria construction industry (Kaming et al., 1997). It also account for more losses than other factors on construction sites due to defective work. The problems associated with concurrency are exacerbated by time pressure, especially when rework occurs, and can accumulate as the data of project completion is approached. In an effort to meet the project's scheduled completion date, design and construction firms may have to employ additional resources. Such actions may lead to the opposite of the desired effect. That is, pushing beyond the limits of effective concurrency increases complexity and this can increase the time to complete tasks.The huge capital involved in construction project together with the associated high interest rates project financing are meant to face, have made it necessary for clients to become more exacting in their requirements as regards construction economy, early completion date, high standard of quality and workmanship and maximum avoidance of rework (Mee-Edoiye and Nyenka, 2001). Subsequently, all these requirements fall within the remit of a contractor. It will not be ideal to say that the problem of cost and time overruns may not yet be over as they still characterize construction project in most parts of the world especially in developing countries like Nigeria (Ogunsemi and Jagboro, 2006). Love (2002) opined that rework is not excluded, as it contributes to time and cost overruns. Efforts have been focused on determining the performance of Nigeria construction industry with reference to time and cost overrun, of which rework is one of its causes and little or no attention has been directed towards this area whose effort is capable of increasing the contract sum and duration significantly (Love, 2002).Considering these issues, non-traditional methods may in fact be subject to higher rework levels than traditional methods, especially when errors, omissions, and/or changes occur. Moreover, under traditional methods, design and documentation are supposed to be complete, or largely complete, before construction commences on-site, so in theory there should be less rework attributable to design-related sources. Since rework has been seen as an ill wind that may not blow good to the construction industry because of its contributions to cost increase and time-delays couple with the fact that it cannot be totally avoided. Then, it is desirable to provide the client with an indication which tells the likely extent of overrun they should expect on their project (Ogunsemi and Jagboro, 2006). Also, it is apparent to find a lasting solution to this problem by evaluating the level of services provided by various project stakeholders in achieving project objectives.\n2 Literature review: 2.1 Nigerian construction industry\n3 Research methodology: Historical data of 22 completed project from Ondo State was obtained using the following factors as the bases of the findings: initial cost; final cost; initial time; final time; rework cost; variation cost; and additional cost. Tables were used for data presentations. The analysis of the collected data was carried out using the following methods: percentage, mean, regression and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient method.\n4 Findings and discussion: 4.1 Findings\n5 Conclusion and recommendation: 5.1 Conclusion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Rework is seen as an unnecessary effort of redoing a process or activity that was incorrectly implemented the first time. It is caused due to so many factors such as architect changing design during construction, or increase in client taste. The aim of this research is to assess the rework cost of selected building projects with a view to improving the project delivery process in Nigeria.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Historical data for the study were obtained with respect to information regarding rework cost, variation cost and additional work cost and were collected on 22 completed building projects. This was achieved through the convenience sampling method where ease of access to information regarding the projects is a major determinant.\nFindings: - It was concluded that there is a significant relationship between rework cost and initial cost, final cost, cost overrun, initial time, final time and time overrun. It was also observed that sub-structure has the highest rework cost with 9.4 per cent of the total average project, followed by upper floor with 8.3 per cent, while the least on the rank is roof finishes with 4.8 per cent.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study was limited to historical data of 22 completed public building projects in Ondo state, Nigeria.\nPractical implications: - The results indicate that there is relationship between rework costs, variation cost and additional work cost. The result also indicates that sub-structure always has the highest percentage of building elements prone to rework with an approximate figure of 9.4 per cent of the total rework cost of building element.\nSocial implications: - After giving in-depth coverage to the concept of rework cost in building projects by examining the effects of rework cost in relation to variation cost and additional work cost, it could be concluded that rework cost is observed in most projects in Nigeria based on the historical data and should be avoided as much as possible.\nOriginality/value: - It was observed that rework cannot be totally eliminated; it was then recommended that it should be reduced to a minimum in the construction industry by consulting appropriate professionals at different stages of the project at the right time.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Economic growth and its effect on public health
|
[
"Economic growth",
"Medical care",
"Public health"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nI. Introduction: The economic literature discusses various determinants of economic growth. Many researchers focus on human capital accumulation or technology diffusion and innovation-driven endogenous growth (Romer, 1988; Lucas, 1988; Robelo, 1991; Creedy, 2005; Aiginger, 2005; Zagler, 2005).While accumulation of physical and human capital are a clear determinant of economic growth, only recently has health's role become a focus of serious academic inquiry.Preliminary efforts in this direction are (Ehrlich and Lui, 1991; Meltzer, 1995; Barro, 1996; and others) who suggested that health status, as measured by life expectancy or analogous aggregate indicators, is an important contributor to subsequent growth. In fact, initial health, according to Barro (1996) and others, is a better predictor than initial education of subsequent economic growth. Arora (2001) confirmed by time series analysis that health conditions are likely to play a causal role in the growth process.Conventional wisdom suggests that prolonging the period in which individuals may receive returns on their investment spurs investment in human capital and causes growth. This conventional wisdom dates back at least to the seminal work of Ben-Porath (1967), and is consistent with the historical relationship among longevity, education, and per-capita output, which have been increasing simultaneously and monotonically since the middle of nineteenth century. Numerous studies that explore the transition from stagnation to growth utilize this mechanism (Ehrlich and Lui, 1991; de la Croix and Licandro, 1999; Kalemli-Ozcan et al., 2000; Boucekkine et al., 2003; Soares, 2005; Cervellati and Sunde, 2005; among others).Health as a determinant of growth has been analyzed in two strands in the literature. The first strand assessed the direct effect of health on productivity. Shastry and Weil (2003) estimated the direct contribution of health to cross-country differences in per-capita output and found that health may account for one-third of the variation that is left unexplained by other measures of factor accumulation.The second strand assessed the indirect effect of health on income through education. Alderman et al. (2001), Miguel and Kremer (2004), and Behrman and Rosenzweig (2004) estimate the impact of health on education. Most of this literature finds positive causal effect running from health to education.However, the connection was also found to go in the other direction. Many researchers have found a clear connection between income level and health (Townsend and Davidson, 1992; Barr et al., 1992; Chen, 1988; Marion et al., 2007).Past studies have overwhelmingly found OECD health expenditure to be positively related to GDP per-capita or aggregated. The work of Nehouse (1977) involved cross-sectional regression of data from the early 1970s for 13 advanced counties. He reported income elasticity estimates of 1.15-1.31 for medical care. Parkin et al. (1987) estimated a cross-sectional regression for 18 OECD countries using 1980s' data, essentially confirming the robustness of earlier results. Their results indicate that Engel elasticities of medical care are around one. Gertham and Jonsson (1991) used 1985 cross-sectional data from 22 OECD countries, similar to that of Parkins et al. The estimated income elasticities do not differ whether the GDP or health care PPP adjustment factor was used. Murthy (1992) questioned the Gerdtham and Jonsson conclusions and found income elasticity between 1.57 and 1.19. Gertham et al. (1992) used a pooled database over three years (1974, 1980, and 1987) for 19 OECD countries. They found per capita GDP the most important determinant of international differences in health expenditure. Aggregate GDP elasticity exceeded one.Positive income elasticities were also found by Solvathan and Solvathan (1993) and Hitiris (1997). Musgrove et al. (2002) analyzed national health accounts of 191 World Health Organization member states for 1997. Their analysis shows that out of pocket spending, total spending, total health expenditure, and total public spending all rise with income.Income level has a direct effect on medical care as well as on health. The effect of socioeconomic position on health has been analyzed by numerous studies. Several studies have reported people's own ratings of their life expectancy to be associated with their socio-economic position. In the UK, more pessimistic self-ratings of life expectancy have been shown to be associated with lower social class (Wardle and Steptoe, 2003). In a US study, pessimistic ratings were associated with low education and economic hardship (Mirowsky and Ross, 2000).Risk of morbidity and mortality are, in general, strongly associated with exposure to disadvantages over the course of life and self-rated life expectancy has been shown to be predictive of mortality after adjustment for general health (Siegel et al., 2003; van Doorn and Kasl, 1998).Previous theoretical and empirical work on growth and health stressed that better health tends in various ways to enhance economic growth while other studies emphasized that economic growth enhances better health. However, I could not find any empirical or theoretical research that discusses the simultaneous relations between economic growth, demand for medical care, and health status. In this paper, I will focus on the mechanisms by which economic development is simultaneously determined by income and by the demand for medical care. I will present a theoretical model that enables a comprehensive analysis of the connections between the demand for medical care, which is mainly supplied by local producers, health status, and economic growth.I will use the frame of the Over-Lapping Generation model with capital by Diamond (1965). In Diamond's model (1965), all individuals are similar and live during two periods. An individual supplies one unit of labor when young, for which he receives a wage, and zero units when old. His consumption when old is financed by savings done when young in addition to the return on those savings. The savings of each generation finances the investment of the next generation.In this paper, an overlapping generation model that includes two sectors will be presented. Each sector employs workers and pays all workers in the sector equal wages, although wages in different sectors are not equal. The aggregate savings of each generation finance the investment of the next generation. Capital is distributed between the two sectors until marginal product of capital in the two sectors is equalized. The productivity of medical care goods is defined by the agents' demand. Given the amount produced and the amount of capital, the number of workers in the medical care sector is defined, while the rest of workers are employed in the consumption goods sector. The agents' demand is defined according to their utility from health and regular consumption. All young agents are born with a given \"stock\" of health which deteriorates at a given depreciation rate. Having medical care in the second period would slow down health depreciation and increase utility. Given a growth path of the economy, capital, and production are divided between the sectors along the path to steady state equilibrium.This paper is organized in the following manner. The model structure is laid down and competitive equilibrium conditions are presented in Section 2. A specific example is presented in Section 3. To confirm the results of Sections 2 and 3, a simulation is presented in Section 4. Section 5 presents the summary.\nII. Model structure: Consider a perfectly competitive world where economic activity is performed over infinite discrete time, t=1,2, ... ,[?].All individuals live during two periods of time. An individual works during the first period and retires at the beginning of the second. Individuals save part of their first period income so that the savings, including the return, and finance their second period consumption. During each period, both young and old people are alive.Supply and demand for capital\nIII. Example: Production\nIV. Simulation: In order to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that the model can be used for empirical analysis, I present a simulation that uses the functions presented in the example in part III. Specific parameters are assumed in the production and utility functions and in the function that connects medical care and health [9]. My intention is to demonstrate that given initial values of economic and health variables, we can calculate their level in each period along the growth path of the economy and their level in steady state equilibrium. Given a starting value of the aggregate capital in the economy, the number of workers in each sector and initial health level we can find capital distribution between the sectors and the income of workers and of owners in each sector. In addition, we can calculate the path to equilibrium of the capital stock and the changes in income distribution and in health and medical care along this path.Initial values\nV. Summary: The main contribution of this paper is in constructing a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing the connection between economic growth, demand for medical care, and economic health.According to the model, the economy is composed of two sectors, one of medical care goods and the other of consumption goods. The demand for medical care, which is defined according to individual preferences, is supplied entirely by local producers. Consumption goods might be traded with foreign countries. Allocation of capital is due to equality of the marginal product of capital in the two sectors. Workers in the medical care sector are employed until local demand is satisfied, while the rest of the workers are employed in the consumption goods sector. Wage income might be different in each sector and is equal to the workers' marginal product in each sector. Savings are determined according to preferences and define the next generation's capital and economic growth path. Equilibrium is defined when capital per-capita in period t is equal to that of period t+1. We get an equilibrium path for the demand for consumption and for medical care goods, per-capita level of health, capital, savings, trade balance and net foreign assets.In order to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that the model can be used for empirical analysis, an example and a simulation were presented.The effect of tax policy can be added to the model and to the discussion. However, since my main aim is to construct a frame for analyzing the connections between economic growth and health level, I leave the discussion on tax policy for future research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to construct a theoretical framework for analyzing the connection between economic growth, demand for medical care, and economic health.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The economy is composed of two sectors, one of medical care goods and the other of consumption goods. Equilibrium is defined when capital per-capita in period t is equal to that of period t+1.\nFindings: - An equilibrium path is found for the demand for consumption and for medical care goods, per-capita level of health, capital, savings, trade balance, and net foreign assets.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The importance of the paper is in its ability to analyze the change in public health along the growth path of the economy.\nPractical implications: - An example and a simulation are presented in order to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that the model can be used for empirical analysis.\nOriginality/value: - The paper constructs a connection between economic growth and health sector economic developments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A sustainable procurement approach for selection of construction consultants in property and facilities management
|
[
"Performance outcomes",
"Procurement",
"Construction consultants",
"Property and facilities management",
"Selection criteria",
"Sustainabiltiy",
"Procurement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In many countries such as Australia and the UK, there is a trend to outsource architectural and engineering services for public-sector projects. It is vitally important to develop an effective assessment method for the procurement of consultancy services so that competent consultants can be selected to achieve the required project outcomes. As innovations and sustainability for the built environment have now dominated the public-sector agenda, more governments have set ambitious greenhouse gas emission and life cycle cost targets for the near future, and seek to establish strategies and standards to promote sustainable building practice. However, a survey investigation conducted by Brammer and Walker (2011) on a sample of over 280 public procurement practitioners of 20 countries shows that although sustainable procurement practices are adopted for outsourcing of services in the public sector, the extent and nature of these practices vary significantly from country to country. In Australia, previous research reveals that public authorities are at different stages of implementation of \"green\" initiatives in construction planning and development, with considerable gaps in the tender analysis tools and types of contract used for tendering and contracting (Sanchez et al., 2013).\nSustainable project outcomes: The existing selection approach is often an input-based assessment relying on a range of task and contextual performance factors. This approach is developed by Ling (2000) for the selection of construction consultants in Singapore and reflected in the evaluation framework suggested by Morledge and Smith (2013) for the selection of various consultants for construction projects. However, such an approach cannot guarantee that the strategic project objectives could be achieved. Public-sector clients should focus to measure the required project outcomes instead of prescriptive inputs to achieve the project success (Cabinet Office, 2011).\nSustainable performance influencing factors: According to the theory of job performance, performance comprises two elements: task performance, which refers proficiency and skills in job-specific tasks related to the project and the relevant job experience (Van Scotter and Motowidlo, 1996); contextual performance, which is related to general communication and coordination skills, as well as initiative and teamwork within an organisational setting (Borman and Motowidlo, 1993). Based on the task and contextual performance, Ling (2000) develops a reliable and valid evaluation framework for choosing construction consultants in Singapore.\nHypotheses: Based on the literature findings, the following hypotheses are developed to address the aim of the research, i.e. what selection criteria should be considered for choosing construction consultants for optimising the sustainable project outcomes.\nResearch design and methods: Built environment research consists of cognitive and affective, as well as behavioural components. The use of a single methodology often fails to explore all of these components. Amaratunga et al. (2002) suggests that a mixed-methods approach be used to counteract this weakness and to enhance research into the built environment. For this study, conducting data analysis on qualitative and quantitative data in mixed methods provides an authentic explanation on the causal links between performance outcomes and factors, as well as objective generalisation of such relationships.\nQualitative and quantitative results: Each qualitative case-study interview conducted with the university estate office took approximately 45 min, using a semi-structured questionnaire developed from Tables 1 and 2. All the experienced heads of estate, managers for consultant management and quantity surveyor confirmed that economic, environmental, social and functional sustainability are the university's strategic and practical needs and that these sustainability aspects can be well-measured by the KPIs as shown in Table I. In addition to this, one of the estate heads specifically spelled out that the consultant's performance should cover all aspects of sustainability. The participants further confirmed that the task and contextual performance factors as listed in Table II are influential to the consultant's sustainable performance outcomes.\nDiscussion: Replicative qualitative results from the three case studies identify that the KPI sustainable building measures listed in Table I can measure the project outcomes of economic, environmental, social and functional sustainability. The results also reveal that economic sustainability can be influenced by task and contextual performance factors and that functional, social and environmental sustainability can also be influenced by these performance factors. These provide a sound basis for validating the validity of H1 and H2 by hierarchical regression analysis.\nConclusions: Outsourcing architectural and engineering services is a trend for public-sector construction projects. The qualitative study of this research indicates that sustainable procurement of construction consultants for property and facilities management of estate portfolio should consider all the four aspects of economical, functional, social and environmental sustainability, which are the strategic objectives and practical needs of public-sector clients. The current \"triple bottom lines\" of sustainability should be extended to embrace all sustainability values. The existing selection practice is biased towards the environmental and economic values such as greenhouse gas emission and life cycle cost, but functional and social values are equally important.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Outsourcing architectural and engineering services is a trend for public-sector construction projects. This study aims to examine what tender selection criteria should be considered when assessing the performance outcomes of consultants in relation to sustainable design, construction and management of buildings within the context of property and facilities management of existing building portfolios.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Combined qualitative-quantitative methods are adopted to examine the causal relationship between sustainable performance outcomes and influencing factors, using primary data collected from the estate offices of the UK universities, which form a unique public sector. The performance factors identified form the basis of selection criteria.\nFindings: The qualitative multiple-case interviews identify economic, environmental, social and functional sustainability measures as the attributes of performance outcome. The quantitative hierarchical regression analysis generalises that sustainable performance outcomes can be significantly influenced by task and contextual performance factors.\nResearch limitations/implications: The scope of the study is limited to university estates. Further research should be conducted on other property and facilities management and construction-related organisations so that the sustainable procurement approach developed by this research can become more robust and applicable to the wider public sector.\nPractical implications: At the tender stage, estate managers should adopt a sustainable procurement approach for selection of construction consultants: focussing on the significant task performance (project staff and execution approach) and contextual performance (collaborative consultant frameworks) influencing factors to optimise the project sustainability outcomes in relation to economic, environmental, social and functional values.\nOriginality/value: The sustainable procurement approach developed by this research benefits property and facilities management, as well as construction disciplines within the wider public sector, thus contributing to the government construction policy on promoting sustainability to the built environment.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Leveraging automation and integration to improve manufacturing performance under uncertainty: An empirical study
|
[
"Manufacturing industries",
"Automation",
"Uncertainty management",
"Performance management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Throughout the history of manufacturing management, managers are constantly refining their skills for controlling and stabilizing against various technological and market uncertainties (Skinner, 1985). Some of those skills, such as division of labor (Taylor, 1911) and buffering technical core from external changes (Tompson, 1967) had been very successful in the transition from craft to industrial manufacturing system, creating the powerhouse of US manufacturing.However, many of those skills can no longer keep up with the accelerated changes in technology and global market over the last two decades. Indeed, \"in today's business environment, more than in any preceding era, the only constant is change.\" (Champlin and Olson, 1994). US manufacturing is experiencing yet another revolutionary transition, i.e. the evolution from industrial to post-industrial manufacturing system (Doll and Vonderembse, 1991). Doll and Vonderembse (1991) further characterized the post-industrial manufacturing environment as growing global competition, changing customer demand, shorter product life cycles, increased market diversity, and rapid advances in manufacturing and information technology. Thus, an essential managerial question is: what new skills should manufacturers have to deal with this highly competitive and uncertain post-industrial environment?For one time, US manufacturers seemed to have found the answer, i.e. investing in new manufacturing technology to increase the level of automation. Thus, we saw a boom in purchasing the hardware for flexible automation. But the US managers soon realized that their competitors were using the same technology more effectively. A study by Jaikumar (1986) revealed that the flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) installed in US showed an astonishing lack of flexibility in terms of machine utilization and variety of parts produced per system as compared to Japan. Boyer et al. (1996) clustered 202 US metal-working companies into four groups according to the degree of adoption of automation: traditionalists, generalists, high investors, and designers. However, they did not find any performance difference among these four groups of companies. Similarly, Sacristan Diaz et al. (2003) identify three groups out of 20 companies according to the investment of AMT and also found no performance differences among these three groups. It appears that the advantage lies not in whether or not you have the technology but how it is being used. Therefore, Jaikumar (1986) concluded that \"The technology itself is not to blame; it is management that makes the difference.\" Duimering et al. (1993) further proposed that the key to effective management of flexible automation is to improve manufacturing system integration before implementation. Burcher et al. (1999) also confirmed the importance of integration for a company implementing AMT through a case study.Cross-functional integration is an effective way to respond to more turbulent environment. It includes production engineering integration and production process integration (Cagliano and Spina, 2000). Birou et al. (1998) emphasize the importance of cross-functional process integration to creating competitive advantages. Rondeau et al. (2000) empirically confirmed that high time-based manufacturing practices can lead to high integration and thus lead to high-competitive capabilities. Nahm et al. (2003) also found that a high level of horizontal integration in a firm leads to fast and abundant communication.Recently, the issue of manufacturing system automation vs integration has attracted greater attention due to the increasing level of environmental uncertainty (EU). But empirical evidences of whether automation and integration really makes a difference in terms of manufacturing performance (MP) under different levels of EU are almost non-existent. A case study by Vonderembse et al. (1997) provided some initial empirical implications on the role of automation vs integration under the highly uncertain post-industrial environment. Jonsson (2000) studied 324 manufacturing companies in Sweden and divided those companies into three groups (i.e. traditionalists, hard integrators, and high investors) according to the degree of automation and integration that is defined as data and information transactions both within manufacturing functions and between manufacturing function and other functions. He viewed AMT as both automation and information integration and concluded that \"companies with heavy AMT investments perform better than those without\". However, he indicated \"The analyses conducted were mostly descriptive in nature, and did not look for cause-and-effect relationship between underlying variables and high performance.\" Droge et al. (2004) utilize a sample of 57 US first tier automotive suppliers and empirically supported that integration has direct effects on time-based performance, market-share performance and financial performance, respectively. Swink et al. (2005) empirically supported that strategic integration leads to cost efficiency and new product development flexibility capabilities that contribute to market-based performance according to analysis of data from a sample of 57 US manufacturing firms.The authors are very interested in two research questions:RQ1. What are the impacts of automation and integration on MP under different levels of EU?RQ2. Are there any empirical results of the empirical supports?The current study is the first large-scale survey research to address the differing impacts of automation and integration on MP under different levels of EU. The next sections will first present the theoretical model and the development of hypotheses. Research methodology will then be presented along with statistical results. This is followed by discussion of implications and final conclusion.\nTheoretical framework and hypotheses development: The theoretical model under investigation in the current study can be shown in Figure 1.The basic argument of this model is that the level of EU moderates the impact of manufacturing system automation and integration on MP. As discussed earlier, today's post-industrial manufacturing environment is fundamentally different from the industrial environment in terms of the uncertainty level. The highly turbulent post-industrial environment is largely resulted from the increasing competition, changing customer demand, shorter product life cycle, and rapidly advancing technology innovation. These factors will definitely affect manufacturing practices and performance.Manufacturing systems integration refers to both the physical connections and information flows among the manufacturing system components. It may include co-operation of application systems, consistency of the information model and continuity of communication through all management and control levels (Lapalus et al., 1995). Integration includes physical material flow integration and information flow integration (Frohlich and Westbrook, 2001); Information integration can improve business process (Bhatt, 2000) and plays a critical role in a firm (Giachetti, 2004). In the manufacturing function, information integration implement through utilizing network and other information technologies (Dan et al., 2005) to share product and process data (Deng et al., 2002; Gao et al., 2002; Cho and Seo, 2002) and coordinating process planning and scheduling (Zhang et al., 2003). Process integration mainly includes integration of design, manufacturing and inspection systems (Cho et al., 2002) and integration of production and logistics functions (Chikan, 2001; Gimenez and Ventura, 2005).Manufacturing systems automation can be defined as substituting labor with automatic facilities and equipment so that the system can operate with fewer labor hours per unit produced (Vonderembse et al., 1997). This usually involves the adoption and implementation of various advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs), such as robotics, CNC machines, computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM), and FMS. Thus, in manufacturing management literature, the level of automation is often represented by the level of AMT usage.In the current study, MP is defined as the level of attainment of various manufacturing objectives, which are commonly considered to including cost, quality, delivery, flexibility and innovation (Swamidass and Newell, 1987). Although, the concept of MP has been widely used and discussed, a comprehensive and reliable measure of MP cannot be easily found. One contribution of the current study is the development of a valid and reliable measurement instrument for MP, which can also be used in other manufacturing management studies.The impact of automation and integration on MP under low-uncertainty industrial environment\nResearch methodology: Data collection\nDiscussion of results: The results presented above, taken together, suggest that EU, manufacturing system integration and automation do have distinctive impact on MP. The results of this study may provide useful directions for top management in understanding and dealing with the performance problems in manufacturing firms, especially when the firm is puzzled by the problem of not being able to get expected returns out of investments in AMTs. In fact, a study by Mansfield (1993) on 175 Japanese, Western Europe, and USA firms indicated that many US firms have been relatively slow in assimilating AMTs due to the actual rate of return on this investment being lower in the USA than elsewhere.Our results show that if a manufacturer is facing a more predictable market, i.e. its customer requirements seldom change, product life cycle is long, and technological changes in the industry are slow, then simple automation of part or all of the manufacturing system will be enough to give the firm a significant performance improvement. When the firm can always predict customer needs and does not have to worry about its products getting obsolete, fixed automation of key processes of the system can surely improve productivity and quality. A empirical recent study by Pagell and Krause (1999) showed that the sample of AMT users reported more certain external environments than the random survey sample of manufacturers.However, when the market environment is highly unpredictable, which is often the case for most manufacturers today, simple installation of automation equipments will not be sufficient. Instead, manufacturing system integration becomes a more important factor if firms want to reap the full benefits of automation. This finding is consistent with Vonderembse et al. (1997) case study results that under the chaotic post-industrial environment, firms generally perform better if they focus first on integration and then on automation.When firms have to frequently update their products and processes to meet constantly changing customer needs, the advanced automatic machines may sometimes become useless if the material and information flow were delayed in other parts of the system due to lack of system integration and flexibility. A good example is at Sun Microsystems where a highly automated assembly line for desktop workstations has been replaced by a less automated but more integrated cellular manufacturing scheme. The level of automation at the facility actually impeded a fundamental requirement of today's world-class facilities - flexibility (Feare, 1995). Therefore, before embarking on any investment in manufacturing automation, firms should first carefully evaluate their market environment. If it belongs to the high uncertainty category, then a system-wide effort of integration will be necessary, which may include establishing standards to improve compatibility, setting up computer-based network systems to facilitate information sharing, and reengineering the work management system to assist in cross-functional cooperation.The results also show that firms operating in high uncertainty environment generally perform better than those in low uncertainty environment. This finding is significant because many firms that used to enjoy predictable markets are now confronting increasingly turbulent market. This is not necessarily a negative factor as perceived by many manufacturing managers. The demand for flexibility and integration that the uncertain market imposes can actually stimulate the firm to take innovative steps and achieve dramatic results.This study represents a continuing effort in addressing environmental and organizational contexts that are more conducive to higher MP. The issues involved are both complex and substantive in nature. While the hypotheses developed in the present research represent our perspectives on the issue, there is scope for future research to extend this study in several directions. One, using the MP measurement instrument developed in this study, the effect on MP of other contextual variables can be theorized and then empirically tested. Secondly, the impact of automation and integration on some new dependent variables such as firm performance can be studied. Third, it will also be interesting to further examine the moderating effects of some other contextual variables such as firm size and industry type. Future research can also benefit from the use of multiple respondents to counter the likely effects of single respondent bias.\nConclusion: The current research is one of the first large-scale empirical studies to address the complex interactions among manufacturing system integration, automation, EU, and their distinctive impacts on MP. Valid and reliable measurement instruments for MP and EU were developed to facilitate the study. The empirical results demonstrated that automation and integration had differing effects on MP under different levels of uncertainty:* Under industrial (low uncertainty) environment, manufacturing system automation has significant positive impact on MP, while the impact of manufacturing system integration is not significant.* Under post-industrial (high uncertainty) environment, manufacturing system integration has significant positive impact on MP, while the impact of manufacturing system automation is not significant.* Under post-industrial (high uncertainty) environment, when the degree of system integration is also high, manufacturing system automation will have significant positive impact on MP; when the degree of system integration is low, manufacturing system automation will have no significant impact on MP.These results provide valuable implications for management efforts directed at improving manufacturing competitiveness in today's turbulent post-industrial environment.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to address the differing impacts of automation and integration on manufacturing performance (MP) under different levels of environmental uncertainty.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Responses from 303 companies are analyzed and presented.\nFindings: - Under industrial (low uncertainty) environment, manufacturing system automation has significant positive impact on MP, while the impact of manufacturing system integration is not significant. Under post-industrial (high uncertainty) environment, manufacturing system integration has significant positive impact on MP, while the impact of manufacturing system automation is not significant.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This paper emphasizes manufacturing strategy responses to different uncertainty levels of environment; either manufacturing system integration strategy or manufacturing system automation strategy plays the primary role for a manufacturing firm to achieve high performance under different uncertainty levels.\nPractical implications: - This paper strongly supports that the key to effective management of automation technology is to improve manufacturing system integration before implementation under high uncertain environment.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is one of the first large-scale empirical studies to address the differing impacts of automation and integration on MP under different levels of environmental uncertainty (EU). Another contribution of this study is the development of valid and reliable measurement instruments for MP and EU, which can be widely used in other manufacturing technology management studies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Life cycle and performance among SMEs: Swedish empirical evidence
|
[
"Sweden",
"SMEs",
"Life cycle stages",
"Performance path"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The firm life cycle model has attracted considerable attention in recent decades as a conceptual framework for understanding and analysing various aspects of firm development in the management literature (Aghion et al., 2007). By applying the model, empirical research has explored various topics, including financial performance (Anthony and Ramesh, 1992), growth (Klepper, 1996; Fitzsimmons et al., 2005), profitability and cash flow (Dickinson, 2011), firm financing (Berger and Udell, 1998; Fama and French, 2000), entrepreneurship (Quinn and Cameron, 1983) and strategy (Lester et al., 2003, 2006). The model has provided a useful theoretical framework for researchers and practitioners. From the managerial perspective, the putative power of the life cycle model can help managers predict potential problems and opportunities in various life stages. However, since firms may operate in multiple industries and produce different types of products and services, a firm's life cycle stages are difficult to identify precisely. This may explain why empirical research into the relationship between firm performance and life cycle stage is rather rare.\n2. Theoretical framework, previous studies, and hypotheses: According to the life cycle model, a firm - like any living organism - develops through various stages. Consequently, the life cycle of a firm typically consists of a set of stages that starts with birth and ends in death. A life cycle stage can be described as a phase of firm organizational operations and structures. According to Hanks et al. (1993), a life cycle stage is a \"unique configuration of variables related to organization, context and structure\". Common contextual dimensions include age, size, growth and profitability rate. The advantage of applying a life cycle approach is that it emphasizes that activity and structure change over time. The number, nature, length and breadth of life cycle stages have been interpreted and implemented in various ways. While Quinn and Cameron (1983) and Kazanjian and Drazin (1989) identified four stages in the business life cycle process, Scott and Bruce (1987) and Hanks et al. (1993) identified a five-stage model. Furthermore, Tam et al. (2001) recommend a six-stage and Adizes (1989) a ten-stage model.\n3. Selection of variables, data collection and data analyses: 3.1 Selection of variables\n4. Empirical results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Concluding discussion: The high performance of SMEs is a precondition for their survival and thereby job creation. Although the life cycle approach has been applied to explain several aspects of the firm (Berger and Udell, 1998; Lester et al., 2003; Fitzsimmons et al., 2005; Aghion et al., 2007; Dickinson, 2011), empirical studies of its applicability to reliable performance measures are limited. In line with the life cycle model, the present study examined the impact of life cycle on performance among Swedish SMEs in six industries using a large panel data set covering 26,721 firms from 2008 to 2011. The empirical results indicate a clear life cycle performance pattern among the studied SMEs. The results indicate that performance in terms of growth and profitability is, on average, considerably higher in young SMEs than in their older counterparts. Thus, firm performance follows a pattern explainable by firm life cycle stage (Fama and French, 2000; Hobdari et al., 2009\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to empirically examine the applicability of the life cycle model of firm performance to growth and profitability among Swedish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using analysis of variance, multiple analysis of variance and three-stage least square modelling, this study analyses a longitudinal data set covering 26,721 Swedish SMEs in six industries from 2008 to 2011.\nFindings: The empirical results indicate a clear life cycle performance pattern among the sampled SMEs, and that a six-stage life cycle model is applicable in predicting the performance pattern in terms of growth and profitability. On average, younger SMEs tend to display better performance in terms of growth and profitability than do their older and larger counterparts; moreover, larger SMEs tend to achieve better performance than do smaller ones.\nPractical implications: The findings help SME managers understand how their decision-making style, strategy and structure can be related to various life cycle stages. Such an understanding may help them improve firm performance over time. Policymakers may find the results useful in coordinating SME support in line with various life cycle stages.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge, this study is one of only a few using two performance variables to test the applicability of the life cycle model in a longitudinal and cross-industrial sample.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
High quality diabetes care: testing the effectiveness of strategies of regional implementation teams
|
[
"Diabetes",
"Patients",
"Patient care",
