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Developing students' energy literacy in higher education
|
[
"Attitudes",
"Knowledge",
"Behaviour",
"Curriculum",
"Energy literacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Higher education (HE) has a key role to play in educating \"leaders for the future\" (Martin and Jucker, 2005), and there is an increasing expectation that higher-level study should play a leading role in equipping graduates with the knowledge, skills and attitudes which enable them to respond appropriately to sustainability challenges [see, for example, The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE, 2013]. However, conjecture surrounds the extent to which HE is rising to this challenge. Orr (1994, p. 5), for example, claims that there is no clear correlation between educational level and environmental concern:\n2. Methodology: The research took the form of an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) to explore the issue of energy literacy through studying students at a UK university. An instrumental case study uses a single institution to explore and exemplify a wider issue (in this case students' energy literacy). The case-study approach was chosen on the basis of its strong grounding in reality and the ability to generate a rich, detailed account. Generalization in this study thus takes the form of \"theoretical inference\" (Hammersley, 1998), in which the conclusions move beyond the claims made about the individual case to a more general, theoretical level that is potentially of wider interest. Any theoretical understanding produced must therefore be considered provisional in nature and would benefit from further investigation.\n3. Findings: 3.1 Respondents' energy literacy\n4. Discussion: It is clear that multiple factors interact with the formal and informal curricula to influence students' energy literacy. These include:\n5. Study limitations and further research: Like all research, this study has a number of limitations which should be taken into account when considering the findings. First, it is a single institution case study of a UK university with known leadership credentials in sustainability. Second, the findings are based largely around a survey which achieved a high number of responses but a relatively low overall response rate. These issues are discussed and justified in the methodology section, but they, nevertheless, place limitations on the generalisability of the findings. Rather than stronger generalisability, therefore, the research offers an indication of the possibilities and problems of promoting energy literacy in the HE context. The fact that students' energy literacy was somewhat patchy, even within this institution where sustainability is a high priority, adds strength to the argument that much remains to be done to progress this agenda.\n6. Conclusion and implications: This research illustrates the importance of both formal and informal curricula in the development of students' cognitive, affective and conative energy literacy. Although differences in energy literacy between disciplines were identified, knowledge about energy was certainly not limited to specific subjects, suggesting that scope exists for the further development of energy literacy within aspects of the formal curriculum. In addition, the informal and campus curriculum (including extra-curricular activities and social learning) emerged as important influences on students' attitudes and behaviours. Taken together, these findings offer indicators for how HE institutions might enhance the energy literacy of their students, while the 4E model provides a useful framework for identifying and structuring future developments. Also important in this context are the potential lessons to be gained from studying an institution which has gone some way towards embedding sustainability across its curriculum and campus activities. Although the evidence from the study suggests that the value of the case study lies equally in understanding failures and successes, the sharing of experiences in this way may provide lessons for universities at different stages in the broader effort to integrate sustainability concerns into HE.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate students' energy literacy at a UK university, and recommends ways in which it can be enhanced using a behaviour change model. Developing students' energy literacy is a key part of the \"greening\" agenda, yet little is known about how students develop their ideas about energy use and energy saving at a university.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research utilised a mixed-methods approach including an online survey (with 1,136 responses) and focus groups.\nFindings: The research identified strengths and weaknesses in students' energy literacy, and noted the relative influence of formal and informal curricula. The potential for aligning these curricula is highlighted through the 4Es model of enable, engage, exemplify and encourage.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research involved a single instrumental case-study site. The wider applicability of the findings should therefore be tested further in other institutions.\nPractical implications: The research suggests ways in which universities might better support their students in making more sustainable energy-related behaviour choices, and it indicates the importance of knowledge as well as attitudes.\nSocial implications: The research may have implications for the energy-saving behaviours of individuals in the wider society.\nOriginality/value: Attempts to reduce energy use in higher education are widely seen in campus operations. This research provides an indication of the potential for enhancing energy-saving through different forms of curricula.\n",
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Voluntary helpful organizational behavior: Recognition of individual attributes
|
[
"Contextual performance",
"Employee predispositions",
"Helpful employee behavior"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In a global sense, graduates of collegiate programs of study, as employees, are entering organizations that are relying to a greater and greater extent on employee behavior that is voluntary, helpful and that goes beyond regular job requirements and duties. Employers around the globe expect that newly hired college graduates will possess the needed technical skills, first and foremost. Most managers in for-profit and non-profit organizations would agree that they observe and recognize helpful employee behavior that goes above and beyond the usual requirements of a job or role (Dalal, 2007). The reinforcement and development of this type of behavior are matters that should be of significance to managers and to human resource (HR) practitioners, in particular. The topic of this article touches many current topics in the HR domain to include talent recruitment and development (Garavan, 2012), employee engagement (Fearon et al., 2013), retention of quality employees (Rahman and Nas, 2013) and shaping an organization's culture (Chen and Huang, 2009).\nBackground and review of literature: Helpful employee behavior\nAccounting students and v-hob: Because we chose to study a group of students of accounting we decided to examine information that offers some insight as to personality and interests. In addition, we examined the literature to learn more about behavior of accounting students related to communication skills, teamwork skills and other interpersonal relationships that relate to v-hob. The paragraphs that follow examine in order:\nResearch methodology: V-hob is more likely to be offered by some individuals than others. Some people would offer helpful behavior frequently and some would never attempt to do more than the job absolutely requires. Some individual personalities are predisposed to offer helpful behavior. We decided to examine this matter with a sample of accounting students who will be joining the work force in about 18 months, after completing their baccalaureate studies in accounting. Using tested measures of helpful behavior we anticipated a means to identify which individuals have a predisposition to engage in helpful behavior. Further, the comparability of this predisposition with success in academic achievement can be examined as well as the relationship between predisposition for v-hob and self-reported interest in goal achievement, a concept related to motivation to achieve (VandeWalle, 1997). Recent research by Jones (2010), in a detailed study of generic attributes and skills of accounting students, indicates clearly that goal achievement is a significant factor in much of the work of accountants including: reporting, research, decision making, interpretation of data and project management among others.\nResults: Table I presents some of the descriptive information obtained for the student sample. With the exception of grade point average (GPA) and course grade, none of the information in Table I was used in the analysis of student performance, goal achievement or v-hob.\nInterpretation of results: This section is organized around the propositions stated previously. Below, each proposition is restated followed by commentary.\nDiscussion: Owing to the composition of our sample and some of the limitations noted here, results from the study may not be highly generalizable. There are several limitations of this exploratory research. The sample is not large, and all the students are enrolled in an accounting curriculum at a single university in the USA There are practically no international students in the sample. The student group is homogeneous per cultural characteristics yet somewhat diverse in racial make-up. These are relatively important shortcomings. However, the sample size is adequate for application of nearly all common statistical tests. The content of this exploratory work should be of interest to faculty and scholars, as most of the concepts examined in the study have not had exposure in the literature of accounting education. Many of the concepts have not been examined in the literature of higher learning, in general. The study also provides a linkage from education in accounting to the world of work.\nConclusions: There is no claim to express any cause and effect contingencies in this study; however, this exploratory work has illuminated some interesting relationships. One relationship discovered is that this sample of accounting students demonstrated higher, more positive scores (dispositions) on the v-hob variables than any of the employee samples identified in research in which the various v-hob measures were validated and found reliable (see Table V). This speaks well for accounting students, as they prepare to enter the work force. At the same time, research concerning personality variables of accounting majors or graduates (see above, Bealing et al., 2006, 2009) suggests that accounting students, when compared to other students, are less likely to engage in spontaneous efforts to be helpful, particularly in matters that may be mediated through interpersonal relationships. It may be that many accounting students are aware of this matter as some of them suggest that teamwork skills education should be a more prominent feature of their undergraduate experience (Wells et al., 2009).\n",