"Israel"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Diabetes is a chronic disease with consequences on both the individual and national levels. It decreases life expectancy by seven years on average and can lead to serious morbidities such as retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathies and heart disease that influence quality of life (Backlund et al., 1997; Romm and Hulka, 1979; Lippert et al., 1995; Boulton, 1998; Turner et al., 1998). On the national level, the complexity of diabetes and its synergy with other co-morbidities such as hypertension and hypercholesterolemia, imposes a burden on health resources and interferes with national productivity outcomes (Overland et al., 2000). In 1996, Clalit Health Services (CHS), a major Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) that provides care for 70 per cent of Israel's diabetes patients, initiated a program to improve diabetes care, with the aim of addressing these problems and achieving effective control of diabetes within the population. This program is based on the St Vincent declaration of the World Health Organisation of 1989 (The Acropolis Affirmation Diabetes Care, 1995). The project is described in detail elsewhere (Goldfracht and Porath, 2000; Benbassat et al., 2005; Goldfracht et al., 2005). It includes compulsory, annual setting of measurable quality care indicators for the primary care providers, followed by individual feedback. To facilitate goal attainment, providers receive continuous medical education (CME) guidelines, clinical pathways, clinical decision support tools, as well as special profiles and interventions for minorities.Generally, this improvement project follows the principles of management by objectives (MBO). Conceptually, MBO is seen as an approach that will influence the total management hierarchy and will integrate their efforts by setting goals for the organisation as a whole (Drucker, 1954; Rodgers and Hunter, 1991; Antoni, 2005). These goals are then cascaded down through each management level, to ensure that their accomplishment at each level will help attain the objectives of the level above, and ultimately of the entire organisation (Carroll and Tosi, 1973). MBO was developed as a synthesis of three component processes: goal setting, objective feedback and participation in decision-making (Locke and Latham, 1990; Rodgers and Hunter, 1991; Antoni, 2005). Underpinning the advantages of applying MBO programs, researchers have noted that despite the widespread use of these programs, their impact varies considerably: Enormous effects have been reported in some studies, and only minor effects in others. In a few studies, negative effects were found (Rodgers and Hunter, 1991). In an attempt to explain the conflicting evidence, MBO research has pointed at task complexity: As tasks become more complex, the typical motivational effects of improving quality of health as measured by specific indicators may not be sustained and may even become harmful (e.g. Drach-Zahavy and Erez, 2002; Earley et al., 1989; Gist et al., 1991; Kanfer and Ackerman, 1989; Wood et al., 1987). In diabetes care, achieving improvement in process measures might appear a less complex task than achieving improvement in outcome measures, as evidenced by several randomised clinical trials to evaluate MBO programs (O'Connor et al., 2005; Landon et al., 2007).Furthermore, in healthcare organisations, forming inter-professional teams of physicians, nurses, dieticians, and other health professionals has been suggested as a way of facilitating goal attainment. Cross-functionality promises rapid, creative and flexible responses to the challenging goals, by allowing input from diverse expertise and perspectives (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; Bower et al., 2003; Chin et al., 2007; Chin et al., 2004; Lemieux-Charles and McGuire, 2006; Shortell et al., 2004). In the field of diabetes care, team interventions yielded mixed findings. For example, several studies (Landon et al., 2007; Chin et al., 2004) found improvements in care processes (e.g. rates of HbA1c measurement, ophthalmic examination referral, dietary counselling) but failed to identify improvement in outcome measures (e.g. absolute value of HbA1c) comparing data one year pre-collaborative to one year post-collaborative. However, Chin et al. (2007) noted that improving complex patient outcomes, such as glucose control, may require prolonged commitment to the collaborative approach, and thus, positive effects might not be captured in short-term studies. In this vein, the findings of Chin et al. (2007) showed improvements in care processes and in hemoglobin A1c and LDL cholesterol levels over a period of four years.Only little is known, however, concerning the exact strategies by which teamwork influences diabetes management. Several studies found that a focus on team climate (Bower et al., 2003) or balanced culture (Shortell et al., 2004) was positively associated with improving diabetes care. Nevertheless, more information is needed concerning the specific strategies teams employ to attain high quality diabetes care, as measured by improvement in the attainment of predetermined quality indicators. In this study, we focused on the teamwork of regional inter-professional implementation teams. These teams do not provide direct patient care, but rather have the authority to direct, guide and supervise the inter-professional clinic teams. To the best of our knowledge, no study heretofore has examined the strategies employed by regional diabetes implementation teams to attain high quality diabetes care. Nor has any study examined the link between these strategies and achieving improvement in health indicators. The present study set out to close these gaps. Our aim was to identify and test the effectiveness of work strategies employed by regional implementation teams to attain high quality care for diabetes patients.\nMethod: Design\nDiscussion: This study provides empirical support for the premise that achieving high quality diabetes care is not only clinical. Interdisciplinary teamwork can, in fact, be associated with the attainment of high quality diabetes care. The study also showed that the complexity of the indicator measured (simple process, compound process and outcome) was negatively associated with the teams' performances. These results offer clear guidelines for theoreticians and practitioners for the team strategies that are associated with the performance of diabetes implementation teams, thereby contributing to the literature in several aspects.First, our findings demonstrated that goal interdependence, i.e. the perception that the team members' goals are common, was positively associated with team performance across all types of health indicators. All teams agreed that the goal-setting process was a motivating feature. But high goal interdependence was not a common strategy used by the six teams. Those who were rated low on this strategy viewed goal attainment mainly as the responsibility of the physicians. This variability indicates that although all teams were responsible for developing and presenting their goals (as a part of the MBO process), only two actually took practical measures to turn them into shared goals. Practical steps included creating a shared climate and understanding the mutual responsibility of each team member in achieving the common goal. Teams high on goal interdependence apparently develop a \"community of fate\" perspective (Fan and Gruenfeld, 1998), which motivates members to strive jointly for the attainment of the common team goals - in our case, each region reaching its goals for high quality diabetes care. In effect, several authors have recently advocated goal interdependence as a means for binding together inter-professional team members, thereby overcoming inter-team conflict and productivity loss (van Vijfeijken et al., 2002; Nauta et al., 2002). As our findings demonstrate, this is particularly important for interdisciplinary healthcare teams who work in a system characterised by separate chains of control, and different goal, feedback and payment systems for the various professions (Poulton and West, 1999; Capozza et al., 2006; Freund and Drach-Zahavy, 2007).Second, our findings show a negative association between the complexity of the type of indicator and performance. Complexity has been systematically proven to block the effect of indicators on performance. As indicators' complexity increases, the typical motivational effects of specific indicators may not be sustained and may even become harmful in industrial organisations (e.g. Drach-Zahavy and Erez, 2002; Campbell, 1984; Earley et al., 1989; Earley et al., 1989; Gist et al., 1991; Huber, 1985; Kanfer and Ackerman, 1989; Wood et al., 1987), and for diabetes care (O'Connor et al., 2005). In this vein, diabetes process indicators might indicate a less complex task than outcome indicators in three parameters: component complexity, coordinating complexity and dynamic complexity (Wood et al., 1987). Component complexity refers to the number of performance dimensions that need simultaneous attention. In process indicators, such as taking blood pressure, fewer actions have to be performed than in outcome indicators, such as controlling blood pressure, which requires medication prescription, training for a healthier lifestyle, and creating readiness for change in patients. Coordinating complexity refers to the sequencing of acts and the coordination required among different providers to accomplish the task. An outcome indicator might be considered more complex than a process indicator because it necessities coordination of the inter-professional team (physician, nurse, dietician, health educator). Dynamic complexity refers to the changes in actions and information cues and their potential predictability. Dynamic complexity imposes an additional load on the performer due to the need to adjust to uncertainty, change and resistance to change, which inhibit performance (Wood and Bandura, 1989). As our qualitative finding demonstrated, many health providers trying to attain improvement in outcomes report that this calls for a trial-and-error process, in an attempt to adapt to the patient's unique requirements.Our findings suggest a contingency theory explanation for the effectiveness of two of our team strategies, namely team learning and reliance on top-down processes to promote team performance by regional implementation teams. The effectiveness of these team strategies proved clearly dependent on the complexity of the health indicator. For simple process indicators, teams may well be served by relying on a top-down strategy, one commonly employed in health services; whereas for outcome indicators, a team-learning strategy is more beneficial. In other words, the choice of strategy should depend on the type of health indicator.Inter-professional implementation teams are an important source of knowledge for process improvement and team learning (Field and Sinha, 2005; Tucker et al., 2007). Their first-hand knowledge of the specific challenges of their region, and experience with successes and failures resulting from existing organisational processes, provide insight into improvement opportunities (Field and Sinha, 2005). However, as our findings indicate, accessing their knowledge is often easier said than done. Team learning was not the commonest among our implementation teams. Earlier studies likewise show that knowledge exchanged between regional implementation teams and front-line staff often remained unshared because of a variety of interpersonal, psychological and structural factors (Institute of Medicine, 2004; Siemsen et al., 2007; Freund and Drach-Zahavy, 2007). Healthcare organisations thus face the substantial challenge of transforming the work environment into one that cultivates knowledge exchanged between regional implementation teams and front-line staff. As our findings indicate, team learning (including shared care processes and tailoring of educational materials to meet the needs of clinical providers) was positively associated with performance of outcome measures. This is supported by research on healthcare teams (Vashdi et al., 2007; Tucker et al., 2007). For simple process indicators, however, as shown here, team learning was even negatively associated with performance. A possible explanation for this adverse effect is that teams that are preoccupied with learning are distracted from performing at least some of their simple tasks (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992).Based on the same logic, we show here that reliance on top-down standardised process strategy was associated with higher performance for simple process indicators. For simple indicators, team members have relatively defined and clear-cut roles, each member deals with his or her own set of demands, and there is little need for coordination. To perform such tasks, research has shown that the best strategy is reliance on guidelines, protocols and standardised plans (Locke and Latham, 1990). However, as indicators became more complex, the strategy became less effective, and it even hampered the performance.Limitations and further research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to identify and test the effectiveness of work strategies employed by regional implementation teams to attain high quality care for diabetes patients.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study was conducted in a major health maintenance organization (HMO) that provides care for 70 per cent of Israel's diabetes patients. A sequential mixed model design, combining qualitative and quantitative methods was employed. In-depth interviews were conducted with members of six regional implementation teams, each responsible for the care of 25,000-34,000 diabetic patients. Content analysis of the interviews revealed that teams employed four key strategies: task-interdependence, goal-interdependence, reliance on top-down standardised processes and team-learning. These strategies were used to predict the mean percentage performance of eight evidence-based indicators of diabetes care: percentage of patients with HbA1c < 7 per cent, blood pressure <= 130/80 and cholesterol<=100; and performance of: HbA1c tests, LDL cholesterol tests, blood pressure measurements, urine protein tests, and ophthalmic examinations.\nFindings: - Teams were found to vary in their use of the four strategies. Mixed linear models analysis indicated that type of indicator (simple process, compound process, and outcome) and goal interdependence were significantly linked to team effectiveness. For simple-process indicators, reliance on top-down standardised processes led to team effectiveness, but for outcome measures this strategy was ineffective, and even counter-effective. For outcome measures, team-learning was more beneficial.\nPractical implications: - The findings have implications for the management of chronic diseases.\nOriginality/value: - The advantage of allowing team members flexibility in the choice of the best work strategy to attain high quality diabetes care is attested.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Public management systems, accounting education, and compliance with international public sector accounting standards in sub-Saharan Africa
|
[
"Accounting education",
"Sub-Saharan Africa",
"IPSAS",
"Public sector reforms",
"Compliance level",
"Public management systems"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The awareness of the traditional cash accounting drawbacks and the growing calls for improving government financial transparency and accountability have largely stimulated the revolution of public sector accounting. Like many countries, sub-Saharan African governments have made considerable efforts and substantial changes to reshape their public financial management systems through the introduction of accrual-based accounting, and most importantly the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). The widespread acceptance of these standards around the world fits into an ongoing government reform agenda to overcome corruption and promote a more performance-based public sector (Sellami and Gafsi, 2018a). Indeed, IPSAS are developed by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and its committee the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) with the aim to disclose more transparent, complete, timely, comparable and reliable public financial information needed for better public resource allocation, effective governance and decision making and a more stable government framework. However, mere adoption of IPSAS does not lead to the achievement of the expected objectives without proper application and faithful compliance with these standards' requirements. In sub-Saharan Africa, most governments face serious challenges in implementing and complying with IPSAS, depending on each country's specific factors (e.g. legal framework, political support, economic development, quality of public administration and management, level of accounting education and training, etc.). In this regard, this paper assesses the extent of compliance with IPSAS disclosures in sub-Saharan African governments and investigates the impact of the strength of public management systems (SPMS) and accounting education on this level.\n2. Historical background and study context: 2.1 New public management (NPM) reforms and development of IPSAS\n3. Literature review and hypothesis development: In the government accounting field, few studies investigating IPSAS disclosure level have been undertaken (Benito et al., 2007; Perez and Lopez-Hernandez, 2009; Abushamsieh et al., 2014; Sukmadilaga et al., 2015; Araya-Leandro et al., 2016). Indeed, Benito et al. (2007) who conducted a comparative and survey-based analysis of 30 countries across the world showed important diversities in the degree of conformity with IPSAS between jurisdictions but no significant differences between government levels (the mean compliance index is 58.61 percent for central government and 59.98 percent for local government). In the Romanian context, Tiron-Tudor (2010) revealed a high degree of correspondence between national accounting regulations and IPSAS. Abushamsieh et al. (2014) and Perez and Lopez-Hernandez (2009) analyzed the extent of public financial information disclosed in accordance with IPSAS 1 and IPSAS 2 in the Middle East Arab governments and MERCOSUR member countries, respectively. They revealed that, in spite of the important public administrative reforms made in these regions, none of the selected countries has reached the minimum requisites for the information to be provided in accordance with IPSAS in the government annual reports as recommended by the IFAC. Ernst and Young (2012a) prepared, for Eurostat, a report on public accounting and auditing practices in the 27 EU member states. This report revealed significant differences in the extent of compliance with IPSAS across jurisdictions (ranging from 42 to 69 percent for most European countries) and between government levels (the overall average score for local and central governments is 64 and 63 percent, respectively). Sukmadilaga et al. (2015) examined the extent of IPSAS disclosure in the governmental financial statements for the year ended 2012-2013 in the two ASEAN countries Indonesia and Malaysia. They indicated that, although Indonesia presents higher IPSAS disclosure level than Malaysia, compliance level with these standards in both countries is still low, making it necessary to implement substantial changes and improvements in public financial management to increase IPSAS disclosure level and thereby enhance the quality of public financial reporting. In the Central American context, Araya-Leandro et al. (2016) stated that government financial reporting has not yet reached a high level of convergence to IPSAS despite considerable efforts made to modernize the public sector accounting in this region. These studies are relevant and provide insight into the level of IPSAS disclosure in the selected contexts. However, the assessment of the degree of government accounting transparency and compliance with IPSAS in the African context has not yet been investigated. Moreover, none of the above-mentioned studies empirically demonstrated the impact of country-specific factors on the extent of compliance with IPSAS. In fact, in the private sector accounting literature, it was well established that corporate accounting disclosure depends on each country's environmental factors (Adhikari and Tondkar, 1992; Glaum et al., 2013; Mazzi et al., 2018). In the public sector field, Luder (1992) stipulated that the evolution and quality of government accounting information system are largely affected by a country's history, economic development, legal framework and culture. According to Cheng (1992) and Bolivar et al. (2013), government accounting disclosure is associated with institutional and environmental factors such as political system, legislative and legal framework, government size, government's financial condition and bureaucratic accounting/auditing characteristics. In the Portuguese context, Carvalho et al. (2007) indicated that compliance with accounting practices in local government is influenced by government financial condition, urban characteristics, government size and diffusion across neighboring municipalities. Tejedo-Romero and Araujo (2018) assessed the transparency level of 100 Spanish local municipalities. They showed that political and economic factors such as political strength, electoral turnout, gender and unemployment are significant determinants of government accounting disclosure. Regarding IPSAS implementation, Sellami and Gafsi (2019) revealed that countries' decision to adopt these standards is influenced by institutional factors such as external public funding, external openness, availability of local GAAP and socio-economic importance of public sector entities. However, the issue of the factors associated with IPSAS disclosure level appears to be more important and much more complex, as mere adoption is still insufficient to reap the benefits of these standards and improve the quality of government financial reporting which requires IPSAS to be well understood and properly applied. In sub-Saharan Africa, most governments face serious challenges in implementing IPSAS (Ijeoma and Oghoghomeh, 2014; Tanjeh, 2016). These difficulties are mainly related to the environmental factors such as inconsistency of regulatory and legal framework (case of Tanzania), lack of adequate training programs, resistance to change management, poorly developed information and communication technology and lack of political support (Tanjeh, 2016; ACCA, 2017). This study focuses on the SPMS and accounting education as two main factors expected to have an impact on compliance level with IPSAS disclosures in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, several macroeconomic factors have been examined in prior research to analyze their impact on the level of accounting disclosure, but the effect of accounting education is not yet well brought to light. Moreover, the taking into consideration of the NPFM reforms' impact on African government accounting practice makes it important to explore the extent to which public management quality affects the degree of compliance with IPSAS in this region.\n4. Research methodology: 4.1 Sample and data sources\n5. Research results: 5.1 Descriptive statistics\n6. Conclusion: In recent years, the use of IPSAS has become one of the most recognized best practice benchmark for enhancing and assessing government financial transparency and accountability, especially in developing countries. Starting from this point, this paper attempts to assess the transparency and completeness of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan African countries by examining the extent of compliance with IPSAS disclosures and to analyze the impact of the SPMS and accounting education on this level. Unlike prior research (Abushamsieh et al., 2014; Perez and Lopez-Hernandez, 2009) focusing only on IPSAS 1 and IPSAS 2 disclosures, this study develops a self-constructed checklist including the general and basic disclosures required to be provided in all government accrual-based financial statements and consisting of 116 disclosure items from IPSAS 1, 2, 3, 14 and 24. The research applies panel regressions for a sample of 60 sub-Saharan African government entities over the 2014-2017 period. The results show significant differences in the extent of compliance with IPSAS across sub-Saharan African governments. They reveal a positive effect of the SPMS and accounting education on IPSAS disclosure level in this region. Despite the efforts made to reform their public accounting and implement IPSAS, several African countries are still unable to ensure the faithful compliance with these standards in the presence of weak public financial management infrastructure and insufficiently qualified accounting staff. In this regard, the study results stress the need for these governments to take the necessary actions and relevant measures to strengthen their public financial management mechanisms and also to promote an effective and competency-based accounting education system able to provide greater in-depth IPSAS knowledge and adequate expertise in this field. This will help create a sound and ethical framework of professionalism, transparency, control and integrity for greater compliance with accounting standards and greater public sector performance. The research findings might be of interest to several actors in the government financial reporting field. First, they provide practitioners, academics and researchers with new insights into fundamental questions regarding the assessment of IPSAS disclosure level in sub-Saharan Africa and the extent to which the SPMS and accounting education affect the compliance with these standards. Second, these results might be a stimulus for African supervisory authorities and policy makers to better support the IPSAS implementation by developing and monitoring strategies and policies that are effective, consistent and strong enough to improve government transparency and promote public sector performance. Third, they might assist standard-setters and professional bodies such as IFAC and IPSASB in their ongoing efforts to develop and/or revise relevant standards and guides to make them more suitable to the public sector specificities, taking into account the serious challenges for developing countries like sub-Saharan Africa to adequately apply and comply with IPSAS. Finally, the study findings might be an incentive for governments with low IPSAS disclosure level to reconsider the application of these standards with more emphasis on non-compliance areas, and most importantly, to further focus their strategies on strengthening public management structure and continuously improving accounting education quality to increase the compliance with IPSAS and thereby enhance financial accountability and overcome corruption in the public sector.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the transparency and completeness of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan African countries by assessing the extent of compliance with IPSAS disclosures and to investigate the impact of the strength of public management systems (SPMS) and accounting education on this level.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research develops a self-constructed disclosure index from content analysis and applies panel regressions for a sample of 60 sub-Saharan African government entities during the period 2014-2017.\nFindings: The study results indicate that IPSAS disclosure levels significantly vary across sub-Saharan African governments. They reveal a positive effect of the SPMS and accounting education on the extent of compliance with IPSAS in this region.\nPractical implications: The study findings are of interest to practitioners, researchers, government policy makers, supervisory authorities and professional bodies. By focusing on the effect of the SPMS and accounting education on IPSAS disclosure level, this paper leaves room for future research to investigate other relevant factors associated with the compliance with these standards whether in sub-Saharan Africa or in other parts of the world.\nOriginality/value: This paper gives new insights into the assessment of the quality and transparency of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan Africa by examining the extent of compliance with IPSAS in this region. It is the first to investigate the impact of the SPMS and accounting education on this level.\n",
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] |
Inpatient satisfaction: an analysis of Malaysian public hospitals
|
[
"Malaysia",
"Hospitals",
"Patients",
"Health care",
"Public health",
"Patient satisfaction",
"Public healthcare",
"Public hospitals"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Patient satisfaction has emerged over the years as an important measure of the quality of care provided by healthcare organisations. It is not only important for gaining insights into the perception of customers on the delivery of healthcare services, but also, as indicated by Donabedian (1988), a key outcome of care. According to Torres and Guo (2004), patients entrust their life and wellbeing to healthcare providers, and thus monitoring patient satisfaction is a crucial component in measuring an organisation's effectiveness and should be part of any quality improvement plans. An insight into patient satisfaction can also help decision-makers in resource allocation, as patient priorities and preferences can be identified from the various health care quality attributes (Elleuch, 2008). Apart from that, patients who are content with their service experience are also likely to come back for more services when the need arises (Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2005). Low patient satisfaction also may result in poor compliance, with the potential for waste of resources and suboptimal clinical outcomes.Tucker (2002) suggested that understanding the individual patient characteristics that affect the patient's perspectives on satisfaction can offer insight into their evaluative processes. Information gained from the patient's perspective can help healthcare organisations to modify their approaches to improving satisfaction. Patients who are satisfied with the service that they experience are likely to exhibit behaviours potentially beneficial to the long-term success of the healthcare provider (Ramsaran-Fowdar, 2005). With the concomitant rise in health consumer movement, satisfying the needs of the patients has also of late been the sine qua non of healthcare organisations (Gill and White, 2009).\n2. Research problem: The main aim of the study is to analyse empirically the level of inpatient satisfaction in Malaysian public hospitals. The survey instrument used gathered the respondents' perception of:* the cleanliness and comfort of the physical surroundings;* satisfaction with respect to the food provided;* the level of noise in the wards and the management of visitors to the wards;* treatment and medication received;* services of the doctors and nurses; and* information given to patients on their condition.A study of patient satisfaction needs to be tied to quality improvement efforts within Malaysian public healthcare delivery. The Ministry of Health (MOH) can be regarded as a forerunner in implementing quality improvement efforts among Malaysian public sector agencies. It began its quality assurance programme as early as the 1980s, and today, quality improvement initiatives are widely implemented, aimed at enhancing customer satisfaction. These include the Clients' Charter and the inculcation of corporate values of caring, professionalism and teamwork among employees. Given such an emphasis on service quality, it is therefore timely that an assessment be made on patient satisfaction of Malaysian public hospitals. This provides feedback from the customers' perspectives on the level of service provided by the hospitals. One would posit that given the long period of involvement in quality improvement efforts by MOH hospitals, a higher patient satisfaction score would reflect positively on the effectiveness of such initiatives.Patient satisfaction is also ranked among the most important performance measures for healthcare service delivery (Zabada et al., 2001). Thus, the findings should also assist policy-makers to evaluate the performance of public hospitals. Given the fact that Malaysian public healthcare is at a crossroads, with the government's intention eventually to privatise services, the findings should help policy-makers in charting the next course of action. Efforts at privatising public hospitals have been mooted since the Seventh Malaysia Plan (1996-2000), with the argument that free-market competition will lead to improved services and efficiency. However, the move towards complete privatisation has not yet fully taken shape, although some form of corporatisation has taken place in selected hospitals such as the National Heart Institute.\n3. Research method: Due to the large geographical area to be covered, a self-administered questionnaire was the main method of data collection used. There are 130 public hospitals altogether in the country, and these are organised into national, state and district levels. The national-level hospital is Hospital Kuala Lumpur, which provides a comprehensive range of tertiary services. State-level hospitals are located in the state capital of each of the 13 federal states in the country, and provide a comprehensive range of secondary care services. District-level hospitals on the other hand, provide basic inpatient care services, and may or may not have some secondary-level specialist services.A total of 23 hospitals spread across Peninsular Malaysia participated in the survey. All the state-level hospitals were included in the survey as there is only one state-level hospital in each state. Hospital Kuala Lumpur, which is the only national level hospital, was also included. However, the remaining 11 district hospitals were randomly selected by state and region. This was done by instructing an Excel spreadsheet to assign random numbers to each district hospital, and then randomly select the hospitals. For practical purposes, non-probability convenience sampling was used in the administration of the survey. This was due to the fact that patients are not in the best of conditions to participate in any form of survey. Convenience sampling was also used by Lim and Tang (2000) in their study on patient satisfaction in Singapore hospitals. Respondents comprised patients from all wards of the respondent hospital. A proportionally larger number of questionnaires was distributed to the third class ward, followed by the second class ward based on the number of beds. For patients from the paediatric ward, the questionnaire was completed by their parents or guardian who was with them on the ward.The instrument used for the study was based on an earlier questionnaire developed by the Institute of Health Management (IHM), Ministry of Health Malaysia (Abdullah et al., 2000). The instrument comprised 14 items covering, among others, the satisfaction of patients on the service of doctors and nurses, information about their health condition, the hospital environment and the facilities provided. Manaf (2006) pointed out that the majority of patients in Malaysian public hospitals are low-income earners, as the service is almost free at the point of use. Lin and Kelly (1995) stressed the need to reduce data collection demands on patients, while Tomes and Ng (1995) also raised the concern that patients may also be burdened with psychological concerns such as fears of physical disability, fears of dying and fears about side-effects of treatment. Thus, taking into consideration their social background and their conditions, it was considered that the IHM questionnaire, which comprises short, straightforward items that are simple to answer, was most suited for the study. Likert-scale responses were assigned to each item of the questionnaire with a score of 1 for \"very dissatisfied\", 2 for \"dissatisfied\", 3 for \"not sure\", 4 for \"satisfied\" and 5 for \"very satisfied\". The mean of the variables was worked out by averaging all the responses for a single variable. A mean of less than 3 was classified as being dissatisfied with the service provided, and a mean of greater than 3 was taken as an indication of satisfaction.Donabedian (1988) cautioned that patients may actually be quite reluctant to express their true feelings about the service provided for fear of reprisals from service providers. Thus, in order to reduce the fear, logos of the funding educational institutions were placed on the questionnaires as a means of communicating to the respondents that the survey was carried out by independent educational institutions, and not by the hospital itself. Envelopes were also provided with the questionnaires in order to ensure confidentiality of response. This was to encourage the respondents to express their true feelings about the quality of services. The envelopes containing the completed questionnaires were then collected by the researcher. A total of 900 questionnaires were distributed to the respondent hospitals, and 819 responses were received. Of these, 173 were found to have missing data. Hair et al. (1998) suggested that one of the remedies in dealing with missing data is to delete the offending cases. Accordingly, cases with missing data were deleted and the remaining 646 usable questionnaires were analysed, which gave a response rate of 71.8 per cent.\n4. Reliability and validity: Reliability analysis was first carried out using Cronbach's coefficient a. Nunnally and Bernstein (1994) stressed that coefficient a should actually be applied to all new measurement methods even if other estimates of reliability are also necessary. The Cronbach's a for the 14 items was found to be 0.8776, which indicated a good internal consistency among the items. All the corrected item-total correlations were also found to exceed the acceptable lower limit of 0.30 proposed by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994). Factor analysis by principal component analysis was then carried out in order to establish construct validity. The factor analysis was performed by Varimax rotation and three factors resulted from the analysis, with 58.79 per cent of total variance explained. The first factor accounted for 41.38 per cent of total variance. A minimum factor loading of 0.50 was applied for the loading to be considered significant (Hair et al., 1998). The latent root criterion was also applied in the factor extraction with factors having latent roots or eigenvalues greater than 1 being considered significant (Hair et al., 1998). Table I shows the factor loadings, eigenvalues, percentage of variance and cumulative percentage of variance of the factors.Reliability analysis carried out on all three factors showed the Cronbach's a of the first factor to be 0.8500, the second factor 0.7530, and the third factor 0.6495. The first factor, which grouped items relating to the clinical aspects, such as service of doctors and nurses, clinical treatment received, and information given about treatment, was labelled the \"clinical dimension of the service\". The second factor, which grouped items that concern the physical aspects of the service, such as cleanliness, and environment of the ward, was labelled the \"physical dimension of the service\". The third factor, which grouped items on additional facilities such as public telephones and food provided, was labelled \"additional facilities for patients and family members\".\n5. Analysis of findings: 5.1 Demography\n6. Conclusion: The findings for the inpatient survey indicate that generally patients are satisfied with the inpatient service of Malaysian public hospitals. Nevertheless, patients are more satisfied with the clinical aspects of treatment than with the physical aspects of service. This reflects the emphasis of Malaysian public hospitals on clinical aspects rather than on physical aspects. For the clinical aspects, the sample statistics suggest that they are also most satisfied with the service of the doctors and nurses, whereas for the physical aspects, they are most satisfied with the cleanliness of the wards.The findings speak well of the service of the doctors and nurses. In the course of conducting the survey, the researcher was often taken aback by the large number of patients; wards were almost always full to the brim. In meetings hospital directors, most would lament the shortage of doctors and nurses in their hospitals. A shortage of manpower among doctors and nurses is an incessant problem in the Malaysian public healthcare landscape, where an average of 300 doctors and specialists resign from the government service each year (Lim, 2002). The government has also never committed more than 3 per cent of GNP to healthcare, and Malaysia has not fallen into the trap of pouring money into hospitals, as is common in most developing countries. Thus, public hospitals are not endowed with adequate and up-to-date medical equipment, except for a few newer ones (Ghazali, 2002). Given the circumstances, one may conclude that the doctors and nurses have done quite well as shown by the findings of the survey.The findings should also serve as a wake-up call to the policy-makers, who are generally of the opinion that problem in service delivery of the public hospitals can only be solved through privatisation. Hence, numerous studies have been conducted on the proposed national health financing scheme which will eventually see the country's healthcare system converging into a single entity rather than the current public-private dichotomy (Yon, 2002). The proposed reform is on the assertion that the public healthcare delivery service is in dire need of an injection of entrepreneurial dose in order for it to be more customer-centric. Thus, rather than undergoing major healthcare reform, the findings may support the contention that public healthcare in the country may not actually need a major surgery, but rather an increase in allocation for a system that is operating within very tight financial and human resources constraints.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical analysis on inpatient satisfaction in Malaysian public hospitals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A self-administered questionnaire was the main data collection method. Altogether, 23 hospitals throughout Peninsular Malaysia participated in the survey. Cluster sampling was used in the selection of the respondent hospitals, while convenience sampling was used in administering the survey.\nFindings: - Three factors of inpatient satisfaction were extracted, which were clinical and physical dimensions of service, and additional facilities for patients and family members. Inpatient satisfaction was found to be higher for the clinical dimension than for the physical dimension. Overall, inpatient satisfaction was high, as reflected by the high mean score of the variables, although caution was expressed in interpreting the findings, particularly the low expectations of patients to begin with.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research was limited to inpatients of Malaysian public hospitals. A thorough evaluation of the nation's public healthcare delivery system would need to include outpatient services as well.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides an empirical analysis on inpatient satisfaction in Malaysian public hospitals. This allows policy makers to evaluate the level of public healthcare delivery service in the country and therefore assist in policy decision-making and implementation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Employability of older workers in the Netherlands: antecedents and consequences
|
[
"Employability",
"Retirement",
"Older workers",
"Generations",
"Occupational status"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As a result of the aging population, researchers and practitioners alike have expressed an increased interest in how to manage the growing number of older workers at the workplace (OECD, 2011). Older workers are a vulnerable group of workers, being strongly affected by the changing economic climate and at risk of social exclusion (Burgess and Connell, 2006). This study focusses on older workers with a low occupational status, an extremely vulnerable sub-group where precarious work is the rule rather than the exception and who are exposed to mentally and physically strenuous working conditions and environments (Sargeant and Giovannone, 2011). These precarious working conditions affect their employability (Sanders and de Grip, 2004). Perceived employability is assumed to have overall favorable consequences. For example, a core assumption is that employability leads to gainful employment, better performance and higher productivity (Fugate et al., 2004; Sung et al., 2013) and that it contributes to employee health and well-being (Berntson and Marklund, 2007; De Cuyper et al., 2008), which might incite them to extend their working lives.\nResearch context: This study focusses on older workers with a low occupational status in the creative industry in the Netherlands. These three contextual factors will be briefly outlined below.\nLiterature review: The recent economic slowdown resulting in widespread downsizing and layoffs coupled with the rapid pace of skill obsolescence due to changing technologies has made employability an important topic (Van den Broeck et al., 2014). With the arrival of the boundaryless career employees have become responsible for their own careers and work security (Van der Heijden and Bakker, 2011). Rothwell and Arnold (2007, p. 25) define employability as \"the individual's ability to keep the job one has, or to get the job one desires.\" This definition was chosen in this study because it has been the starting point for many self-perceived employability measures (Berntson and Marklund, 2007; Berntson et al., 2006; De Cuyper et al., 2008). Self-perceived employability concerns the individual's beliefs about how easy it is to find new employment (Rothwell and Arnold, 2007) or the individual's perception about possibilities to find a new job (Berntson et al., 2006). Self-perceived employability has been linked to many personal and organizational factors like health (Berntson and Marklund, 2007), employee well-being (De Cuyper et al., 2008), long-term unemployment, work status (Thijssen et al., 2008) and employee development (Van Dam et al., 2006). This study examines two generations older employees with a low occupational status regarding their self-perceived employability, the factors that influence this, their chances to find a job and their retirement preferences.\nMethodology: Sample\nResults: Descriptive statistics are displayed in Table II. Generational membership was significantly correlated with both self-perceived employability (r=0.20), the time it takes to find a job (r=0.20) and retirement preferences (r=-0.28) in the hypothesized direction (all p\nDiscussion: This study examined the similarities and differences of two generations that are often taken together as a homogeneous group called \"older workers.\" The population under study was highly vulnerable since they belonged to two devalued social groups and worked in the creative industries where hazardous working conditions are common. The Veteran Generation and the Baby Boomer Generation were compared regarding their self-perceived employability, the factors that influence this, the time it takes them to find a job and their retirement preferences. The dispositional approach to employability (Fugate et al., 2004; Fugate and Kinicki, 2008) was used. This approach to employability was chosen because it applies to both individuals that are working as well as unemployed individuals and it provides more information about what makes someone employable, even if this person is a vulnerable worker. Vulnerable workers in a precarious sector are likely to perceive their employability as low, as well as their chances on the job market, leading to high numbers of early retirement. However, it is important to know how those workers perceive themselves, what characterizes them and how this is related to their chances at the labor market and their retirement decisions. Researchers have called for more research on the link between dispositional employability on the one hand and job search efforts and re-employment outcomes on the other hand (Fugate and Kinicki, 2008). Moreover, a need for studies making a distinction within demographic categories like age and gender (Gowan and Nassar-McMillan, 2001) has been stressed. This study answers this call for research and examines the employability of two generations that fall in the category \"older workers.\"\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine self-perceived employability, the factors that influence this, the chances to find a job and retirement preferences of two generations older workers with a low occupational status in the creative industries in the Netherlands.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Survey data including qualitative elements were obtained from 1,112 older workers registered in a job agency specialized in older workers. Correlations, t-tests and multiple regressions were performed to test the hypotheses, while the open questions were analyzed in a qualitative manner.\nFindings: The Veteran Generation reported a higher self-rated employability than the Baby Boomer Generation, found a job quicker and also preferred to retire later than the Baby Boomer Generation. In addition, they focussed on aspects that fostered their employability. The Baby Boomers, on the other hand, stressed the importance of some barriers that hindered their employability. The Baby Boomer Generation explained how external factors like negative stereotypes and being too expensive hinder their employability and chances at the labor market.\nResearch limitations/implications: A limitation in the study is the use of a cross-sectional design that fails to capture the influence of the aging process.\nPractical implications: In the light of the aging population, knowledge about which factors influence the employability and labor participation of older workers is necessary. More insights about the differences and similarities among the various generations in the workforce can help organizations to take important decisions about human resource policies and practices.\nOriginality/value: This study compared the Baby Boomer Generation to the Veteran Generation in a sector that is known for its unstable employment and hazardous working environments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Explaining Trinidad and Tobago's system response to international assessment data
|
[
"Strategic leadership",
"International assessments",
"Effective data use",
"Evidence-based policy making",
"System reform",
"Data-driven decision making in education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nWhole system reform as context: Over the last decade, there has been increased focus on whole system reform in nation states (Hopkins et al., 2011; Fullan, 2009, 2010, 2011; Levin, 2007, 2008; Schiefelbein, 1995). Whole system reform involves improving several schools at the same time within an administrative region or nation state (Datnow et al., 2006). Targets for change might be created from benchmarking successful school systems (Clifton, 2011). This comparison of schools and systems across contexts has facilitated the transfer of policies and strategies from one country to the next, although the value of direct transfer is limited if reductionist comparative logic is overused (Bulle, 2011; Takayama, 2008, 2010). Nevertheless, nation states can successfully learn to solve some critical issues by examining the strategies used by others. Moreover, there is value in countries cautiously reviewing their own education policies and comparative performance, given the globalized context of work and the economy.\nUsing data for system improvement: Arguably, data might act synergistically to trigger whole system reform, but perhaps more so in OECD countries with a longer history of successful data use and evidence-informed change. For OECD countries, Hargreaves (2009) has argued that in the last decade large scale reform has been characterized by movement from reliance on experience and intuition to greater data use. He proffered that \"hard data have pushed aside soft intuition and judgment\" with \"data-driven\" becoming \"de rigeur elements of Anglo-American approaches to educational reform\" (p. 94). Supporting this argument, Campbell and Levin (2009) described the successful use of data in the whole school improvement initiative in Ontario. In this case study, data went beyond informing school and classroom practices to directing system-level policies and performances over time at both provincial and district levels. However, the use of evidence to guide educational reform might not be a universal trend (Cueto, 2005; Saito and Van Cappelle, 2010). Therefore, there is a need to understand how data is used for system reform specifically in non-OECD contexts. This is especially important considering the rapid expansion in the number of non-OECD countries participating in international assessments. A theoretical framework explaining data use for system reform will also be applicable to national and regional assessments, which are increasingly used in non-OECD countries (Benavot and Tanner, 2007).\nThe unique value of comparative data: Although data from national and regional assessments have a critical role in providing detailed contextualized data for directing whole system reform, only international assessment data will allow comparison and benchmarking across country contexts. Thus, international assessments may be considered as a uniquely valuable tool for informing and directing a system change agenda. In Latin American, Ravela et al. (2008) have called for a greater balance between use of national and international assessments because both have value for directing system reform. Interestingly, however, Wagner et al. (2011) argued that the unit costs of both types of assessments are quite comparable. Since policymakers also have some choice between different international assessments they must consider also the different measurement frameworks offered. Moreover, policymakers in non-OECD contexts must seek evidence for claims that measurement constructs are strongly related to important economic and social outcomes (Bulle, 2011).\nCase studies of system responses to international assessment data: Schleicher (2009b) has credited Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data for triggering the education reforms of the German system in the 2000s and the increased awareness of equity-based issues. It appears that the three-tier system of Gymanium, Realschule, and Hauptschule might have changed with time so that immigrants and very poor performers were increasingly concentrated in the lowest tier. Although the system was still perceived to be highly efficient by stakeholders, data from early administrations of PISA pointed to large disparities between schools related to students' socioeconomic status (OECD, 2011). The weight of the evidence suggested that the hierarchical tri-partite school system might be less efficient compared with the more egalitarian systems of the Nordic countries. Germany's scores in Reading, as measured by PISA, have improved over the course of the four administrations since the year 2000. This experience suggests that some issues such as system inequity might not be readily apparent without credible comparative data. Germany's response to PISA data is also notable because the issue of inequity was first apparent in the results of the 1995 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, but it was the phenomenal response by the media to the poor performance in the 2000 PISA that prompted action in a favourable political and economic climate (Neumann et al., 2010).\nExplaining differential system responses to data: These case studies suggest that the relationship between educational benchmarking and whole system change may be more complex than commonly described (Schleicher, 2009b). As alluded to here, international assessment data is important to whole system reform, but triggering an initial response and sustaining change might require additional factors. The complexity of system responses to data especially in non-OECD contexts is evident in work outside of education. For example, Teller et al. (2011) described barriers in the demand and supply of demographic data use in the public health care system of Ethiopia. The authors observed that the demand for data often outstripped access to quality information. Interestingly then although data might have appeared to be readily available, it was not presented in a user-friendly format suitable for the media and the general public. Consequently, the media response was limited. Moreover, cultural factors resulted in fear and caution during data reporting, even from universities. Overall, throughout the stages of data supply and use, there were several barriers with the most critical being stringency, data illiteracy, mistrust, and politicization of the process.\nTrinidad and Tobago as a case study of data use in system reform: Methods\nFindings: Document analysis\nEducational implications for data use and whole system reform: The four themes identified provide broad support for the theoretical framework explaining data - informed system change in non-OECD contexts. Table I summarizes and compares the sub-themes and themes generated with the corroborated and revised theoretical propositions. There was evidence for a multi-staged process of data-informed system reform beginning with seeing or taking note of the data. Although stakeholders and policymakers might take note of international assessment data, moving and finishing appeared to be separate stages in change process. This was especially apparent in Trinidad and Tobago's local experience with the 1991 IEA Survey where a local report had been generated and new policy and structures initiated. However, these were not sustained because of political manoeuvring.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although high-quality comparative data from international assessments are now more widely available, to what extent is that data being used to trigger, inform, and direct educational change in non-Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries? The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to guide a case analysis of Trinidad and Tobago's system response to international assessment data.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is a single-nation explanatory case study using data from policy documents and elite interviews. Findings are generated through inductive thematic analysis.\nFindings: The four emerging themes were: first, weaknesses in the national evaluation system; second, policy-making practices not attuned to data; third, lack of collaboration and stakeholder involvement; and fourth, challenges in accessing and using data. Findings suggested that data rarely acted alone to trigger system change. Critical to initiating and sustaining effective data use for system reform were policy-making contexts and mental maps of system leaders, which in this context acted as barriers. Respondents believed that greater strategic leadership from politicians and technocrats could ensure data-informed systemic change.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study focuses upon data use and data-driven decision making for whole system reform within a single country context. However, it advances theory that might be applied to other non-OECD cases.\nOriginality/value: The findings contribute to the refinement of a conceptual model explaining data-driven system reform applicable to non-OECD contexts. The role of system leaders when using international assessment data is clarified.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A comparison between structural equation modelling (SEM) and Bayesian SEM approaches on in-store behaviour
|
[
"Atmospherics",
"Affective state",
"Bayesian SEM",
"Frequentist structural equation modelling",
"In-store behaviour",
"Markov Chain Monte Carlo"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Kotler (1974, p. 50) first defined atmospherics as \"the conscious designing of space to create certain effects in buyers\". Since 1970s, both retailers and marketers across the globe have attempted to manipulate various aspects of store atmospherics that appeal to the human senses (e.g. climate, music, scent, in-store display, etc.) to stimulate positive consumer reactions. In fact, this long-standing preoccupation with atmospherics is intensifying especially in the highly competitive retail sector worldwide (Kumar and Kim, 2014). This is because both retailers and marketers regard store atmospherics as a highly effective aspect of marketing that they could fully manipulate (Heung and Gu, 2012; Turley and Chebat, 2002). Most importantly, there is a wealth of evidence that most consumers consider store atmospherics as an important criterion when deciding where to shop (see for instance, Nicholls et al., 2000; Kusumowidagdo et al., 2012). This justifies retailers' emphasis on creating an appealing environment to evoke shoppers' emotions that, in turn, trigger \"desirable\" behaviours such as increasing time and money spent, positive word-of-mouth communication, and higher repurchase intentions.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Theoretical underpinnings\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Frequentist structural equation modelling (SEM) and Bayesian SEM (BSEM)\n4. Findings: 4.1 CFA\n5. Discussion and conclusion: Our study focused on understanding the effects of store atmospherics (i.e. the influence of music, colour, and store layout) on shoppers' affective state as well as in-store behaviour. In this regard, a series of tests were conducted using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches and the results show that both approaches had consistent outcomes. More specifically, the results from the SEM and bootstrapping method for testing complex mediations showed the positive effect of store atmospherics (music, colour, and store layout) on affective state. The positive affective state generated, in turn, brought about in-store approach behaviour: shoppers tended to spend more time, more money, and indicated intention to patronise the store again. The empirical evidence of this study affirms that atmospheric cues, such as the presence of music, colour and good store layout applied in retail setting, influence the consumption experience in terms of emotional and behavioural responses. In terms of our contribution to the extant literature, our empirical findings add to the relatively sparse evidence available that is specific to consumers patronising the outlets of clothing retailers in shopping malls. This is very much in line with the recent exhortation of various researchers (see for instance, Dabija and Babut, 2014; Heung and Gu, 2012; Davis and Hodges, 2012; Kumar and Kim, 2014; Mohan et al., 2013) that the behaviour of consumers must be rationalised within the distinctive context where the \"consumption experience\" takes place, be it a particular subsector, industry or even retail format.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of atmospherics and affective state on shoppers' in-store behaviour using the two approaches in structural equation modelling (SEM), i.e. Frequentist and Bayesian approaches. Shoppers' affective state was tested for its mediating effect on in-store shopping behaviour.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The final sample consists of 382 respondents who were drawn from shoppers at selected apparel stores in six of the most popular shopping malls around Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). A frequentist approach to SEM is common among researchers and offers generally an analysis of the relationships between multiple latent variables and constructs. Alternatively, the Bayesian SEM (BSEM) approach stems from the diffusion of the model's posterior distributions using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique. More specifically, this technique is inherently more flexible and substantive in determining parameter estimates as compared to the more conventional, the frequentist approach to SEM.\nFindings: The results show the mixed effects of atmospheric cues in retail setting on shoppers' affective state. More specifically, the positive direct effect of atmospheric cues (music) on in-store behaviour was confirmed while other atmospheric cues (colour and store layout) were found to be fully mediated by affective state. The Bayesian approach was able to offer more distinctive results complementing the frequentist approach.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although the current sample size is adequate, it will be interesting to examine how a bigger sample size and different antecedents of in-store behaviour in retailing can affect the comparison between the frequentist approach in SEM and BSEM.\nPractical implications: The authors found that a combination of well-designed store atmospherics and layout store can produce pleasurable effects on shoppers resulting in positive affective state. This study found that results from both frequentist and Bayesian approaches complement each other and it may be beneficial for future studies to utilise both approaches in SEM.\nOriginality/value: This paper met the aim to compare the approaches in SEM and the need to consider both approaches on in-store shopping environment. Overall, the authors contend that the Bayesian approach to SEM is a potentially viable alternative to frequentist SEM, especially when studies are conducted under dynamic conditions such as apparel retailing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Understanding the factors that characterise school-community partnerships: The case of the Logan Healthy Schools Project
|
[
"Partnership",
"Project management",
"Schools",
"Health education",
"Australia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The school environment has been recognised as a suitable and effective setting for health promotion programmes in many countries such that there have been numerous health promotion initiatives around the world implemented within school settings (Koplan et al., 2005; Mukoma and Flisher, 2004). Schools provide an excellent opportunity to promote health as interventions can reach a large number of children at one time and over an extended timeframe because most children remain within the educational system for ten to 12 years. This capacity to deliver messages or health promotion programmes over an extended timeframe is considered essential for sustainable behavioural changes to occur (Lynagh et al., 1997; Nutbeam and Harris, 2004).The health-promoting schools (HPS) approach is an internationally recognised model for promoting and sustaining health initiatives in the school setting (WHO, 19974, 1998). It aims to improve health by addressing the school curriculum, teaching and learning, the school organisation, ethos and environment, and partnerships between school community members, such as students, families, school staff, and the wider community, including health service providers (Clift and Bruun Jensen, 2006; NHMRC, 1996; Rowe and Stewart, 2009). The three components of the HPS model interact with one another to address various health issues in a holistic and sustainable manner.Sustainability has become an important focus when considering school-based health promotion initiatives. This is understandable given the limited funding that is available for health initiatives at any level and the need to demonstrate intervention effectiveness (Shediac-Rizkallah and Bone, 1998; Swerissen and Crisp, 2004). The sustainability of health promotion programmes increases the cost effectiveness of interventions, provides opportunities for the assessment of medium to long-term effects, and also is consistent with the goal of improving the health of school communities (Altman, 1995; Thompson et al., 2000). School-community partnerships have been identified as a key strategy of the HPS approach because they promote the sustainability of school-based health promotion initiatives (Gillies, 1998; Inchley et al., 2006; Laurence et al., 2007; Warwick et al., 2005).Schools alone do not often have the capacity to solve and unravel the diverse health risk behaviours of students without the aid of other organisations and members of the wider community; however, schools do offer the setting wherein families, businesses, government and community-based organisations, and media can work together in school-community partnerships to develop and deliver programmes and sustain a healthy lifestyle for youth (Cho and Nadow, 2004; Gross and Cinelli, 2004; Levine et al., 2002). A partnership for health is defined as \"a voluntary agreement between two or more partners to work cooperatively toward a set of shared health outcomes\" (Altman, 1995, p. 101). Developing programmes in partnership with education and health professionals has been identified as a key element in the success and sustainability of a health promotion programme within the school environment (Cho and Nadow, 2004; Mitchell et al., 2005). It is the collaborative work of differing professionals that leads to programmes that are robust, diverse, and correctly targeted at the applicable audience (Minkler and Wallerstein, 2006).Partnerships, much like other educational policy initiatives, must be carefully considered and planned to be able to be effectively integrated into the school culture (Soultatou and Duncan, 2009). Effective school-community partnerships can aid in the funding problems associated with health promotion programmes. For example, departments of public health and other agencies may provide funding for initial stages and may also help educate schools on how to apply for further grants (Greaney et al., 2007). Strengthening and nurturing the relationships that are developed during the funding phase of a project can help to continue the project after grants or start-up funds have been exhausted (Paine-Andrews et al., 2000).School-community partnerships can also aid in not only sustaining school health initiatives, but also in \"mobilising more talents, resources and approaches to influence an issue than any single organisation could achieve alone\" (Butterfoss et al., 1993, p. 317). While the literature indicates that school-community partnerships are a key factor for sustainability in community and school-based health initiatives (Cho and Nadow, 2004; Mitchell et al., 2005), research into the factors that characterise these partnerships, particularly in the secondary school environment, is limited.In response to this shortcoming, the present study investigated the factors that characterise school-community partnerships through a case study of \"The Logan Healthy Schools Project\" (LHSP). The LHSP aims to promote health by providing before, during, and after-school activities to promote nutrition and physical activity behaviours to prevent overweight and obesity in secondary school students. This project used the HPS approach to address these aims, specifically through building effective partnerships between the school and community-based partners. This paper examines the sustainability of health-promotion initiatives through the use of building effective school-community partnerships, in the context of promoting nutrition and physical activity in the secondary school setting.The LHSP was developed and implemented in five secondary schools in Logan, South-East Queensland, Australia, and was conducted between September 2007 and September 2009. The project initiated collaborative partnerships between school and community members to promote nutrition and physical activity in the school environment. The project was coordinated by a steering committee of representatives, a deputy principal and teaching staff member from each of the five schools and community-based partners including university, local and state government representatives. The project received a funding grant of approximately AUD $230,000, which provided a project officer who initiated and facilitated the partnerships of the steering committee and also initiated partnerships between participating schools and community-based partners such as local organisations and service providers to conduct before, during and after school nutrition and physical activities with the students. These community-based partners were initially funded to provide this service to all schools participating in the LHSP.\nMethods: This study used an explanatory qualitative case study approach (Neuman, 2006; Yin, 2003) to examine the factors that characterise effective school-community partnerships in supporting the sustainability of school health initiatives applied within the HPS approach. In order to achieve this research goal, the objectives of this study were to:* identify the factors that underpin effective school-community partnerships;* explain and discuss the features that construct the identified factors of effective school-community partnerships; and* examine how effective school-community partnerships have provided support for sustaining school-health initiatives within the LHSP.The case study\nFindings and discussion: An analysis of the data collected in the current study identified four factors that characterise effective school-community partnerships to contribute to the sustainability of school-health initiatives. The four factors are:1. a focus on relationships;2. complementary capacities;3. a commonality of intent; and4. competence in practice.Each of the four identified factors has three features that provide depth in the explanation of the factors. The identified factors and their features in the current study have been found to be present at both the school operational level and the strategic programme level of the LHSP; however they vary in importance and prominence across the three stages of the initiation, growth, and maturity of school-community partnerships. The three phases of partnership development will be highlighted throughout the presentation of the results. Figure 1 provides a diagrammatic representation of the relationships among the four factors.The \"Focus on Relationships\" factor in Figure 1 provides the foundation for effective school-community partnerships. It has been identified that good working relationships are the foundation for creating effective partnerships (Lasker et al., 2001; Mickan and Rodger, 2000; Seifer, 2006). As such, this factor is positioned as the base of the figure. The two factors, \"Commonality of Intent\" and \"Complementary Capacities\", are displayed as the second tier of the figure. These factors impact one another, specifically on the factors of \"Focus on Relationships\" and on \"Competence in Practice\" positioned at the top of the figure. These two factors are considered central to productive working relationships and are represented as the core of the figure. The factor \"Competence in Practice\" is placed at the top of the figure because it is an overriding constant factor within partnerships. It is suggested the partnership itself will only be workable or viable should the associated parties involved perceive one another as having competence in practice.Focus on relationships\nPhases of partnerships: The four characterising factors of effective school-community partnerships have been identified to be present within three sequential, yet connected, development phases (Kelly et al., 2002), discussed in this study as initiation, growth, and maturation. Interestingly, this study has identified that the factors fluctuate in their importance and prominence at different stages of the partnership. Figure 2 presents a broad conception of the relationships among the four factors that characterise school-community partnerships and the three phases of partnership development.The factors of focus on relationships and competence in practice have both been found within this study to be consistently present across the three phases of partnership development. As such, these factors are represented as constants within the figure across the three phases of partnerships. In contrast, the two factors of commonality of intent and complementary capacities were found to vary across the three phases of partnership development. Interestingly, the commonality of intent has been found to be most prominent at the initiation phase of partnership development, and gradually declines in prominence as the partnership matures through the growth and maturation phases. The commonality of intent is prominent in the initiation phase because it plays a role in the choice and early bonding of partners as a partnership. This is consistent with the literature, which indicates that the commonality of intent acts to draw partners together in the initiation phase of partnerships, and then, once established, becomes less prominent within the partnership (Baum, 2008).In contrast, the factor of complementary capacities has been found in this study to build in importance as the partnership develops and to be of greater importance in the maturation phase of the partnership. This is consistent with the phases of a partnership because in the maturation phase it is likely that the partnership is fully functioning and delivering the outputs (e.g. services or products) that it was developed to deliver. As such, it is at this phase of the partnership that the capacities of the different partners and how these combine or complement one another are most needed and most evident to the partners. The complementary nature of the partner capacities then directly links with the need to continue a partnership in the maturation phase and, in turn, to add value to the health promotion intervention (Saxton, 1997). Hence, the complementary capacities of the parties therefore become an important factor in the decision to sustain the partnership.\nThe role of partnerships in sustainability: School-community partnerships have great potential to add value to school health promotion interventions and contribute to the sustainability of such interventions. It has been identified in this study that school-based health promotion interventions benefit from school-community partnerships due to the increased resources, skills, and funding, in addition to the increased availability of programmes (Greaney et al., 2007). School-community partnerships can aid in continuing the components of health promotion programmes even after funding for a specific programme has been exhausted. The strength of the school-community partnership is believed to be the essential element in maintaining school-community health promotion programmes and events. This feature has been identified through a community-based partner involved in the LHSP:Look, from my point of view, the partnership with [community partner] has been huge, because they've funded everything up until now. Unfortunately [community partner] funding will end in June of this year. But given that they've funded up to $200,000.00 or more towards this project over a two or three year period, like they've been essential. Without [community partner] there would have never been a project officer, and I don't think the Logan Healthy Schools Project would ever have become what it has become now.For the future, because I know [community partner] are moving out of the picture, I believe that the strength of the partnerships that we can maintain with [community organisation] and [community organisation] are essential to continue at least some elements of what has been achieved by the Logan Healthy Schools Project.As I said, they're things that may have happened anyway, but they're things I think that - and hopefully I feel that [community organisation] think they've benefited too - because they got double the number of people at their second [youth event] through working with me. [Community organisation event] has more than doubled their applications for that. And [community event], which - Logan Healthy Schools can take no credit for [community event] - but [community event] has been able to expand to fifteen schools because it's got extra funding from somewhere - how easy that expansion has been, hopefully has been, because Logan Healthy Schools is there and you've got that collective body of schools (Community-based partner C).School-community partnerships that are developed through a school based health promotion programme, such as the LHSP, are essential to the sustainability of school-based health initiatives. The strengthening of partnerships that are developed during the funding phase of a project can help to continue the project after grants have been exhausted (Paine-Andrews et al., 2000). School-community partnerships increase the sustainability of school health initiatives because community-based partners develop working relationships with schools and thereby have an established access point to schools. Hence, there are \"no dramas\" about going into secondary schools as the familiarity has been developed due to the participation in an initial programme, such as the LHSP. This indicates that if a school based health promotion programme, such as the LHSP, is not sustained, a number of school health activities can still occur as evidenced in the following quote from a community-based partner:Oh well, it's very important for like [community organisations] in that area, like Springwood or Logan. Now I'd have no dramas of going in there. And before the next summer season I'll probably even ring these schools up and try and tee up some sessions to try and boost numbers in that area (Community-based partner A).This quote highlights how an emphasis on building school-community partnerships within a school health programme, such as the LHSP, provides connections with community and community organisations that will continue to benefit the partners and sustain the health promotion activities after the initial project has been completed.\nConclusion: This study has identified and examined the factors that characterise effective school-community partnerships in supporting the sustainability of school health initiatives. The data that has been presented in this study provides a sound base for the factors and features that should be planned for when a collaborative health partnership within the school setting is required. Specifically, health promotion practitioners and school staff members would benefit from the findings and from integrating planning for effective school-community partnerships into the initial stages of school health promotion initiatives. The findings highlight the factors that characterise effective school community partnerships as a focus on relationships, complementary capacities, a commonality of intent, and competence in practice. These four factors are interrelated and collectively characterise effective school community partnerships. Their importance and prominence has been shown to vary at different stages of the partnership, incorporating initiation, growth, and maturation. It is the effectiveness of the school-community partnerships that underpins the success of many school-based health promotion activities, including nutrition and physical activity interventions targeting overweight and obesity in children, and thereby contributes to long-term population health and wellbeing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that characterise effective school-community partnerships that support the sustainability of school health initiatives applied within a health-promoting schools approach.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study used an explanatory case study approach of five secondary schools participating in a health-promoting school programme, \"The Logan Healthy Schools Project\" in Logan, South-East Queensland, Australia to investigate how school-community partnerships support the sustainability of school health initiatives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 deputy principals, school staff members, and community-based partners, along with observations and a documentary analysis of Logan Healthy School Project activities. A thematic analysis was conducted on the data.\nFindings: - The factors that characterise effective school-community partnerships that support the sustainability of school health initiatives include: a focus on building relationships between school and community partners, complementary capacities of school personnel and service providers, commonality of intent and shared goals between both parties, and competence of practice, primarily of the community service provider. These four factors were consistent at the school operational level and strategic programme co-ordination level of the Logan Healthy Schools Project, yet varied in importance across the initiation, growth, and maturity of the school-community partnerships.\nOriginality/value: - The study adds to the limited body of knowledge that surrounds effective school-community partnerships and how the features of these partnerships contribute to the sustainability of school health initiatives. The study highlights the importance of initiating, growing, and maintaining school-community partnerships and provides insight into the factors that should be considered when planning and developing school health promotion initiatives.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Unions as "managers of precariousness": The entrenchment of micro-corporatism in the Spanish automotive industry and its drawbacks
|
[
"Spain",
"Automotive industry"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: the 2008 crisis as an opportunity conjuncture?: Political economy scholars have widely argued that the 2008 financial crisis and its particular unfolding in Europe have resulted from the overwhelming power of transnational capital over labour and the uneven entrenchment of neoliberal policy making and labour market deregulation throughout different spatial scales (Jager and Springer, 2015). Enhanced labour market competition has put national trade unions in a very difficult position, in which win-win coordination strategies are difficult to pursue due to the different, and often mutually opposed, immediate interests of their members (Erne, 2008; Bernaciak, 2013). Nevertheless, forms of collective resistance have existed at the national scale through, for example, the repeated organisation of general strikes, or at the transnational scale, as happened on 14 November 2012, with the Pan-European general strike that mainly affected Southern European countries. However, despite the apparent upsurge of social mobilisations and prefigurative forms of working class resistance (Bailey et al., 2017; Las Heras and Ribera-Almandoz, 2017), the overall landscape is gloomy: scattered forms of resistance have not coupled with increasing unionisation rates or more encompassing collective bargaining practices and industrial conflict has often resulted more from the need to prevent factory shut-downs or lay-offs than from demanding for better working conditions (Urban, 2012). The current historical conjuncture puts national and European unions into a complicated situation in which they need to be more audacious, find new opportunities and renew their strategic repertoire if they want to change the balance of forces (Hyman, 2015).\nFrom \"managers of discontent\" to \"managers of precariousness\": Critical approaches have rightly conceptualised the everlasting tension or dilemma that unions face when either contesting or accepting capital's demands by qualifying them as \"managers of discontent\" (Hyman, 2001, p. 29). In that sense, trade unions only become in and through their concrete struggles and pacts with capital and the capitalist state at the various spatial scales in which they operate, including the workplace but not only (Gramsci, 1977).\nResearch method: This study draws upon 16 semi-structured interviews to union delegates and union officials in the province of Barcelona during the spring of 2015. In so doing, it has been possible to grasp union reps' \"world-views\" and their logic behind the adoption of strategic templates in particular historical conjunctures where their decisions mattered most (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009).\nFrom the democratic transition until the mid-1990s: qualitative shift in collective bargaining in NZF: NZF is an automobile and van assembly-plant that was established in 1971 on the outskirts of Barcelona, where the large industrial port of Zona-Franca is situated. Nissan took over control from Motor-Iberica (originally a Spanish-US capital company) and became the predominant shareholder in 1982, following the same expansionary strategy of Toyota to enter western markets. When the Spanish democratic transition occurred, NZF became a paradigmatic case of workers' resistance to Francoism. In spring 1976, around 2,000 workers went on an indefinite wild-cat strike demanding freedom of association, better working conditions and higher salaries. The strike lasted 100 days, finding support from other factories and social movements in the region and in France. After three months, workers went back to work without having achieved their economic demands (CCOO1). The 100-day strike was followed by a relatively long period of political calm and at the same time it brought about enormous structural transformations.\nBefore the 2008 crisis: unions sign their disarmament: The constitution of GVCs in the mid-1990s brought factory restructurings and relocations throughout the Spanish automotive industry (Peligros and Bilbao-Ubillos, 2005). Between 1995 and 1998 Nissan got rid of various productive branches in the Spanish territory, shrinking its corporate size, and completing the transformation into a GVC structure. In 1999 Nissan-Japan appeared to be in serious economic trouble; Renault stepped in and became a dominant shareholder of Nissan. The Renault-Nissan Alliance was born and the Nissan-Revival-Plan was implemented to reduce 30 per cent of its production costs worldwide (Nissan News, 2012).\nAfter the 2008 crisis: the yellow union supplants class unions as dismissals and competitiveness-pacts multiply: Demand and output forecasts shrank in NZF by 40 per cent after the 2008 financial crisis erupted. Managers sought to cut factory employment to preserve the large revenues that they had accumulated since 2003, and proposed a collective dismissal of 450 workers. This was opposed by the four unions. Around 2,600 workers mobilised, organising one-hour strikes on various days, and blocking the circulation of one of the main arterial roads of Barcelona. In exchange for flexibility and temporary dismissals, the company stepped down and agreed not to fire anyone. UGT, CCOO and SIGEN agreed on what was thought the \"less evil\" of the solutions.\nConclusion: The repeated signing of competitiveness pacts that fragmented and worsened working conditions across Europe from the mid-1990s became a widespread mechanism in and through which organised labour actively reproduced and reinforced transnational capitalist hegemony (Erne, 2008, pp. 51-52; Urban, 2012, p. 224; also Bengtsson and Ryner, 2015). UGT's and CCOO's adoption of concessionary positions in NZF during the crisis cannot be understood as an isolated case of micro-corporatism, but as a cumulative process that reproduced both prior collective bargaining practices within the factory and overarching neoliberal capitalist regulation dynamics in Spain and across western economies. In this sense, and based on the case study analysed hitherto, we may say that the 2008 financial crisis in Spain was predominantly economic but not necessarily political. Fundamentally, organised workers seemed unable to challenge the \"common sense\" that gives primacy to \"economic competitiveness\" and articulate new forms of collective action that could challenge pressures to reduce labour costs. Instead, unions' role has been one of \"managing precariousness\" through progressively embracing, notwithstanding various moments of resistance, the \"there is no alternative\" logic. The fragmentation of working conditions left the yellow union with ample space to challenge class unions' discourses, of course, with the help of the managers, and portray itself as the \"union that can secure workers' immediate interests best\" (SIGEN1).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue that: in a context of global labour market competition and in the absence of new strategic repertoires, class trade unions are progressively becoming \"managers of precariousness\". Thus, the paper challenges the compromise logic as the unique solution to corporate threats to relocation, since it undermines trade union power resources, mainly discursively and organisationally, and hinders trade union capacity to transform the balance of forces to their favour later, when the hegemonic discourse can more easily be challenged in periods of crisis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws upon the doctoral fieldwork the author undertook in the city and province of Barcelona during Spring-Summer 2015. More than 30 semi-structured interviews to various union delegates and regional metal officials have been accompanied by an exhaustive review of primary and secondary documentation. In so doing, this paper gives a rich and nuanced account on the different \"world-views\" and strategies that union delegates pursue when bargaining against transnational corporations.\nFindings: This paper shows how the conservative position that Spanish trade unions adopted to the 2008 financial crisis in the automotive industry is path-dependent to dynamics established during the 1990s when lean production techniques were implemented in exchange for higher salaries. It draws upon the collective bargaining history of the Nissan-Zona-Franca assembly factory in the outskirts of Barcelona to, crucially, explain how signing micro-corporatist pacts and portraying them as the unique solution to corporate threats to relocation undermines trade union power resources, and has two important drawbacks: that micro-corporatist pacts only postpone the recurring threat to relocation to the future by eroding, not improving, the conditions of the workforce, accepting corporate discourse erodes the solidarity among workers, and it also allows yellow unions to displace class unions.\nOriginality/value: This paper enriches and updates the literature on micro-corporatism, collective bargaining in transnational corporations, and the erosion of trade union power resources which dates back to the 1990s and early 2000s. Whilst the negative aspects that competitiveness pacts have on workers' salaries and conditions have been widely reported, this paper provides a rich and updated explanation of how such pacts have negative repercussions on the discursive and organisational power resources that unions have at the workplace level. In that sense, the originality of this paper rests on engaging into a substantiated historical analysis on how trade unions change throughout time as a result, at least partially, of their own strategic choices. Moreover, this paper clearly shows that concessionary positions towards collective bargaining are self-undermining.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Validating fashion brand centrality scale amongst young adults
|
[
"Centrality of brand",
"Fashion brand devotion",
"Centrality of religiosity",
"Transcendent brand experience",
"Brand evangelism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: To date, significant research has been conducted on consumer-brand love relationships (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Hemetsberger et al., 2009; Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen, 2010; Batra et al., 2012; Sarkar et al., 2012). Some of these previous studies proposed scales to quantitatively measure individual consumers' brand love (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006; Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen, 2010; Batra et al., 2012; Sarkar et al., 2012). Majority of the previous research on brand love cited above conceptualized brand love based on the premise that brand love is structurally analogous to interpersonal love. In other words, the brand is personified in the eyes of the consumer. This structural similarity between interpersonal and brand relationship was first proposed by Shimp and Madden (1988). This brand love is dyadic in nature as it involves two parties, namely, the individual and the brand.\nTheoretical background: Structural similarity between interpersonal love relationship and individual-brand relationship\nScale development studies: This section serially describes different CoB scale development study stages following the methods suggested by Churchill (1979) and Devellis (2012). In different empirical study stages, different or independent samples were used to enhance the generalizability of the scale. In all the study stages only the respondents falling within the age bracket of 18-24 years or young adults were selected as previous research carried out in the Indian context shows that individuals falling within this age group significantly sacralize brand like religion (Sarkar et al., 2015). Belk et al. (2003) also support that consumption assumes significant value in the mid-20s.\nQualitative study phase: The objective of this qualitative phase was to understand the extent to which Indian young adults' fashion apparel brand-related experiences would corroborate with Huber and Huber's (2012) CoR dimensions. Following the approach of Brakus et al. (2009), we carried out a paper and pen exploratory study among 52 college students. Age range of the informants was 18-24 years with an average age of 21 years. Annual family incomes ranged between INR936,517 and INR2,173,973 with an average of INR1,274,593. The responses were collected during classes. Each informant was asked to write his/her feelings within one sheet about any fashion brand in apparel category toward which he/she felt strong love/devotion. A definition of brand devotion following Pichler and Hemetsberger (2007) was also included at the beginning of the sheet provided. Seven informants stated that they had no such devotional feelings toward fashion brands. Hence, they were excluded from the study. Finally, descriptions of 45 informants were considered. In total, 23 respondents were males. An open coding of the descriptions following Strauss and Corbin (1990) showed that informants' feelings toward selected devotional fashion apparel brands largely matched with Huber and Huber's (2012) CoR dimensions.\nQuantitative study phase: Stage 1: initial item pool generation\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a psychometrically reliable scale to measure centrality of brand (CoB) or brand centrality construct in the domain of fashion apparel brands. The scale quantitatively validates that brand relationship can be of equivalent importance to religious relationship in an individual fashion brand lover's life.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a previous literature review, brand centrality has been conceptualized. Following that, CoB scale has been validated in a step-by-step process following the scale validation methodology suggested by Churchill (1979).\nFindings: The final outcome of the study is a psychometrically reliable CoB scale. The study results validate the relationships between CoB, and other important theoretical antecedents and consequences of brand centrality.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the existing body of fashion branding research by showing that a consumer-fashion brand relationship can be of importance akin to a religious relationship in an individual's life.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Beyond "halo": the identification and implications of differential brand effects across global markets
|
[
"Brand management",
"Brand effects",
"Brand ratings decomposition",
"Consumer survey data",
"Halo effect"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this issue.\nIntroduction: It is widely accepted among marketing managers and researchers that brands act as a \"shorthand device or means of simplification for their [consumers'] product decisions\" (Keller, 2008, p. 6). One way in which brands may play such a role is through a \"halo\" effect, where the brand name has a consistent impact on a variety of consumer evaluations, even those not directly associated with the brand's positioning or promise of benefits. \"Halo\" is a theoretically and empirically robust factor that impacts many different types of consumer evaluations. Indeed, recent research demonstrates the impact of halo effects on factors such as global product quality and corporate social responsibility (Madden et al., 2012), brand-image associations (Sonnier and Ainslie, 2011), brand extensions (Batra et al., 2010), and country of origin effects (Bloemer et al., 2009).\nLiterature review: Mental sources of brand ratings: support for differential effects\nOperationalizing the sources of brand-benefit ratings: Using a procedure similar to that first proposed by Dillon et al. (2001), and subsequently adopted widely in the marketing literature (e.g. Batra et al., 2010; Madden et al., 2012; Sonnier and Ainslie, 2011), we empirically address a brand's impact across brand-benefit beliefs by decomposing brand-benefit beliefs into overall brand sources and detailed attribute-specific sources. We first describe our model, which identifies the brand versus attribute effects in consumer brand-benefit evaluations, but unlike previous models allows for differential brand effects. The model is then applied to a set of data representing multiple brands from nine global product markets.\nEmpirical application: We next apply our model to consumer data to determine the extent of equal versus differential brand effects within real brands in actual product-markets. The following section reports results using consumer survey data for more than 55 brands across nine markets in four countries.\nResults: Using the procedure outlined above, the following section examines results from a single representative product market to identify brands with equal versus differential effects within brands. Focus then shifts to model results across all nine product markets, with particular interest in the differential versus equal brand effects within brands in each product market.\nGeneral discussion: We acknowledge that brands have strong and broad effects across a variety of benefits and stakeholders. But our research indicates that they are not blunt instruments. Rather, brands have a differential effect on the evaluation of specific benefits. This paper offers a methodology and evidence of its ability to see consumers' use of the different informational \"buckets\" within and across benefits for a brand. With this information, managers are able to determine if their branding, positioning and/or messaging is having the desired impact on consumer evaluations and can make and evaluate required changes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether brands impact consumer evaluations in ways other than a consistent halo and the degree to which consumers use both overall brand information along with detailed attribute-specific information to construct their evaluations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors decompose consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources through a standard CFA approach. Data cover 55 brands in four product categories sold in nine global markets.\nFindings: Halo effects are rare in global CPG markets. The authors identify the presence of differential brand effects in eight of nine global markets tested. Application of an extended model to a market where several competing family brands are present demonstrates the ability of the model to identify relationships among brand offerings within a family brand and to differentiate between family brand sets.\nResearch limitations/implications: The finding of differential effects calls into question the assumption of a consistent brand effect assumed in past research; future models should accommodate differential effects.\nPractical implications: The ability to decompose consumer brand-benefit beliefs into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources provides managers with insights into which latent mental sources consumers use to construct their brand beliefs. As such, the methodology provides useful descriptive and diagnostic measures concerning the sources of suspicious, interesting, or worrisome consumer brand beliefs as well as a means to determine if their branding, positioning and/or messaging is having the desired impact on consumer evaluations so that they can make and evaluate required changes.\nOriginality/value: A significant contribution of this research is the finding that many times the brand source differentially impacts consumers' evaluations of brand-benefits, a finding that is contrary to a consistent halo effect that is assumed in prior models.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate governance and dividend strategy: lessons from Australia
|
[
"Corporate governance",
"Dividend policy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The case of Australian cash dividend policy is interesting because it differs substantially from that of the USA and UK although its governance system adopted the same framework as the traditional Anglo-Saxon one. In particular, corporate dividend strategy has changed remarkably since the late 1980s when Australia introduced the franked dividend policy. Since then, the average payout ratio of Australian firms has maintained a substantially higher level.\n2. Development of empirical hypotheses: The FCF argument proposed by Jensen (1986) and Easterbrook (1984) illustrates that retained cash without dividend distribution may create the agency problem. Managers strongly prefer not to pay dividends as DPs reduce the amount of cash subject to managerial discretion (Jensen, 1986). According to the \"outcome model,\" dividends are paid because minority shareholders pressure corporate insiders to distribute cash (La Porta et al., 2000). Shleifer and Vishny (1997) suggest that the goal of corporate governance is to protect (minority) shareholders. A positive relationship exists between corporate governance and DPs because companies with stronger governance mechanisms are better at monitoring their managers; therefore, managers are less likely to use the money for their personal benefits, and as a result pay higher dividends (Smith, 1992; Farinha, 2003). Additionally, companies with stronger governance mechanisms have better firm performance, which can result in higher DPs. Mitton (2004) and Francis et al. (2011) demonstrated empirically this positive association. The present study therefore summarizes these predictions in the first testable hypothesis:\n3. Model: This study used the random effect panel Tobit regression because the DP ratio should be non-negative but less than unity. Indeed there is what one called a \"mass point\" in 0 as the dividend can only be positive or nil. Tobit estimations can eliminate biases associated with OLS regressions in the presence of censored dependent variables (Kim and Maddala, 1992; Greene, 2003). Baseline estimation model for DP in this study is:(1)\n4. Data and descriptive statistics: 4.1 Construction of corporate governance index\n5. Regression results: Table VI shows the coefficient of CGI I is positive and significant irrespective of model specifications, which is consistent with H1. In addition to the baseline estimation for the effect of governance on payout on model (1), this study includes growth opportunities variable and other control variables on model (2) with a view to examining the H2. Results on column (2) show a negative coefficient of growth opportunities as expected. Meanwhile, the positive effect of governance remains positive and significant although the magnitude of estimated coefficient dropped almost by 80 percent.\n6. Further analyses and robustness checks: 6.1 Analysis of corporate governance categories\n7. Conclusion: This study investigates the effect of corporate governance on the dividend policy of Australian firms over the period of 2001-2013. To capture multiple aspects of corporate governance, this paper calculated governance indexes. The main index is based on 13 governance variables which are divided into four categories.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of corporate governance on the dividend payout (DP) in Australia where DP remains high and corporate governance system has recently been strengthened.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A self-constructed governance indexes over 2001-2013 is used for the random effect panel Tobit model to investigate the effect of corporate governance on cash dividend. Two different versions of the indexes and the traditionally emphasized governance elements such as board structure are also used for the robustness checks.\nFindings: Estimation results report that a positive effect of governance, combined with size of firm and profitability, on DPs. In contrast, financial distress and the global financial crisis, respectively, have negative effect on dividend policy. Further examinations imply that the positive effect of governance is attenuated by growth opportunities while intensified by firm free cash flow and the franked dividend policy.\nOriginality/value: The sample period and the governance indexes in this paper, respectively, are the longest and the most comprehensive among existing studies on Australian case. This paper also combined the traditional governance-dividend theme with corporate tax, particularly the unique franked dividend tax system.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Institutional change as cultural change: An illustration by Chinese postsocialist transformation
|
[
"China",
"Organizational change",
"Culture"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: A new field of research emerged with the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of socialist economies: the study of postsocialist transformation. Nevertheless, the first country which left socialism was not Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or German Democratic Republic, but China. By the end of the 1970s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led the country on the road of reforms. Despite, the fact that most of them were implemented gradually, the economic system has been changing radically. Moreover, a consensus has grown about institutions: researchers wonder about their emergence and the way they change. The process of postsocialist transformation is a kind of institutional change. So from this standpoint, the Chinese case is a very good subject of analysis too.In this perspective, how can we explain such a change while Chinese reforms were gradual? Our opinion is that Chinese postsocialist transformation can be seen as an illustration of a cultural change which induced an institutional change. We do not claim that Chinese experience is only the result of a cultural change. Of course, other factors have been playing a part in the process. But their influence should not induce us to forget the cultural factor which was a deciding factor. This paper therefore, attempts to show that Chinese institutional change is not only a political, an economic, or a social phenomenon, but is a cultural one too. More particularly, we illustrate the role played by culture in its genesis. Following North (2005, p. 6), we consider that \"the culture of a society is the cumulative structure of rules and norms (and beliefs) that we inherit from the past, that shape our present and influence our future.\" We argue that a study of institutional change can be significantly improved if it includes cultural factors. However, culture is often neglected and underestimated by economists. In particular, although it may play a major part in the formation of preferences, neoclassical theory does not refer to it.Since this paper prioritizes a theoretical outlook on the issue of change, few field data will be required. We first give an overview of Chinese economic reforms. Then, we highlight the nature of the Chinese process. The last section finally describes the causes of postsocialist transformation.\n2 The institutional change per se: an overview of Chinese economic reforms: By institutional change, we refer to a change in rules (formal or/and informal) or in their enforcement mechanisms[1]. In China, this change has been taken the form of a postsocialist transformation. Although some reforms were implemented very quickly, like the family contracts in the agriculture, by and large, this process was quite gradual[2]. The CCP initiated a change in rules, at first in the agriculture then in the other areas of the economy.Reforms were launched in 1978 with the third plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the CCP as part of the program called \"Socialism with Chinese characteristics\"[3]. They consisted essentially in policy reforms with limited political changes[4]. So, since Chinese economy was a predominantly agrarian economy, they began in the agriculture with the household responsibility system and the familial contracts[5].The early reforms were characterized by a dual-track approach, also mainly (but not only) in prices with both market prices for some goods and plan prices for others. By this way, agents began to learn market behavior. In the industry, like for the peasants, state-owned enterprises were allowed to sell above-plan output at market prices. The role of the state in the resource allocation therefore decreased (compulsory plan disappears in 1992-1993). As for property rights, we assisted at a kind of \"privatization from below\" (Kornai, 2000a), that is the emergence of new entities. Furthermore, with the \"open door\" policy, Deng Xiao Ping promoted foreign trade and economic investment. Some \"special economic zones\" with more liberal economic laws were established along the coast. China experienced market economy in these areas.The pace of reforms and transformations is quickening since the beginning of the 1990s. China integrated the WTO in December 2001. During the month of March 2007, the Chinese Parliament passed a law which protects private ownership. Finally, China clearly moves away from socialism and is progressively becoming a genuine capitalist economy.\n3 Institutional change as cultural change: the nature of change: Our hypothesis is that culture is the driving force of the Chinese institutional change. With his peculiar approach of culture, North (2005) provides an analytical framework to capture all changes, both in beliefs and rules. A key-element to understand the Chinese experience is the ideology of the party. The CCP has undoubtedly changed from within. It promotes now capitalism and fosters accumulation of wealth. Here, lies the cultural change: in the shift of values. Moreover, the change in rules initiated by the CCP brought about changes in behavior and had a cumulative effect with the introduction of new rules. It is particularly obvious in the agriculture. It is what, we try to show in this section.3.1 What is culture?\n4 Cultural change as chemical change: the causes of change: This section details, the causes of the process of change. We first set out and justify our conception of causality. Then we expound the elements of the chemical change: the \"cultural shock\" and the catalysts.4.1 The issue of causality\n5 Conclusion: To explain the process of institutional change is very difficult because it is a complex phenomenon. It is true that it remains a mystery about Chinese change. Why China succeed in the way of postsocialism while some other countries do not? We cannot (and we should not) reduce the answer to a mono-causal explanation. The aim of this paper is not therefore to give such an explanation of the roots of the Chinese postsocialist transformation. Here, we only lay stress on the importance of a factor which is often neglected by economists: culture. Through the change of ideology and the cumulative effect of change of rules, culture has been playing a decisive part in the process. So, Chinese postsocialist transformation results from the conjunction of several factors: the country's opening which lead to a cultural shock, Great Leap forward, Cultural Revolution and the revival of most Asian countries which act as internal and external catalysts. The process described is consequently more cultural than political. In this perspective, political changes are only signs of cultural changes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Through Chinese experience, the purpose of this paper is to underpin the hypothesis of institutional change as cultural change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper compares Chinese postsocialist transformation to a chemical change reaction. So, the paper discerns initial conditions, factors which triggered the reaction, catalysts, and elements of synthesis. Chinese institutional change per se derived from a cultural shock induced by the economic, political, and cultural opening which acted as trigger. Then, it deals with the other elements of the process.\nFindings: - The paper reveals that Chinese postsocialist transformation is based on change in values and mentalities particularly in the Chinese Communist Party. In this perspective, institutional change is not only an economic or a political process but also it is fundamentally cultural.\nOriginality/value: - This paper shows the process of postsocialist transformation in a different light. Whereas, economists often only focus on political considerations or conflicts of interests, it insists on the cultural dimension of the process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Risk analysis for clean and sustainable production in a urea fertilizer industry