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to examine employee-helpful behavior that is voluntary and given freely without anticipation of reward or recognition. The authors have labeled this voluntary behavior in all its forms as v-hob, or voluntary helpful organizational behavior. They seek to define and explain the behavior and attempt to discern measures that will help to discover individual's predispositions to offer v-hob.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors examine current theory/constructs and offer a detailed empirical study in identifying measures that may provide some means for assessing employee predisposition toward helpful, voluntary behavior on the job. The format of the work is reflective of a typical research study with hypotheses.\nFindings: The authors learned that, within limits, it is possible and practical to identify direct measures to discover one's predisposition toward v-hob. They also have identified regression equations that use several variables to help predict one's predispositions toward this valued behavior.\nPractical implications: This study brings to the manager and/or human resource (HR) practitioner the substance of contextual performance, that is, behavior that goes beyond task performance in the support of individual and organizational goal attainment. This research demonstrates several means by which trainers, managers and HR professionals may assess an employee's or a recruit's predisposition to offer voluntary, helpful behavior.\nOriginality/value: This research, unlike most of the empirical, academic research in the domain of contextual performance, speaks directly to practitioners. The authors' definitions, explanations and study clearly demonstrate the practical features of contextual performance.\n",
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Cross-cultural application of a practice-oriented acquiescence measure
|
[
"Cross-cultural management",
"Hofstede",
"Hierarchical linear modelling",
"Response style",
"Acquiescence",
"ARS"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Studies in the field of comparative cross-cultural marketing research aim at understanding different national and/or cultural markets (Malhotra et al., 1996; Sojka and Tansuhaj, 1995). If enterprises build their global strategies on these studies, they need to be sure that study results are unbiased because they need to avoid budget misallocations. Yet, extant literature confirms that response styles may bias questionnaire data and that these contaminations are contingent on the culture of the respondents (Dolnicar and Grun, 2007; Hoffmann et al., 2013). This (stable) systematic measurement error makes up to one quarter of the total variance (Baumgartner and Steenkamp, 2006a).\n2. Measuring acquiescence response style: 2.1 Conventional measures of acquiescence response style (cARS)\n3. Cultural predictors of acquiescence response style: 3.1 Extending knowledge on culture-bound ARS\n4. Design: 4.1 Individual-level data\n5. Results: We use a set of statistical methods to answer our research questions. Correlations analysis discriminates the substantive measure of pARS from the mix-up measure of AR. The correlations between national-level pARS and Hofstede's (1991) original four cultural dimensions further replicate existing intercultural results and ensure nomological validity. This establishes pARS as an alternative measure for acquiescence (RQ1) and hints to construct validity based on the relations to cultural dimensions (RQ2). Two more analyses validate the holistic cultural effects. Ordinal least square regression simultaneously tests on a national-level all six dimensions and investigates in successive models interaction terms also (RQ3 and RQ4). Multi-level analysis confirms the stability of national culture-bound influences on individual pARS under the condition of individual- and country-level variability.\n6. Discussion: This paper investigated four research questions which contribute to the literature. RQ1 investigates an alternative ARS measure which is suitable for application in practical research and contributes methodological-wise. We introduce an alternative measure, namely, pARS, which discriminates between stylistic and true variance. With respect to RQ2, the present study replicated the pattern of cultural influences of Hofstede's (1991) original four dimensions, shown in previous studies to predict ARS. This nomological network establishes construct validity for pARS. pARS is particularly suitable for shorter questionnaires. In contrast to prior approaches, it does not add non-substantive items. To measure pARS, only a small set of substantive items is needed (e.g. product knowledge). Therefore, pARS is appropriate for practice-oriented research. Unlike previous research, pARS used neither Likert-typed scaling nor attitudinal items to measure pure affirmative vs profound stylistic responding (Greenleaf, 1992; Baumgartner and Steenkamp, 2001). For the first time, we apply knowledge-based familiarity scales, which are the basis for a test of truth. Therefore, our research design enables us to contrast the stylistic and true parts in affirmative responding. Note that the familiarity measures are flexible in such a way that the measures could apply Likert scales with different numbers of points or with binary answers (yes or no).\n7. Limitations and future research directions: We hope that this work stimulates further research to apply an adjusted form of the new measure. Additionally, like every empirical investigation, the present study has methodological limitations which could be addressed in future research.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: Extant research shows that acquiescence response style (ARS) is culture-bound and may bias the results of comparative cross-cultural studies. Conventional measures of ARS are difficult to apply in practice. To overcome this limitation, the purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative, practice-oriented measure, namely, pARS. The authors apply Hofstede's cultural dimensions (Hofstede et al., 2010) to test whether pARS is culture-bound. The cross-cultural study provides a high level of cross-cultural generalisability due to the extensive number of surveyed countries (n=30) and subjects (n=236.089). The authors run multi-level analysis to identify within- and between-country-level predictors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: On the individual level, the authors use data of a large-scale cross-cultural study, including 236.089 consumers from 30 countries worldwide. The authors apply several methods to test for the culture-boundness of pARS. First, they apply correlation analysis to replicate existing cross-cultural results and to ensure nomological validity. Second, applying ordinary least square regression, the authors simultaneously test the six Hofstede cultural dimensions (Hofstede et al., 2010) and investigate interactions between the dimensions. Finally, they use multi-level analysis to confirm the stability of culture-bound results, controlling for individual- and country-level variability.\nFindings: The paper introduces an alternative measure for acquiescence (pARS), which is particularly suitable for shorter questionnaires. A large-scale consumer study with 236.089 respondents in 30 countries supports the culture-bound validity of pARS. The authors confirm construct validity and the nomological network of pARS. Contrasting existing studies, multi-level analysis demonstrates that a high level of power distance majorly leads to ARS. Therefore, cross-cultural researchers need to control for ARS in countries high in power distance, especially when paired with high uncertainty avoidance.\nOriginality/value: A large-scale consumer study with 236.089 respondents from 30 countries shows that respondents from various countries differ significantly in their level of acquiescence. The study confirms that power distance is the most relevant cultural dimension to explain these differences. Although ARS may bias the results of comparative cross-cultural studies, it is rarely controlled by market research studies outside the academic realm. The present work proposes and establishes the validity of a practice-oriented measure of acquiescence, namely, pARS. pARS is particularly suitable for shorter questionnaires. In contrast to prior approaches, applying pARS does not require adding non-substantive items to the questionnaire.\n",
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] |
Understanding innovation through the vocational student work-placement experience
|
[
"Innovation",
"Workplace learning",
"Meanings",
"Vocational placement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In globalised knowledge-based economies, learning, work and innovation could now be considered the three dimensions of prosperity. All three, in concert, are essential to successful living. Such a perspective becomes apparent through any reading of contemporary international and economic development literature (OECD, 2015; ISA Innovation and Science Australia, 2017; Schwab, 2018). And it remains so at national, organisational and personal levels of social aspiration and participation (Lundvall, 2016; Jorna, 2017; Smith, 2017) where governments, businesses and individuals strive to secure their places in the increasingly competitive markets that now characterise society. The conceptual conflict that once separated work, learning and innovation and that Brown and Duguid (1991) rightfully argued against, has now given way to the more accurate understanding of the complementarity and integration of these three forms of human activity - work, learning and innovation are interdependent, the one an expression of or essential element of the others (Widmann et al., 2016; Billett, 2012; Ellstrom, 2010).\nInnovation literature - understanding innovation: There is no consensus about what innovation is and how it should be understood. Rather, within policy, research and advocacy literature, innumerable meanings of innovation are advanced. For example, innovation can pass undefined and yet be rich with assumptions that its meaning is understood and accepted by all - as in the Australian federal government statement, \"innovation is essential to create more economic and social opportunities for Australians\" (ISA Innovation and Science Australia, 2017, p. 1). Equally, it can be tightly specified to a particular set of conditions and circumstances, for example, to focus on a certain type of innovation - as in Visnjic et al. (2016, p. 36) research focused definition of service business model innovation being, \"where a manufacturing firm with a product business model expands its offering into services related to its products, and as a result, shifts from the 'product-only' business model to the 'service-oriented' business model\". Indeed, so diverse are understandings of innovation, both in terms of meaning and degree of explicit definition, that Curtin and Stanwick (2011, p. 10), in their overview of research that examined the links among innovation and skills development, described it as a \"slippery construct - in fact, chameleon-like, adapting its meaning according to time, place and economic circumstances, and who is defining the term\". By intimation, going to the literature in search of clarity of meaning may make finding shared understanding of innovation more difficult. And yet, securing such shared understanding remains necessary to its realisation in practice (Lundvall, 2016; Verdonschot and Keursten, 2011).