|
[
"GRA",
"Maintenance policy",
"Risk",
"Ammonia synthesis system",
"Clean and sustainable",
"Fuzzy FMEA"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Nomenclature\n1. Introduction: Emission of toxic gases and substances such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia oxide and nitric acid, etc. from various chemical industries is of great concern for clean and sustainable production. Sudden failure of an equipment/component of an industrial system is one of the main causes for heavy emission of toxic gases and substances. Since, such emission has significant impact on human as well as environment, therefore it is essential to control or prevent their release to the environment especially from the chemical industries such as urea plant, petro chemical and paint industry, etc. Presently, for developing nations due to lack of technology advancement handling of such toxic emission is still a big challenge and therefore the risk to human health increases to manifold in such countries. However, considering this fact the international community has initiated several major steps in the form of Copenhagen (2015) and Paris (2016) summit. With all these facts the operating state of the system/equipment of a plant plays a major role in preventing the environment from toxic release/leakage. Even a minor failure in the subsystem/ equipment of a plant may result in heavy leakage of toxic emission and hence causes serious injuries to the personnel, production loss and undesirable environmental impact. In the past, due to minor failure of a sub-system/equipment of a plant one can observe serious damage to the society, i.e. union carbide plant leakage, Bhopal 1984, oil pipeline leakage, Nigeria 1998, nuclear explosion, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 1986 and oil tank farm fire, Jaipur 2009, etc. (Panchal and Kumar, 2016; Sharma and Sharma, 2012; Sharma et al., 2005). Since, such types of failure may pollutes the environment heavily through toxic emission therefore for clean and sustainable production of a plant, identification of critical failure causes and planning of suitable maintenance policy or inspection accordingly for their reduction or elimination is must. From the past literature it has been noted that less comprehensive and precise studies are available so it has become a great importance to be explored for better understanding and knowledge for studying the risk aspects of different industrial system for clean and sustainable production. Various qualitative and quantitative approach (analytical hierarchy process (AHP), Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), etc.) based framework were applied by different authors for studying the risk aspects of different production systems in the context of clean and sustainable production. FMEA approach was applied to identify and eliminate known and potential failure mode of the production system (Zhou and Thai, 2016). Hyun et al. applied FTA and AHP approach for studying the risk aspect of shield TBM tunnels. Karaca developed an AHP approach based indoor air pollution risk index method for identifying the risk levels of the selected location. Schlifter and Madlener expounded the application of AHP approach for performing the risk analysis of energy performance contacting project. The frameworks so developed are based on the crisp set theory and the direct values (crisp values) obtained from the experts are used in the analysis. Due to the use of these direct values the uncertainty and imprecision involved in the raw data may result in uncertain results and therefore, for high accuracy in the results it is essential to consider uncertainty/vague and imprecision involved in the information/data obtained from different sources namely log book record, reliability data base and the experts, etc. Since the obtained results with the available crisp information might have an element of uncertainty therefore there is high probability of developing faulty maintenance policy or inspection, which directly affects the plant's availability and risk aspects, thereby resulting in the increase of risk of sudden failure of a system. Hence, for obtaining high accuracy in the results, a powerful mathematical tool, fuzzy methodology (FM), has been incorporated with these techniques/tool for considering the uncertainty and imprecision in the raw data. The implementation of FM by different researches for analyzing the failure of various systems of different process industries can be demonstrated through the following studies. Guimaraes and Lapa (2004) expounded the application of fuzzy FMEA approach for analyzing the risk associated with volume control system in a nuclear power plant. The critical or risky components of the plants considered in this study were identified by comparing the results of Risk Priority Number (RPN) and fuzzy RPN outputs. Fuzzy FMEA approach was applied to overcome the criticism of traditional FMEA approach (Gilchrist, 1993; Bowles, 2003). Hu et al. applied both the FMEA and fuzzy FMEA approaches for evaluating the risk associated with electronic manufacturing company and prioritized the critical components based on the outputs of these approaches. Sharma et al. (2005) in their study applied FM for analyzing the failure of paper machine in paper plant and the results so obtained plays a vital role in the sustainable production of the plant. Tay and Lim (2006) implemented fuzzy set theory-based approach for analyzing the risk associated with the semiconductor manufacturing plant system. Panchal and Kumar (2015) in their study applied fuzzy set theory-based FMEA approach for studying the risk aspects of compressor house unit of a coal fired thermal power plant. Furthermore, Panchal and Kumar (2016) presented the application of FM for analyzing the reliability and risk issues of the water treatment plant in a thermal power plant. Gul and Guneri (2016) applied FM-based decision-making approaches for analyzing the failure risk associated with an aluminum industry. Rajakarunakaran et al. (2015) expounded the application of fuzzy set theory-based tools for analyzing the risk associated with liquefied petroleum gas refueling station.\n2. Proposed framework: In the proposed framework, first, the quantitative and qualitative information related to operation of the considered system was collected from various sources such as maintenance log book and maintenance experts, etc. Second, the collected information has been used to carry the FMEA analysis of the considered system. Failure causes related to each subsystem/component of the considered system were prioritized on the basis of RPN score. Further, in order to consider the uncertainty of FMEA approach-based ranking results fuzzy FMEA and grey relation analysis (GRA) approaches were applied within FMEA approach and the ranking results are compared for better and intelligent decision making of risky components of the considered system. The structured framework implemented for current study is shown in Figure 1.\n3. Failure analysis approaches: This section discusses only those approaches which have been applied in the present study for performing the risk analysis of the industrial system considered in this study.\n4. Case study: In the present study, a case from the urea fertilizer industry located in northern part of India has been considered and the examined failure events of system/subsystem/equipment refer to some serious cases of leakage/release of toxic gases and substances. From the current safety report, input failure data related to these events has been studied and it has been found that the risk of sudden failure of equipment/subsystem is quite high in the ammonia synthesis unit in comparison to any other unit of the considered industry. Since ammonia synthesis unit is risky and the probability of toxic release such as ammonia oxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitric acid is high which may results in serious impact on human health, environmental and production therefore for clean and sustainable production of the plant, it is essential to identify and eliminate the various failure causes associated with different subsystem/equipment of the considered unit.\n5. Discussion on ranking results: From Table II, it has been noted that through implementation of the FMEA approach, the causes AC1, AC2 and AC6, AC7 of centrifugal compressor of the ammonia synthesis system with different set of linguistic terms (Medium, High, Medium), (High, Medium, Medium) and (Medium, Medium, Medium), (High, Very High, Fair) produce the same RPN values (210 and 216), thus meaning that same ranking (third and second) should be allocated to these failure causes, but the application of fuzzy FMEA and GRA approaches give different FRPN and grey output values, and therefore, the priorities are allocated accordingly as shown in Table III. Similarly, the causes CL4, CL6 with the same set of linguistic terms (Very High, High, Fair) and (High, Medium, Medium) produce different RPN score (216 and 189) and are ranked differently, but the application of fuzzy FMEA and GRA approaches produce the same FRPN and grey output values (0.4819, 5.79 and 0.5523, 5.38), which entails that both these causes are given same priority. Further, from Table III, it has also been observed that for most of the failure causes, the ranking results obtained through the implementation of the fuzzy FMEA and GRA approaches are same, which not only validate the high accuracy of risk ranking results but also overcome the limitations of FMEA approach in an effective and efficient manner. Thus, the comparative ranking results as shown in Table III prove to be highly useful for the system analyst, as these results help the analyst to plan and implement a suitable maintenance policy and inspection for the considered ammonia synthesis system of the considered industry.\n6. Conclusion: In the present study, a FM-based integrated framework is used and the critical components/equipment of different system/subsystem have been identified. FMEA approach is implemented and the risky components are identified on the basis of RPN score. The identified risky components of the plant considered in this study are based on the information collected from the field experts and maintenance log book. The uncertainty or imprecision involved in the collected information are surmounted by applying FM-based FMEA and GRA approaches. FRPN and GRA outputs are computed for each failure cause and the ranking results (Table III) are compared for prioritizing the risky components with high accuracy and affectivity. The comparative results are probably of high importance for a system analyst or maintenance manager, as these results help in formulating the appropriate maintenance decisions for clean and sustainable production of the considered industry.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a fuzzy methodology approaches based framework for carrying the risk analysis of a real industrial system of a urea fertilizer industry located in northern part of India.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Petri Net approach was applied for representing the series-parallel arrangement of the considered system. Various failure causes related to different subsystems or equipment of the considered system were listed under FMEA approach and their Risk Priority Number was tabulated. Further, to overcome the drawbacks of traditional FMEA approach in risk ranking fuzzy FMEA and grey relation analysis (GRA) approaches were applied within traditional FMEA approach and the ranking results were compared for better and effective decision making of risky components.\nFindings: The proposed framework has overcome the drawbacks of tradition FMEA approach in an effective and efficient manner. Causes AC7, CL3, ST2, DR3 and NR3 of centrifugal compressor, hot heat exchanger, ammonia convertor reactor, cold condenser and ammonia separator have been identified as the most critical failure causes of the considered system.\nOriginality/value: The proposed framework has been tested with its application on an ammonia synthesis system of the considered process industry. The risk ranking results would be highly useful in developing a planned maintenance policy for the considered system which further results in improving the system availability.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Multidimensional study of hospitality and the host-guest paradigm in China
|
[
"China",
"Cultural context",
"Hospitality",
"Airbnb",
"Host–guest paradigm",
"Linguistic approach"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Hospitality can be understood as a negotiated interaction between the host and the guest (Sheringham and Daruwalla, 2007), and this interaction can, in turn, be usefully viewed from a narrow (i.e. commercial hospitality) or a broad perspective (i.e. social hospitality) (Causevic and Lynch, 2009). Correspondingly, the meanings assigned by the participants involved in hospitality transactions vary with the specific spatial and temporal conditions of the context. This implies that hospitality is fundamentally a cultural experience (Bryce et al., 2013). The culturally- or socially-conditioned nature of hospitality suggests that an appropriate \"cultural sensitivity\" (Hogg et al., 2014, p. 157) in understanding and communicating hospitality is warranted. However, a comprehensive understanding of hospitality phenomena has been undermined by the \"Anglo-Western centrism\" (Tucker, 2016, p. 250) which has dominated hospitality research.\n2. Studies reviewed: The linguistic issues involved in conceptualizing tourism scholarship are significantly under-researched in the literature. Belhassen and Caton (2009) suggest that tourism research is a communicative practice in which researchers create language systems to metaphorically represent the phenomena under investigation. Obviously, both the created language systems (i.e. the knowledge product) and the communicative process (i.e. the production of knowledge) are mediated by language, which is also a part of the speaker's cultural system. Belhassen and Caton, thus, suggest a linguistic approach to advancing epistemological progress in tourism. In particular, the emergence of tourism terminology (such as pro-poor tourism and community participation) does not occur in a vacuum but as a multidimensional representation of the given culture in which they are coined and developed.\n3. Method: The focus in this paper is on the conceptual distinctions that exist between the corresponding terms in China and the West, the ways in which those distinctions reflect a distinctive cultural understanding of hospitality and the host-guest paradigm in the Chinese tradition and its implications in both theory and practice. The initial aim was to review the origin of hospitality in the Chinese-language literature so as to make the knowledge accessible to English-language researchers. During this process, however, it became apparent that \"the assumed literal symmetry between the source text and target text\" (Catford, 1965, p. 20) might not exist for the English term \"hospitality\" and its Chinese translations.\n4. Analysis and discussion: 4.1 Critical comparison of hospitality and its Chinese translations\n5. Discussion and conclusions: 5.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to analyse the conceptual bases of the related terms of \"host\" and \"guest\" in Chinese and reveal essential, though overlooked, cultural differences that relate to \"hospitality\" in Western and Chinese cultural contexts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A presupposition of this conceptual investigation is that culture manifests itself linguistically. The analytic approach used here is textual analysis. Confucian classical texts are the main source of evidence for examining the conceptual commitments of the Chinese characters Zhu and Ke and their corresponding practical expressions.\nFindings: Cross-cultural comparison reveals asymmetries between the term \"hospitality\" and its Chinese translations, etymologically and culturally. This study demonstrates how the Chinese Zhu -Ke paradigm is both hierarchal in nature and centred on the role and interests of the host. It further compares this paradigm with its Western counterpart along five different dimensions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The specific Chinese norms for the host-guest paradigm synthesized here could prompt both academicians and operators to question the cultural attachments associated with hospitality by participants and the cultural differences in hospitality transactions and management. The cultural sensitivity modelled here is intended to facilitate harmony between a hospitality setting and the culture in which it is embedded.\nOriginality/value: This conceptual paper is the first in the Anglophone literature to explore the Chinese cultural roots of the concepts \"host\" and \"guest\". The linguistic perspective used in this study allows the concept of \"hospitality\" to be studied cross-culturally and in an interdisciplinary way, addressing a blind spot in the extant hospitality literature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A study of quality management practices in TQM and non-TQM firms: Findings from the ASEAN automotive industry
|
[
"Automotive industry",
"Quality management",
"Total quality management",
"ISO 9000 series",
"Organizational restructuring",
"South East Asia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This study presents findings on the current state of Total Quality Management (TQM) in the automotive sector in the Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN) region. The necessity to maintain competitiveness has led to many firms outsourcing manufacturing abroad to take advantage of lower labor costs, proximity to raw materials, and new markets (Phusavat and Kanchana, 2008). Besides China and India, the ASEAN region has been an important beneficiary of this trend. This has led to the region being recognized as one of the most dynamic economic regions in the world and the one with the most potential for growth and development (Karki et al., 2005). The ASEAN was established in 1967 in Bangkok to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development, and to promote peace and stability in the region. The ten members of ASEAN are Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It is important to note that the ASEAN region had a combined gross domestic product in excess of US$1,281 billion in 2007, and a total trade of about US$1,405 billion in 2006.According to a study by Ferdows (1997), firms that outsource manufacturing aim to provide high quality products at comparatively low prices. This factor combined with increased consumer awareness of quality has forced manufacturers in emerging economy countries to place more emphasis on developing technological capabilities, establishing supply networks, and enhancing quality management systems (Lee and Zhou, 2000). Quality management has long been recognized as a source of competitive advantage and one of the most important drivers of global competition (Prajogo and Sohal, 2003). Quality therefore, is critical if manufacturers are to achieve world class manufacturing and it has been identified as a crucial factor for sustainable development of ASEAN manufacturers (Phusavat and Kanchana, 2008). However, Huang and Lin (2002) found that eastern countries, except Japan, lagged almost a decade behind western countries in implementing quality management.The positioning of manufacturers in the ASEAN region as suppliers to firms and, ultimately, consumers worldwide implies that their quality management practices have worldwide impact. It is crucial to understand the development of quality in this very important region of the world. Furthermore, it has been suggested that quality management practices may not easily be transferred from one culture to another (Young and Wilkinson, 2001). There is agreement among several researchers that while there is a lot of literature in international journals examining quality practices in UK, USA, Japan, and Western Europe, only a few have examined quality practices in developing countries and, in particular, ASEAN countries (Young and Wilkinson, 2001; Arumugam et al., 2008).Hence, this study based on the ASEAN automobile manufacturing sector investigates differences among tier suppliers in terms of implementing quality management practices. In addition, the study also examines differences between organizations that have formally implemented a TQM program and those that have not done so. Therefore, it contributes to a growing body of research into differences between TQM and non-TQM organizations by presenting an ASEAN perspective comprising multi-tier organizations in the automobile industry. Such a study has not been the subject of other published TQM versus non-TQM research including studies by Ahire et al. (1996), Adebanjo and Kehoe (1999) and Lee and Zhou (2000).The following section reviews the literature. Subsequent section presents the research methodology including the survey instrument development, respondents' characteristics, and reliability and validity of the survey instrument. It is followed by research finding from statistical analysis. The managerial implications and conclusions are described in the last section.\nLiterature review: The literature presented in this section examines the concept of TQM implementation as a facilitator of organizational innovation. An analysis and comparison of literature on TQM implementation in firms from different perspectives (i.e. national-level, regional-level, and global-level) are summarized. Then, a review of literature on the relationship between TQM and international standards for quality management systems (QMS) is discussed.TQM: an organizational innovation/intervention\nResearch methodology: Survey instrument and data collection\nResearch findings: TQM programs versus ISO 9001: 2000 implementation\nImplications and conclusions: This study has examined TQM in the ASEAN automotive sector. Three research questions were explored by using 165 survey responses obtained from five ASEAN countries in the automotive manufacturing industry. The result shows that firms that have been certified to ISO series standards are significantly more likely to go further and implement TQM program. The differences and similarities in implementation of TQM practices indicated similarities between TQM and non-TQM firms with respect to customer focus and supplier involvement. While a similar effect with respect to customer focus was found in a UK-based study (Adebanjo and Kehoe, 1999), no such similarity was found in respect of supplier involvement. This suggests an increasing realization that customers and suppliers are equally important to all organizations and that organizations, in general, are more aware of their impact on the supply chain. It also suggests that participants in the ASEAN automotive supply chain clearly view having a sustainable relationship with both upstream and downstream partners as being crucial for commercial success, even when they do not intend to implement TQM practices. In addition, the study found that tier 3 suppliers are less likely to implement TQM practices when compared with higher tier firms within the automotive supply chain.This study has a number of implications for both industry and research. First, for the ASEAN automotive industry, it suggests that beyond tier 1 and 2 suppliers, there may be opportunities for improvement in the supply chain within the context of quality management and its practices. It is important, therefore, that higher-tiered suppliers and OEMs encourage tier 3 and lower suppliers to improve their focus on QMS or TQM constructs as tools of organizational development intervention. In effect, a supply chain view to managing quality should be considered in these countries.Second, it may be beneficial to encourage the implementation of ISO series standards as the starting point for current non-adopters as these firms are then likely to progress to TQM strategy. Third, firms in the ASEAN automotive industry who have failed to adopt TQM need to be aware of its effects on performance and should not consider relationships with suppliers and customers as sufficient for commercial success. With respect to research implications, this study has shown that less than half of the respondents have implemented a TQM strategy. This diffusion rate is less than would be found in industrialized countries. It is, therefore, important to understand the impact that this level of diffusion has had on product quality and supply chain performance. In addition, research needs to focus on the impact, if any, that TQM practices, or lack of, in this region has had on the attractiveness of the region to OEMs as a destination for future investment or \"offshore manufacturing hub\".\nAcknowledgements: The authors would like to thank executives, operation managers and staff working in all cases for giving such valuable information about the history and practical points of view of their adoption and adaptation of TQM. They would also thank the Office of the Higher Education Commission, Thailand Research Fund (TRF), and Thammasat University who supported the research funding of this project. They would also would like to thank the Australian Government (AusAID) who funded ASEAN SME Development Program (2006-2008) and ASEAN Secretariat through AMSAT Pty Ltd, for the opportunity for authors to work on the ASEAN Automotive Business Excellence Model and Survey.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The primary objective of this research is to explore whether total quality management (TQM) firms execute various quality management practices significantly differently from non-TQM firms in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) automotive supply chain. The study also aims to analyze differences between different tiers of this supply chain and to examine the relationship between the implementation of quality management systems and adoption of TQM.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 165 datasets collected from ASEAN automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and their tier 1 and 2 suppliers in five ASEAN countries were tested by using cross-tabulation analysis and ANOVA with post hoc test.\nFindings: - The results show that firms that have successfully implemented the concept of work standardization or process-approach through quality management systems (QMS) certification have tended to pursue TQM as the subsequent stage in their quality journey. In addition, the study found that all seven TQM practices - leadership; strategy and planning; customer focus; information and analysis; people management; process management; and supplier involvement - were significantly higher in TQM firms than in non-TQM firms. Finally, the study found that tier 3 suppliers were less likely to implement TQM practices compared with higher tiers (1 and 2), except in supplier involvement.\nOriginality/value: - The study presents an insight into TQM constructs evolution in the ASEAN region, which has gained increased prominence and world impact as a result of international outsourcing. It therefore addresses a significant gap in the literature about how quality management is deployed in this important region of the world.\n",
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Outsourcing strategies for radical innovations: does industry clockspeed make a difference?
|
[
"Outsourcing",
"Corporate strategy",
"Manufacturing industries"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Outsourcing decisions - which are frequently referred to in the literature by aliases such as \"vertical integration\" or \"make-buy judgments\" - are an important aspect of most firms' overall strategic plans (Anderson and Weitz, 1986; Gertner and Knez, 2000; McIvor and Humphreys, 2000), and the introduction of a new and potentially radical technology into an industry should, therefore, be a cue for managers to review their make-buy policies (Fine et al., 2002). Should the company make in-house the components and processes underpinning the technology, or should it buy them from a supplier? Building upon more general theories of the firm (Coase, 1937; Penrose, 1980; Williamson, 1981), research in the field of strategic management offers considerable evidence which suggests that it is a good idea for a company to pursue a fairly rigorous \"make\" policy throughout the early days of a new technology (Afuah, 2001; Fine and Whitney, 1996; Harrigan, 1984; Hayes and Abernathy, 1980). But other research prescribes exactly the opposite, promoting instead a \"buy\" strategy so that the firm can share costs with its suppliers (Canez and Probert, 1999; Kumpe and Bolwijn, 1988; Manders and Brenner, 1995). A \"buy\" strategy is also offered in the literature as a means by which a customer firm can access a broader radius of new ideas (Quinn and Hilmer, 1994).One possible explanation for this lack of convergence in the literature is that both of these strategies are valid, but that they are most successfully applied in different market environments. The \"make\" prescription may be more suited to industries with either fast or slow rates of technological change, while a \"buy\" strategy might be more appropriate in market sectors where technologies evolve at a medium pace. This paper builds upon prior work on make-buy decisions in the face of technological discontinuity, and constructs two new hypotheses by introducing ideas and evidence from research in the areas of:* supplier relationships; and* the rate of change within a sector's external environment, referred to as an industry's \"clockspeed\" (Fine, 1998; Mendelson and Pillai, 1998).Then it describes an internet-based survey that was used to measure supply chain management practices from a broad range of manufacturers around the world, and discusses the resulting statistical evidence. Finally, the paper will draw together the main points of the paper, identify how these points constructively add to the existing body of research in this field, and underline the practical implications of this evidence to outsourcing decisions and the development of new technologies in industry.\nLiterature review and hypotheses: Make-buy strategies for new technologies\nMethodology: Designed and implemented using guidelines from Dillman's (1978) Total Design Method, a survey was created that asked managers about how their business unit dealt with principal suppliers during radical technology jumps in the past, and then measured the managers' perceptions of how their firm is currently performing relative to its competitors. The instrument was pre-tested by three academics and three senior managers in industry, and 1,500 director-level decision-makers from a wide variety of manufacturing firms around the world were sent written invitations to participate in the spring of 2003. A \"business unit\" was defined as an organization that produces a particular line of products (as opposed to a corporation, which might consist of several business units and manufacture several different types of relatively dissimilar products). Respondents were identified using a database purchased from a firm that specializes in business-to-business direct mailing lists.Because of the financial and logistical difficulties associated with traditional printed surveys that are distributed internationally, the internet was used a medium for collecting respondents' answers. Citing similar challenges, Dillman (2000, p. 4) designed a \"survey which used no paper or stamps, but did use individually addressed e-mails and a pre-notice with three replacement questionnaires, [and] achieved a 58 percent response rate. This response rate was the same as that obtained by a four-contact paper mail strategy\".Using the internet to collect data from respondents all over the world does indeed introduce several important methodological issues. First, Dillman (2000, p. 220) underlines that, in spite of the internet's proliferation in most parts of the world, it is unlikely that every potential respondent would have an even measure of access to the www. The medium used to deliver the survey may, therefore, influence the types of business units that respond. High technology companies might, for example, be over-represented in the sample, while managers from industries with less exposure to the internet - like heavy manufacturing, for example - might not find it quite as easy to participate.Second, there can be little doubt that some of the international respondents would have a limited knowledge of English. Nonetheless, a www-based survey was used on the expectation that director-level managers of internationally recognized companies would probably have access to the internet, and that many of them would have a working knowledge of English.Third, people from different cultural backgrounds may have profoundly different interpretations of the relationships and inter-firm links discussed in the survey. As Litwin (1995, p. 70) suggests, \"failing to be attentive to multicultural issues may result in significant bias when collecting data\". In her investigations focusing on trust among firms in different countries, Sako (1998) notes that some cultures seem to be significantly more predisposed to trust than others. It, therefore, follows that a respondent's answers throughout this investigation could be significantly colored by where they are from.However, earlier phases of this research project highlighted the increasingly international character of modern manufacturing. Many manufacturing companies conduct operations in several countries, and consist of employees from different parts of the world. Moreover, throughout the development of a new technology, it is not uncommon for firms to establish ties with suppliers in other countries. Thus, while some cultures may be quicker than others to establish trust-based relationships between firms, it is very difficult to typify or isolate these types of cultural nuances. A company in China might deal with its US-based suppliers in a way that is quite different from how it handles its Chinese ones. Alternatively, an American company with an Indian-born chief executive officer may be managed in a way that is quite different from what would seem normal among the company's industry peers in the US. Therefore, in the interest of focusing on the principal hypotheses of the investigation, the www-based survey did not separate respondents according to nationality.To create an international sample pool that was reasonably representative of manufacturing business units around the world, the database of potential respondents for the survey was drawn from four geographic regions: the USA (21 percent), Western Europe (21 percent), Asia/Pacific (36 percent), and the rest of the world (22 percent). The number of potential respondents in each region was proportional to the total gross domestic product (GDP) of its constituent countries as recorded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (2003). For example, the aggregated GDP of Western Europe represents approximately 21 percent of the world's total economic output, and 21 percent of the 1,500 managers in the international database were, therefore, from that region.Completed surveys were obtained from 31 of the business units in the sample, but multiple radical technology jumps were identified by 12 of the respondents: ten firms described two radical technology leaps, and two firms pointed to three jumps. Because different technology transitions may have been managed very differently within a single business unit, multiple jumps by a single respondent were considered as separate data points, resulting in a total of 45 responses. The unit of analysis for this study is, therefore, the individual radical technology jump experienced by a business unit. This approach for dealing with multiple responses is similar to that used by Tatikonda and Rosenthal (2000).However, only three business units were from slow clockspeed industries. Any conclusions drawn from a sub-group consisting of only three data points would be statistically meaningless, so the \"slow clockspeed\" category within the international survey data was subsequently excluded from the analysis. The total number of usable technology jumps was, therefore, reduced to 42.The relatively low response rate can probably be attributed to the fact that the surveys were entirely unsolicited and were sent without any kind of advance warning, in-person meeting, or telephone call. Also, the comparatively high rank of the target group - director-level managers and key decision-makers - is populated by busy individuals who very often do not have time for non-essential activities such as questionnaires.Applying a common definition of \"Radical Innovation\"\nResults and conclusions: Imputation of missing data\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - To determine whether or not clockspeed is an important variable in outsourcing strategies throughout the development of radical innovations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An internet-based survey of manufacturing firms from all over the world.\nFindings: - An industry's clockspeed does not play a significant role in the success or failure of a particular outsourcing strategy for a radical innovation.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Conclusions from earlier research in this area are not necessarily industry-specific.\nPractical implications: - Lessons learned via previous investigations about the computer industry need not be confined to that sector. Vertical integration may be a more robust outsourcing strategy when developing a radical innovation in industries of all clockspeeds.\nOriginality/value: - Previous research efforts in this field focused on a single technology jump, but this approach may have overlooked a potentially important variable: industry clockspeed. Thus, this investigation explores whether clockspeed is an important factor.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Corporate social responsibility and business ethics: conceptualization, scale development and validation
|
[
"Business ethics",
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Scale development",
"Brand trust",
"Brand attitudes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics (BE) are important in establishing brand attitudes. Firms recognize the importance of positive impact on stakeholder through CSR initiatives and ethical conduct. Brands such as Dominos, with their paving for pizza campaign and target's 5 per cent give-back philanthropic investment in communities, are making substantial investments in \"doing good\" for communities. Although many companies model appropriate BE, some companies display ethical misconduct that quickly becomes public. Unethical behavior, such as auto emissions deceptions, price-gouging or accounting scandals often directly impacts a company's reputation through negative perceptions of products, brands and/or service quality. CSR and appropriate BE, in turn, have the potential to generate positive consumer brand attitudes and trust, which can then enhance business value. Likewise, consumers value these behaviors (Meier and Cassar, 2018; Groysberg et al., 2016). In fact:\nLiterature review: Overview of research on consumer expectations of corporate social responsibility and business ethics\nDevelopment of business ethics and corporate social responsibility scales from a consumer perspective: Study overview\nDiscussion: Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to theoretically develop and empirically validate separate scales that represent a consumer's expectations of business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A literature review and qualitative research were conducted to generate items for the scales. Initial item reduction was performed qualitatively based on a panel of experts. A follow-up quantitative assessment using an exploratory factor analysis further reduced the items. The scales were then validated using confirmatory composite analysis with partial least squares-structural equation modeling.\nFindings: Separate scales representing consumers' expectations of BE and CSR behaviors were developed. The scales exhibited reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and external validity.\nPractical implications: The separation of these scales into two components will facilitate more precise examination of consumer perceptions of these two components of product and brand images, and how they may impact brand attitudes and brand trust.\nOriginality/value: This is the first effort to develop separate scales for consumer expectations of ethics and CSR, and assess their impact on brand outcomes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Successor selection in family business using theory of planned behaviour and cognitive dimension of social capital theory: evidence from Ghana
|
[
"Intention",
"Cognitive dimension",
"Family business",
"Succession",
"Theory of planned behaviour",
"Trust"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Succession has been a major issue in family-owned businesses (FOB's); the intention to pass on control of the business to the next generation is a factor that distinguishes family business from non-family business (Garcia et al., 2018). In family businesses, family interest surpasses that of the firm (Maas et al., 2014). Due to the knit of family and business, with the intertwine of individual desire and interest, succession has become a complex issue (Helin and Jabri, 2015). Unlike non-family business managerial turnovers, family business succession involves transfer of controlling ownership from the founder/incumbent to a family member, or to an unrelated outsider if the firm is sold (Bennedsen and Fan, 2014) or to an outsider heir if there is not a competent insider heir. Brockhaus (2004) perceives succession in the context of FOB as a business that will be bequeathed from one generation to another. As argued by some scholars, founders usually have a long-term view of their business and have a strong interest in its continuity; thus, succession becomes one of the keys decision-making (Ansari et al., 2014). Indeed, lack of comprehensive succession roadmap of family businesses all over the world and Africa in particular, has garnered considerable attention and is one of the dark spots in the FOB literature (Gabriel and Bitsch, 2019; Ogola, 2018). In line with this thought, some scholars eloquently argued that internal succession gains its grips in FOBs when the next-generation family members have the express will to contribute its success (De Massis et al., 2014) as well as the readiness of founder to bequeath the business to the next generation (Chen et al., 2016).Burgeoning literature attests that family business plays enormous role in job creation, economic growth and transformation and wealth creation (Lucky et al., 2011). Against this backdrop, report indicates that family business creates about 59% of the jobs in the US and 78% of all new employments (Lucky et al., 2011). Literature further revealed that substantial amount of studies on family-owned business are predominantly found in advance economies in the world such as the US, Australia, and some Asian countries (Moores and Mula, 2000). However, little is known about succession of family-owned business in Africa especially in the context of Ghana. Clearly, there are several family-owned business in Ghana which have been understudied (Ogola, 2018; Buckman et al., 2019). Founder/incumbent faces a great deal of successor selection due to Ghanaian kinship structures that determines the next successor as against selecting a qualified successor to hand over the FOB in promoting survivability. Hence, this paper explores drivers of succession selection in Ghanaian FOBs representing the intention of founder/incumbent in selecting a successor taking into consideration family goals, values and tradition. In a quest to fill the research gap, the following objective guided our investigation:To analyse the factors that strongly influence founder/incumbent selection of insider heir from several heirs in the Ghanaian context.Thus, this study contributes to the literature in two main ways. First, the study offers a novel perspective given that FOBs in the context of Ghana contribute to economic growth and job creation (Fukuyama, 1995; Buang et al., 2013). Second, the conceptual framework used in the study illuminates the role of the study constructs with regards to the successor selection in FOBs backed by the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and cognitive dimension of social capital theory, different from prior studies that have focused on only one or two factors (Gabriel and Bitsch, 2019; Bozer et al., 2017; Stel, 2017) with respect to successor selection; this has enriched the literature in the field. Although these theories (TPB and Social Capital Theory) used in the study have shown their worth in the literature, they have received less interest with respect to successor selection in FOBs within the domain of SMEs in Ghana.Based on a survey of 357 FOBs, the study employed structural equation modelling via AMOS software version 22. The study discovered that intention of founder/incumbent to hand over to an internal successor is strongly determine by attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and cognitive dimension of the social capital theory. Trust influence attitude but not intention of founder/incumbent in choosing internal successor.\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: 2.1 Family and family business in Ghanaian economy\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. Statistical analysis: 4.1 Exploratory factor analysis\n5. Discussion and Conclusion: Burgeoning literature attest that family businesses play enormous role in job creation, economic growth and transformation and wealth creation (Lucky et al., 2011). Report indicates that family business creates about 59% of the jobs in the US and 78% of all new employments (Lucky et al., 2011). Literature further revealed that substantial amount of studies on family owned business are predominantly found in advance economies in the world such as the US, Australia and some Asian countries (Moores and Mula, 2000). However, little is known about succession of family owned business in Africa especially in the context of Ghana. Clearly, there are several family owned business in Ghana which have been understudied (Ogola, 2018; Buckman et al., 2019). For the Ghana's economy, the engine for economic growth greatly depends on private sector which are predominately SMEs. 92% of all industry establishment in Ghana is made up of SMEs. The SMEs contribute about 70% to the GDP and employs over 75% of labour force (Ameyaw et al., 2016). This clearly shows that Ghana's economic sustainability and development highly depends on SMEs which are which are predominantly FOBs. However, investigation into succession in FOBs in Africa and more precisely Ghana is lacking. In a quest to fill the research gap, the study analyses the factors that strongly influence founder/incumbent selection of insider heir from several heirs in the Ghanaian context.Therefore, the study used proposed theoretical model-TPB with the incorporation of Trust and Social Capital Theory - cognitive dimension as a predictor of founder/incumbent intention to hand over ownership to an internal successor in Africa particularly Ghana. In view of this, the study conducted a survey of 357 SMEs which are family owned businesses and employed structural equation modelling via AMOS software version 22 on the construct of the proposed theoretical model (ATT, SUB, PBC, TT, SOC). The results demonstrated that attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SUB), perceived behavioural control (PBC) and cognitive dimension of social capital theory (SOC) have significant positive influence on intention (INT). This shows that successor selection decision by founder/incumbent in Ghanaian FOBs are influenced by several factors; attitude formation to hand over internally, resources (tangible and intangible) availability, other stakeholders input to successor selection decision and congruence in vision and objective of founder and potential successor(s) (Luan et al., 2017; Lee et al., 2010), family-owned business is more likely to select an intra-firm member as the new CEO when the incumbent CEO is a family member if family ownership control is greater than shareholding ratio of outside directors.Our study revealed that positive significant of cognitive dimension of social capital theory on intention implies the congruence of shared mission, vision and values of founder/incumbent and potential successor, consistent with previous research (e.g. Stel, 2017). This is as a result of having more family members in Ghanaian FOBs and constant reminder of the purpose of establishing the FOB (poverty alleviation and employment) with regards to present economic condition prevailing in the country. Also, giving the next generation successors the opportunity to articulate the vision and mission of the family business implies that they would be asked to implement the said vision. Next generation having the clarity about succession and future direction indicate a fair process to the successors (Bizri, 2016; Cater and Kidwell, 2014)Consistent with previous studies (e.g. Sok et al., 2016), our study discovered that attitude and perceived behavioural control were having stronger influence on intention. This is due to the bond that exists in Ghanaian family; caring for one another; the provision of financial support and emotional needs. The cultural practice of Ghanaians: considering one's lineage (family) first, before thinking of an outsider makes internal successor is a necessity for Ghanaian FOB. Therefore, having an attitude to hand over to an insider heir is deemed as necessity for the following reasons: wealth preservation, employment creation, preserving family public image (Ogola, 2018). In order to achieve this, resources (tangible and intangible) are made available to enable successor(s) to deal with any issue that may arise in the family after the succession process. Family businesses that have low level attitude towards adaptability will perceived succession process as problem ridden, the founder/incumbent will make considerably amount of resources and time to deal with succession related issues and conflict. While family business which have positive attitude towards adaptability will perceive transition as an opportunity to have more resources leftover for the next successor for innovative activities (see Hauck and Pru, 2015).Our study revealed that trust (TT) influence attitude but not intention of the founder/incumbent to hand over to an internal successor, this implies that for Ghanaian FOBs, the higher the level of trust of founder/incumbent in family members the greater the possibility of forming better attitude towards internal succession, this is line with previous research (e.g. Ghee et al., 2015). In other situation the founder/incumbent may choose several insider successors because of his/her inability to trust only one successor therefore handing over to several insider heirs depict a sign of group trust and their ability to work together, in tend shared leadership can promote trust in the next generation (see Cater and Kidwell, 2014). The influence of trust indicate how Ghanaians trust their own family members more than non-family member and definite in having insider as the next successor. Trust is said to be a key factor in forming strong family bonds and family firms usually depend on mutual trust in their governance (Eddleston and Morgan, 2014).Furthermore, it was discovered that subjective norm has positive influence on intention. This happened because the decision of the founder/incumbent to hand over FOB to an internal successor is dependent on the views of the family members and other external family relations. It should be noted that family goals and values supersede that of FOBs. Therefore, individualistic of property ownership does not necessarily operate in Ghana, there is a general role that what belongs to an individual family member, belongs to the whole family (extended family) for that matter, the decision of transfer of control and management highly depend on all family members and other stakeholders but not only on the founder/incumbent. Although founder/incumbent can overcome individual biases, strong families' ties can still allow him/her to choose family member as the next family business successor (see Liu et al., 2015). 5.1 Implications of the study\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: Succession of family enterprises has been an issue of concern to a number of researchers, and extensive studies have been conducted on this. Transfer of family business from one generation to next has resulted in collapse of most family business in both developed and developing economies. This study looked at succession in family enterprise in Ghana using theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and cognitive dimension of social capital theory to know the intention of founder/incumbent to hand over the family business to an internal successor.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Our target population for this study is family businesses run in Ghana, Western region. Ghana is not having statistical database on family businesses; therefore, the study relied on the database of registered SMEs which was gotten from Registrar General's Department, Ghana. This is the government department that is in charge of registering business in Ghana. A sample of 596 was used and received a response rate of 60%. The study used structural equation model to find out how the variables correlate to discover the intention of the founder/successor on internal succession.\nFindings: It was discovered that intention of founder/incumbent to hand over to an internal successor is predominantly determined by attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and cognitive dimension of the social capital. Trust does not influence the intention of founder/incumbent but attitude; this rejects the findings of most researchers.\nResearch limitations/implications: Most family enterprises were not registered, which made it difficult to reach out to all family businesses. This limited the authors approach to only the registered family enterprises.\nPractical implications: Family firms are the backbone of any economy, which comprise mostly of SMEs. Therefore, the understanding of succession by incumbents/founders as well as policymakers enhances firms' value and continuity.\nOriginality/value: The study was conducted in Africa, Ghana in particular, owing to the limited studies in this region.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The changing role of the salesperson: how should salespeople act today?
|
[
"Salespeople",
"Sales managers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Nature and development of the sales position: The sales position has particular characteristics compared to other jobs. Unlike other workers, salespeople are physically distanced from their coworkers, which contributes to social and psychological distance. Second, salespeople are faced with different situations on a daily basis. Consequently, to cope with a job that lacks routine, salespeople must be innovative and highly flexible. Third, they are positioned between the company and the customers and must simultaneously consider company goals and customer demands (Moncrief and Marshall, 2005). In this sense, fourth, salespeople frequently face situations of role stress that involve both role conflict and role ambiguity and are enhanced by the uncertainty experienced (Verbeke et al., 2011). Fifth, salespeople have multiple tasks and functions to perform, from prospecting for customers to providing customers with after-sales service. Therefore, as a sixth characteristic, salespeople need to be persistent in their work and to have sufficient self-motivation. Finally, there is a delay in the results of the efforts made, which often has a negative effect on the salesperson's enthusiasm for his/her work. However, it is important to recognize that the sales position also has positive aspects (Hammervoll, 2012); for example, salespeople have more autonomy and freedom in making decisions than other workers do.\n2. How the sales position is changing: In the past, salespeople were oriented toward the achievement of objectives and sales quotas, which were sometimes too ambitious, which led salespeople to behave in questionable ways (Moncrief and Marshall, 2005). This situation is characteristic of a transactional approach, where the objective is the sale, and only the short-term needs of the salesperson are considered.\n3. Recommendations to sales practitioners: In the context described above, first, managers and supervisors should have good knowledge of the new sales context. To this end, it is important for them to have an in-depth knowledge of the market and, specifically, their customers. For example, they can make combined use of traditional and newer market research tools. Second, they should recruit salespeople with values in line with the new sales situation, and that demonstrates attitudes and behaviors in accordance with the needs of the sale and its customers. This point, however, is more complex than it may initially appear. Managers, in a selection process, will only be able to use their intuition to determine whether salespeople meet these requirements. In this sense, highly trained recruiting personnel are needed.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight the nature and the organizational role of salespeople and, in particular, underscore the change in salespeople's management in the current business context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper briefly explains the role of salespeople in an organization and how salespeople are gaining prominence in customer management. From this point of view, the paper suggests steps to achieve the sale.\nFindings: It is evident that salespeople must change the way they achieve sales goals within the organization. Currently, they need to adopt a more customer-centric approach, and the paper suggests how to do this.\nPractical implications: The paper aims to provide key points for understanding and managing the sales force within the organization. Findings are relevant for those who must manage these workers or those who simply want to know more about the characteristics of the sales force.\nOriginality/value: The paper highlights the importance of salespeople in organizations and describes how they should be managed. In addition, in some ways, the paper helps improve readers' perception of the sales position.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
"We are still here": the stories of Syrian academics in exile
|
[
"Syria",
"Higher education",
"Exile",
"Collaboration"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Of the 15 named authors of this paper, 12 are Syrian academics currently living in exile in Turkey, and the remaining 3 are UK-based academics. Our collaboration took place through the Council for At Risk Academics' (Cara) Syria Programme (hereafter SP), which supports Syrian academics in exile in countries within the Middle East region in sustaining their academic work in exile, and which is staffed on a voluntary basis by academics from universities in the UK, Turkey and Europe. Following an initial scoping exercise (Cara, 2016), the Cara SP was devised across three strategic strands: English for Academic Purposes (EAP), Research Incubation (RI) and Academic Skills Development (ASD).\nSyrian HE in the context of conflict: Syria's civil war first broke out in 2011. In the intervening seven years, all aspects of public life inside the country have been ravaged by violence and its fallout. Higher education has not been spared: university buildings, infrastructure and resources have been destroyed, and their populations have been subjected to violent attacks, intimidation and militarisation (Anonymous, 2016; Bakarat and Milton, 2015; Bariscil, 2017; Watenpaugh et al., 2014; Young-Powell, 2017). Over the last seven years, over 2,000 academics have fled Syria (King, 2016; Sheikh, 2016), mostly to the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. Refugee academic communities in these countries can face hostility, and linguistic and bureaucratic obstacles to continuing their academic work (Al-Ibrahim, 2016; Sheikh, 2016); the Institute of International Education estimates that less than 10 per cent of displaced Syrian academics have continued their academic careers in exile (Sheikh, 2016). In Turkey, the country that has accepted the largest number of Syrian refugees, exiled academics can experience restrictions in relation to travelling beyond and within the country, or undertaking certain types of paid work, due to conditions associated with their temporary protection status (Icduygu and Millet, 2016), or to lacking necessary documentation (Ammar, 2016).\nCara: supporting at risk academics since 1933: Cara is a UK-based non-profit NGO that has supported academics at risk from conflict and persecution since 1933. Cara's precursors the Academic Assistance Council and the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) were established in 1933 and 1936, respectively, in response to the expulsion of academics under Nazi Germany. During the Second World War, the SPSL provided support and financial assistance to some 2,000 academics and their families fleeing Europe to the UK and other countries, and connecting them with networks of international colleagues. This approach continued after the end of the War, with Cara supporting academics at risk in other global contexts, and is still the main basis for Cara's Fellowship Scheme, which assists individual academics by securing visiting academic positions at UK universities, and offering stipendiary support. In recent years, however, in response to the scale and duration of crises in the Middle East, Cara has also established regional programmes offering in situ support to academic communities still domiciled in the region.\nRationale: telling our stories, and learning to work together: As noted earlier, this study sits within the wider action research context of the Cara SP, and as such has concomitant, mutually supporting research and applied (action) aims. Applied aims include building capacity in research methods, EAP and learning to work together as a diverse, multidisciplinary community. Learning to work together is our foremost applied aim here, alongside the research aim of generating insight relating to the experiences of Syrian academics in exile.\nMethodology: a hybrid visual-autobiographic methodology within a large group process (LGP) design: Data collection and analysis for this study took place within the format of a two-day LGP. LGPs have origins in social psychology and organisational management, and particularly within action research contexts (e.g. Lewin, 1946), where they are used to engage groups in learning and working together to address common issues and improve their conditions. Today, LGP work is a broad field comprising an array of approaches for convening groups to address important issues or problems. Despite this variety, most approaches, however, share the features of systematic design, inductive enquiry, qualitative sense-making (Tavistock Institute, nd) and an urgency to the issue at hand. Martin (2005) cautioned against off-the-shelf approaches to LGP design, and suggested that the structure of LGPs should be determined by the specific nature of the problem. A theoretical understanding of subjectivist ontology/epistemology and practical experience of group facilitation and qualitative social research methods support rigour and validity in design. A central principle of LGPs in action research is that they should work towards applied, as well as research aims: put simply, they are not simply an academic research exercise, but should promote learning and capacity building among the participant group. Validity in action research projects is gauged not only against academic research criteria, but also in terms of the extent to which these applied ends are achieved, termed catalytic validity (Lathar, 1986).\nCoding and analysis of narrative data: The second day of the LGP was dedicated to coding, analysing and presenting the data. The facilitators shared the 12 anonymised individual narrative texts with the wider group. The purpose of this was manifold: to reveal the diversity of our individual interactions with the Syrian crisis, to practise language skills through reading and summarising text and ultimately to look at how, through thematic analysis, we as participant-researchers could begin to consider communicating our experiences to an external audience. The second day's activities can be categorised into three stages, as follows.\nFindings: Displacement and upheaval\nReflective evaluation of the large group process: Reflective evaluation was conducted via an online video conference, lasting 90 min, during which the Syrian and UK-based authors shared thoughts regarding the outcomes of the LGP and needs going forward. Notes were taken and circulated for checking and further elaboration.\nDeveloping relational understanding: While the data generated in this study pertain to the past experiences of the Syrian authors, the study's objectives are future oriented. The theme of this special issue has focussed our thinking towards the future of Syrian higher education - both short term and long term, both inside Syria and in exile - and the challenges it will entail. In the short term, it is vital that the Syrian academic community in exile remains cohesive despite being geographically dispersed. Syrian academics and their international partners must develop ways of working together to sustain academic activity and develop strategies and resources for the present and future.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to generate insight into the experiences of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey; and second, to explore approaches to collaboration and community building among academics in exile and with counterparts in the international academic community.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study employs a hybrid visual-autobiographical narrative methodology, embedded within a large group process (LGP) design.\nFindings: Findings are presented in two phases: the first phase presents a thematic analysis of narrative data, revealing the common and divergent experiences of 12 exiled academics. The second phase presents a reflective evaluation of undertaking the LGP and its implications for community building and sustaining Syrian academia in exile.\nResearch limitations/implications: While this is a qualitative study with a small participant group, and therefore does not provide a basis for statistical generalisation, it offers rich insight into Syrian academics' lived experiences of exile, and into strategies implemented to support the Syrian academic community in exile.\nPractical implications: The study has practical implications for academic development in the contexts of conflict and exile; community building among dispersed academic communities; educational interventions by international NGOs and the international academic community; and group process design.\nOriginality/value: The study makes an original contribution to the limited literature on post-2011 Syrian higher education by giving voice to a community of exiled academics, and by critically evaluating a strategic initiative for supporting and sustaining Syrian academia. This represents significant, transferable insight for comparable contexts.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Capital structure dynamics: China and India (Chindia) perspective
|
[
"Capital structure",
"Speed of adjustment",
"Partial adjustment mechanism",
"Target leverage",
"System generalized method of moments (GMM)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The roots of capital structure theories emerge from the renowned irrelevance proposition of Modigliani and Miller (1958), following, which many streams of theories have been developed to aid the managers in financing decisions. The dynamic trade-off model proposed by Fischer et al. (1989) argues that firms rebalance their capital structure because of changes in various internal and external factors. Considering the turbulence and dynamism in the current corporate environment and recent empirical shreds of evidence of the trade-off theory (Drobetz et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2016; Tao et al., 2017; Chung et al., 2018; Kannadhasan et al., 2018), this study attempts to investigate the capital structure dynamics for sample firms.\n2. Related literature and hypothesis development: With the progression of capital structure research towards the emerging economies and various cross country studies (Rajan and Zingales, 1995; La Porta et al., 2000; Beck et al., 2004), the importance of macro-level factors have been identified (Zafar et al., 2019). By witnessing global patterns in this domain, it has been established that leverage decisions vary with different institutional set-ups and macro-factors. A pioneering study by Booth et al. (2001) highlights that factors impacting leverage vary across different emerging economies. Korajczyk and Levy (2003) and Huang and Ritter (2009) provide that macro-level factors impact the firms' financing decisions because of the country-specific differences. Literature provides mixed results about the impact of capital market development on leverage. Sett and Sarkhel (2010) document a negative influence of stock market development on capital structure. Faulkender and Petersen (2006) report a positive association between BM and capital structure. Further, De Jong et al. (2008) investigate the impact of various firm-level and macro-level factors on the firms' financing choices across 42 economies including both, the developed and emerging economies. They report a positive association of BM and negative association of stock market development with leverage. Bokpin (2009) reports a significant positive impact of BM on leverage in a sample of 34 emerging economies. Researchers such as Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (1996) and Dincergok and Yalciner (2011) suggest that stock market development is positively associated with capital structure.\n3. Data description: The present study uses accounting, market and macroeconomic data from Bloomberg(r), Prowess(r) and world development indicators databases, respectively, for Indian and Chinese firms from 2009 to 2018. Indian firms listed on National Stock Exchange and Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange are chosen for the analysis.\n4. Econometric model and methodology: The present study modifies the partial adjustment framework to accommodate macro-level factors along with the firm characteristics. Hence, a typical firm's target leverage is specified as a function of prior period macro-level and firm-level variables as follows:\n5. Empirical findings: 5.1 Summary statistics\n6. Robustness checks: The findings of the study are tested for robustness at four levels as follows:\n7. Implications, contributions and limitations of the study: The findings of this study contribute to the corporate finance domain by shedding light on the capital structure adjustment framework. Firstly, it furnishes new evidence of the dynamic trade-off theory in the emerging market context. It evinces that Indian and Chinese firms do have target leverages and they do revert to the targets but partially. As the target leverage is an unobservable variable, the study has used a pre-tested partial adjustment model to test it. The validity tests used in the model (Hansen test statistic and AR2 test for serial autocorrelation) have proven the existence of target leverage and firms' reversion to their targets. Further, the estimate of the speed of adjustment has been reported to be less than unity (i.e. l < 1) confirming the partial reversion to targets. Secondly, in an attempt to compare the trade-off behaviour of the top two emerging economies of the world, this study provides that the management of Indian firms is relatively quicker in capital structure adjustments than the management of Chinese firms. Thirdly, this study contributes to the internationalization of the financing decisions supporting the notion of \"global village\". Based on the current global environment where the firms operate, this study renders robust evidence of the impact of macro-level factors on capital structure decisions. Therefore, the findings provide that macro-level factors should be treated at par with the firm-level factors for financing decisions.\n8. Conclusion: This research proposes the importance of macro-level factors in testing the trade-off behaviour of Indian and Chinese firms. Inflation rate, BM and stock market development emerge as significant macro-level factors impacting the capital structure of Indian firms. This implies that the well-functioning capital markets and the expected rate of inflation in the Indian economy impact the speed of capital structure adjustment by firms. However, BM is the only significant factor impacting the capital structure of Chinese firms. As far as the firm-level factors are concerned, firm size, tangibility, non-debt tax shield and research and development expenditures are significant factors impacting capital structure, lending support to the trade-off behaviour of firms for both the countries.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamics of capital structure for businesses in China and India. Whether and how they adjust their capital structures to witness the trade-off behaviour in the light of different macro-level factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Firms listed on the National Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange over the period of 2009-2018 are used for the study. System generalized method of moments proposed by Blundell and Bond (1998) is deployed due to the use of dynamic short panel data.\nFindings: Indian firms revert to their target leverage ratios at a higher rate as compared to Chinese firms (30 and 20 per cent, respectively). Further, the inflation rate, bond market and stock market development are significant factors impacting leverage in the case of India, whereas bond market development significantly impacts leverage in the case of China. These results are robust across various definitions of leverage and other firm and institutional control variables.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study has implications for various stakeholders. The study highlights that development in financial markets and economy impact the financing decisions and should be a cause for concern for the financial managers and policymakers. Thus, managers can use the findings of the study if they desire to maintain their target capital structures for better firm valuation and the policymakers can support them in achieving the same. Even, the investors can make informed investment decisions considering macro-level factors impacting firms' financing choices.\nOriginality/value: It is believed to be the first piece of research effort to consider the novel paradigm of the macro-level factors impacting the target leverage to estimate the adjustment speed. Secondly, it is a pioneering study, which attempts to compare the trade-off behaviour of the top two emerging economies of the world.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Gender inequality in employment: Editors' introduction
|
[
"Employment",
"Equal opportunities",
"Sexual discrimination",
"Gender"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In October 2008, the Centre for Employment Studies Research at the University of the West of England, UK, held a one-day research event on gender inequality in employment. As co-organizers, we decided to put together papers arising from this event to create this special issue of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. After some deliberation, we decided to use this Editors' introduction to focus upon the relationship between the causes of gender inequality in employment and policies designed to eliminate or ameliorate it. When this is brought into focus, some fundamental shortcomings in policy emerge from the shadows. While there is nothing radically new in any of the individual points we raise, they add up to more than the sum of their parts, making the overall argument worth stating. Part 2 of the paper establishes that gender inequality in employment exists; part 3 considers the main causes of gender inequality in employment; part 4 evaluates the effectiveness of the main policies dealing with these causes; and part 5 provides a thumbnail sketch of the four other papers that make up this special issue.\n2. Establishing that gender inequality in employment exists: As experienced teachers, we have come across what we consider to be remarkable phenomena - and we have good reason to suspect this is not peculiar to our experience. Many UK students, male and female, seem reluctant to accept that gender inequality exists. This is partly due to students not yet having experienced discrimination in the workplace and also the result of a discourse often referred to as \"post-feminism\" - a discourse that, like the proverbial baby elephant, is difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it (Douglas, 2002). The post-feminist argument is that because women have achieved legal equality there simply is no further need for a feminist movement or agenda. The post-feminist argument can seem plausible for three reasons. First, some women who are employed in predominantly \"male\" areas of work, such as science, engineering and technology are reluctant to claim an allegiance with feminism (Phipps, 2006). Second, because it tends to focus on culture alone, not on culture and political-economy. Third, because it plays on the discourses of formal legality and (non-pejorative) individualism. That is, the emphasis on de jure legal equality between men and women, creates the impression that little now stands in the way of individual women, in a meritocratic way, achieving equality for themselves.Consider three examples: sexual liberation, socializing and education. It is true that (in some countries) women have made progress in attaining a high degree of sexual liberation; they have also managed to wrestle public spaces from domination by men; and women obtain educational qualifications similar, or at advanced levels, to men. Even assuming these are unequivocal gains, and there are reasons to be sceptical, they do not translate into equality in various dimensions of employment. Even assuming that being able to ogle at male strippers, for example, illustrates a degree of equality, women still earn less than men, in some cases, considerably less; are found in the lower ranks of the organizational hierarchy; are segregated into \"women's\" jobs; tend to work part-time and so on (Lewis and Humbert, Tomlinson and Durbin, in this special issue). For these reasons, we consider post feminism to be a dangerous discourse, and we reject it. Indeed, we would go further and claim that gender inequality in employment (and elsewhere) is woven into the social, economic, political and cultural, structure of society. Understanding this immediately scotches the idea that gender inequality has anything to do with individual (women's) failings such as lack of ambition or some such.In lieu of this, we decided not to simply assume the existence of gender inequality, but demonstrate that gender inequality is significant, and is a problem, by providing some rudimentary data. Table I shows several measures of gender inequality across 26 countries selected (virtually[1]) at random. We leave the reader to peruse the table, but would like to draw attention to the following points.Even in Iceland, Australia and Norway (ranked one, two and three on the GDI index), the ratio of male to female earned income does not exceed 0.77. At the other end of the spectrum, we have Egypt, Botswana and India with ratios of 0.23, 0.31 and 0.31, respectively.Adult literacy rates are a serious problem primarily in low HDI countries where only around 50 per cent of women are literate. In most of the high HDI countries, more women than men enrol in primary, secondary and tertiary education (Japan being the outlier). In medium HDI countries, the picture is mixed and in the low HDI countries women are under-represented relative to men. No country on the list has more than Sweden with 47.3 per cent parliamentary seats being held by women and Kuwait with the least at 3.1 per cent.A similar story emerges with women being represented as legislators, senior officials and managers, with the USA topping the table at 42 per cent, followed by the Russian Federation, Germany, Australia and the UK with 0.39, 0.37, 0.37 and 0.34 per cent, respectively. Turkey and Egypt have the least percentage of women represented in these categories at 7 and 9 per cent, respectively.The interesting point to note about enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education is that even where relatively more women are educated, this is not always reflected in other measures of gender equality such as relative earnings, running major companies or obtaining seats in parliament. This means simply increasing the numbers of women enrolling in education is not sufficient to eradicate gender inequality (Wilton and Purcell, in this special issue). We draw attention to this because, there seems to be a growing consensus in many circles that where women have equal access to education, gender inequality will (eventually perhaps) be eradicated.Before leaving this section, it is worth mentioning one additional point. Not all aspects of gender inequality can be captured in quantitative data, indeed, some aspects are even hard to define let alone measure. This point is important because it highlights the fact that even if the gender pay gap were to be closed, even if women were to be educated as well as men, and even if more women were to be found in the upper echelons of corporate and civic life, many other aspects of gender inequality in employment would continue to exist, a point supported by recent debates in Equal Opportunities International (e.g. Corby and Stanworth, 2009; Priola and Brannan, 2009; Wood, 2008).\n3. The (internal and external) causes of gender inequality in employment: While the causes of gender inequality in employment are many and varied, it is important to note that they originate both from inside (i.e. internally) and outside (i.e. externally) the employing organization. This difference matters because it demands different policies. We consider these in turn.Internal causes\n4. Evaluating the policies dealing with the causes of gender inequality: Let us face a rather daunting fact - and it probably is a fact. The policies that have thus far been implemented to eliminate or ameliorate gender inequality have not resulted in the degree of success that was hoped for. It is true that some of the worse gendered inequalities in employment, at least in some parts of the world, have been ameliorated, but nowhere have they been eliminated and in many places, huge inequalities remain. For example, in the UK, the full-time gender pay gap is 17.2 per cent and the part-time gender pay gap is 35.6 per cent. This compares with a gender pay gap across Europe that ranges from 25 per cent in Estonia to 10 per cent in Romania (TUC, 2008). The UK figure should also be read in light of equal pay legislation being in place for over 30 years and while it is acknowledged that the gap has closed from an initial 40 per cent, the figure of 17.2 per cent not only remains, but the pace at which the gap is closing has slowed dramatically. Because of their lack of success, these policies demand critical evaluation. It is to this that we now turn.While all policies face relatively superficial problems surrounding their design and implementation, there are a small number of problems that are fundamental in the sense that the policies do not recognize, or adequately deal with, all the (internal and external) causes of gender inequality. We proceed by stating four such fundamental problems, then elaborating upon them. First, some policies implemented inside the employing organization do not, and often cannot, deal with causes of gendered inequality that originate outside. Second, while some internal causes are rooted in political-economy, other internal causes are rooted in culture. Policies designed to tackle the former (e.g. equal pay legislation) might have little or no effect on the latter; and policies designed to tackle cultural causes (e.g. legislation to prevent overtly sexist advertising) might have little or no effect on political economy. Third, some policies implemented within the employing organization conflict with other objectives of the organization, thereby weakening the policies. Fourth, some policies have unintended consequences that actually end up making gender inequality worse. These fundamental problems tend not to come in a straightforward manner, but usually in combination, making them difficult to spot. Let us consider them in more depth.Policies to promote networks\n5. A thumbnail sketch of the papers: Before concluding, we present thumbnail sketches of the four papers that constitute this special edition.Lewis and Humbert examine the impact of flexible working arrangements and particularly reduced hours working arrangements on a Dual Agenda of gender equity and workplace effectiveness, in an organization employing a relatively high proportion of women scientists. In depth interviews explored working practices, the assumptions underpinning them and their un/intended consequences. They find that the main form of flexible working arrangement used in the organization, a four-day week, is double-edged and complex in its effects. It supports mothers, but at a cost because of gendered assumptions. Despite a commitment to flexibility and \"work-life balance\", the gendered construction of the ideal worker and ideas of competence conflated with hegemonic masculinity, remain powerful. This, together with a prevalent \"good mother\" ideology, undermines both gender equity and workplace effectiveness.Drawing upon 16 semi-structured interviews, Tomlinson and Durbin explore the work-histories of female part-time managers, focusing upon their employment trajectories, aspirations, perceptions of work-life balance and career mobility. The discussion is framed with reference to theoretical debates on \"choice\" and preferences but also in terms of the ways in which organizational cultures and structures, and key individuals within them, help or hinder female managers' mobility and work-life balance while working part-time. They found that the majority of female part-time managers had varied and successful career histories while full-time but that these careers stalled once a transition to part-time work was made, despite the female managers in the sample remaining highly productive and committed to their jobs and careers.Wilton and Purcell analyze the impact of partnership and family-building on the aspirations, expectations and orientations to work of graduate women working in a range of industries in the UK. A combination of qualitative interviews and quantitative, longitudinal data are drawn upon to explore the persistence of gender asymmetries in both employment and domestic partnership as well as the complex decision-making processes that underlie career development between equally qualified partners. The paper explores how women in dual-career partnerships negotiate the transition from single entities into dyads and the dynamics of gender role change and stability.Gall examines the ways in which nascent or weakened labour unions in the sex industry have been \"forced\" (or with limited options, have chosen) to operate on a terrain of acting politically and as pressure groups concerned with work issues in a way in which other pressure groups operate on non-work issues. He argues that this forsakes a key characteristic of labour unionism, namely, the focus of collective self-activity in and on the workplace and from a basis on having a tangible presence in the workplace through membership amongst workers.Lovell reminds us of the complexities of analyzing gendered employment through an extended review of the work of three prominent authors in the field - Acker (2006), Bradley (2008) and Crompton (2008) - who highlight the importance of addressing gender alongside other forms of inequalities, such as class and ethnicity.\n6. Conclusion: After the one day research event on gender inequality in employment that generated this special edition, one member of the audience raised an important criticism: the papers had all ignored other forms of inequality such as class, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability and so on. We want to conclude, therefore, with a brief comment on this matter. We know that the employment circumstances of certain groups in society are blighted due to class, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, religion and gender and that these characteristics are not mutually exclusive - one can, for example, be working class, female, black and young, all at the same time. Moreover, although this particular special edition has focused upon gender inequality in a predominantly UK and European context, we acknowledge that this will vary by country. We hope that this special issue might urge researchers with an interest in the area of gender and employment to further explore these persistent gender inequalities and the ways in which they intersect with ethnicity, disability, age and class in the context of gendered employment across a range of sectors and organizations worldwide.\nNotes: 1. We included UK and USA deliberately, Iceland because it ranks 1st, and Sierra Leone because it ranks 177th and last.2. Some, but not all, of these stages are sequential and there may be some overlap.3. See Fleetwood (2008a, b) for an elaboration of deliberation and habit following.4. This is true for women with and without children, although the way the process works is different.5. Political economy cannot explain why women and not men bear the responsibility for performing domestic labour. This requires a cultural explanation - we reject any suggestions that there is a \"biological\" explanation for this: women do not have a gene for ironing! Such a cultural explanation (rooted in what we referred to above as negative gender stereotyping) is beyond the scope of this paper.6. This simple example can easily be made more realistic by, for example, allowing women to engage in full and/or part-time employment; not having children; having men doing some unpaid domestic labour and so on.7. We acknowledge that this is not a \"like for like\" comparison of the same cohort.8. Indeed, it has been left to feminists and activists to combat the more extreme forms of negative gender stereotyping via guerrilla tactics such as adding anti-sexist graffiti to public advertising.Opens in a new window.Table I\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the relationship between the causes of gender inequality in employment and policies designed to eliminate or ameliorate it. When this is brought into focus, some fundamental shortcomings in policy emerge from the shadows. It also provides a thumbnail sketch of the four other papers that make up this special issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is a theoretical reflection, with lessons for practice.\nFindings: - The paper: establishes that gender inequality in employment exists; considers the main causes of gender inequality in employment; and evaluates the effectiveness of the main policies dealing with these causes.\nPractical implications: - Policy makers must reflect far more thoroughly on the causes of gender inequality in employment, and tailor their policies to address them.\nOriginality/value: - It is one of only a few papers dealing with the relationship between the causes of gender inequality in employment and policies designed to eliminate or ameliorate it.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Systematic review of hospitality CRM research
|
[
"Customer relationship management",
"CRM",
"Relationship marketing",
"Review",
"Hospitality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In a highly competitive environment, the effort of hospitality firms to constantly enhance product and service quality is necessary but insufficient to improve their businesses. A key success factor is the quality relationships that a firm can maintain with its customers considering that the cost of acquiring new customers is higher than that of retaining existing ones (Peppers and Rogers, 1993). Customer relationship management (CRM) is rooted in the relationship marketing (RM) philosophy introduced and defined by Berry (1983, p. 25) as \"attracting, maintaining, and enhancing customer relationships,\" which denotes a paradigm shift from a transactional marketing approach emphasizing operational efficiency and sales volume to a relationship-oriented approach (Kim et al., 2001). Practitioners implement CRM to maintain intimate relationships with their customers, from which valuable insights into their needs, behaviors and preferences can be drawn (Josiassen et al., 2014). Such implementation ultimately aims to identify and retain the most profitable customers and improve the profitability of less profitable ones (Wang, 2012). Firms implement CRM to perform better in terms of customer satisfaction and business performance (Kim et al., 2006a; Sigala, 2005; Wu and Lu, 2012).\n2. Literature review: The concept of RM was introduced in the 1960s when airlines pioneered their frequent flyer program to reward loyal customers (Xiong et al., 2014). RM focuses on directing the marketing activities of firms toward establishing and maintaining relationships with customers by creating mutual benefits (Kim and Cha, 2002; Kim et al., 2001). Subsequent research has transformed this concept into CRM, which encompasses a wide range of perspectives from a technological solution (Payne and Frow, 2005) to a customer-centric process (Garrido-Moreno and Padilla-Melendez, 2011) and a management philosophy (Vaeztehrani et al., 2015). Despite their conceptual differences, the essence of \"attracting, maintaining, and enhancing customer relationships,\" as Berry (1983) suggested, is still prominent in RM and CRM. Therefore, both terms have been interchangeably used in the literature. Both RM and CRM denote a paradigm shift from transaction- to customer-based approaches, in which the role of information technology (IT) is widely acknowledged. In this study, CRM is used to represent RM and CRM.\n3. Methodology: Hospitality CRM articles were collected from three databases including Scopus (www.scopus.com), EBSCOHost (http://search.ebscohost.com.pitt.idm.oclc.org) and ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com) from March to August 2017. The researchers used a combination of keywords including \"customer relationship management,\" \"relationship marketing,\" \"CRM\" and \"hospitality\" or \"hotel\" appearing in the \"titles, keywords, or abstracts\" to identify articles in the databases. All hospitality-related articles published in various fields were included for analysis. Three conditions determined the final inclusion of each article. First, only full-length papers in English were retrieved. Other publications such as book chapters, research notes and conference papers were excluded from the analysis. Second, the authors read the title and abstract of each article to determine its relevance to hospitality CRM. Finally, the authors reviewed each article and screened out irrelevant papers when a consensus is reached among the researchers. For example, papers that apply the concept of RM to business-to-business relationships were excluded during the second and final stages of article selection to maintain strong coherence to the research topic, i.e. the relationship between hospitality firms and individual customers. The above procedures resulted in 111 papers for subsequent analysis. These papers were then read and sorted into four categories according to the methodological orientation, namely, conceptual (18), qualitative (16), quantitative (66) and mixed methods (11). Table I shows the list of academic journals in which the reviewed articles were published. Hospitality CRM research publication has been scattered, with most listed journals contributing only one article over the extended period. Among them, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (22) contributed the largest amount of CRM research, followed by International Journal of Hospitality Management (18) and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research (13).\n4. State of hospitality CRM research: An inductive thematic analysis was manually performed to identify prominent patterns in the literature. The authors read and analyzed each paper and assigned codes to represent major research foci and findings. The initial codes were then studied to search for patterns. Subsequently, five research themes were generated, including:\n5. Potential pitfalls in hospitality CRM research: 5.1 Superiority of CRM over transactional approach\n6. Conclusion and limitations: 6.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to comprehensively and systematically review the state of customer relationship management (CRM) research on hospitality and propose future research agenda.\nDesign/methodology/approach: All hospitality-related CRM articles since its introduction as a concept in 1988 were collected. The retrieved articles were then chronologically and thematically analyzed.\nFindings: Hospitality CRM research has rapidly grown from the initial relationship marketing concept into social CRM. Five research foci were identified, including CRM planning and implementation process, organizational support, technology and tools, customer perspectives and characteristics and outcome and impact. Three potential pitfalls were observed in the existing literature. A comprehensive research framework incorporating the five research domains and three key players was proposed.\nPractical implications: Hospitality practitioners should take an integrated perspective on the five major domains of CRM and the three key players to ensure that informed decisions can be made.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature through its qualitative and critical assessment of existing hospitality CRM literature, which can guide future research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Child labour, future earnings and occupation choice: evidence from Ghana
|
[
"Earnings",
"Endogeneity",
"Child labour",
"Occupational choice"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Child labour and its related issues have become a challenge for many developing countries, including countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In western Africa, the cocoa farms of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire pose the greatest challenges to the eradication of the child labour problem, where in 2010, about 1.8m children were employed. In addition to these children being denied educational opportunities, they are often exploited physically and sexually. These negative early labour market experiences may, therefore, be expected to have devastating consequences on economic livelihoods when these children become adults.\nLiterature review: Basu (1999) observed that although literature on child labour is widespread, empirical evidence is deficient in the Sub-Saharan African region. Of the studies on child labour that exist, several focus on the trade-off between child labour and human capital accumulation (Patrinos and Psacharopoulos,1995; Akabayashi and Psacharopoulos, 1999; Heady, 2003). Beegle et al. (2006), however, observed that these studies have examined correlations, rather than causal relationships. Few studies have examined the long-term consequences of child labour (Beegle et al., 2007). One study by Emerson and Souza (2003) found a negative effect of child labour on adult earnings in Brazil, where child labour was measured using the age at which children became engaged in economic activities. However, a limitation of this study was the failure to address endogeneity issues, given their reliance on the OLS estimation technique. In an adapted version, Emerson and Souza (2006) examined a similar relationship using a nationally representative data set from Brazil and employed the instrumental variable technique. The finding of a negative effect of child labour on adult earnings was confirmed. An explanation for this negative effect is that child labour may hinder the acquisition of formal education and cause irreversible damage to health which results in reduced human capital development (Spindel, 1985). The reduced human capital formation, therefore, leads to reduced future earnings. The study by Emerson and Souza (2006) also alluded to possible heterogeneity of the effects of child labour. For instance, while the negative effect was significant for male children, it was not significant for female children. The negative results also showed a reverse impact on earnings within the age bracket of 12-14 years.\nChild labour in Ghana: The passage of the Children's Act, 1998 (Act 560) and the ratification of the ILO Convention on Rights of the child (1990) which prohibits the labour or economic activity that jeopardises the physical and mental well-being of the child has yielded very little results in terms of eliminating the child labour problem in Ghana. For example, according to Asuming-Brempong et al. (2007), the phenomenon is rife in all the ten regions of the country. Evidence from Ghana Statistical Service (2008) shows that about 89.3 per cent of child labour is found in the agricultural sector. Its worst forms, however, are more prevalent in the form of head porters (kayayei), child domestic labour, ritual servitude (trokosi), commercial sexual exploitation, quarrying and small-scale mining (galamsey), fishing and cash-crop agriculture.\nData: The study uses the sixth round of the GLSS 6. Since its inception in 1987, Ghana has conducted six rounds of the living standards surveys. The current round was carried out from October 2012 to September 2013. The GLSS is a nationally representative sample, spanning across all ten regions of the country. The survey contains data on about 18,000 households in 1,200 enumeration areas. The enumeration areas were selected as primary sampling units, using a two-stage stratified sampling design. In all, 15 households each were then systematically selected from each primary sampling unit. The data contain detailed information on households' demographic characteristics, education, health, employment and time use, migration and tourism, housing conditions, household agriculture and access to financial services and asset ownership. Each round of the survey is known to have a particular focus. For example, in the fifth round, the focus was on non-farm enterprises. In the current round, the focus changed to labour force issues. Its concentration on the labour force makes the data from this current round suitable for providing answers to the research questions proposed in this study as it contains the required variables for this research. Particularly, the labour force module of this round of the survey provides very detailed information on labour force issues including age at which individuals started working, wages and earnings, occupation types as well as other related labour information.\nMethodology: Overall, the paper aims to study the relationship between child labour and some labour outcomes. Specifically, the research objectives are twofold. The first research objective is to examine the impact of child labour on future earnings, while the second is to investigate the effect of child labour on occupation choice. The estimation equation of the first objective is generally represented as follows:(1)\nResults and discussion: After controlling for a host of relevant socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, results from estimations (shown in Table II) based on the first research objective suggest a negative and significant effect of early labour market entry on future earnings. Particularly, based on results from the Heckman, propensity score matching and nearest neighbour matching models, entry into the labour force before the age of 12 reduces future earnings by about 15, 16 and 12 per cent, respectively. The Heckman model was estimated to account for the lack of information on wages for early labour market entrants who are either currently not participants of the labour force or have no reported income. The non-significant l suggest that problem of selectivity bias in deciding to work as a child or not is not an issue in this particular case. Estimations from the propensity score matching and nearest neighbour matching techniques which rely on a counterfactual framework to deal with the problem of selectivity bias also show a negative and negative and significant effect of child labour on future earnings.\nConclusion: The study aimed to answer two main research questions. The first research objective was to examine the impact of early labour market entry on future earnings, while the second objective is to determine the impact of early labour market entry on choice of occupation. Overall, the study finds a negative relationship between early labour market entry and future earnings. Specifically, the study provides evidence which indicates (on average) a 14.3 per cent[3] reduction in earnings of people who enter the labour force before the age of 12 years. These results are quite robust as estimations from Heckman model which accounts for self-selection and the matching techniques, which creates a counterfactual scenario, all point to similar results. With respect to the second research objective, the study finds that people who entered the labour force before the age of 12 years have increased odds of being in relatively low-skilled jobs in the future compared to being in technical and more professional jobs. However, findings from the study suggest that early labour market entry may have some positive implication in terms of acquiring skills through learning by doing, which therefore reduces the odds of being an unskilled worker compared to someone who entered the labour force after 12 years.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The prevalence of child labour continues to feature prominently on the agenda of many sub-Saharan African countries. The problem remains critical despite existing laws and other legislative instruments that have been put in place to address the situation. The purpose of this paper is to examine a critical consequence of child labour, that is, its effect on future earnings and occupational choice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The most recent round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey is used for this purpose. In addition to the Heckman model, the study employs propensity score and nearest neighbour matching techniques to account for the possible self-selection in engaging in child labour activities. Also, the multinomial logit model was employed to determine the choice of occupations of people who were engaged in child labour.\nFindings: Results indicate that early labour market entry significantly reduces future earnings, possibly due to lower human capital accumulation. These results remain robust with different estimators. Additionally, results from the second objective show that child labour increases the odds of choosing low-skilled occupations.\nOriginality/value: In Ghana, the negative consequences of child labour on educational attainment have been well documented. Less, if at all, studied are the long-term consequences of child labour, particularly on future economic status.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Changes in family dynamics predict purchase and consumption