\nThe research - exploring innovation through vocational student work placement: As noted above, the research and findings reported here emerged from the first exploratory phase (qualitative - interview based) of a larger project (mixed methods - survey, interview, focus group) aimed at examining the contributions of vocational student placement programs to innovation in host organisations. These kinds of programs function at the intersection of work and learning and bring together a diversity of resources, challenges and opportunities that may have strong positive impacts on all stakeholders involved (Jackson et al., 2017; Atkinson, 2016). The focus within the exploratory Phase 1 was enabling vocational students, trainers and host organisation staff to discuss themselves, their perspectives on the work placement program, their work, training and learning experiences and to identify and consider the kinds of changes and improvements that were taking place in their work and workplaces, along with the potential reasons and purposes for these changes and their involvement in them. The questions addressing change and improvement lead into specific questions about their understanding of innovation and innovative work practices. The question schedule that guided interviews with vocational placement students is appended at the end of the paper. Similar questions guided the interviews with host organisation staff and trainers. Data from this Phase 1 were used to develop a survey tool that was then used across a broad range of industry sectors to identify suitable host organisation case studies for deeper examination in subsequent phases of the larger project (Hodge et al., 2017).\nFindings - conceptions of innovation: The six meaning clusters identify what can be described as work-based generic understandings or conceptions of innovation. Each is elaborated below. Excerpts from the interview transcripts are used to illustrate.\nDiscussion - considering the six understandings of innovation: The six conceptions of innovation elaborated above represent a set of meaning distinctions that attest to the \"chameleon\" of innovation having a range of at least six colour palates that it moves freely between as it changes colour depending on with whom and in what circumstances it is being considered. And notably, these being additional to the numerous variations briefly outlined in the literature reviewed earlier in the paper. For the staff, trainers and students here, innovation can carry any one or combination of the six meanings outlined. Importantly, these meanings are not the carefully considered and crafted definitions of researchers who have made it their task to better understand just what innovation is. Nor are they the aspirational rhetoric of innovation policy and promotion advocates. Rather, these meanings are the culturally founded understandings of workers whose work tasks may or may not coincide with their beliefs about what innovation means for them. They are here described as work-based generic understandings of innovation.\nPhase 1 - vocational student questionnaire: Section A - placement enactment and experience\n",
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"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to report and discuss findings from the first exploratory phase of a research project that examined how and in what ways the practice of vocational student work-placement contributes to innovation in host organisations. The focus of the paper is on identifying and clarifying how innovation is understood in this context and outlines six different meanings of innovation variably used by those involved in the work-placement provision - vocational education students, training providers and host organisation staff. The paper suggests that these six meanings evidence the disparity of work-based understandings of innovation and the need to be more explicit and accurate about what the term means in specific work contexts if innovation is to be realised.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The qualitative first phase of the project interviewed 41 students, trainers and organisational staff about the nature of their work and learning practices and the kinds of changes and improvements to those practices that they experienced through the placement program. Through these interview conversations participants were asked to describe and explain their understandings and experiences of innovation in their work. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed.\nFindings: Interview analysis gave rise to a set of six distinguishable meanings that operate as definitions of innovation. These six meanings highlight the range of meanings the term innovation carries within small business work-learning contexts and the need of those who promote and encourage innovation to be mindful of these various usages.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings reported emerge from a small sample and are only one aspect of the overall project. Further larger scale research is needed.\nSocial implications: The term innovation should not be considered commonly understood and accepted by those who promote it and within workplaces and organisational practice. Clear, accurate and specific work context consideration of the term is needed.\nOriginality/value: The project reports the voices and understandings of those whose work and learning are foundational to the emergence and enactment of innovation in work. These voices are all too often seldom heard and heeded. The six meanings they articulate for innovation contrast markedly with typical innovation research literature.\n",
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A liminal approach to parents in leadership positions in schools with students of high socioeconomic background in Israel
|
[
"Parents",
"Leadership",
"Liminality",
"Parental involvement",
"Collective involvement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nObjectives: Neoliberalism refers to a \"meta social change\" that articulates the traditional boundaries of social categories (Beck, 2000) and along with decentralization, induces schools to adapt to their multi-contextual (e.g. cultural, political and social) environment (Hallinger, 2018). As being integral to their communities, schools need to develop flexible and heterarchical structures based on social networking and interactions with diverse external stakeholders that foster school improvement, support and legitimization (Addi-Raccah, 2006; Keddie, 2015; Keddie et al., 2018; Ni et al., 2017). Building a partnership with external stakeholders is currently acknowledged as a significant component of successful leadership and a key priority in educational policy worldwide, as well as in Israel (e.g. Hargreaves and Harris, 2015; Scott and Halkias, 2016).\nParental leadership in schools: Parent-school relations encompass individual and collective patterns of involvement. As individuals, parents are involved in common activities that comprise of volunteering in routine or social school activities such as taking part in school events or attending school programs or performances (Epstein, 2010). Parents also act as supervisors to ensure that educators deliver high-quality education (Addi-Raccah, 2018). As a collective, parents comprise a leadership group that serves as a representative body of the school parents. The PLS members have an interest in influencing school policy and processes in order to provide better educational services for their children, as part of the growing responsibility for children's education (Ball, 2012). Furthermore, PLS participate actively in the public spheres for leading social change, as part of the expanding functions of civil society (Beck, 2000). This trend is enhanced by the free-market ideology and the privatization of educational services (Ball and Youdell, 2008) that contributed to the perception of parents as consumers who exert on schools a powerful pressure toward accountability. Furthermore, as a result of government budget cuts, parents in public schools are increasingly required to provide additional resources for services formerly provided by the state (Posey-Maddox, 2013). Hence, parents in leadership and various representative bodies (e.g. school governance bodies, school councils or school boards) gain legitimization to transmit parents' voice (Dusi, 2012; Borgonovi and Montt, 2012), actively express parents' interests, participate in school decision making, governance and advocacy activities, and share views and actions toward common goals (Epstein, 2010; Oostdam and Hooge, 2013).\nParental leadership in Israeli schools: Briefly, more than 30 years ago, the Israeli education system was highly centralized, with marginal and insubstantial parental involvement. Even if parents were formally granted influence over 25 percent of the school curriculum, this option was not realized, partly due to parental unawareness and partly as a result of bureaucratic barriers. Parents gained power in schools during the 1990s thanks to decentralization and democratization processes that afforded them a stronger \"voice\" and more choice in education (Goldring and Shapira, 1993). Yet, parental involvement has never been fully institutionalized in schools or regulated by the General Executive of the Ministry of Education (Schechtman and Busharian, 2015). However, the Ministry of Education, Local Education Authorities (LEAs) and schools seek ways to collaborate with parents. In practice, parental involvement occurs through various informal and individual interactions with the school staff (Addi-Raccah and Grinshtain, 2016), and through organized collective participation in PLS. The PLS consists of volunteers who are selected each year from the larger school parents' community. However, there is a lack of clear regulations regarding the PLS's responsibilities and roles (Troan, 2004). The PLS operates \"in-between\" school and parents, blurring the boundaries between these two spheres while their actions are left to dynamic interactions cultivated between the school and parents. As such, we suggest to explore PLS from liminal lenses.\nThe liminal framework: The concept of liminality is derived from the Latin word \"limen,\" referring to threshold. Liminality was originally employed in anthropology to describe the experience of individuals undergoing \"rites of passage\" (van Gennep, 1960), in order to identify and describe the transition from one social state to another, as found in tribal and traditional societies.\nMethodology: This is a qualitative research based on the grounded theory approach, aiming to formulate conceptual explanations of the PLS's position in Israel (Marshall and Rossman, 2014). As PLS is common and active in high-socioeconomic schools and parents express intense involvement in their children's education in comparison to low-socioeconomic schools (Addi-Raccah and Grinshtain, 2016), focusing on parents of high-socioeconomic schools is an advantageous starting point for exploring and understanding the PLS's position.\nFindings: The findings distinguished between in and out of school regarding the characteristics, activities and status of the PLS. Four main themes were found, two of the themes were focused within the school and related to the characteristics of the PLS and its activities. Another theme was centered on the PLS activities outside of school. Extending on in and out of school activities, the fourth theme related to the PLS's position. First, we addressed the characteristics of the PLS and the motives for joining it as the baseline for the \"driving force\" to volunteer and become involved in school from a collective position.\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study, that examined parental collective involvement, aimed at revealing PLS's attributes, activities and position. Based on interviews with the PLS's chairpersons and members, we can conceptualize the PLS as a liminal framework that retains both formal and informal organizational attributes, which affect the activities and the position of its members. Accordingly, we propose to regard the PLS as having a dual nature. On the one hand, it is established based on formal elections; it has structural arrangements as sub-committees; it holds formal meetings and maintains hierarchical patterns of authority, such as the chairperson assuming a leading role. The PLS and in particular the chairperson maintains close relations with the school principal who sets constraints over the PLS's roles. PLS members acknowledge that they do not act against the school or without the school principal's approval. That is, the PLS is co-opted to the school and in a way subordinated to the school principal. These findings are in corroborate with those of Malen and Cochran (2008) that parents do not challenge the power of the principals.\nImplications: Regarding school principals, they need to support the PLS members and enable them to express their needs and visions and keep encouraging entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. Thus, school principals have to outreach parents as a collective, rather than finding avenues to exclude them. For that purpose, educators need in-service training since currently, in Israel, there is a lack of systematic knowledge and skills in working with parents (Schechtman and Busharian, 2015).\nLimitations and future research: In this study, school principals agreed to participate in this research; this may cause a certain bias toward positivity of the overall relations between the PLS and the principals. Different patterns can be found in cases where the relations between parents and school principals are tenser. There is also a need to extend the scope of the current study by referring to parents who are not in the PLS in order to better understand the relations between the PLS and the other school parents. It is also suggested to look at diverse populations and school contexts, e.g., diverse socioeconomic backgrounds or secondary schools and employing a comparative approach to collective parental involvement at school.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Parents' collective involvement in their children's education takes the form of holding leadership positions in schools. Employing the concept of liminality, which is used in anthropological and sociological approaches, the purpose of this paper is to explore the features of parent leadership in schools (PLS).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Interviews were conducted with 18 individuals: 11 chairpersons and 7 members of the parent leadership of 11 primary schools in Israel attended by students of high socioeconomic backgrounds.\nFindings: Data analyses disclose PLS as a liminal framework, which constitutes both formal and informal dimensions, whether these be its in-school limited activities or out-of-school actions in introducing change and supporting the institutions. PLS's functions are restricted by school principals, but simultaneously enhance school principals' position.\nPractical implications: The study's findings carry implications for school collaboration with external entities. School principals need to support PLS and keep encouraging entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. There is a need for acknowledging the value of PLS's contributions whereas policy makers must provide more guidelines and support to parent leaders.\nOriginality/value: The study focuses on exploring the position of collective parental involvement in schools. This issue is of significance in a time where parents gain more responsibility over their children's education and schools support more collaborative relationships with external agencies. The study highlights the benefits of parents in leadership positions for school benefits and for school principals' legitimacy, from the approach of liminality.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Effects of managerial communication as moderated by LMX and trait NA
|
[
"Emotions",
"Interpersonal communication",
"Interpersonal mistreatment",
"Managerial communication",
"Relationship quality",
"Leader-member exchange (LMX)",
"Trait negative affect"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: At times managers communicate with their employees in ways that belittle them, ignore them, or invalidate their feelings. Whether intentional or not this form of interpersonal mistreatment has negative consequences for employee emotions, on organizational effectiveness and on society as a whole. This study introduces the model of disconfirming and confirming managerial communication (Sieburg, 1969; Ellis, 2002) and explores its complex relationship with employee emotions in the context of LMX, and the employee's trait negative affect (NA) personality.\nTheory and hypotheses: Disconfirming managerial communication as a trigger of employees' negative felt emotions\nMethodology: Sample\nMeasures: The data collection focussed on disagreement discussions between employees and their managers to avoid trivial or unimportant (with low goal relevance) conversation topics (Spitzberg and Cupach, 2002).\nConstruct validity: Discriminant validity was confirmed by checking that each construct's variance shared with other constructs was lower than its average (Sharma et al., 2009). We also used the Harman one-factor test for common method bias and loaded the full set of items into a principal component factor analysis. Our analysis revealed a solution that accounted for 56.17 percent of the total variance, while the single factor solution accounted for only 21-24 percent of the variance. Further, our test for the common latent factor revealed that only 3.28 percent of the variance in survey items was explained by common method. (0.1812). Thus, common method bias appears not to be of particular concern in this study.\nResults: Table I summarizes the means, standard deviations, correlations and scale reliabilities. Regression analysis, as shown in Step 1, Table II revealed that, after controlling for contact time, disconfirming managerial communication was positively related to employee negative felt emotion (0.29, p\nDiscussion: Contributions to theory\nConclusions: The objectives of our study were to use the disconfirming/confirming constructs to gain an in depth understanding of the communication behaviors that underlie employee perceptions of interpersonal mistreatment by their managers. We also wanted to place context front and center and discern whether LMX and the employee's personality were significant moderators of the managerial communication-employee emotions relationship. Our results confirmed that high LMX reduced the effect of high disconfirming and low confirming managerial communication on negative employee felt emotions. Low employee trait NA also had the effect of reducing the effects of disconfirming managerial communication on negative employee felt emotions and interestingly low trait NA employees also exhibited greater variance in relation to high and low levels of managerial disconfirming communication.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Using the concept of disconfirming communication to define interpersonal mistreatment, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of specific negative managerial communication behaviors on employee emotions, while taking into account both leader-member exchange (LMX) and employee trait negative affect (NA).\nDesign/methodology/approach: In all, 275 working adults completed surveys about their managers' confirming and disconfirming communication and their own emotional responses to these communications.\nFindings: The positive relationship between disconfirming managerial communication and employee negative felt emotion was reduced when LMX was high and was increased for employees with high trait NA personalities.\nResearch limitations/implications: While the cross-sectional design exposes the study to potential common method bias, a priori and post hoc procedures minimized this risk, confirming it has a negligible impact on the results.\nPractical implications: Study insights and the new instrument, the confirming/disconfirming managerial communication indicator can be used to train managers to be better communicators, thereby improving organizational effectiveness.\nSocial implications: Drawing attention to the nature and emotional impact of disconfirming managerial communication may reduce its occurrence and lead to improved employee mental health with resultant positive effects for society.\nOriginality/value: Unlike previous studies of interpersonal mistreatment and managerial communication, the authors focus explicitly on the effect on employee emotion and explore confirming and disconfirming communication, and the moderating roles of LMX and trait NA.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Do buyers express their true assessment? Antecedents and consequences of customer praise feedback behaviour on Taobao
|
[
"Electronic commerce",
"Customer behaviour",
"Feedback bias",
"Online feedback systems",
"Praise feedback"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Most online communities bring buyers and sellers together (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Jingdong, and Taobao[1]) with the assistance of reputation systems. These systems have played a vital role in the viability and success of electronic commerce (Josang et al., 2007; Floyd et al., 2014). Such systems provide consumers with tools to submit their feedback (so called reviews) such as ratings, text and picture reviews, and summarise the past ratings received by a trader (Nettelhorst et al., 2013; You and Sikora, 2014; Jeong and Koo, 2015). Thus, the transactional efficiency of electric commerce is improved by online feedback that is beneficial to solving information asymmetry and identifying trustworthy behaviour between buyers and sellers (Bolton et al., 2004; Hsu et al., 2014; Jeong and Koo, 2015).\n2. Theoretical background and hypotheses: 2.1 Online review bias\n3. Methods: 3.1 Data collection and samples\n4. Results: 4.1 Measurement model\n5. Discussion: A summary of the results is shown in Table IV. Our findings suggested that fear of confrontation and incentive of reducing nuisance costs contributed to casual praise feedback. On the other hand, casual praise feedback still had a positive effect on trust towards sellers, but had no effect on repurchase intention. It should be noted that deliberatively praise feedback, influenced by fear of confrontation rather than incentive for reducing nuisance costs, indeed had a negative influence on trust and repurchase intention.