|
[
"Family",
"Marketing",
"Food industry",
"Consumer psychology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The constantly changing world has had an impact on business, family, and government in a variety of ways. Hirschautt (2004) points out that:[...] if nothing else, the uncertainty in today's world reminds us to enjoy the company of family and friends, not just on special occasions, but on every possible occasion. Over the last several decades, the home has become a quick pit stop in a frantic family schedule. Today, however, more and more families are opting out of that hectic lifestyle, and one of the first things that they are reclaiming is the family meal.\nLiterature review: Most of the academic and trade literature has focused on convenience and demonstrating that consumers are trying to simplify their lives by either making simpler meals via fewer ingredients or eating away from home. However, an emerging trend seems to be eating more at home. The literature review documents the aforementioned changes, and the authors discuss how the changing family will move away from the kitchen table to areas throughout the house.\nWhat are we eating? Convenient goodies!: The time crunch has left families with more to accomplish in a day than time permits. One area in which families are multi-tasking in an effort to get all finished in a day's time is eating. The unfortunate result has been that family members eat together less often now than they do individually. A total of 50 percent of people eat while working, 42 percent eat while watching TV, and 19 percent eat in the car (10 percent - 15 percent of all meals are consumed in the car).Data indicate that the average family dinner has decreased from seven components to one to two components over the last 50 years. In fact, according to an unpublished National Panel Diary (NPD, 2003) report in 2003, an average lasagna recipe has reduced from 26 ingredients to nine ingredients while the average salad has shriveled from seven ingredients to bagged pre-washed salad containing one ingredient called lettuce. Now, 23 percent of consumers consider the best recipe to contain no more than three ingredients while 58 percent of consumers claim to only have a repertoire of eight recipes. Individuals do not purchase foods because these foods are the ones that they may ideally want for a meal. Instead, they purchase them for their convenience characteristic (AC Nielsen, 2000). If it is easy to throw together/heat, it is dinner, and desire for the product seems secondary.In addition, the percentage of new pacesetter brands offering convenience as a major benefit has increased by 25 percent in the last ten years. Nearly half of all leading brands now have products that offer convenience as a main benefit (IRI Times and Trends, 2000). As a result, food marketers who have responded to a desperate call for time-saving food products from consumers are making money. Pre-cut salads, refrigerated entrees, and breakfast bars are among the top selling and growth areas in the food industry (AC Nielsen, 2002).\nWhere we shop and eat: The rise of food service: In addition to the change in what we eat (i.e. more convenience), the evolution of where we eat and shop has changed. There are two key consequences associated with this issue: the shift away from eating at home and thus eating and spending more time and money at food service establishments, and the location at which a meal is consumed when eaten at home.As the time famine intensified, consumers relied more on prepared foods and the food service channel even though it often increased food costs. [Note: In an unpublished report for the Campbell Soup Company, Stanton and Kirschling (1985) predicted that the food service channel would overtake supermarket sales in the mid-1990s.] This trend was not just in traditional restaurants but especially in fast-food restaurants as more working females ate meals at work and did not have time to prepare meals for other family members (Stanton and Kirschling, 1985).Not only has the changing family affected the mix of eating at home versus eating away from home, but it has also had an influence on the amount of time and money consumers spend at the traditional supermarket. The old paradigm was based on keeping consumers in the store and getting them to \"shop the entire store\" by placing common purchased items such as milk and eggs in the back of the store. Long lines at check-out were tolerated by store management because the waiting period often led to unplanned sales near or around the checkout lines. Little to no industry-wide effort was made to speed time-starved consumers in and out of the store.Two ramifications resulted from this neglect of the time-starved consumer. The number of convenient stores and more convenient channels of distribution increased, and they expanded the number of product offerings. Convenience stores that once focused on tobacco, newspapers, and coffee, now sold both more grocery items (e.g., milk and eggs) and more prepared foods (e.g., sandwiches and frozen meals). At the same time, other outlets were capitalizing as they simplified the shopping effort by becoming one-stop shops (e.g., combining food and other goods into super-store formats - this is epitomized by the Wal-Mart SuperStore). This trend was equally prevalent in Europe as in the United States (AC Nielsen, 2004).Thus, the landscape of where consumers shop for foods that provide convenience as a main benefit has changed. From 2000 to 2003, including K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Target stores, family trips to dollar stores and superstores have increased markedly while voyages to the mass merchants and supermarkets have decreased significantly (AC Nielsen, 2003). So, people are shopping the more convenient food formats and the growth of the superstore has been quite dramatic.\nMethod: Female heads of household were surveyed via telephone interviews to identify the characteristics of how the modern family dines. The telephone interview was conducted by a commercial research organization and used random digit dialing methods to identify potential respondents. The personal telephone interview was conducted by trained interviewers provided by the research supplier. The respondents were screened to insure that the respondent was a head of household.\nDiscussion: Data revealed that families are reacting to time pressures in a way that changes the way they prepare foods while not affecting the end result. That is, in the end, we may not have an hour to prepare meals today, but families do prioritize eating together. Seventy-five percent of families eat as a family in the home five or more nights per week. In addition, 85 percent of those who eat together four nights a week or fewer claim that they would like to eat at home more often with their families:Dashboard dining - eating on the go or in a hurry - is on the decline because parents and children alike recognize the opportunity to spend time with the people who matter most in their lives. Plus, families are rediscovering all the benefits of dining at home (Hirschautt, 2004).From the most endorsed benefit to the least, spending quality time with family, spending less money, enjoying eating at home, eating healthier, greater control over family life quality, and feeling like a parent that is appropriately responsible were listed as benefits of eating at home (AFMA Press Release, 2004).Eating with an ear on the family chat, an eye on the TV, and a tooth on the meal\nImplications: Psychological benefits of preparing a family meal\nLimitations: This research is best described as exploratory in that it has, for the first time, documented the suspected migration from the dinner table to the home. While some evidence has been provided that people are eating more in the car, little has been revealed concerning in-home eating habits. By no means should this small sample of telephone interviews be taken as a final statement. Instead, this research is a clarion call for more intensive investigation into how in-home eating \"place\" migration should influence how we market food to these households. The authors believe that improvements can be made to the sample size and the depth of questioning as to how food choices are made in the context of food consumption location. Greater emphasis should be placed on a taxonomy of in-home eating locations and their relationship to food choice. Most importantly, the authors recognize the methodological implications of the study and would encourage further analysis of this emerging and important trend.\nConclusion: In sum, what has not changed is the realization that eating together is important. We have always known that eating together is an instrumental part of a healthy family. The difference is that, today, we are making it work even if it means making mealtime part of the daily multi-tasking ritual. Eating together while watching TV or completing homework may be better for family life quality than eating in shifts or grazing independently. The extent to which families actually make a point to eat meals together could be an invaluable and irreplaceable component of healthy family relations. Culture, economy, and society have changed and, after time for readjustment, people have again started ensuring that eating together occurs on a daily basis.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes that have taken place in the family and relate these changes to where and how people eat.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Female heads of household were surveyed via telephone interviews to identify the characteristics of how the modern family dines. The telephone interview was conducted by a commercial research organization and used random digit dialing methods to identify potential respondents. The personal telephone interview was conducted by trained interviewers provided by the research supplier. The respondents were screened to insure that the respondent was a head of household.\nFindings: - Data revealed that families are reacting to time pressures in a way that changes the way they prepare foods while not affecting the end result. Overall, 75 percent of families eat as a family in the home five or more nights per week. In addition, 85 percent of those who eat together four nights a week or fewer, claim they would like to eat at home more often with their families. Today, families are eating together, even if it means making mealtime part of the daily multi-tasking ritual. The extent to which families actually make a point to eat meals together could be an invaluable and irreplaceable component of healthy family relations. Culture, economy, and society have changed and people have again started ensuring that eating together occurs on a daily basis.\nOriginality/value: - The paper highlights how the changing role of the family can dramatically influence the food industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Relationship transparency for partnership enhancement: an intellectual capital perspective
|
[
"Relationship transparency",
"Partnership enhancement",
"Intellectual capital",
"Knowledge management",
"Case studies"
] |
[
{
"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 widely accepted that enhancing relationships with business partners is essential to business survival, growth and competitive advantage (Anderson and Narus, 1990; Geyskens et al., 1998; Parise and Casher, 2003). Although relationship transparency offers a potential way of enhancing relationships in business markets, it has received little attention in the literature (Eggert and Helm, 2003; Hultman and Axelsson, 2007). In this study, we argue that transparency of a firm's intangible knowledge resources can enable relationship transparency and enhance partnership. This view is supported by the current corporate practice of reporting information concerning management philosophy and processes, customer base and business collaboration, employees and their work-related knowledge, and innovation to enhance transparency, value and relationships with stakeholders. However, this information, which is scattered around firm's web-pages, annual reports, corporate reports and analyst reports, is mainly partial, discursive and lacks numerical detail and a generalised organising structure (Guthrie et al., 2006; Striukova et al., 2008). A framework, which can assist businesses to systematically report their intangibles to their partners is necessary. Thus, this study proposes to achieve relationship enhancement through making transparent to business partners the information of intellectual capital - the sum of all intangible knowledge resources a business can utilise for competitive advantage (Stewart, 1997; Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005).Eggert and Helm (2003) define relationship transparency as an individual's subjective perception of being informed about the relevant actions and properties of the other party in the interaction, and indicate that it involves giving information about important characteristics such as technical abilities and relationship atmosphere. Relationship atmosphere is the emotional settings of the relationship in which both parties interact (Hakansson, 1982; Hallen and Sandstrom, 1991; Sutton-Brady, 2001). Eggert and Helm suggest that, by better understanding the other party and its value creation, relationship transparency can minimise the need to search for better alternatives and contribute to satisfaction, relationship commitment, recommendation, and competitive advantage. Although they recognise the importance of relationship atmosphere to relationship transparency, they do not further discuss this in their study. They suggest the inclusion of relationship atmosphere in future studies particularly using in-depth case study research to better understand what information is relevant within specific customer-supplier contexts for improving transparency. In response to their appeal, this study attends to the provision of information concerning both important business characteristics and relationship atmosphere, as well as intangible knowledge resources used for developing and sustaining them for improving transparency. This study aims to answer the question: How does the transparency of intellectual capital information through intellectual capital reporting enable relationship transparency and enhance partnership? Even though intellectual capital (or intangible knowledge resources), in contrast to physical monetary capital or machinery, is the major asset of modern businesses and the key to competitiveness (Grant, 1996; Davenport and Prusak, 1998), intellectual capital information is still very lacking in most corporate communications with stakeholders. Therefore, disclosing how important business characteristics and relationship atmosphere are developed and sustained by intellectual capital can supplement information gaps about intellectual capital and give partners a holistic view of the focal business.Our study extends and contributes to the literature on relationship transparency by combining limited research on relationship transparency with intellectual capital theories and demonstrating how partnership can be enhanced through intellectual capital transparency enabled relationship transparency. In the rest of the paper, we introduce the concepts of relationship transparency and intellectual capital and propose the elements of intellectual capital transparency needed to make transparent intellectual capital information and enable relationship transparency. Next, the research method is described and a detailed case study presented. Finally, theoretical conclusions and managerial implications are drawn.\nLiterature review: relationship transparency and intellectual capital transparency: Relationship transparency\nResearch method: Single-case study design\nThree elements of intellectual capital transparency of the case company: The information perceived as relevant by partners\nConcluding remarks: This study has addressed the question of how intellectual capital transparency through intellectual capital reporting can enable relationship transparency and enhance partnership. Firstly, we propose three elements of intellectual capital transparency specific to enhancing partnership in the business-to-business context through combining limited research on relationship transparency with intellectual capital theories and showing the importance of intellectual capital information to the enabling of relationship transparency. Secondly, compared with value, cost, supply chain, technological and organisational transparency, we identify that intellectual capital transparency as a type of relationship transparency is more suitable for enabling holistic understanding through highlighting intellectual capital used for competition and improving relationship atmosphere, thereby enhancing partnership. Therefore, this study provides new insights. It complements Eggert and Helm's (2003) research on relationship transparency by demonstrating in depth what information is relevant in the contexts of specific customer-supplier relationships, confirms their results that it can enhance satisfaction and relationship commitment and extends the extant relationship transparency literature.Limitations and future research directions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to explore and illustrate how intellectual capital transparency through intellectual capital reporting can enable relationship transparency and enhance partnership.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A case study research method is adopted to explore and illustrate the key research issues on a single case.\nFindings: - Three elements of intellectual capital transparency specific for the enhancement of business-to-business partnerships are proposed: the transparency of a focal business vision, value proposition, strategies and supportive knowledge resources; the transparency of information perceived as being relevant by its partners; and the transparency of relationship atmosphere. Intellectual capital transparency through the suggested intellectual capital reporting framework is very suitable for enabling holistic understanding of and enhancing partnership.\nPractical implications: - Businesses may benefit from making transparent their intellectual capital information to key partners because this strategy demonstrates honesty, sincerity and professionalism, aside from enabling the transparency of their totality and relationship atmosphere. With no legal obligation, transparency of intellectual capital information should be highly valued by partners, because this enables partners to more fully understand their relationships and how they can benefit from them as well as demonstrating willingness to honestly face facts and keep important indicators on track. As a result, partners should be more satisfied with their partnerships, and more willing to continue and enhance them.\nOriginality/value: - This study proposes and illustrates how intellectual capital transparency can be used for partnership enhancement through combining limited research on relationship transparency with intellectual capital theories and thus extends the extant relationship transparency literature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Addressing Public Health informatics patient privacy concerns
|
[
"Information management",
"Information technology",
"Public health",
"Freedom of information",
"Informatics",
"Patient privacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Public Health strives to achieve social benefit for all members of society, and public trust is fundamental in that relationship. The growing volume, velocity and vulnerabilities of \"big data\" and linked data in today's wired world presents good as well as bad potentials as Public Health enters a new era of information technology. In this paper, we describe the nature of health record researchers; recent privacy breaches that reveal inadequacies in current practice; proposed courses of action to improve a legal and administrative framework that balances legitimate public access to information against individual rights and expectations of privacy protection; several different approaches to establishing an effective operational framework; and an outline of what may be needed to sustain a dynamic system which undoubtedly will be challenged by future technological developments.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review stakeholder perspectives and provide a framework for improving governance in health data stewardship. Patients may wish to view their own lab results or clinical records, but others (notably academics, journalists and lawyers) tend to want scores of patient records in their search for patterns or trends. Public Health informatics capabilities are growing in scope and speed as clinical information systems, health information exchange networks and other potential database linkages enable more access to healthcare data. This change facilitates novel service improvements, but also raises new personal privacy protection issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper summarizes a panel session discussion from the 2015 Information Technology and Communication in Health biennial international conference. The perspectives of health service research, journalism, Public Health informatics and privacy protection were represented.\nFindings: In North America, an expectation of personal privacy exists as a quasi-constitutional right. Individuals should be allowed to control the amount of information shared about them, and in particular the public expects that details of their personal healthcare data are protected. This is supported by laws, regulations and administrative structures; however, there are fundamental differences between the approaches taken in Canada and in the USA. In both countries, population and Public Health has wide powers to collect data and share it appropriately in order to accomplish a social good. A recent report issued by the British Columbia Information and Privacy Commissioner, and a recent story issued by the Bloomberg News service, highlight ways in which laws and regulations have not kept pace with advances in technology. Changes are needed to enable population and Public Health agencies to protect confidential personal information while still being able to comply with legitimate requests for data by researchers, policy makers and the public at large.\nOriginality/value: Similarities and differences in approach, gaps, current issues and recommendations of several countries were revealed in a conference session. Those concepts and the likelihood of ensuing legislative changes directly impact healthcare organizations' patients and leadership.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Institutional knowledge: Acquisition, assimilation and exploitation in internationalisation
|
[
"Learning",
"Knowledge management",
"Internationalization",
"Market entry"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Institutional differences between countries impact economic growth and create obstacles to internationalisation (Globerman and Shapiro, 2002) and international marketing efforts. Institutional knowledge, such as knowledge of laws and regulations (Eriksson et al., 1997), and a firm's ability to learn about, understand and address the challenges of operating in multiple institutional environments (Drori et al., 2009), have been shown to be essential for successful internationalisation yet rarely have studies focused on the acquisition of this knowledge (De Clerq et al., 2012).\n2. Institutional theory and learning processes: Institutional theory is concerned with how firms and groups secure their positions and legitimacy, by conforming to the rules and norms of the institutional environments in which they operate (Scott, 2007). The term \"institutions\" describes the formal and informal rules, shared interactions, and taken-for-granted assumptions which form structures and processes which may become institutionalised within corporate cultures, shared belief systems and political processes. Institutional theory explains how those activities are managed and perpetuated over time (Oliver, 1997), based upon three pillars identified by Scott (2007). The regulatory pillar, is based upon regulations and sanctions which provide the rules of the game, monitoring and enforcement processes and which encourage conformity. The normative pillar is concerned with how institutions guide the models of organisational and individual behaviour and interaction, while the third, cognitive pillar represents the models of individual behaviour which are gradually and subjectively developed, based upon socially constructed rules and meanings which limit actions and beliefs (Scott, 2007).\n3. Research methods: The objective of this research was to gain a deeper understanding of the acquisition, assimilation and exploitation of institutional knowledge and learning activities of firms during their internationalisation processes.\n4. Findings and discussion: International activity by firm type\n5. Conclusions: This study contributes to our understanding of the institutional knowledge learning process in internationalisation in a number of different ways. First, it presents a new conceptual framework for institutional learning which seeks to move from the empirical data to a higher level of abstraction and conceptualisation of various aspects of the process. It also reflects the dynamic nature of institutional knowledge, including the iterative loops required as firms determine, source, access and incorporate new knowledge required to address new regulatory regimens. Even though some parts of the framework are not unexpected or may be taken for granted, the model points to the magnitude of the institutional knowledge acquisition, assimilation and exploitation process needed for successful internationalisation. The elements of each step in this process are obviously complex and each must be successfully completed before new knowledge can be assimilated with other elements, firms' absorptive capacity increased and learning exploited successfully. This framework has, however, been shown clearly to propel a range of different service, manufacturing and combination firms within the pharmaceutical sector to internationalise successfully in more than 50 different markets. While the focus on a single sector in this study could be considered a limitation, the findings may, nevertheless, be generalisable to other knowledge-intensive or highly regulated industrial sectors, born-global SMEs and MNEs.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Rarely have studies on the acquisition of knowledge in internationalisation focused on institutional knowledge. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to investigate the acquisition of this knowledge, and its assimilation and exploitation processes in internationalisation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper utilises ten longitudinal revelatory case studies built from multiple semi-structured interviews conducted with three different firm types of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) in the pharmaceutical industry and secondary documents to which the researchers obtained proprietary access.\nFindings: The study enhances the conceptual understanding of the institutional learning process in internationalisation by, for the first time, developing a framework to characterise this process. The study explores and identifies multiple types of institutional knowledge required, the sequencing of their acquisition, sources and learning methods utilised. It also discusses transferability of this learning across foreign markets and firms' absorptive capacity for that knowledge. Regulatory-specific product knowledge, found to be the most important type required, appeared to affect significantly both market selection and mode of entry, and when acquired insufficiently, prevented internationalisation.\nResearch limitations/implications: While the sample size is relatively small, and sector-specific, the findings were consistent across all the SME firms and firm types. They may also be generalisable to other sectors, firm sizes such as MNEs and types, particularly those which are knowledge-based or highly regulated, given that similar institutional knowledge and processes of acquisition are necessary for firms of all sizes in internationalisation.\nPractical implications: International marketing managers will gain valuable insights, based on a framework proven to propel firms to successful internationalisation, upon how to plan, organise, manage and match their institutional knowledge-seeking and learning activities with their firms' internal capabilities, staffing and other resources in an effective and timely manner.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the conceptual understanding of the institutional knowledge learning process in the internationalisation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The relationship between non-audit fees and audit quality: dealing with the endogeneity issue
|
[
"Earnings management",
"Audit quality",
"Auditor independence",
"Non-audit services",
"Financial reporting quality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This research studies the effects of the provision of non-audit services (NAS) on audit quality by considering audit fees, non-audit fees, and abnormal accruals simultaneously in a system of three equations. Recent studies have explored the relations between these variables separately, not accounting for simultaneous determination of the firm's financial reporting and its decisions to purchase services from auditors. Indeed, this is the case in the studies by Frankel et al. (2002) and Ashbaugh et al. (2003), who ignore this endogeneity issue as they test the relation between fees and financial reporting.\n2. Literature review and hypothesis: Conscious bias toward an audit client is consistent with expectations of agency problem and economic bonding between an auditor and client. An auditor worried about the potential loss of fee income is less likely to challenge management's accounting choices if termination of audit contract makes it less likely the auditor will be hired to provide NAS.\n3. Research design modeling the joint determination: 3.1. System of regression equations\n4. Model specification and variables: In this section we discuss the control variables we expect to have a direct influence on abnormal accruals, non-audit, and audit fees.\n5. Data: We examine the interrelationships among audit and non-audit fees, and financial reporting quality by means of a system of simultaneous equations for the period 2005-2010. The fees data (audit and consultancy), audit firm, and audit opinion were hand collected from footnotes disclosed in the annual financial reports of listed companies in Spain for the aforementioned period. We exclude statements filed by financial institutions because of the unique procedures required to estimate discretionary accruals for these firms; indeed, banking companies are typically excluded from similar audit studies. The final sample consists of 444 firm-year observations from 2005 to 2010 of firms belonging to the four industries previously mentioned.\n6. Results: The SURE-regression results of the system of simultaneous equations and single-equation (OLS) estimates are reported in Tables II-IV. Table II presents the results of the abnormal accrual model (4) using both single-equation and simultaneous-equation specifications. According to Hausman endogeneity test results, at a 1 percent level is rejected the exogeneity null hypothesis for the abnormal accrual equation. Consequently in this equation the variables LNAF and LAF are endogenous and OLS coefficients are biased and inconsistent.\n7. Summary and conclusions: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between non-audit fees and audit quality while dealing with the joint determination of these two variables and audit fees. To this end, the SURE-regression estimation method is applied and abnormal accruals are taken as a proxy for audit quality. The use of simultaneous equations to model the auditor-client relation allows us to shape more fully the theoretical relations between the three variables.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the provision of non-audit services (NAS) by public accounting firms undermines audit quality. The study addresses this question by testing for an association between the provision of consulting services and auditor independence in listed companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors study if the magnitude of non-audit fees explains variations in earnings management by looking at the joint determination of non-audit fees, audit fees, and abnormal accruals using the SURE-regression estimation method.\nFindings: Evidence from tested models suggests that audit services quality is uncompromised by the provision of NAS. In other words, high non-audit fees do not necessarily result in poor quality financial reporting.\nResearch limitations/implications: A different research methodology and a different sample (e.g. non-listed companies) may lead to differing results. As the paper analyses only one country, generalizability of the results might be a limitation. There is no need to increase legal restrictions on the provision of consulting services by public accounting firms in order to better safeguard audit quality.\nPractical implications: Consulting clients may be more confident to hire both audit and NAS with the same firm and can make a case before the general Shareholders' meeting. By providing both audit and NAS, consulting firms obtain knowledge spillovers and synergies while appealing highly qualified professionals.\nOriginality/value: The use of simultaneous equations (SURE-regression) to establish the auditor-client relation allows us to better model theoretical relations between audit fees, non-audit fees, and abnormal accruals. Likewise, joint modeling takes account of correlations between the error terms of the individual models, yielding more efficient estimates than ordinary least squares. Performing this analysis in a non-Anglo-American country with low litigation risk is also a valuable contribution to extant literature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Exploring the bank selection criteria in India: scale development and validation
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Scale development",
"Validation",
"Customers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Banks are beginning to realize that customer retention provides a sustainable and competitive advantage that is not easily replicated by its competitors. On the other hand, today's customers, who are often aware and educated consumers, are not only apprehensive about the services and products, but also interested in how banks work and behave. With this consumer demand and market need, banks, in addition to implementing customer retention, are also positioning their strategies toward determining factors influencing consumer's decision on who to bank with. There are several examples where organizations are spending billions of pounds on sponsorships, corporate advertising and philanthropic and community involvement activities to attract consumers (Smith and Stodghill, 1994; Karaosmanoglu and Melewar, 2006). Hence, researchers have extensively studied the issue as to \"How customers select banks\" (see Anderson et al., 1976; Kaynak and Yavas, 1985; Boyd et al., 1994; Holstius and Kaynak, 1995; Metawa and Almossawi, 1998). Investigating such information will facilitate banks to devise appropriate marketing strategies that are desirable to attract and retain their customers (Kaynak and Kucukemiroglu, 1992).\nBackground and review of literature: The Indian banking industry is experiencing transformation in terms of automation and an adoption of technology. The private sector banks, which inherited subsistence in the last decade, have acquired a substantial market share, whereas government-owned banks are suffering a loss of market share to these new banks (Lenka et al., 2010). Thus, it has become imperative for banks to recognize their customers' preferences and protect their existing client base from migration. Also in India, where banks explore issues that include issues such as cultural differences, demographics, affordability and IT penetration, there is a necessity for an extended study on bank selection attributes. With such escalating competition in the banking industry, it is vital for banks to understand how customers select a bank that suits them, as only then the marketing efforts will enhance the client base (Lenka et al., 2010). On the other hand, inappropriate recognition of the right determinants of the bank selection criteria of customers could result in poor marketing efforts (Zeithaml et al., 1990). The present research also stems from the assertion that with the significance of international marketing in the global market scenario (Balabanis and Diamantopoulos, 2004; Rogers et al., 2005), the emergence of the \"Global Village\" phenomenon (Keegan and Green, 2005) and the adoption of information technology around the globe (Levitt, 1993; Wan et al., 2005), insights and adaptation of global customer buying behavior and customers' eventual decisions in selecting banking services are not an option but a necessity for all financial service providers (Kotler, 2000). And in the face of a global marketing environment, there is a great need to understand the determining factors entailing consumers' selection of banks (Laroche et al., 1986; Thwaites and Vere, 1995; Devlin, 2002; Devlin and Gerrard, 2004; Blankson et al., 2009).\nResearch methods: In this study, we employed the well-accepted scale development procedure first presented by Churchill (1979) and subsequently refined by Bentler and Bonett (1980), Anderson and Gerbing (1982) and Bagozzi et al. (1991). The scale development procedure is depicted in Figure 1, adopted from Arnold and Reynolds (2003). The procedure employed in this research included item generation and selection, scale refinement (pilot testing and scale purification) and scale validation. A concise explanation of each of these elements is given in the subsequent sections.\nDiscussion and managerial implications: The purpose of this research was to identify the key bank patronage attributes considered in choosing a particular bank and to develop a reliable and easy-to-administer scale that captures the complete dimensionality of selection criteria from a customer-based perspective. Drawing on a sample of 683 respondents, a 29-item scale has been developed to measure bank the selection criteria of customers. The present scale distinguished itself in many ways. First, the study started by creating a pool of statements used by customers in their selection and evaluation of banks. Next, the statements were amalgamated and then summarized to develop key determining factors. The findings revealed that selection criteria had been conceptualized and appraised as a seven-dimensional construct: service delivery, convenience, referrals and incentives, bank reputation, corporal efficiency, cost/price and core banking. This scale shows evidence of internal consistency and maintains reliability across different samples. Psychometrically, this scale outshined all the reliability and validity tests. Therefore, the scale is capable of generic measurement and can be employed by a wide range of financial service providers in different countries.\nImplications for the marketing theory and practice: From the theoretical perspective, our work advances the current knowledge on the utility of a validated tool in measuring the customers' decision process when choosing a bank. Based on the conceptual coherences enveloping the constructs, reliability and validity measures, it is believed that this mechanism is the preliminary point toward a more vigorous operational tool. Consequently, this valid and reliable scale would bring standardization to the research in this field. Second, researchers may use this scale to assess the commonly used criteria for measuring bank patronage in other developing countries. With its consistent use, the scale evaluated in the present study can facilitate comparisons of results yielded by several studies and can provide some valuable insights to the bank selection criteria literature. Moreover, the instrument can be customized to a variety of situations as Rogers et al. (2005) recommended that future studies should investigate the benefits of standardization vs adaptation. Moreover, the present study augmented the limited research body of research on the selection criteria customers use when choosing a bank in developing countries. In this respect, this research revealed the significance of standardization in banks' marketing policies in economies characterized by open/liberalized market and competition. Finally, in future studies, the dimensions pertaining to demographics and psychographics employed in this work can be utilized as attributes of consumer attitudes toward their choice decisions of a bank.\nLimitations and avenues for further research: Before the conclusion, certain limitations must be discussed that imply future research directions. In discussing these limitations, we developed a scale for a developing country (i.e. specific to an Indian population). The results may vary due to cultural and economic differences, particularly in terms of developed countries. Therefore, future research should be conducted for the purpose of validating this scale in developed countries in order to identify national differences. Additionally, the cross-national study can be undertaken in order to compare the factors used by consumers of different segments in developed and developing countries regarding the decisions they make (Blankson et al., 2009). Second, the scale is validated on banking customers. It would be a worthwhile task to replicate the current research with consumers of other banking segments, such as wholesale and retail banking as well as students, and business firms' cohorts. Furthermore, investigation into the reasons for selecting foreign or Islamic banks was omitted because the scope of the current exploratory research was limited to the public and private sector banks. Consequently, the results would generally be applicable to the customers of public and private sector banks only. Foreign banks have been excluded from the purview because of the limited availability of their branches in the province. One clear avenue for future research is to incorporate religious factors, such as Shari'a compliance or Islamic banking into the scale. There has been considerable discussion, recently, concerning religious reasons for selecting Islamic or conventional banks (Erol et al., 1990; Gerrard and Barton Cunningham, 1997; Metawa and Almossawi, 1998; Al-Ajmi et al., 2009; Al-Tamimi et al., 2009; Ullah and Lee, 2012). Therefore, the application of an additional scale that incorporates the religious aspects of a bank's attributes would be beneficial. Focus of future research in this field should be on exploring the leading factors of prompting customers to switch to other banks and thereby shift to the competitors.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop, measure and empirically validate a scale that captures the full dimensionality of selection attributes considered by customers when choosing a bank.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Focus group interviews were conducted and a well-structured questionnaire was designed. The validity of this scale was tested in accordance with the psychometric scale development procedure.\nFindings: Contrary to some assertions in past literature, the results suggested service delivery and cost/price as among the most important determinants of the bank selection decisions of consumers.\nPractical implications: The practical implications drawn from this study involve the seven constructs which could be adopted by the bank managers, advertising executives and marketing experts in providing good quality services resulting in overall higher levels of customer satisfaction. These decision makers can apply the constructs from the study to identify factors most appealing to both potential and existing customers and build up effective marketing strategies to attract new customers and retain existing ones.\nOriginality/value: This research paper signifies the leading studies for advancing a validated tool to measure the customers' selection decisions for banks. As a result, this valid and reliable scale would bring standardization to research conducted in the field of bank selection attributes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Emerging technology sustainability
|
[
"Knowledge transfer",
"Innovation",
"Sustainable development",
"High-tech innovation",
"Chemical industries",
"R&D management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For the prior century, technology alone was the driving force for invention and application of that invention. Today, new terms are associated with technology and whether they will be adopted or accepted. One of these is sustainability. Terms related to sustainability include renewable materials and energy and \"green\" products, materials, processes, etc. In addition, another important, relatively new entity is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO is a critical factor in any discussion related to emerging technology because before a new material/technology can become internationally accepted in our marketplaces, the procedure/company/process must be ISO approved. ISO has procedures related to the environment, customer, production, etc.\nSustainability: The classical Greek elements earth, air, fire and water can act as a brief guide to describe sustainability. These four elements represent critical aspects of global sustainability. Sustainability is not new but within the past decade or two has been thrust forward as a critical element. Management of these elements will determine the suitability of human life as we currently know it.\nBusiness sustainability: We normally look at sustainability from solely a \"natural\" prospective. Next, we will briefly focus on sustainability from a business point of view.\nManaging sustainability: We now move towards managing sustainability. The stakeholders are many. We contribute by influencing legislation, voting, membership in groups, etc. We also contribute through recycling, use of reduced energy consuming transportation, lights, appliances, etc. Sociological and psychological components are also important.\nPuzzle pieces: Some pieces of the global sustainability puzzle are in place. These pieces might give us some idea of how to proceed in developing other pieces and eventually we will need the entire puzzle to be completed. One of these pieces involves developing international standards for industry. The organization is known as the ISO. ISO currently has over 100 member nations, including most of the first and second world nations. ISO acts as a global standardizing \"tool\" with respect to business and industry (Memili and Welsh, 2012). While volunteer, it has the power of requiring member nations to abide by ISO standards to do business with member countries. Different ISO procedures deal with varying practices. For instance, the ISO 9000 series deals with product development sequences from strategic planning to customer service. ISO 14000 is a series of standards intended to help manage the impact of manufactured materials from \"cradle to grave\" emphasizing the impact of products, operations, and services on the environment (Carraher and Carraher, 1996a, 1996b).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine sustainability with an emphasis on China.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper examines previous research on sustainability and polymer chemistry to provide a better understanding of the importance of sustainability and technology in China.\nFindings: There are many different perspectives when it comes to sustainability and that multiple stakeholders need to be considered when examining sustainability.\nOriginality/value: As the longest serving member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) accreditation committee and a Fellow of the ACS, the perspective on which this paper is based comes from over 1,000 publications and over 45 years of active research in the sciences and technology.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Customer experience formation in today's service landscape
|
[
"Individual level",
"Systematic literature review",
"Contextual lens",
"Customer experience formation",
"Service landscape"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Interest in customer experience (CX) has increased exponentially over the past decades among service researchers and practitioners. Many researchers now consider CX to be a key research priority in the contemporary service and marketing literature (Jaakkola et al., 2015). Likewise, managers recognize the need to invest in CX strategies across offerings, categories, and channels to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving service landscape (Ostrom et al., 2015). Zomerdijk and Voss (2010) observe that, \"increasingly, many service organizations are placing the customer experience at the core of the service offering\" (p. 67). Meaningful CXs play a pivotal role in enhancing a firm's competitive advantage (McColl-Kennedy et al., 2015b) and engendering increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and firm revenue (Klaus and Maklan, 2012), essentially forming the fundamental premise of all business (Helkkula, 2011).\n2. CX and CXF: Service researchers often use the terms CX and service experience interchangeably (Jaakkola et al., 2015). For clarity, this study will only use CX to depict customers' experiences with service.\n3. Methodology: This study employs a systematic search and reviewing process to identify the relevant literature on CXF. A systematic review synthesizes and categorizes research findings in a transparent, replicable, and orderly manner to increase the understanding of a phenomenon (Lightfoot et al., 2013).\n4. Findings: 4.1 CXF at the individual level\n5. Discussion: This study aimed to review CXF by first identifying and analyzing service researchers' different approaches to the phenomenon, including the underpinning theories.\n6. CXF in today's service landscape: The reviewed approaches come with distinct opportunities and challenges in accurately portraying CXF. Given their specific foci, however, some approaches may be better suited for illustrating the complexities of CXF, especially in today's multifaceted and rapidly evolving service settings. As Ostrom et al. (2015) contend, the service field has undergone immense and radical change over past decades, and many trends are transforming the ways in which companies provide services and customers serve themselves.\n7. Conclusion: 7.1 Theoretical contributions and limitations\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review customer experience formation (CXF) by first locating and analyzing how researchers approach CXF in the service literature and the theoretical underpinnings of these approaches, and then assessing which approaches are best suited for understanding, facilitating, and examining CXF in today's service landscape.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study systematically reviews 163 articles published between 1998 and 2015 in the service field.\nFindings: This study illustrates how researchers approach CXF on the individual level by applying stimulus- interaction- or sense-making-based perspectives. These reflect researchers' theoretical underpinnings for how individuals realize the customer experience within environmental, social, and temporal contexts through intermediation. Researchers further apply contextual lenses, including the dyadic and service- or customer-ecosystem lenses, which reflect their theoretical underpinnings for explaining how various actor constellations and contextual boundaries frame individual-level CXF. Finally, this study shows why the sense-making-based perspective, together with a service- or customer-ecosystem lens, is particularly suitable for approaching complex CXF in today's service settings.\nResearch limitations/implications: To advance theory, researchers should choose the approaches resonant with their research problem and worldview but also consider that today's complex service landscape favors holistic and systemic approaches over atomistic and dyadic ones.\nPractical implications: This study provides managers with recommendations for understanding, facilitating, and evaluating contemporary CXF.\nOriginality/value: This study advances the understanding of CXF by systematically reviewing its multiple layers, approaches, and dimensions and the opportunities and challenges of each approach.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Cybersecurity and information security - what goes where?