\n6. Implications and limitations: 6.1 Theoretical contributions\n7. Conclusion: The current study provided strong support for the congruence between customer feedback behaviour and feedback bias in online reviews. The findings indicated that customers' praise feedback behaviour had an influence on their perception of e-commerce. By identifying three dimensions of praise feedback behaviour, we were able to determine the distinct and specific effects of it on trust and the likelihood of online purchase. Meanwhile, the study revealed that two important reasons (confrontation concerns and reducing nuisance costs) contributed to praise feedback behaviour. The research provided a descriptive model that better explains the consumer decision-making processes in giving feedback. It may help us to understand the phenomenon of positive review bias and indicate directions for amending feedback mechanisms. This study also enriched research in this area in China's e-commerce setting (Floyd et al., 2014).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a research model that incorporated antecedents of praise feedback behaviour (fear of confrontation and incentive for reducing nuisance costs), praise feedback behaviour (deliberatively praise feedback, casual praise feedback, and true compliment feedback) and consequences (trust and repurchase intention).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A structural equation model was employed to test the relationships of the research model using survey data collected from 398 Taobao consumers.\nFindings: The results showed that fear of confrontation and incentive for reducing nuisance costs had a significant positive influence on deliberatively praise feedback and true compliment feedback, respectively, and both antecedents had a significant positive influence on casual praise feedback of consumers. It also showed that trust was influenced negatively by deliberatively praise feedback, and positively by casual praise feedback and true compliment feedback. Meanwhile, deliberatively praise feedback and true compliment feedback were found to have negative and positive influences on repurchase intention, respectively.\nOriginality/value: This research was a pilot study to identify a three-dimension conceptualization of praise feedback behaviour from the perspective of customer satisfaction, and to understand positive review bias from the perspective of input processes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Types of director, board diversity and firm performance
|
[
"Firm performance",
"Board diversity",
"Outside directors",
"Executive directors"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: One of the topics most commonly addressed in the corporate governance literature is board's independence, which is recognised essential to its supervisory role, and its influence on a range of firm variables relating to performance. This has led to the analysis of variables such as the size of the board, the percentage of independent directors, the separation of the roles of chairman and CEO or the frequency of board meetings (Hermalin and Weisbach, 2003), all of which make up its so-called structural diversity.\n2. Theoretical framework: 2.1 Demographic diversity approaches\n3. Empirical design: 3.1 Data and variables\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Concluding remarks: The board, the highest echelon of a firm's internal control system, plays a particularly important role in environments where investors' rights lack proper protection and appropriate external control mechanisms, such as the market for corporate control, have yet to be set up. This kind of environment prevails in Spain, the setting for our analysis of the diversity of the board members in a sample of non-financial publicly-traded firms. This study's main contribution is to make a distinction between inside and outside directors. To our knowledge, there has been no analysis of the firm performance impact of the diversity of each type of director using the same sample and methodology, although their respective roles have been differentiated in many studies. Separate analysis of the two is therefore required to determine which aspects of their diversity have most impact when it comes to improving firm performance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of board diversity on firm performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: From different theories perspective and based on data collected about the composition of board of directors in Spanish non-financial firms, the paper determines statistically the relationship between board diversity and performance for the period 2005-2015.\nFindings: The results reveal differences between inside and outside board members in terms of the performance impact of board diversity. Thus, while age diversity has a positive effect on firm performance in both, insider and outsider directors, nationality mix is associated with higher performance levels just in the case of insiders. In addition, educational diversity seems to have a negative effect on performance for supervisory directors. On the contrary, the authors do not find any evidence about a possible influence of gender diversity on performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors are just taking some board's attributes, but the concept of board diversity is a very wide one. In this regard, less traditional methodologies that do not rely on extant archival databases may be necessary to get a deeper understanding of the impact of boards on firm's performance.\nPractical implications: This study demonstrates that the claim of \"one size fits all\" often implicitly stated by regulators and advisors is misleading. Board's attributes analysis over the boardroom as a whole turns out in too simplistic conclusions. This is particularly important for regulators: a rigorous analysis should be performed before including general recommendations about, for instance, the age or the board tenure in corporate governance codes.\nSocial implications: As diverse boards contribute to a greater social value, the paper analyses the performance consequences of demographic diversity.\nOriginality/value: The paper analyses the firm performance impact of diversity among insider directors, on the one hand, and outsider directors, on the other. Although there is a clear difference between the roles assigned to insider and outsider directors, to the authors' knowledge, there has been no analysis of the firm performance effect of the diversity of each type of director using the same sample and methodology.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Consumer perceptions of salesperson gender and credibility: an evolutionary explanation
|
[
"Retailing",
"Credibility",
"Salesperson",
"Cosmetics",
"Evolutionary psychology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Marketers often seem to believe that matching a salesperson's gender with that of the customer results in more productive marketing outcomes. These arguments are grounded in homophily theory (Lazarsfeld and Merton, 1964), which predicts that communication is more effective between a source and a receiver who are alike because they are more likely to have common beliefs and mutual understanding. According to theories related to source similarity, communicating with those who are markedly different requires more effort to make the communication effective (Hass, 1981). Such heterophilic communication may also cause cognitive dissonance because an individual is exposed to messages that are inconsistent with his or her existing beliefs, resulting in an uncomfortable psychological state (Rogers and Bhowmik, 1971).\nBackground: Evolutionary psychology\nMethods: This research involved two studies. In the first, the hypotheses are tested through an experiment. Then, to provide further explanation for the linkages established in the experiment, a phenomenological study was conducted with women who deal with male salesmen in a cosmetics shop.\nManagerial implications: This research has generated a number of implications for practice. The results of previous research based on the homophily theory suggest a link between salesperson characteristics such as gender and race and purchase intention (Evans, 1963; Churchill et al., 1975; Crosby et al., 1990; Swan et al., 1999). Consumers tend to prefer being served by salespersons of the same sex as themselves because they feel more comfortable interacting with them (Brown and Reingen, 1987). For products designed to enhance female attractiveness, however, it may be that heterophily in the buyer-seller dyad is more optimal. Both the experiment and the phenomenological components of this study showed that, in some contexts, heterophily may be more effective than homophily, and this has important practical implications for retailers in particular. In the context of selling cosmetics, the results of the experiment indicate that being served by a male is more strongly associated with purchase intention, and that this is primarily because they are perceived as having more credibility than female salespeople. In particular, male salespeople are associated with higher levels of perceived trust and attractiveness. Male salespeople, therefore, ought to be used ahead of female salespeople, and those male salespeople need to have high credibility to be effective. Surprisingly, however, salesmen are not seen as more expert than saleswomen. Expertise, therefore, needs to be an area of focus in terms of cosmetic salesperson training.\nLimitations and future research: Several limitations of the experimental methodology suggest areas for future research. First, the experimental protocol relied on creating fictitious salespeople matched for trust, expertise and attractiveness. Expertise and trustworthiness were relatively easy to match in the two experimental treatments, but ensuring that the male and female were equally attractive required the pilot study. An independent confirmation of this equality would have been beneficial.\nConclusions: Some products can be considered as gender-sensitive, and when that is the case, evolutionary theorizing is of importance in understanding buyer behavior. This research has argued that for products designed to enhance female attractiveness, heterophily in the buyer-seller dyad may be more optimal than homophily. The findings indicated that male salesmen can generate greater purchase intention for cosmetics primarily because they have more perceived trustworthiness and attractiveness. The salesperson is the customer's only contact at the point of sale. His or her recommendations and information are important, especially for a relatively high involvement product such as cosmetics. To improve the perceived credibility of the salesperson and thus increase purchase intention, men should be used to sell cosmetics rather than women. There is, however, an important caveat: while men may be good judges of beauty, they may not be good creators of it. Cosmetics salesmen need to be thoroughly trained in the technical process of applying the products if they are to reassure the customers about their expertise.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the utility of the homophily theory and the related concept of source similarity which predict that a male salesperson is more effective in serving male customers, and a female is more effective with females. For products designed to enhance female attractiveness, however, Darwinian theories of reproduction suggest that a male may be more effective than a female in dealing with female customers. This study of Hong Kong consumers examined the possibility and, in doing so, challenged the assumed utility of homophily in selling cosmetics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two studies were conducted. The first was an experiment where female subjects were asked to report their responses to female and male salespersons selling cosmetics. The second study was a phenomenological study exploring the responses of female customers who had encountered male salespeople in cosmetics shops.\nFindings: The experiment found that a male salesperson tended to induce significantly stronger purchase intention than a female, and that salesperson credibility (specifically, trustworthiness and attractiveness) plays a significant role in mediating the impact of salesperson gender on purchase intention. The follow-up phenomenological study of female customers who had encountered male salespeople in cosmetics shops supported the experimental findings and offered additional support for their evolutionary basis.\nResearch limitations/implications: Darwinian theories of reproduction and source credibility together offer a more complete explanation for the effectiveness of salespeople in the gender-sensitive cosmetics market. However, the experiment involved creating fictitious salespeople matched for trust, expertise and attractiveness. The artificiality of the treatments was necessary to construct a controlled scenario to uphold internal validity, but it may limit the generalizability of the results.\nPractical implications: To encourage a positive consumer response, retailers need to consider salesperson gender and training. In some specific contexts (such as the selling of products designed to enhance female attractiveness), male salespeople ought to be used ahead of female salespeople, and those male salespeople need to have high credibility to be effective. However, as such, salesmen may not be seen as more expert than saleswomen; expertise needs to be an area of focus in terms of salesperson training.\nOriginality/value: The results of previous research testing homophily theory suggest that a salesperson of the same gender as the customer ought to induce stronger purchase intentions. This study has shown that for the selling of appearance-related products, gender heterophily may be more effective than homophily. Darwinian interpretations of intrasexual rivalry and courtship might help explain why males sell cosmetics more effectively.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Heuristic vs formal dynamics of the wage- and price-curve model of equilibrium unemployment
|
[
"Inflation",
"Unemployment",
"Imperfect competition",
"NAIRU",
"Wage-price spiral"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Late in last millennium there was an interesting development in macroeconomic modelling of equilibrium unemployment. First, macroeconomic implications of imperfect competition with price setting firms were developed in several papers and books, see e.g., Bruno (1979), Blanchard and Kiyotaki (1987), Bruno and Sachs (1984) and Blanchard and Fisher (1989, Ch. 8). Second, the economic theory of labour unions, pioneered by Dunlop (1944), was extended and formalized in a game theoretic framework, see e.g. Nickell and Andrews (1983), Oswald (1986) and Hoel and Nymoen (1988). Models of European unemployment, that incorporated elements from both these developments, appeared in Layard and Nickell (1986), Carlin and Soskice (1990), Lindbeck (1993) and Layard et al. (1991/2005).\n2. The heuristic argument: The basic argument for the NAIRU is that unemployment serves as an arbiter between conflicting real-wage claims from wage-earners and firms. The wage-price spiral will lead to increasing inflation if unemployment is too low or falling inflation if unemployment is too high. The NAIRU is the particular unemployment rate that equilibrates the real-wage claims and stabilizes inflation. This was succinctly expressed by Layard et al. (1994, p. 18), authors' italics:\n3. Modelling the heuristic dynamics of the wage-curve model: 3.1. Equilibrium unemployment\n4. Discussion: We have seen that care must be taken when formalizing the heuristics of the ICM/wage-price model of unemployment (aka Layard-Nickell model). The formalization requires specific restrictions on the model of the wage-price spiral that completely remove nominal rigidity. Without these restrictions, it no longer follows logically that the wage-price spiral model is accelerationistic, and that the rate of unemployment logically has to adjust to a NAIRU in order to stabilize inflation. Adding an independent dynamic unemployment equation to the wage-price spiral gives a model of equilibrium unemployment, but not an accelerationist one. To arrive at an accelerationsist model, the unemployment dynamics must be implied in full by the equations of the (restricted) model of the wage-price spiral.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: A standard model of equilibrium unemployment consists of static equations for real-wage ambitions (wage curve) and real-wage scope (price curve), which jointly determine the NAIRU. The heuristics of the model states that unless the rate of unemployment approaches the NAIRU from any given initial value, inflation will be increasing or decreasing over time. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors formalize this influential heuristic argument with the aid of a dynamic model of the wage-price spiral where the static theory's equations are re-interpreted as attractor relationships.\nFindings: The authors show that NAIRU unemployment dynamics are sufficient but not necessary for inflation stabilization, and that the dynamic wage-price spiral model generally has a dynamically stable solution for any predetermined rate of unemployment. The authors also discuss a restricted version of the model that conforms to the accelerationist view that inflation increases/falls if unemployment is not at its \"natural rate\".\nResearch limitations/implications: To investigate the relevance of heuristical dynamics of influential macro models, explicit modelling of such dynamics is a necessary step.\nPractical implications: An important argument against social orders that represent an attempt to target unemployment at relatively low levels, is refuted by the analysis.\nSocial implications: A high degree of employment is a main premise for a social order with equal income distribution and a drive for productivity growth.\nOriginality/value: It is important that economics give a balanced view of the possibility of attaining inflation stability at low or moderate levels of unemployment. This offering is contributions to establish such a balance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Process optimization with simple means: the power of visualization
|
[
"Employee involvement",
"Work flow",
"Team working",
"Denmark"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In today's global economy, competition among companies continually escalates. Companies compete with new products and services, and time-to-market plays a crucial role in many industries. In such processes, supply chain management functions also create competitive environments. In addition to such initiatives that focus on improving the top line (gross income) of a company's financial accounts, there is also another route to remaining competitive. This route is concerned with cost reduction; that is, focus is on initiative that improves the bottom line. Cost reduction initiatives can be concerned with physical spending for, e.g. raw material and components but also with work-hour consumption in administrative processes. During the 1990s, the management philosophy of business process re-engineering was developed by Hammer (1990). He introduced the concept of cross-functional business processes that should be innovated through radical redesigns. In all companies there is a need to make systematic analyses of business processes at regular intervals. However, some companies' processes remain static and unchanging for many years. In such companies, there is often a huge optimization potential in terms of work-hour consumption and efficiency while other companies, in contrast, have a more mature approach and schedule their organization's restructuring at shorter intervals (e.g. every third year).It is not only the supply chain and manufacturing functions that are objects for cost reductions. Administrative functions are also subjected to scrutiny through process analyses. In such analyses, visualization has shown its merits. Bringing people together to map what is actually going on - both within functions and across functions - often leads to shocking results. However, in spite of the strength of visualization through mapping, there are certain conditions that must be in place for the efforts to yield maximum benefits. This paper addresses these conditions by analyzing two visualization sessions of administrative processes in two Danish manufacturers. Although both companies succeeded with creating maps of the work flows and identified over 100 problem areas, only one company has managed to continue the optimization process. The paper elaborates on the differences in the processes of the two companies and the major factors that contribute to success. To fulfill this purpose, the paper is further organized into four main sections. In the next section, information about the applied method of generating data for the paper is described. The subsequent section presents an overview of visualization and mapping techniques as major resources in process optimization tasks. The two cases are then analyzed in the section that follows, and the final section presents a conclusion to the overall purpose of the paper.\n2. Visualization and mapping: 2.1 Visualization\n3. Method: This paper is based on qualitative longitudinal studies of two Danish manufacturers. Case A is a manufacturer within the paper industry that employs 600 people (60 white collar and 540 blue collar employees). Case B is a manufacturer within the machine industry. This company employs 220 individuals (50 white collar and 170 blue collar employees). The two cases have been promised anonymity. The author has been employed as a process consultant and has conducted visualization of administrative processes from sales and order entry to physical delivery in both companies. In each company, the line managers had the responsibility to select a representative from their function that should be involved in the cross-functional visualization session. Selection criteria were based on both in-depth knowledge of the specific functional area and an open-minded attitude and willingness to engage in discussions with colleagues from other functions. The functions represented in these visualization teams are shown in Table I.It is important to include staff that have a deep knowledge and understanding of what is actually going on in the process flow. The persons selected have not been managers of specific functions since managerial presence could stifle other staff's willingness to discuss issues openly.Empirical data was developed through a one-day visualization session in each company and through subsequent meetings with the cross-functional teams in each company. The results were then presented to the top management in each company. Each of these steps has been undertaken and completed by the author.