|
[
"Information security",
"Boards of directors",
"Cybersecurity",
"Cyber security governance",
"Information security governance",
"ISO 27032"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: It is clear from newspaper reports, academic articles, security-related conference proceedings and many other studies that cyber space, and specifically cybersecurity, is a topic currently attracting considerable interest and attention over a wide spectrum of stakeholders. It is a topic growing in importance and significance month by month, with ever-expanding consequences and impact. The stakeholders cover the full spectrum - from the ordinary citizen accessing his or her online banking site - to the boards of directors (BoDs) of companies. Such boards are realizing more and more that protecting their respective companies in cyber space is a definite corporate governance responsibility, and consequently they are accountable for the related cyber risks in their companies, together with the associated subsequent legal implications for possible negligence and/or ignorance.\n2. Cybersecurity is fully contained in information security: As stated, the basis of our argument stems from the following two reputable sources:\n3. Cybersecurity governance is fully contained in information security governance: The ISACA Study Guide, referred to in Section 2, states: \"Information security deals with information, regardless of its format--it encompasses paper documents, digital and intellectual property in people's minds and verbal or visual communications.\"\n4. Cybersecurity accountabilities and responsibilities: The definitions and explanations of cybersecurity and cybersecurity governance argued above allow us to present cybersecurity to executive management from the following point of view:\n5. Re-directing the message to boards of directors: The message to CIOs and information security managers is, therefore, as follows:\n6. Conclusion: BoDs and executive management are responsible and accountable for the well-being of any modern organization. As most, if not all, organizations are totally dependent on the confidentiality, integrity and availability of their information assets, information security plays a critical role in the well-being of such an organization; therefore, information security governance has grown to become a definite mandate of BoDs. Currently, most organizations utilize cyber space for critical business processes, and the internet has become an integral link in modern information systems.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to define cybersecurity and cybersecurity governance in simplified terms - to explain to the boards of directors and executive management their responsibilities and accountabilities in this regard.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The primary research methodology utilized in this paper is desk research. A literature study is followed by some discussion in terms of the contribution made.\nFindings: Clearly define the relationship between cybersecurity and information security, especially from a governance perspective.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper is based predominantly on an ISO standard.\nOriginality/value: The simplification of terminology to be used in the governance of cybersecurity, together with assistance to the guiding of boards of directors regarding their duties and responsibilities as far as cybersecurity is concerned.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A cross-cultural perspective on relational exchange
|
[
"Cross-cultural",
"Buyer-supplier relationships",
"Relational norms"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, international business-to-business (B2B) relationships have become increasingly crucial. Relationships with emerging markets are of particular interest because their high growth rate and unexploited market potential can have a significant impact on the global economy (Biggeman and Fam, 2011). Relational norms play a central part in relational exchange as a regulator of business partners' behavior, but normative expectations may differ between cross-cultural business partners. While some cross-cultural research related to buyer-supplier relationships in the emerging and transitional markets context has been carried out (Ashnai et al., 2009; Hewett and Krasnikov, 2016; Barnes et al., 2015; Voldnes et al., 2012; Lin and Germain, 1999), there is little research exploring the particularly relational norms of this interesting context. This study explores what Russian and Finnish managers consider to be the most important aspects in a relational exchange and how they evaluate the relational exchange of their domestic and foreign business partners.\n2. Theoretical background: Relational exchange theory (Macneil, 1980) differentiates discrete transactions from relationship-based exchanges. Discrete transactions exchange money for measurable commodities (Macneil, 1980; Dwyer et al., 1987). Relational exchange expects inter-firm business partners to engage in mutually satisfying social exchanges in long-term exchange relationships that transcend mere transactions (Viio and Gronroos, 2016). As a regulator of business partners' behavior, relational norms are crucial in relational exchange, and therefore, the theoretical framework of this study focuses on those norms.\n3. Methodology: The repertory grid method chosen for this study was appropriate for the research topic, the perceptions of relational aspects because it is independent of the researcher's own \"assumptions about what might be important issues in the eyes of the interviewee\" (Bachmann, 2011, p. 132). Thus, it is highly recommended for cross-cultural studies to prevent possible biases caused by ethnocentrism.\n4. Findings: A total of 535 personal constructs constituting a difference between a well-functioning relationship and a poorly functioning relationship were elicited from 22 interviewees. These constructs were first written by the interviewer and checked with the interviewee at the end of each interview; therefore, the interviewee named and approved the constructs. This arrangement reduced possible biases because of the researcher's own subjective views on the analysis of the results. The number of constructs elicited from each participant varied from 11 to 45, and the mean was 24 constructs (see an illustrative example with 34 constructs in Appendix 2). These constructs were personal, representing single individuals' perceptions of relational exchange. Please note that, despite the numerical ratings, the grids are not mathematically combinable; only the content analysis technique is a valid analysis method for multiple grids of many individuals (Easterby-Smith et al., 1996; a method description Jankowicz, 2013).\n5. Discussion: This study answered several questions. First, it showed how the importance of relational aspects differed between cross-cultural business partners. Second, it identified in which relational aspects the differences between well- and poorly functioning relationships were the highest. Finally, it demonstrated how Russians and Finns viewed well-functioning and poorly functioning relationships with domestic partners differently than with foreign partners.\n6. Contributions, implications, limitations and future research: This study contributes to the literature on relational exchange in cross-cultural settings in several ways. First, as the principal theoretical implication, it argues that relational norms of flexibility, information exchange, long-term orientation, mutuality and solidarity (Macneil, 1980; Heide and John, 1992; Artz, 1999; Liu et al., 2009) can be equally important for business partners of dissimilar cultural backgrounds. Second, it claims that the importance of a business partner's ability can be culturally dependent and sharing the same cultural background might have a negative effect on business relations. Third, as a methodological contribution, it shows how the repertory grid method can be utilized for studying perceptions of relational norms. Finally, as a managerial implication, this study reveals what relational norms, long-term orientation and mutuality (especially mutual targets and mutual understanding) should be focused on to build and maintain cross-cultural business relationships.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine relational norms in cross-cultural business settings. Cross-cultural business partners may differ in their normative orientations toward relational exchange. Owing to the high extent of international trade, there is a need for developing a more nuanced understanding of cross-cultural relational exchange.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The repertory grid method was used to elicit the personal constructs characterizing the perceptions of business-to-business (B2B) relational exchange for 22 Russian and Finnish managers. These items were further categorized into categories of relational elements drawn from relational exchange literature using a content analysis. Then, the category means of scored importance and scored evaluations of domestic and foreign business partners were tested statistically.\nFindings: Relational norms of flexibility, information exchange, long-term orientation, mutuality and solidarity were equally important to both Russian and Finnish managers. The importance of a business partner's ability seems to be culturally dependent. Sharing the same cultural background might have an adverse effect when evaluating poorly functioning business relations.\nResearch limitations/implications: The validity of these findings is limited to this context and material. Future research should repeat cross-cultural comparisons of the relational norms with more data and other nationalities.\nPractical implications: Firms should focus on long-term orientation and mutual targets to form well-functioning cross-cultural business relationships.\nOriginality/value: This study provides new knowledge into B2B marketing literature by revealing the role of relational norms, business partner's ability and shared cultural background on functionality of cross-cultural business relations. It also demonstrates the use of the repertory grid method in studying perceptions of relational norms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Assessing the essential pre-conditions of an authentic sustainability curriculum
|
[
"Economic growth",
"Sustainability education",
"Authenticity in higher education",
"Ethics in higher education",
"Mindfulness in higher education",
"Neoliberal ideals"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In higher education (HE) literature the adjective \"authentic\" occurs in various contexts including knowledge construction and academic performance (Newmann et al., 1996), assessment (Bosco and Ferns, 2014), teaching science (Braund and Reiss, 2006), students' scientific inquiry (Hume and Coll, 2010) or problem-based learning (PBL) (Dobson and Bland Tomkinson, 2012), to mention a few, and typically describes correspondence approaches (Splitter, 2009) where students are confronted with tasks resembling real life situations. The authentic character of the teacher and students has also been subject of enquiry (Cranton, 2001; Laursen, 2005; Chickering, 2006; Kreber, 2013b; Bialystok, 2015). According to Kreber, authentically engaging in the Science of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) \"[...] means to act in the important interests of students by helping them grow into their own authenticity\". She views authenticity of a person as something necessarily encompassing qualities such as responsibility, compassion, reciprocity, placing public good above self-interest and acting ethically (Kreber, 2013a). Several authors reflected on the authentic character of teachers underlining the importance of being a role model for students (Dawe et al., 2005; Lovren, 2017; Shephard, 2008; Cavallaro et al., 2017).\nWhy these three points?: The consumer paradigm is built on the dark aspects of human nature such as greed, possessiveness, selfishness, vanity, cut-throat competitiveness and moral relativism (Fromm, 2013). As these emotional forces are largely driven by the subconscious, once unleashed, the individual is a perfect target of the manipulative forces of agressive advertising of commodities or ideologies. By the time a graduate leaves the neoliberal higher education institution (HEI), these ideologies might already have become the Scheinian \"shared assumptions\" that operate \"outside of awareness\" (Schein, 2012, p. 12). High levels of mindfulness (reached through mindfulness practice) create an opportunity to realize how the self becomes identified (Grabovac et al., 2011) with cravings, desires, emotions, beliefs, compulsions and inner forcess that need to be harnessed to be able to steer the consumer towards ever-increasing levels of consumption. This realization brings about the possibility of detachement which in turn can lead to inner transformation and a new realization of what one's true/authentic self is (Bodhi, 2011).\nThe problem of growth: Peer-reviewed articles promoting the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) through Education for Sustainable Development in higher education offer a lot of valuable ideas (e.g. PBL, community service-learning, participatory action-research) worth being integrated into an ASC. Strangely, however, they fail to critically reflect on SDGs, especially SDG 8 which promotes \"sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth\" (UN, 2018). Constant economic growth still forms the basis of neoliberal capitalism. Washington and Kopnina are quite explicit about it, \"The insanity and unsustainability of endless economic growth is a critical reality that society must acknowledge and discuss.\" (Washington and Kopnina, 2018, p. 62). Since \"Limits to growth\" was published (Meadows et al., 1972) and even before it (Carson, 1962; Hardin, 1968), many researchers and scientists have tried to call humanity's attention to the unviability of limitless growth (Capra, 1983; Costanza and Daly, 1987; Scitovsky, 1992; Brown et al., 2011; Meadows and Randers, 2012; Dietz and O'Neill, 2013; Eriksen and Schober, 2018; Ardichvili, 2012). There is scientific consensus on this issue today (Kendall, 2000; Ripple et al., 2017). All that said, it is hard to believe that in Goal 8 of the UN's set of SDGs \"sustainable economic growth\", that is, business as usual is promoted (UN, 2018).\nThe problem of neoliberal ideals: There have been a lot of critical voices in connection with neoliberalism's impact on HE in recent years (Giroux and Giroux, 2004, 2009; Saunders, 2010; Washburn, 2008; Taylor, 2017; Cannella and Koro-Ljungberg, 2017; Webb, 2018). Huckle and Wals warns, \"Educational institutions have largely given up 'training people capable of thinking about important political, environmental, economic and social issues of global order' and reflecting and acting on radical alternatives.\" (Huckle and Wals, 2015, p. 493). Comparing neoliberal and public education in the US Baltodano remarks \"[...] neoliberalism is training students to become docile citizens\". (Baltodano, 2012, p. 490). An ASC should be able to answer questions:\nTheoretical and methodological underpinnings of a learning outcome framework for authentic sustainability curriculum: Emancipation, instrumentalism and transformation\nEmpirical research: Research arrangements, instrument and goals\nQuantitative findings: Figure 1 shows the relationship between categories of sustainability and mindfulness and the distribution of mindfulness categories across sustainability categories. The Chi2 proved that at 5 per cent level of significance that relative frequency of \"witness\" was higher in the \"change lifestyle\" category and relatively lower in the other two sustainability categories. The frequency of categories \"never\" and \"thinking\" was relatively higher in the categories of \"future generations\" and \"keep lifestyle\" compared to the category \"change lifestyle\"/Chi2(4) = 10.34; p = 0.035/. These results support earlier research linking mindfulness with sustainable thinking and behaviour (Brown and Kasser, 2005; Amel et al., 2009; Sol and Wals, 2015; Patel and Holm, 2017; Lengyel, 2018; Wamsler, 2018).\nHow do the five points of authentic minimum appear in the answers?: AM1: 26 per cent of the subsample were coded as \"witness\", a phrase often used in mindfulness literature to distinguish mindful presence from habitual thinking, rumination, or future speculation (Kabat-Zinn, 1995; Siegel et al., 2009). Quantitative results support earlier research proving that mindfulness can be an effective antidote of consumerism, more mindful students were more likely to suggest a change in consumer lifestyle (transformation).\nConclusions, practical implications and limitations: The goal of the present paper was to direct attention to the important role universal human and environmental values should play in a truly, that is ethically, ASC in HE. The authors outlined the theoretical foundation and created a set of values called \"Authentic Minimum\" which can serve as a horizon of significance on the road to the urgently needed paradigm change from our dying consumer \"civilization\" to an authentic life based on universal human and environmental value. The urgency is underlined by the findings of our qualitative empirical research which, supporting earlier literature, demonstrates that undergraduate students have an alarming deficit of mindfulness, sustainability literacy, universal values concerning nature and fellow humans and system thinking.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study has two aims. It aims to analyse three essential pre-conditions of an authentic sustainability curriculum (ASC). The theoretical analysis involves the definition of authenticity through the learning outcomes (LOs) framework called authentic minimum (AM). This paper also aims to gauge students' views on economic growth, sustainability and mindfulness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The theoretical aim was accomplished by extensive study of and critical reflections on the relevant literature. The empirical research was qualitative using an online questionnaire as survey instrument consisting of predominantly open-ended questions involving students of two economic faculties. Directed content analysis and nonparametric quantitative methods were used to assess the answers.\nFindings: Viable sustainability goals are in stark contrast with the promotion of sustainable economic growth in sustainable development goals 8 and the reigning neoliberal agenda. The empirical findings provide valuable insights into how undergraduate students view mindfulness, economic growth and aspects of sustainability.\nResearch limitations/implications: The empirical research has some obvious limitations that warrant caution in generalizing the results. The authors used a sample of convenience and the base population of the survey consisted only in students of economics in two economic faculties of two Hungarian universities.\nPractical implications: Practical implications of the present paper are many all sharing; however, the need for existential courage on the part of teachers, students and leaders of higher education institutions. Existential courage is required for profound personal transformation, for going against mainstream ideology and the possible confrontations with colleagues, leaders of institutions, students, friends or family members.\nOriginality/value: On the theoretical side, the concept of ASC was introduced with AM as its LOs framework. For the first time, an attempt was made to interpret authenticity in sustainability education as an integration of mindfulness, human and environmental ethics and a firm opposition to economic growth and neoliberal ideals. The analysis of qualitative data supported earlier research and also provided unique findings in the examined areas.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
School-aged children and decisions for studying abroad in Canada
|
[
"Canada",
"Student mobility",
"International education",
"Early study abroad",
"School-aged children"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: International student mobility trends and relevant statistics are typically described in relation to post-secondary education (e.g. OECD, 2016; Eurostat, 2017). However, the study abroad phenomenon among school-aged children is on the rise globally with increasing numbers of students enrolled in primary, middle and secondary school levels (CIC, 2015; Government of Australia, 2017). For example, the Institute of International Education (2014) stated that the number of international students enrolled in US secondary schools had more than tripled from 2004 to 2013, reaching 73,019 students (IIE, 2014). The number of international students enrolled in Australian secondary school was 25,762 in 2017, an increase of 10.7 percent since 2016 (Government of Australia, 2017). Most diploma-seeking students are coming from Asia; those coming for cultural exchanges tend to represent the European Union countries (IIE, 2014).\nInternational education in Canada: International education in Canada is associated with economic competitiveness and the need for skilled labor (Scott et al., 2015; Trilokekar and ElMasri, 2016). To \"maximize economic opportunities for Canada\" and guide strategic activities, the Canadian federal government introduced a national strategy for international education in 2014 (Government of Canada, 2014, p. 5). International education is a policy sector with shared responsibilities and blurred lines of authority across the Canadian federal, provincial and local jurisdictions. Education is a provincially governed policy sector across Canada. While the federal government does not have direct legal authority over education, it does have responsibility for immigration, and shared responsibility for advancing international trade and economic growth in the country. This fragmentation has arguably led to less effective pathways to permanent residency (Sa and Sabzalieva, 2018).\nDecision making for study abroad involving school-aged children: Research exploring the specific factors influencing students' decision-making processes has mainly focused on university students. The dominant analytical approach has been the \"push-pull factor\" framework (Mazzarol and Soutar, 2002; Ahmad and Buchanan, 2017; Lehto et al., 2017). This framework suggests that \"push\" factors are internal and mostly linked with a home country, triggering the study abroad decisions. Scholars have identified \"push\" factors such as a need for personal growth, the enhancement of language skills and future career prospects (He and Chen, 2010; Eder et al., 2010). \"Pull\" factors are external and are associated with the host country. \"Pull\" factors may include geographical proximity (Mazzarol and Soutar, 2002), lower tuition fees (Wilkins et al., 2012) and the desirability of the host country's culture (Lee, 2017).\nMethodology: The study utilized a qualitative case study approach to answer its research questions. Two main methods and data sources were employed - document analysis and semi-structured interviews. The first step was to conduct a background analysis of international education documents accessible through government and school websites. A content analysis (Weber, 1996) of the policy documents was performed to identify how international education is regulated and what mechanisms are applied in student recruitment and supporting international students' learning experiences. The findings of the document analysis are integrated into the country-specific choice section of this paper.\nFactors influencing study abroad decisions for school-aged children: The findings demonstrate that factors behind early study abroad decisions were most often related to securing a future for the student. Three main categories emerged from the interviews - career prospects, changing global environments and post-secondary education choices. While these themes were represented in both groups, a theme focusing on \"accessibility of technology\" emerged as a unique factor only among parents' responses.\nFactors influencing the specific country choice - why Canada?: The participants had chosen to study in Canada and were asked about their rationales for that decision. The findings suggest that the factors influencing parents' decisions in favor of Canada differed slightly from the students' decisions. Parents seemed to be more concerned about the learning environment of the receiving country, while students were more influenced by the overall reputation and attractiveness of the country. Both groups shared a concern over safety. In students' answers the \"had no choice\" answer emerged as a theme not because parents made the decisions for them but because many worked with agents and followed the rules of the agency. For example, one student commented, \"My agency didn't allow me to choose.\" Below are the common themes explained.\nInfluencers of early study abroad decisions: In the interviews, it became clear that the study abroad decisions were often impacted by underlying perceptions, if not stereotypes, that were shaped by interacting with trusted influencers. The way a country, its reputation, or its quality of education is imagined is shaped by the opinions and experiences of individuals that have an impact on study abroad decisions. The findings of this study point to three key categories of decision influencers - family (personal experiences, connections with friends and relatives), recruitment agents and educators at home schools. Five parents had personal connections with studying in Canada, which significantly influenced their perceptions of the quality of Canadian education and the overall benefits of a study abroad experience. Those personal connections served as the key motivating factor for sending their children overseas. One parent reflected, \"I was fortunate enough to make Grade 12 in Canada many years ago through Rotary Club. So from personal experience Canada was a destination to consider.\" Four parents referred to a historical family connection of emigrating from Europe to Canada as a major factor in choosing a particular study destination. Two parents indicated that they had personal connections through friends living in Canada and that served as an important factor in the decision: \"We had excellent references about the country's lifestyle from friends and relatives living in Canada.\" Those connections became a major influencer on the study abroad decision.\nConclusion: This study adds important empirical evidence to the limited research that has been conducted on early study abroad experiences at the K-12 level. The findings suggest that the decision-making involves two distinct considerations - the broader benefits of studying abroad and country-specific factors. The broader benefits influencing study abroad decisions are future career prospects, changing global environments and post-secondary education choices. Participating in an early study abroad experience helps children prepare them to build globally valued skillsets that may contribute to their success later in life. The study points out that having international exposure, learning about different cultures, and perfecting English language skills are expected to help students to get access to high-quality education and establish a good foundation for their future careers. The findings confirmed that parents belonging to the upper-middle class in society could afford early study abroad opportunities (Waters, 2012). The significant financial expenditures involved in early study abroad decisions were perceived to be an investment in their children's future and worth the expense.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine parental and students' decisions regarding participating in K-12 level study abroad programs in Manitoba, Canada.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study reports on data collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 18 international students and 14 parents.\nFindings: The findings suggest that the key factors influencing decisions are perceptions of enhanced career prospects, changing global environments and broadened post-secondary education choices. Country-specific factors include quality and safety of the learning environment, multiculturalism and reputation associated with the country and people.\nResearch limitations/implications: The participants were primarily students and parents from the EU countries associated primarily with horizontal mobility. Experiences of students from the main sending countries (China, South Korea and Japan) might differ.\nPractical implications: The results are relevant to educational managers in designing high-quality international programs and recruitment agents.\nOriginality/value: The study adds important empirical evidence to the limited research that has been conducted on study abroad experiences at the K-12 level. It is one of the first in the Canadian context. It provides unique perspectives in USA and Canada comparisons for study abroad of school-aged children.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How do Party organizations' boundary-spanning behaviors control worker unrest? A case study on a Chinese resource-based state-owned enterprise
|
[
"Boundary-spanning behaviour",
"New work-unit system",
"Party organization",
"State-owned enterprise",
"Worker unrest"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: At the 2011 National Conference on Cooperation and on Constructing Harmonious Labor Relations, the President of PR China, Mr Jinping Xi, stated that a \"combination of the powers of the Party and government, mass organizations, and enterprises\" is needed to \"construct harmonious labor relations\" (Workers Daily, 2013). Since the reform and the opening up of China, \"the most remarkable transformation is the reform and restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs)\" (Cheng and Wang, 2012, p. 5). The workers' \"iron rice bowl\" (an occupation with guaranteed job security, as well as steady income and benefits) had been broken during the \"downsizing for efficiency\" (Jian yuan zeng xiao), leading to worker unrest. Although Party organizations play a key role in SOEs (Mi, 2007), few studies have explored their behaviors and the controlling effects and constraints of these behaviors. Based on a case study in a resource-based SOE named CH[1], this study uses boundary-spanning theory to explore how Party organizations' behaviors control worker unrest in the workplace.\nTheoretical relationship between Party organizations' behaviors and worker unrest in \"new work-unit system\": Party organizations' boundary-spanning behaviors (PBSBs)\nResearch methods: CH is selected as the case company for three reasons. First, it is easy to observe PBSBs in CH, as it is a large resource-based SOE in \"new work-unit system.\" Second, it is easy to collect data in CH, which has an excellent filing system. Third, the workers' collective protest in 2005 facilitates exploration of worker unrest. During the period July 2014 to July 2016, we went to CH six times and interviewed 22 people (each interview lasted an average of 57 minutes). Information on interviewees is shown in Table IV. Archival data were also collected from official correspondence, statistics reporting, and media publications. Data from different sources ensures triangulation.\nBackground of the CH corporation: The CH corporation, founded in 1958, is located on the boundaries of three provinces (Fan et al., 1989), and its core businesses are coal mining and transportation. In the 1970s, CH became the most important coal-mining producer, accounting for one quarter of the total coal production in the province. Since the 1980s, CH has been expanding, and has diversified into the power, cement, and construction industries. At the same time, the number of staff rose rapidly from 3,000 in 1958 to 16,329 in 1987. All of \"the staff [in CH] come from more than 17 provinces\" (Zhang, 2008, p. 68), and CH has established schools, hospitals, and other living facilities for them. From the organizational structure in CH (Figure 1), it can be seen that the union is affiliated with the Party, and Party branches are rooted in all the workplaces at the grassroots level.\nAnalysis on Question 1: existence and classification of PBSBs: Through analysis of archival data, labor relations activities from January to July were classified into ideological education, official visits, political network establishment, union development, and worker unrest. The first three, which closely relate to the Party, were used to refine PBSBs (see Table VI).\nAnalysis on Question 2: the agents and the mediation effect of agents' behaviors: A starting point: the production relations\nAnalysis on Question 3: the transformation of the \"new work-unit system\" and the provocation effect: The first factor for worker unrest: the transformation of the \"new work-unit system\"\nConclusions: Conclusion 1: existence and classification of PBSBs\nDiscussion: Contributions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the boundary-spanning behaviors of Party organizations, and the processes and constraints of these behaviors in controlling worker unrest in Chinese resource-based state-owned enterprises in the \"new work-unit system\" using boundary-spanning theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This case study was carried out in a resource-based state-owned enterprise in the \"new work-unit system\" in China. The research utilized interviews and archival documents, and then coded and analyzed the data using NVivo.\nFindings: In China, Party organizations' boundary-spanning behaviors (PBSBs) in labor relations management are identified, and classified into the behaviors of the ambassador, task coordinator, and scout. Worker unrest can be controlled by these behaviors through the mediation effect of the behaviors of agents in the \"new work-unit system\" but can also be provoked in the transformation of the \"new work-unit system.\"\nOriginality/value: The Communist Party plays a key role in labor relations management in China's SOEs; however, this role has not been explored in any depth. This study builds a model to reveal the \"black box\" in which the PBSBs influence the agents' behaviors and how the agents' behaviors then influence the workers, and in this way control worker unrest.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Bullying among support staff in a higher education institution
|
[
"Bullying",
"Mental health services",
"Universities",
"Workplace"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The context of the research\nMethods: Target group\nResults: The questionnaire\nDiscussion: The study was small but intensive and it is hoped that it may have contributed, in a modest way, to the emerging field of research into workplace bullying by attempting to give a representative view of support staff perceptions of the nature and causes of bullying, and effects on health and well-being. As Ball (1996) would argue, data available from incidence surveys and anecdotal reports should not be dismissed lightly but used as a foundation to build on.There is no generally accepted definition of workplace bullying, although most definitions appear to share two determinants:1. Single episodes of inappropriate behaviour do not constitute bullying: bullying tends to be an accumulation of incidents over a period of time. This is an important differentiation between bullying and sexual or racial harassment as these forms of harassment may consist of one incident.2. These persistent episodes are based on an abuse of power.A total of 100 support staff were surveyed, and a 42 per cent response rate was achieved. Nineteen respondents reported experiencing one or more forms of bullying in the previous two years, while 17 had witnessed colleagues being bullied. Ten interviews were carried out with participants who perceived they had been bullied at work to expand upon the questionnaires. The top four bullying tactics ranked in terms of frequency of reporting were:1. undue pressure to produce work;2. undermining of ability;3. shouting abuse; and4. withholding necessary information.The most likely attribute of the bully is that they are a manager. Major findings are that headaches, fatigue and stomach and bowel problems are the most commonly reported physical ailments. Loss of confidence, loss of self-esteem and stress are the most commonly reported non-physical health consequences of being bullied, and these syndromes are associated with a decrease in work-place morale, increased stress at home, and propensity to seek alternative employment.While complete random sampling was not an option for the questionnaires, the researcher obtained a list of support staff from the Personnel Department and from the 800 clerical/secretarial support staff, and selected 100 individuals to survey. Checks with the Personnel Department indicated that the sample adequately reflected the profile of support staff in terms of age, gender and job role, thus minimizing potential bias from non-response. A total of 42 responses were received: a higher response rate would have been desirable.The main area of bias in this study is probably selection bias, as the semi-structured interviews were not randomly selected: participants for the interviews volunteered themselves. However, purposive sampling is frequently used in qualitative research and is designed to extend knowledge by deliberately sampling these areas, which are rich in the type of data required for the study (Reed et al., 1996).This study deals with support staff who, in this organization, are predominantly female, which could be regarded to have significant implications regarding validity. However, bullying does not appear to be a gender issue, as studies such as that of Rayner (1998) found that there was a remarkable similarity between men and women as far as workplace bullying is concerned.Generalisability is compromised as very specific data was collected from a particular group of people, so cannot really be extrapolated to the general population. Additionally, since data are derived from self-reports on the part of the victim, the researcher was aware that as they all perceived they had directly experienced bullying behaviour, they were highly motivated and possibly had their own agenda to pursue.However, given these limitations, many of the findings of this study mirror other recent studies in the public sector (Quine, 1999; Rayner, 1998). Also, studies into workplace stress, such as those of Fletcher (1991), Marmot et al. (1991), Marmot (1997), Cohen et al. (1997), maintain that the main stressors in the workplace are behaviours such as lack of support and information and poor communication - all bullying behaviours and all mentioned by respondents to this study. This can lead to low motivation, low workplace morale and days lost due to stress-related illness. Additionally, the findings that 17 of the survey respondents reported witnessing the bullying of others confirms that it is not merely a subjective phenomenon.\nConclusion: Studying bullying at work presents considerable difficulties, as the breadth of the phenomenon encompasses many different forms of behaviour and reaction. Bullying, or the more generic \"harassment at work\", is claimed to be a more crippling and devastating problem for employees than all other work-related stress put together (Einarsen, 1999). Stress can also have serious implications for the efficient functioning of the organisation. Increased sickness absence, high turnover of staff, low morale, and poor performance can all be consequences or indicators of bullying in the workplace. Cox (1993) suggests that mental health problems are amongst the fastest growing sources of days lost from work. In financial terms absenteeism, loss of trained personnel, higher recruitment costs and reduced productivity can add up to a heavy burden for organisations. The costs of stress, therefore, are paid for both by the suffering of the individual and the financial cost to the organisation.Bullying is morally as well as professionally unacceptable, and impacts not only on the health of victims and their colleagues but their families too. Job stress due to bullying can have serious and deleterious effects on family life that may manifest themselves in increased welfare costs (Cohen et al., 1997). While it is acknowledged that problems exist in relation to proving the causal link between bullying and ill health, employers have a vicarious duty of care towards its employees. It is therefore essential that employers are aware of such issues and of potential signs of bullying behaviour. Consequently there is an urgent need to address this issue by documenting incidents, finding the source of the abuse and what and who perpetrates it, and developing a procedure to eliminate the abusive behaviour. Any policies, to be effective, must be guided by research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Workplace bullying has been a subject of increasing study in recent years, particularly in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia. Health effects of workplace bullying are often cited as an undesirable outcome of being bullied, yet these health effects have not been studied systematically. This study was small and exploratory. The overall aims were to explore support staff perceptions of the nature and causes of bullying, and to examine the perceived relationship between bullying and self-reported health complaints.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 100 self-report questionnaires were sent via the internal mail system. Ten interviews were carried out with participants, who perceived that they had been bullied at work, to expand on the questionnaires.\nFindings: - A total of 42 employees responded, 19 reporting experiencing one or more forms of bullying in the previous two years, while 17 had witnessed colleagues being bullied. The top four bullying tactics ranked in terms of frequency of reporting were undue pressure to produce work, undermining of ability, shouting abuse, and withholding necessary information. When bullying occurred it was likely to be by a line manager. Major findings are that headaches, loss of confidence, loss of self-esteem, fatigue/listlessness, and stress are the most commonly reported health consequences of being bullied, and that these syndromes are associated with a decrease in workplace morale, increased stress at home, and propensity to seek alternative employment.\nOriginality/value: - This study, of bullying of support staff in a large UK educational institution, is a contribution to understanding the health implications of workplace bullying from the perspective of those bullied.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
School and emotional well-being: a transcultural analysis on youth in Southern Spain
|
[
"Health education",
"Adolescents",
"Emotional well-being",
"School environment",
"Culture and health",
"Migrant health"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Promoting positive social and emotional development during childhood and adolescence is increasingly seen as a fundamental objective for schools. The school is increasingly conceived as a place for the development of life skills, well-being and democracy (Cohen, 2006), as a place where values are acquired, for personal and social development (Bisquerra, 2003; Elias et al., 1999; Goleman, 1996) and as the site for dialogue, and critical and reflective thinking (Murphy et al., 2014).\nThe urgency for multicultural schools that promote health: Schools in multicultural societies are potentially meeting points for different cultural groups in which an exchange of values and mutual enrichment takes place, and where \"cultural shock\" becomes an opportunity to learn and solve problems (Soriano, 2006). Multicultural schooling contexts can have positive effects on the psychosocial and identity development of minority groups and of all students, allowing for increased cultural empathy (Le et al., 2009). If schools wish to see themselves as health promoting, they cannot ignore the social and cultural health factors of their students, or underestimate the importance of the links between EW and health, cultural co-existence and academic success (Soriano and Franco, 2010; McLaughlin, 2008; Soriano, 2008). The school needs to be an inclusive space in which a health empowerment of all sociocultural groups can take place, paying special attention to those facing greater difficulties.\nAims of this study: The study aimed to assess and compare the educational and EW of adolescents aged between 10 and 18 of the three main nationalities residing in Southern Spain, namely Moroccan, Romanian and Spanish, and to establish how origin and gender have an impact on adolescents' school life and well-being.\nMethods: Sample\nResults: Table II shows the means obtained for each group on both EW and SW. In terms of EW, the group scores ranged from 25.68 (Moroccan girls) to 28.23 (Spanish boys) out of 35 points. Boys had higher scores than girls, and the native Spanish group for both genders reported higher levels of EW. All cultural groups showed significant differences by gender (p<0.05).\nDiscussion and conclusions: Our findings suggest that the sense of SW influences the educational experience of adolescents. They also indicate the persistence of socio-structural differences involving gender and place of origin on young adults' well-being and health, and the strong link between the emotional state of the student and their sense of well-being at school.\nImplications: If the school is to be effective as a health socializing institution for all groups, including immigrant groups (in the case of Southern Spain - Romanian, and more especially Moroccan groups), there is a need to develop inclusive educative programmes. An inclusive and transcultural framework can contribute to understanding cultural diversity as a source of personal and social enrichment among the school community, whilst attempting to overcome inequalities.\nConclusions: Contemporary societies have undergone changes that oblige school to readapt to the challenges of becoming a truly common area for EW and SW promotion and responding to the expression of the cultural diversity in the multicultural context. Our research shows that neither origin nor gender offers a straightforward linear pattern of response in the different health dimensions. It is therefore necessary to integrate the transcultural and gender perspective in the study of adolescent well-being, to identify the positive aspects of each cultural and social group and strengthen them.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess and compare school well-being (SW) and emotional well-being (EW) among Romanian, Moroccan and Spanish youth, to determine the degree of relation between EW and scholar well-being.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper employed cross-sectional research with cluster sampling in two primary schools and seven secondary schools. The questionnaire Kidscreen-27 was distributed to a sample of 1,840 Romanian, Moroccan and Spanish students aged between 10 and 19 years old. Data analysis was conducted with the software package SPSS, version 21.\nFindings: EW shows significant gender (gender gap) and origin inequalities (lower performance for the Moroccan community). However, well-being in school shows positive results for the Moroccan students and women. Moreover, EW and well-being at school are presented as related and co-linear variables with a predictive power over one another.\nResearch limitations/implications: Understanding cultural expressions in heterogeneous cultures is a very complex task. Despite the cultural adaptation and validation of instruments, the applied surveys could not consider cultural differences.\nPractical implications: The paper underlines that gender and origin remain decisive and determinant for adolescent health. However, the school can have positive effects on the well-being of immigrants. The reasons for well-being need to be explored, and it would be useful to develop educative strategies to implement transcultural EW and SW.\nOriginality/value: It is the first study about SW and EW of immigrants in Spain that explains a better SW in immigrants groups. It is also relevant for applied school intervention to predict the relationship between EW and SW.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Making cultural differences matter? Diversity perspectives in higher education
|
[
"Higher education",
"Qualitative research",
"Diversity perspectives"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The student population in higher education has become more culturally diverse in many countries (Banks, 2007), partly due to the increasing educational level of migrants and a higher percentage of migrants enter the higher education system (Crul and Mollenkopf, 2012). In addition, there is an increasing need to prepare students for dealing with the complex demands and needs of various cultural groups, customers and clients in society that they will work with in their future professional role (Leask and Bridge, 2013; Killick, 2006). To adapt to the increasing diversity in the student population and the need for diversity related knowledge and skills for future professionals, many universities experience the urgency to invest in a more heterogeneous workforce and implement diversity management practices. These diversity management practices refer to proactive and inclusive approaches related to recruitment and effective utilization of personnel from different cultural backgrounds (Cox and Blake, 1991). For example, universities may attract lecturers with diverse backgrounds, or utilize cultural differences among lecturers in educational teams to develop educational curricula that fit the notion of preparing students for \"global citizenship\" (Leask, 2001, 2009) or the labor market that requires multicultural skills (Celik et al., 2014).\nMethod: We used a case study approach (Yin, 2012) to examine the diversity perspectives in different educational teams within one educational institution. The present study was conducted in Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, a large Dutch university with over 20,000 students, 1,800 members of staff and situated in two different cities. Furthermore, this university covers a variety of educational faculties (technical studies, business, media and law studies, sports and education studies, and health and welfare studies) that is representative for the educational domains of other Dutch applied universities.\nResults: Based on the verbatim transcriptions, we will first discuss the findings on the two different diversity practices (recruitment and team interaction) separately for the six educational teams. Consequently, we will look at general patterns, which could be derived from the data based on the first step.\nDiscussion: The higher education sector has become increasingly aware of how the increasing diversity in society affects their institutions. The student population has become more diverse and future employers increasingly require students who are trained to meet the demands of a more diverse market/clientele. In this case study we examined how one of the large Dutch universities of applied sciences responds to this change. Is it reflected in its strategic perspective to diversity and its diversity practices in terms of recruitment of new lecturers from various cultural backgrounds and utilization of cultural differences among lecturers in day-to-day team interaction?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The higher education sector has become increasingly aware of how the increasing diversity in society affects their institutions. The student population has become more diverse and future employers increasingly require trained students who are able to meet the demands of dealing with a more diverse market/clientele. In this regard, education institutions need to align their strategic approach to diversity within their organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine strategical reasons to diversify in different education teams in relation to two different diversity practices: attraction and selection of culturally diverse lecturers and utilization of cultural differences in team interaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In a qualitative study the authors conducted 19 interviews with educational professionals in six different education teams in a university of applied sciences.\nFindings: Interviews with 19 members of six educational teams revealed that some teams acknowledge they need more diversity and exchange of knowledge and skills in order to meet the requirements of the labor market. Especially teams that prepare students for international careers foster this \"Integration and Learning\" perspective. Other teams, e.g. the Law team, notice less changes in labor market requirements. Still, these teams were open for recruiting diverse lecturers and found it important, especially to meet the needs of the diversity in students (access perspective). They also found value in the interaction and mutual learning in their team, but saw no extra value of diversity (colorblind perspective). Labor market demands for diversity seem to have more influence on the diversity perspective of teams than the diversity in the student population.\nPractical implications: Since earlier research has shown that the diversity practices of organizations are more effective when they are in line with their diversity perspective, the differences between teams suggest that when dealing with diversity issues, universities can best work toward a common understanding of the importance of diversity but leave room for team differences in diversity practices.\nOriginality/value: Most studies on diversity management assume or argue that organizations adopt one diversity perspective. The present study shows that intra-organizational differences may exist with regard to the specific needs or concern for diversity management practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Measurement of social development: evidence from India