\n4. Case studies: 4.1 Outline of the process of identifying areas for improvement\n5. Conclusion: This paper has reported on two cases that have applied a brown paper method in order to create a common view of problem areas in the administrative work flows from customer orders to physical deliveries. In both cases, the cross-functional teams were first trained in the brown paper method and process analysis. This training element implied that each participant was well prepared for the brown paper session. Furthermore, the training part stressed the importance of both operating with a common language among the participants and thoroughly understanding how the whole process contributed towards the overall conclusions of the efforts. The cases have demonstrated that companies will be able to generate, even with simple means, a relatively high number of improvement areas. The brown paper method has some strong elements since it involves people through visualization. However, the two cases have also shown the importance of top management commitment. In case A, the detailed work developed by the selected staff along the process flow has been parked with no further development. It seems that some of the initial premises and success criteria not have been met. Such a practice can damage a company's change culture and, the next time a process improvement initiative is launched, staff will remember the last time when nothing happened after the effort expended in the process, and it can create a resistance to change. On the contrary, the top management in case B has demonstrated a bold attitude and positive behavior toward the conclusions. Change initiatives in organization and sales have begun, and the first results have been implemented. Project plans have also been developed for the rest of the themes. The staff in the entire organization is informed monthly about the status and further plans based on the brown paper sessions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report on observations of administrative work processes in two Danish manufacturing companies. The brown paper method was applied in both cases as a visualization technique to map the process flows and to highlight improvement areas. The paper explores the process and discusses drivers as well as barriers for this form of employee involvement in optimization and change programs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is based on two case studies that illustrate the process of completing a brown paper exercise. Key staff along the process flow, from sales and order entry to the physical delivery of goods, participated in a structured course over a one-month period.\nFindings: - The paper stresses the importance of collective learning and validation of current practices. One success factor is the ability to create an atmosphere of openness wherein staff are able to speak freely and honestly. This process provides top management with a range of areas to consider for future optimization. Top management commitment is an important factor in driving the process beyond just mapping as the two cases demonstrate.\nPractical implications: - Important elements in such visualization processes are commitment and support from top management and a common understanding of the terms, techniques, and methods utilized by employees. Spending time discussing the approach and explaining why it is needed as well as providing training is believed to be vital to the success of the process. This paper has relevance for all types of private and public organizations.\nSocial implications: - The paper underscores the value of involving employees in assessments of existing business performance gaps, explorations of root causes for their existence, and planning activities in order to develop the business.\nOriginality/value: - The paper makes a contribution to a limited number of publications that report on how companies in practice conduct common process mappings in order to identify areas for improvements.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Variations in the development of psychological therapy in three European Union countries
|
[
"United Kingdom",
"The Netherlands",
"France",
"Public policy",
"Health services",
"Mental health services",
"Psychology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper has three main aims. The first is to offer case studies, which summarise the development of psychological therapies in the UK, The Netherlands and France[1]. The second is to discuss the similarities and differences in these case studies with reference to the sociology of the professions but taking into account cultural and service system differences between the countries. The third aim is to examine the extent to which the professionalisation of psychological therapies may be peculiar because of its contested knowledge and value bases (compared to other forms of healing practices).\nThe three case studies: The case studies below are not presented in any assumed order of importance but France is left until the end because it diverges in some respects more noticeably from the other two. Space does not permit a full and detailed history for each country. What will be offered instead is a summary of the debates about the professionalisation of the psychological therapies during a time linked to both the growth of the European Union and the counter-cultural arguments extant in Europe and North America about the role of psychotherapy in society (i.e. from the 1960s onwards).The UK\nDiscussion: Now that the three national case studies have been presented they are discussed in relation to the sociology of the professions. Functionalist and trait theories of the professions (following Durkheim and Parsons) have traditionally accepted that they are a positive and democratic contribution to societal stability, whereas more critical theories (following Weber and some feminist theorising) have placed more of an emphasis on self-interest. Thus, the term \"communities of interest\" is ambiguous. It indicates that professionalization might act in the general public good and/or act to advance the interests of some but not others in society. Thus, professions might be framed as a moral community and/or as a lobby group to secure control over forms of knowledge to exclude competitors in the market place and maximise their status and salaries.These insights from the Durkheimian and Weberian traditions have clear applicability in the case studies above. However, three other dimensions are also important. The first relates to the influential role of particular healthcare systems in which particular forms of healing practice are embedded. The second relates to cultural variations and the ways in which global agendas (in this case about the professionalization of psychological therapies) are mediated by national characteristics. The third relates to the particular contestation about psychotherapy, which seems to disproportionately affect its coherence and the basis for its bureaucratic standardisation and regulation.With regard to the argument about therapists as moral communities or communities of interest, we noted that this suggests their Janus-faced position for the health professions. On the one hand, they aspire to offer the remediation of distress and dysfunction, shaping and responding to current notions of eudemonia. On the other hand, they also make opportunistic demands for recognition and autonomy. Moreover, we observed a further ambiguity operating in the politics of professionalism. Therapists were not of one voice about whether their own interests are best served by engaging with the state or keeping it at bay. In the latter regard it is noteworthy that many therapists have sought to resist state regulation, not seek out its putative advantages. This ambivalence has not been neatly aligned with schools, professions or even whether or not the objecting practitioners worked privately or in the public sector (Godet, 2009; Parker and Rivelli, 2007; Postle, 2007; House and Totton, 1997).However, we did observe a trend of the core professions being dominant and excluding incursions from other groups aspiring to practice therapy. In The Netherlands this was evident in relation to medicine and psychology holding on to the reins of power in the field. A variant of that core professional control was also evident in the other two countries. Thus, the neo-Weberian emphasis on boundary maintenance basis, social closure and dominance remains relevant, though note that medical dominance is only part of that picture, given that psychologists, not just physicians, were powerful lobbies in policy development.There appears to be no monolithic professionalization process in this field. Instead we have a somewhat messy and confusing picture. Despite the prospect of globalisation, and in our case Europeanisation, predicting a convergence and reinforcement of such a process of rationalisation about the helping professions, this consistent trend was not obvious in the case studies. Certainly the standard neo-Weberian arguments about bids for legitimacy from new groups and boundary maintenance and resistance to encroachment from others were evident. But more was in play as well.It seems then that it is not just about the political strategies of professions themselves that need to be taken into account, though they remain important to identify and understand. In addition, the systemic context is also important. In our case we have shown how the healthcare systems (particularly their mental healthcare sub-system) in the three countries shaped what did and did not occur and accounted for the timing of some processes. For example, the lower priority given in France to mental health policy and the greater separation of therapy from the public mental health system meant that its debates about therapy have been recent not longstanding. By contrast matters about policy and evidence for them have been prevalent in the UK and The Netherlands for many decades. The Dutch case study showed how because of that longer progression is was possible to identify when service policy changes (the introduction of the RIAGG) began to affect debates about therapy and its role in society.Another example of why we need to look at the embedding features of healthcare systems, not just the aspirations and tactics of professionalizers is how the move from psychiatry to mental health (to quote the French policy) was evident in all three countries. As a result, therapists moved their emphasis over time first towards claimed expertise about common mental health problems outside of psychiatry (largely in primary care). As the \"wellbeing\" agenda has expanded globally and in Europe in particular this has shaped claims made by therapists about their particular expertise. Our point here is not whether those claims are valid or not but that they are made in response to a changing policy context (which professionalizers themselves seek to engage with and shape).One organising framework to go beyond the inner workings of the professionalizers was offered by Alford (1975). He introduced the notion of \"corporate rationalisers\", an admixture of policy makers, managers and lead practitioners, who are mainly concerned with system change and sustainability. These to an extent, some of the time, will contain particular professional interests but their main aim is to develop a pragmatic strategy to maximise the efficiency of healthcare systems and to implement new policy goals. The latter may be generated and offered legitimately globally (for example, from the World Health Organization) or from national governments. In the case of the Depression Report in the UK this reflected both. The particular group involved was effective because it established its legitimacy by appealing to the policy interests of politicians (the reduction of fiscal burden from welfare benefits and the