|
[
"Human development",
"Development expenditure",
"Non-development expenditure",
"Social development index",
"Social indicators",
"Social sector"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Social development is a multidimensional and complex phenomenon and it is one of the alarming issues concerned with the human welfare. It is also directly related to the development of peace, freedom, stability and security, both nationally and internationally. Seers (1972) defined the concept of development in terms of creating the conditions for the realization of human personality. Development means reduction in poverty, unemployment and inequality. It also requires \"upward movement of the entire social system\" as defined by Gunnar Myrdal (1972).\n2. Social sector reforms and expenditure on social services in India: The Government of India has been implementing many social sector programs like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act (MGNREGA), National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM)/National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM), National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA), PAHAL-Direct Benefits Transfer for LPG, Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY), Atal Pension Yojana (APY), etc. to address the issues of social development. Expenditure on social services increased significantly in the Twelfth Five Year Plan. As depicted in Table I, India's expenditure on health and education as a percent of GDP is much lower than the other emerging and developed countries. China's share on health and education is 5.8 and 16.9 percent of GDP (BRICS (2012) Joint Statistical Report) whereas India's share is much lower than that of China.\n3. Definitions of social indicators: In recent years, serious attempt have been made to measure the social development in a country. The United Nations Report on International Definition and Measurement of Standards and Level of Living 1954 is very crucial for social development and made detailed recommendations against the use of per capita national income because some important non-monetary factors are neglected by the per capita national income measure which measures the economic development rather social development. The inter-agency working party of United Nation on statistics for social programs which met in Geneva in September, 1959 (United Nations, 1961: An Interim Guide, E/CN3/270, Rev. and E/CN5/353) recommended 12 basic indicators related to health, food, education, employment, housing, clothing, social security and working condition for the measurement of social development of the society.\n4. Related studies on measurement of social development: Morris (1979) combined three physical indicators - life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and adult literacy to construct the physical quality of life index and used it for a cross-country comparison in terms of social development. Ray (1989) constructed an SDI as a composite index of a number of social indicators for the years 1950-1951 and 1975-1976. Further, Ray (2008) constructed an SDI as a composite index of a number of social indicators. He considered five social indicators of India and constructed the country's SDI as a certain weighted average of the selected indicators, for the years 1974-1975 and 1999-2000. It is found that during India's post-independence period, SDI gradually increased over the years, while the series of per capita national income had variations around its rising trend. The average growth rate of SDI was higher than the growth rates of per capita national income and the plan expenditure on development.\n5. Choices of methods of analysis: It is observed from the above discussion that socioeconomic development cannot be totally evaluated with a single indicator. In addition, many indicators when examined individually do not provide a valid description of the real situation. Therefore, it is important to construct a composite index of social development based upon optimal combination of different development indicators. There are several methods (e.g. principal component analysis, multiple factor analysis (MFA), aggregation method, monetary index, ratio index, ranking method, and Wroclaw Taxonomic technique) for evaluating the impact of various indicators. These methods have their own advantages like principal component analysis used an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables and it reduces multidimensional data to lower dimensions while retaining most of the information. MFA is used when several sets of variables have been measured on the same set of observations. The main advantage of this method is that the \"factor loading\" can be used as weights for combining the effect of various social indicators (Abdi and Williams, 2010; Ohlan, 2013). Monetary Index Method is simple to use and in this method, the development indicators are transformed into monetary values and sum of these values are taken as the composite index of development. Ranking and Ration method are also easy to use but have limited scope. Wroclaw Taxonomic Method provides a useful tool for the pattern of development which may prove to be very useful in micro and macro planning (Harbison et al., 1968; Narain et al., 2003, 2005, 2009; Ohlan, 2013).\n6. Data and methodology for finding weights: 6.1 The period and the indicators\n7. SDI (with base year 1997-1998, SDI for 1997-1998=100): The composite SDI, i.e. SDI has been calculated for India for the selected years from 1974-1975 to 2010-2011, with weighted sum of selected 12 social indicators representing education, food, health, clothing, modernization, etc. by using weights under the projection method. SDI figures are presented in Table IX. It is observed that SDI has almost doubled from 50.56 in 1974-1975 to 110.26 in 2000-2001 and almost three times from 50.56 in 1974-1975 to 163.93 in 2010-2011 with an average annual growth rate of 5.60 per annum, and Figure 1 also clearly shows that there has been increasing trend in the movement of SDI during the study period. Table IX also shows a sharp increase in the SDI value from 2002-2003 to 2010-2011. The sharp increase in the SDI value is actually the result of:\n8. Regression results: Regression results of SDI with the development expenditure, non-development expenditure and PCNNP are obtained by using the ordinary least squares method. EViews9 is used for processing the data from 1980-1981 to 2010-2011 (as shown in Table XI):\n9. Conclusions and policy implications: Social development means development that enables poor people to take actions to help themselves. It is necessary for both improving productivity and ensuring equity. In the present study, we have measured the social development of India by using the methodology of Ray (1989, 2008) of the composite index. Weights have been obtained by using the projection method. These weights are found to be satisfactory. The results show that there has been increasing trend in the movement of SDI during the study period. Our results support the earlier studies by Ray (1989, 2008). Furthermore, the average annual growth rate of SDI is much lower than that of annual growth rates of development expenditure, non-development expenditure and PCNNP at a factor cost. Regression results suggest that Indian Government needs to focus more on the implementation part of the social sector schemes of the center and state government at grass root level. It is also evident from the results that government needs to increase development and non-development expenditures to improve the overall social condition of the country. Indeed, there is an urgent need to increase the share of health and education as a percentage of GDP. The policy implications from our study are clear, that if the government wants to improve social development, more social sector schemes must be started by considering skilled education, health for all and basic infrastructure for improving the quality of life of the weaker section of the society. Attention must be given to the proper implementation and timely feedback of all the social sector schemes funded by the center and state government. This will require determined efforts on the part of states governments and the center. Proper action should be taken to provide the basic facilities like food, shelter and clothes to the poor because social infrastructure of a country not only presents the human face of the economic growth process, but represents the core of well-rounded development. Both economic and social infrastructures are crucial for overall social development of a country. Indeed, improvement in basic services like health, education, power, transport and irrigation is a must to improve the quality of life of the people. The government should remove all the bottlenecks while implementing social schemes for the poor. We conclude quoting Haq (1976), \"The objective of development must be viewed as a selective attack on the worst forms of poverty. Development goals must be defined in terms of progressive reduction and eventual elimination of malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, squalor, unemployment, and inequalities. The concerns for more production and better distribution should be brought together in defining the pattern of development.\"\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the progress of social development in terms of social development index (SDI) of India in the pre- and post-reforms period.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used the methodology of Ray (1989, 2008) for the construction of composite index for social development, i.e. SDI. The study also used the ordinary least squares method of regression analysis for checking the impact of development expenditure, non-development expenditure and Per Capita Net National Product (PCNNP) on the SDI value.\nFindings: The results show an increasing trend in social development. The findings of this study also suggest that there is a sharp increase in the index over the period between 2002/2003 and 2010/2011. But in the remaining period, sluggish improvement in social development has been observed. Though there has been growth in the social sector, but it is not much heartening and perhaps more efforts need to be done in the social sector in India. The results also exhibit that development expenditure, non-development expenditure and PCNNP are significantly affecting the SDI value.\nPractical implications: The study suggests that the government should focus more on social sector programs and there is an urgent need to increase development and non-development expenditures to improve the overall social condition of the country.\nOriginality/value: The work is different in terms of number of development variables from the already existing literature in India. The author constructed the SDI by using the weighted sum of 12 transformed social variables which has not been studied previously.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Sustainability reporting: external motivators and internal facilitators
|
[
"Sustainability reporting",
"External pressures",
"Operational control",
"Strategic control"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Today, with more serious concerns about environmental and social conditions, the business and investment communities are demanding and relying on various types of sustainability[1] (economic, environmental and social) information for decision making (Delmas and Burbano, 2011). The recent formation of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), along with several other global initiatives, sends a signal that the business community is taking sustainability reporting seriously. Given that we are entering what appears to be a new era of enhanced sustainability reporting, the question arises as to which variables external to the organization can motivate and which variables within the organization can facilitate enhanced sustainability reporting. The importance of identifying these variables has been underscored by several professional organizations (IIRC's Discussion Paper, 2011; KPMG, 2011). Early research on sustainability reporting concentrated largely on external institutional influences for motivating disclosure of social and environmental information (Bewley and Li, 2000; Cormier and Magnan, 1999, 2003; Neu et al., 1998; Patten, 2002). Although external pressures are important, Howard-Grenville et al. (2008) suggested that they only help to understand part of the business decision, as companies subjected to the same external pressures behave differently (Moir, 2001). Later research (Bansal, 2005; Darnall et al., 2008) has recognized that even though external pressure may appear forceful and coercive (Delmas and Toffel, 2004; Perez-Batres et al., 2012), an organization needs internal structure and resources to facilitate sustainable behavior (Herremans et al., 2009; Clarkson et al., 2011; Howard-Grenville et al., 2008; Perego and Kolk, 2012; Abreu et al., 2005).\nLiterature review and hypotheses development: The literature review is separated into two sections:\nData and measures: Empirical context and sample\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion and conclusion: The extant research calls for more investigation into the role that internal factors play to facilitate corporate sustainability decisions (Howard-Grenville et al., 2008) and the reporting of the outcome of those decisions (Adams and Larrinage-Gonzalez, 2007; Adams, 2004), especially voluntary participation and reporting. Even though external pressures, such as institutional factors and media exposure, are strong motivators, they are insufficient by themselves to explain participation in voluntary reporting because companies react to these pressures differently (Herremans et al., 2009). Therefore, our research design incorporated variables that are proxies for external pressures that motivate and internal controls that facilitate the reporting process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of internal variables, such as strategic governance and operational controls, along with external variables that influence sustainability reporting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Building on the corporate governance and sustainability reporting literature, the authors develop a model to integrate external motivators and internal facilitators to determine their impact on sustainability reporting. The authors also control for a number of financial and non-financial variables that may influence sustainability reporting. The authors limit their sample to the companies in extractive industries that report their greenhouse gas emission to the Government of Canada. The authors collected the data from several data sources including secondary archival databases, newspapers, Web sites and annual reports.\nFindings: Using a sample of companies in high-polluting industries, the authors found that variables representing both external pressures that act as motivators and internal controls that act as facilitators are significantly associated with enhanced sustainability reporting.\nPractical implications: Considering the formation of several international initiatives such as International Integrated Reporting Council to improve sustainability reporting for decision-making, the authors' research provides interesting insights both to policymakers and managers about organizational characteristics that are important to make reporting useful and relevant.\nOriginality/value: Little academic research has investigated the role of internal variables in facilitating sustainability reporting. The authors use a robust model that combines external and internal variables to more thoroughly understand the reporting process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Buying decision-making process for poultry meat
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Buying behaviour",
"Poultry",
"Country of origin",
"Europe"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. The poultry meat market: Poultry meat is an important segment of the consumption structure of various meat types. Changes in the nutritional habits call for growth of consumption of this type of meat. In the part of the study in question, several different research methods, analysis methods and comparison methods were used, which enabled full analysis of the nutritional trends on the poultry meat market. The comparison method enabled an implementation of a direct content comparison of nutritional trends on the poultry meat market and the importance of meat origin in the buying-decision-making process. The method of strategic analysis, estimation and forecast was used to gain as authentic estimations of the world and Europe poultry meat market development as possible.Based on the results of the analyzes and trends in the meat processing industry, it has been discovered that the poultry meat and poultry meat product sectors represent the market which is growing and is very dynamical. Poultry meat is one of the most favourite meat types. It is not only incredibly tasty, but it is also a food product that corresponds to the requirements of modern and balanced nutrition. In addition, it is quick and easy to prepare, healthy, safe, nourishing, and it offers a rich taste.While examining nutritional trends and trends on the poultry meat market, it is worth to emphasize three global mega-trends: convenience and snacking, health and well-being, pleasure and indulgence. Poultry meat has properties that can be classified into the three analyzed mega-trends: it is suitable for every occasion, it makes meal preparation quick and easy (convenience and snacking trend), it provides diverse, tasty and enjoyable meals (pleasure and indulgence trend), and low fat content makes it easily digestible (health and well-being trend).A research of the consumers purchasing behavior also encroaches on product origin and its impact on the buying decision-making, a country's image formed in the consumer consciousness, ethnocentrism, patriotism, and consumer purchasing behavior in individual countries.In the international researching and business usage the noticed product's origin became one of the factors for distinguishing the products and making choices and thus for compatibility as well. In product and service sales, both global and local, it is important to know impact of origin of goods and forming an image of a country. The importance an image of a country of origin and its effects on consumer perceptions and buying intentions are well-documented in several reviews and meta-analytical studies. The mentioned field is discussed in several papers, which authors are for instance Bilkey and Nes (1982) Han and Terpstra (1988) Johansson (1989) Khachaturian and Morganosky (1990) Knight (1999) Kaynak et al.(2000) Kaynak and Kara (2000) Balabanis et al. (2000) Papadopoulos and Heslop (2002) Balabanis and Diamantopoulos (2004) Vukasovic (2009a) and many more. This field is more and more actual and is becoming more important mainly due to homogenization of elements of demand resulting from market globalization.Studying impacts of product origin on consumer's behavior in decision-making process for consumables is an issue that with its complexity impacts the researching of products originating from various countries. By using a dynamic approach impacts of country of origin are studied through consumer's preferences towards certain products and brands based on stereotypic view of country, a product originates from (\"made in\" label) or based on brand's name, which internationally communicates the true product's origin (e.g. \"Cafe de Colombia\") (Johansson, 1989; Hong and Wyer, 1990).Research on impact of country of origin on product evaluations has taken three approaches in the current marketing literature. These are single-cue studies, multi-cue studies and the conjoint (trade-off) analysis. In recent years, a fourth approach, namely environmental analysis, is emerging which links a consumer's perception of a product and/or evaluation of the impact and/or influence of a select number of environmental factors. In single-cue country of origin studies, a consumer evaluates a product and makes a decision based on both intrinsic (i.e. taste, durability, design) and extrinsic (i.e. price, brand name, service) cues. Those researchers who used multi-cues, on the other hand, designed their studies in such a way that country of origin is one of the factors amongst a variety of influences a consumer considers when making a selection and ultimate buying decisions. To overcome the shortcomings of the first two groups of country of origin studies, the third group of researchers proposed usage of conjoint (trade-off) analysis where a researcher tries to measure how much consumers value respective product attributes. The last research approach-environmental analysis looks at the impact of various environmental factors on consumers and/or company decision makers. To this end, the conjoint research of country of origin has more behavioral orientation whereas the environmental analysis is more related to the environmental impact on consumer decision making (Kaynak et al., 2000).Based on the published researches and the literature review it was determined that impacts of country of origin were studied in the five most important directions:1. the most area of research is studying an image of a certain country from the foreign consumer's point of view (living in another country);2. the second largest research area was the ethnocentrism and studying the relationship between domestic and imported products in as well as importance of a threat that represent successful countries in a local environment;3. a smaller proportion of the studies (10 percent) discussed the product country image, based on customer's perceptions and beliefs;4. even smaller proportion of the empirical studies discussed an impact of the product's origin in relation with factors like brand and price; and5. the smallest proportion of the researches studied the importance of national images in inter-organizational branch buying-decisions.The importance of meat origin in buying process was researched as a part of the quantitative research. In the empirical part of the paper the results of the research that aimed to analyze customers' buying habits, perception of poultry meat and factors influencing decisions to buy poultry meat were shown. At the same time the importance of poultry meat origin for buying-decision-process was studied. The survey of the Central-East European markets (Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia) shows that origin of meat is the most important (the evaluation of significance in the decision-making buying process was 9.5). A matter of interest is also a comparative analysis of data, which can be found in the article of Becker et al., 2000 and the article of Magdelaine et al., 2008. The results of the study (Becker et al., 2000) of German consumers show the following. In case of chicken, country of origin and place of purchase seem to have minor importance, though in general extrinsic cues are still regarded as more useful than intrinsic cues. More than 40 percent of the respondents indicate a known source of poultry meat as an important element in the buying decision-making process. The results of the study (Magdelaine et al., 2008) of French consumers show the following: respondents state that the durability date is by far the most important information as far as they are concerned (70 percent). A name of a product is also considered a priority and ranks second (43 percent), along with official quality label (Label Rouge). Both a packaging date and an origin are placed in the third position (27 percent). A trade mark is of no special importance for the purchase, since it landed on sixth place with only 19 percent.The paper continues with the results of the quantitative research of Central and Eastern Europe markets regarding the poultry meat perception and the importance of meat origin in the buying process.\n2. Perception of the poultry meat of the analyzed consumers: 2.1 Research design and structure of the sample\n3. Conclusions: The nutrition trends and trends in poultry meat market were analyzed and the results of the quantitative research carried out on markets of Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia were presented in the paper. The aim of the research was to analyze the buying habits, the perception of poultry meat and the factors that are important for consumers when deciding to buy poultry meat. At the same time the importance of meat origin in the buying-decision-process was researched as well. To understand the concept of impacts of meat origin full attention must be paid to finding answers to the questions why, when, how and how much does meat origin influences a value of meat and decision on purchase and to synergies between meat origin and other product properties. In the process of choosing a product a consumer collects information of product properties, environment, use and product origin. The latter can more or less influence the process of choosing a product. The information of product origin is the added value for a consumer and depends upon both objective and subjective consumer properties.The trends in the poultry meat consumption which were determined by our study of the poultry meat market were thus confirmed with the carried out quantitative research performed the selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe and were compared with the studies conducted in Germany and France. The comparison of the studies made in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Germany and France showed that the importance of the factors considered by consumers on all analyzed markets when buying poultry meat is slightly different; however, we can agree that the meat of known origin plays an important role when deciding on a purchase. In conclusion, the positive perception of poultry meat is shown in all the analyzed markets. Meat of known origin plays a key role in the buying-decision-making process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - In 2006 the world global poultry meat market was developing under the influence of shocks caused by the outbreak of the avian influenza which spread to the poultry meat market at the end of 2005. The virus affected the entire world poultry meat industry and thus visibly marked the world trade in poultry meat in 2006. This paper aims to investigate these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper concentrates on the results of the primary quantitative research which was carried out by using a method of individual personal interviews in a sample of n=2,452 poultry meat consumers, aged between 18 and 65 years and in the selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia). A positive perception of poultry meat was determined since the consumers in all three analyzed countries perceived it as tasty and healthy. Special attention was devoted to studying the importance of meat origin in a buying-decision-making process.\nFindings: - The trends in poultry meat consumption which were determined in the study of the European poultry meat market were thus confirmed with the quantitative research carried out in the selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe.\nOriginality/value: - The positive perception of poultry meat and the importance of its origin in the buying-decision-making process are evident in all the analyzed countries of Central and Eastern Europe.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A valid and applicable measurement method for knowledge worker productivity
|
[
"Viewpoint",
"Productivity measurement",
"Knowledge worker",
"Principle",
"Fuzzy DEA"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Currently, the number of knowledge workers and their rate of growth are larger than those of manual workers (Drucker, 1999; Xiao and Nembhard, 2014). Consequently, knowledge worker management and particularly knowledge worker productivity measurement are frequently faced by academics and practitioners to the extent that Drucker believed knowledge worker productivity measurement and knowledge worker productivity improvement to be the most challenging managerial issues of the twenty-first century (Drucker, 1991, 1999).\n2. Literature review: Study of the approaches presented to measure the knowledge worker productivity shows that there are two distinct types of approaches: conceptual models and methods for knowledge worker productivity measurement (Ramirez and Nembhard, 2004).\n3. Principles and viewpoints: Based on the analysis of the models and methods, it was concluded that there are two main issues that must be considered while designing a method for knowledge worker productivity measurement: principles and viewpoints.\n4. The proposed method: The proposed principles were followed to design a new method. Moreover, since the main purpose of designing the proposed method is to monitor knowledge workers and establish benchmarks for them, appropriate viewpoints were also selected. The viewpoints considered in the design of the proposed method are demonstrated in Table IV.\n5. Case study: In order to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, a case study was carried out at an Iranian organization in electrical power industry. Seven knowledge workers were chosen (as shown in Table X) and their productivity was measured.\n6. Conclusion: In this paper, we proposed a new method to measure the productivity of knowledge workers based on the general concepts and characteristics of knowledge work. In order to develop this method, we first determined the appropriate principles and viewpoints. Then, inputs and outputs of knowledge work were identified. Moreover, we described the quantification processes of job inputs and outputs. Since knowledge work is involved with several inputs and outputs and due to the fuzzy nature of the outputs, we employed fuzzy DEA to calculate productivity. It can serve as the basis for the comparison among relative productivity of knowledge workers. Furthermore, the obtained results could form a basis to examine the productivity trend of each knowledge worker over different periods of time. A case study was discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the method and the validity of the obtained results.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method for knowledge worker productivity measurement which is based on valid principles and appropriate viewpoints.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on an extensive and thorough literature review the elements that need to be taken into consideration, while designing a method for knowledge worker productivity measurement, are determined and divided into principles and viewpoints. These elements must be incorporated into the design of knowledge worker productivity measurement methods so that the correctness and accuracy of these methods can be verified. The proposed model, which is based on appropriate principles and viewpoints, determines the outputs of knowledge work with respect to the tasks that a worker's job includes. Considering nine measures, these outputs are evaluated using fuzzy numbers and, then, quantified. The inputs of knowledge work are knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) required to do the job. These inputs are identified and quantified using Job Element Method. Furthermore, fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis is employed to model the productivity.\nFindings: In this paper, the proposed method for knowledge worker productivity measurement follows both appropriate principles and viewpoints, simultaneously. In order to validate the obtained results and explore the applicability of the proposed method, a case study was carried out at an Iranian organization in electric power industry. Statistical analyses are employed to prove the validity of the results. Based on the obtained results, the productivity of a knowledge worker is said to be high when he/she delivers the expected amount of job outputs considering the values of his/her inputs (KSAs).\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper is twofold. First, the extracted principles and viewpoints can serve as a guideline for the development of similar methods. Second, the proposed model offers an effective and efficient tool that can serve as the basis for the comparison among relative productivity of knowledge workers. Furthermore, the obtained results could form a basis to examine the productivity trend of each knowledge worker over different periods of time.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The power of platforms
|
[
"Business development",
"Innovation",
"Profit",
"Markets",
"Shareholders"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe quest to sustain profitable growth: Every CEO has one core mandate from investors: to profitably grow the company. But this is easier said than done.There is a long list of companies that once appeared to be nearly invincible and were seemingly bestowed with endless growth (including Apple Computer, IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, Motorola, General Motors, McDonald's, and PepsiCo, to name just a few). Each of these firms enjoyed great success for long periods of time followed by unexpected failure. Some have recovered from their falls, while others did not. In this article we do not want to explore why some of these companies failed, but instead we wish to examine why they were able to grow profitably for so many years, and what enabled some (and not others) to recover.Consider Apple Computer. The company's original rise in the late 1970s and its resurgence 25 years later, after a rough period in the 1990s, tell an interesting tale. Apple's first significant growth spurt was fueled by several generations of innovative personal computing hardware and software products, starting with the Apple II. Apple's decision in the 1980s not to license its operating system was ultimately costly because the real value creation proved to be in software (a lesson IBM learned as well). The availability and affordability of software in turn drove hardware sales. \"Wintel\" systems (based on Intel microprocessors and Windows operating systems) began to dominate personal computing, and do so today. Despite steady sales growth, Apple's PCs continued to lose market share over the years. It was not until Apple took on digital music with its iPod and iTunes offerings that the company returned to levels of profitable growth that it had not seen since the 1980s.PepsiCo is another illuminating example. During the 1970s and 1980s, Pepsi captured market share from its arch rival, Coca-Cola, and the company enjoyed strong growth driven in large part by its line of soft drinks. Fortunes turned in the 1990s and Pepsi seemed to lose the cola war. Recognizing an overall decline in the soft drink market and the shift of consumer preferences toward healthier choices, PepsiCo began focusing the company on healthier alternatives. The company has created more than 100 health products and has significantly invested in its healthier brands, including Quaker, Dole and Tropicana. PepsiCo expects that 50 percent of its new product revenue will come through sale of these new healthier alternatives, and the company has grown this category by 13 percent in the last year alone.Finally, CEMEX, a Mexican cement company, grew from a mid-size family enterprise to a publicly held global player. In the late 1990s the company found itself in a difficult position. CEMEX had run out of traditional growth opportunities in its home market, which accounted for half of its revenues and an even larger share of the profits. CEMEX began to look systematically for new growth opportunities and identified Mexico's low income home builders as a new source of growth. Though this large segment was traditionally considered impossible to serve, CEMEX created a stream of new products and services to help the poor build better homes faster. As a result of this and other opportunities, the company has reinvented itself as a service- and solution-based organization and has set a new standard for the cement industry.\nSo, what do Apple, Pepsi, and CEMEX have in common?: These three companies are just a few out of the many that have discovered the power of growth platforms. By growth platforms we do not mean the traditional notion of modular product architectures (we call these product platforms) but rather, a strategic link or anchor in a stream of growth and innovation opportunities that connects differentiated internal capabilities (or capabilities that can be attained) with external market needs. For Apple, a key growth platform is the \"Digital Media Experience\", which is aimed at creating a new and seamlessly integrated consumer experience for digital media, including music, podcasts, and video. The platform generated, among other things, the bestselling iPod digital music players and the iTunes music store. One of PepsiCo's main growth platforms is \"Health and Wellness\", which is reshaping the brand and generating a new line of healthy choices for consumers. The pursuit of an \"affordable housing\" growth platform has enabled CEMEX to successfully introduce new construction and service solutions for an overlooked customer segment - low income households.These three companies share a common approach for how they went about identifying and capitalizing on these growth platforms. Each either intentionally or unknowingly undertook a series of analyses and actions that led to the successful identification, development and implementation of a growth platform. The four steps each company successfully navigated were:1. developing a deep understanding of markets and identifying unmet customer needs;2. identifying existing and potential internal capabilities that can be leveraged into differentiated competencies;3. finding opportunities at the intersection of market needs and capabilities and clustering innovation opportunities around a strategic platform; and4. investing in the innovation pipeline and executing on the strategic growth platforms and their opportunities.Understanding markets and unmet customer needs\nPlatform example: Apple's Digital Music Experience platform: The phenomenal success of Apple's move into digital music is well known. But how did it become the growth engine for Apple accounting for 50 percent of revenue? Apple did not invent portable digital music players; neither did it create the first online music store. It was not even the first to recognize the potential of providing an integrated offering. That idea was brought to Apple by an outsider, a former Philips employee. But Apple was the first to act on the integrated concept, buying into the notion that the market was poorly served with current solutions.Apple's leadership believed in the fundamental shift in consumption and distribution of music and understood that there was a need for a very different type of digital music experience. Apple also knew that the only way this new music experience would work was to get the entire value chain aligned - including the large music studios that had, until then, battled the digital distribution because they were fearful of continued copyright infringements in the wake of Napster.Within six months, and with significant help from outside partners, the company introduced the innovative iPod, which combined a sleek design and an intuitive user interface that was Apple's signature. Soon to follow was the online music store (iTunes) that was part of the original business concept and worked seamlessly with Macs (later also PCs) and the iPod. iTunes delivered affordable music downloads while satisfying the music industry's piracy concerns. Improvements of the iPod and new formats (iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano) followed. But innovation was not limited to new hardware and software. Special edition iPods emerged, initially featuring graphics of stars engraved on the back and later including special exclusive design features, as well as pre-loaded and discounted music (e.g. U2 special edition). A partnership with HP and the innovative force of dozens of accessory suppliers soon created an infrastructure that was impossible for competitors to replicate.Not all of the initiatives linked to this platform succeeded (the HP alliance was later dissolved). However, because each opportunity was just one piece of a broad set of initiatives generated from the platform, the overall success of Apple's digital music experience platform was not seriously impacted by any one failure.\nPlatform Example: PepsiCo's Health and Wellness platform: For years, PepsiCo had been growing on the basis of its core soda and snack food businesses. Especially in North America the company was involved in fierce market share battles with arch rival Coca-Cola. But by the late 1990s PepsiCo's leadership realized that the food and beverage industry was experiencing a major shift. Obesity and health issues among a growing number of consumers - especially in its home market, the US - drove new consumer demand for healthier products. The consumption of soda started to slip and the category was losing ground to sports and energy drinks, bottled water and juices. Government agencies, health and youth advocacy groups also began demanding healthier choices from food companies. At the time, the company's core brand, Pepsi, stood for anything but healthy.In response to these changes, PepsiCo created a new platform around health and wellness to transform not only its product portfolio but the company as a whole. The platform connected its core competencies in developing, manufacturing, distribution and marketing of consumer products with capabilities from outside partners like universities, health and youth organizations and with the consumer demand for healthier choices. The result was a strong and growing pipeline of healthy foods and beverages. PepsiCo created the Smart Spot logo to help consumers identify healthy choices. The logo was based on nutrition criteria of the US Food and Drug Administration and the National Academy of Sciences. The company has also created a series of innovative partnerships to promote healthier lifestyles and reposition its brand. For example, Pepsi is the national presenting sponsor to America on the Move(tm) and launched the \"Get Kids in Action\" program with the University of North Carolina. It is also a key sponsor for several YMCA programs designed to promote fitness for children and teenagers. Today more than 250 PepsiCo products contribute to healthier lifestyles, and in 2005 these products have grown at more than two-and-one-half times the rate of the rest of PepsiCo's portfolio.\nPlatform example: CEMEX's Affordable Housing platform: CEMEX is one of the leading cement companies in the world. In the mid to late 1990s the company faced a particular challenge. Though there were still opportunities for growth in international markets, the company's leadership realized that it had hit a wall in its home market which still contributed half the revenues and even larger share of profits. Because of the company's dominant market share further acquisitions or regional expansion were no longer viable options for growth in their home market.In the aftermath of Mexico's financial crisis of 1994 the construction business plummeted, affecting all CEMEX customer segments except for one - the very poor. Demand from this segment remained at pre-crisis levels, and because of the size of the segment, this group accounted for a significant portion of the country's cement consumption.CEMEX realized they knew very little about how these low-income customers purchased and consumed cement. Through ethnographic research, CEMEX learned that this segment built houses slowly when money became available and by pooling funds among neighbors and friends to afford the building materials they needed to improve or reinforce their shelters. These consumers were also inefficient users of building materials due to their low education level and lack of construction experience.These insights sparked a line of new product and service ideas that would help the poor build better homes faster and more efficiently. The pipeline of solutions included new financing mechanisms, construction methods, advisory services, and delivery and logistics services that leveraged a range of business partners along the value chain. The solutions were later ported to other consumer segments with higher income levels but still following the premise of helping consumers build affordable homes. The platform has become one of a series of growth platforms that allowed CEMEX to continue to grow in its home market.\nDiscovering the power of growth platforms: The power of growth platforms is not just about the creation of strong innovation pipelines. Growth platforms also enable companies to be successful innovators and harvest the financial rewards over the long run. They help to focus the company's creative and analytical forces. They are an effective mechanism to both integrate innovation in corporate and business unit strategy and to anchor it in the structure of the organization. They enable management to measure the contribution to innovation from individuals and teams and to hold them accountable for results. They enable the company to connect the capabilities and assets of different organizational units and external partners. They serve as a very tangible vehicle to drive cultural change in companies and even to redefine the perception of the company in the marketplace. They are an effective way to communicate the longer-term strategic priorities and growth prospects to investors and employees. And when a company manages a portfolio of platforms effectively, the result is sustained growth and success in the market place.The power to focus\nGetting started on growth platforms: Where should companies begin to look for growth platforms? The examples above show that the most compelling platforms are found at the intersection of unmet customer needs and distinct capabilities available to the firm. To find these opportunities in their organizations, leadership teams need to:*Develop a deep understanding of customer markets and identify new unmet market needs. In order to accomplish this, companies need to update their analytical toolkits, capabilities and processes for generating insights. Scenario planning, customer observation, buying and usage analysis and customer behavior modeling should all be incorporated.*Identify existing or potential internal capabilities and competencies. This requires that sophisticated processes and tools are developed and deployed. Technology roadmapping, capability unbundling and analysis as well as business model simulation are a few approaches that should be incorporated.*Focus on the intersection of market needs and internal capabilities to look for opportunities. This requires the design of new processes and tools as well as the deployment of cross-functional teams.*Invest in growth platforms and drive the implementation of platform opportunities that are identified. To do this, leaders need to look across their organization - across business units, geographies, and their company boundaries - for the right talent to lead and support growth platforms. Then leaders need to visibly drive platform initiatives. Platforms can face some of the biggest challenges from within their own organization. It is the attention and support of senior leaders that will ensure their success.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - Every CEO has one core mandate from investors - to profitably grow the company. But this is easier said than done. Why have so many undoubtedly great firms like IBM, Digital Equipment, AT&T, GM, McDonald's and Coca Cola to name just a few with such potential been unable to sustain their growth, while the likes of Apple Computer, Pepsi and Starbuck's have been able to virtually reinvent their industries?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This article, based on both primary and secondary research, walks the reader through several case studies of companies we have had personal professional experience with, and some that have been written about widely in the media.\nFindings: - Our findings show that \"growth platforms\" are a beneficial way for companies to generate sustainable, profitable growth.\nPractical implications: - These companies are just a few out of many that have discovered the power of platforms. Not in the old-fashioned way of using similar parts to enhance their products, on the one hand covering a broad range of the market, while on the other keeping development time and cost low; but these companies are demonstrating the next generation of platform thinking, creating and acting on sustainable growth and innovation opportunities from a combination of well-established internal capabilities and accessible external market opportunities.\nOriginality/value: - By reading this article, the reader will gain insight into what a growth platform is, how to create one in their own organization, and what other companies' growth platforms look like, and how they bring about real sustainable growth through innovation.\n",
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