provision of evidence-based practice).However, even the advantage of invoking Alford's emphasis on \"corporate rationalisers\" only partially accounts for the complexity and variability of the three case studies we outlined. In addition there was cross-national variation, in terms of different histories about professional groupings, as well as cultural differences in relation to what we might call \"the psychologies\" or \"psy complex\".For example, the cultural dominance of psychoanalysis in France was noted. But it was also very important in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s (because as part of the Jewish diaspora Sigmund and Anna Freud and Melanie Klein exported their disputes from Continental Europe to North London). However, that importance was largely global and epistemological, rather than national and therapeutic. With the emergence of the NHS in 1948, despite incursions of psychoanalytical therapy into service arenas like the Tavistock Clinic, by and large state-provided psychological therapies became associated with behaviour therapy during the 1960s (\"first wave CBT\").Psychodynamic therapy remained in the public sector but relatively on the margins and it was practised predominantly by medical psychotherapists (a small sub-specialty of psychiatry) and a few clinical psychologists and social workers. Latterly that marginalisation has been amplified by the hegemony of CBT within the IAPT initiative, which now has ranks of nurses and psychology graduates \"delivering stepped care\".Compare that picture to France with its remarkable recent scenario of a government department actually withdrawing its own report and recommendations about evidence-based practice, favouring CBT, in the face of psychoanalytical opposition. Not only was the power of psychoanalysis in France peculiar but it also operated in the context nationally of a relatively weak public sector provision of therapy. The UK and The Netherlands instead stood more in the Anglo-Saxon traditions of German experimentalism and British empiricism and so the discourse of evidence-based practice and the regime of rationality reflected in the dominance of CBT were aligned with their cultural traditions (Anderson, 1968).Psychological therapy is a highly contested arena. Differences of opinion certainly exist in all fields of healthcare about practice but here we have an extreme case. It was evident in all three countries that with such a wide range of therapies in the offing, the path to state recognition was going to be winding, difficult and unstable for all. Compare this health policy fragility to legal arrangements about more readily definable professional practices, such as dentistry or midwifery. Psychological therapists disagree vehemently about their ontological claims (what are mental health problems), their epistemological claims (what is legitimate psychological knowledge) and methodological claims (what should be done when intervening in the lives of patients).\nPolicy implications: Faced with this recurring contention, policy makers are faced with confusion about who to negotiate with about what. In those circumstances it is little surprising that other drivers might over determine the negotiation, such as the attraction of evidence-based practice or a default confidence in the traditional core professions (in this case medicine and psychology). These drivers are evident in the case studies when understanding the role of CBT, which is now hegemonic but controversial (House and Loewenthal, 2008). Its dominance in policies to respond to \"common mental health problems\" has created a convergence of interest in its application in the three countries considered above.In all of those countries, talking treatments remain controversial in relation to four policy matters: the principle of registration, which professionals do and do not deserve state recognition, what form of therapy is based in evidence, and the ambiguous role of therapy in relation to social context. The recent fiscal constraints (in the wake of the global recession) have created an even stronger focus on evidence-based practice, than was present previously. This has increased the legitimacy and bids for funding for those groups claiming to demonstrate the latter and delegitimised those groups that fail to deliver such a promise to policy makers. However, the fourth and final consideration noted above is of a different order. If we focus on therapeutic entitlement then the policy questions become ones about equity and access. If, on the other, distress is viewed as being co-constituted by social conditions of oppression and alienation (in the work place and the family), then therapy is criticised for individualising distress and ignoring the contingent social contexts (past and present) of its targets of intervention.The above four policy considerations interweave in debates. Not all therapists endorse the value of regulation, as it is viewed as a constraint on their autonomy, both at the individual practitioner level and collectively for some schools and professions. However, some of the latter (especially medicine and psychology) have sought to form an alliance with the state apparatus of legislation and regulation, to ensure professional dominance or the availability of their preferred therapies. Evidence-based approaches suit the interests of some but not others in this regard (for example, clinical psychologists). However, a narrow definition of therapeutic legitimacy, based on evidence-based practice, has prompted objections about forms of therapy like CBT, which can be seen as insensitive to cultural diversity and socially conformist in their intentions. This leads to the fourth and final social policy matter. Those critics who view it as a \"soft\" form of social control (to ensure conformity to roles, especially of worker, spouse, and parent) are at odds with those who emphasise that people in distress should have fair access to effective health interventions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences in the development of psychological therapies in three European Union countries (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France) in the context of national policies about health services and public mental health.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Three case studies are utilised for this purpose as historical descriptions. The latter are then discussed in the light of traditional approaches to the sociology of the professions.\nFindings: - Whilst some similarities are identified across the three countries (for example the recent convergence of policy interest in \"evidence-based practice\") it is also clear that the particular national cultures have shaped developments and their different forms of healthcare organisation have been reflected in national legislative and regulatory arrangements.\nResearch limitations/implications: - These case studies draw attention to the need to explore national variations in policy formation about the same matter (in this case the professionalization of psychological therapies) and to extend discussions within the sociology of the professions to ones of healthcare organizational contexts. In addition, the contested nature of applied psychology may require special attention relative to other forms of health work practice.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides a particular form of understanding about psychological practices within modern healthcare and public health policies, in the light of the peculiar and contextualised aspects of the case studies provided.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Organising health services through modularity
|
[
"Service management",
"Service operations",
"Modularity",
"Knowledge-intensive organizations",
"Organizational networks",
"Public and private health care"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The increasing demand for productivity and quality in service production was recognised 20 years ago (Sundbo, 1994, p. 251) yet the issue remains current. This is particularly the case in health services where the requirements of customers, professionals and society for service production are multiple and extensive, although reasonable costs should not be exceeded. In order to manage the costs of health services, the most effective production methods need to be found and implemented.\nBackground: Characteristics of health services from the perspective of health economics\nA note on methods and theoretical framework: Deductive reasoning can be divided into two essential phases: first, there is the building of propositions based on extant theories and, second, the empirical testing of the propositions. In this study we concentrate on the first phase. Deductive reasoning starts with the existing theory and aims to determine whether that theory applies to a specific situation (Hyde, 2000). In our theoretical analysis we applied deductive analysis and moved from general premises to particular conclusions. First, we accepted the propositions of Schilling's (2000) and Schilling and Steensma's (2001) general modular systems theory as premises for our analysis. Second, we also accepted the characteristics of the health services acknowledged in the literature of health economics as another group of premises for our analysis (Arrow, 1963; Mooney, 1992; Santerre and Neun, 1996; Van der Gaag and Perlman, 1981). We then reflected on the premises of health economics and general modular systems theory in the framework of health services, in order produce propositions as illustrated in Figure 1.\nHealth services and modularity: The background section describes the three essential characteristics of the health service market in terms of health economics. We also put forward the essential factors of general modular systems theory as Schilling (2000) and Schilling and Steensma (2001) have constructed it. Our aim in this section is to bring these two perspectives together by describing how the factors influencing transformation towards or away from modularity appear in the context of health services, and by analysing the factors that might support or prevent its application. We construct two-dimensional arguments, meaning that one perspective supports the application of modularity whereas the other inhibits it. We summarise our analysis in the form of propositions (Figures 2 and 3).\nConclusion and discussion: In order to evaluate the possibility and plausibility of applying modularity in health services, we have analysed the way in which the factors influencing transformation towards or away from it appear in this context as well as the extent to which the special characteristics of health services might support or prevent its application. We conclude from our analysis that some of these special characteristics support modularity whereas others inhibit it.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the way in which the factors influencing a transformation towards or away from modularity, according to general modular systems theory, appear in the context of health services, and the extent to which the special characteristics of health services might support or prevent its application.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The arguments constructed in the study are based on the theme of modularity, reflected against the special characteristics of health services identified in the context of health economics.\nFindings: The results include 11 proposition pairs that direct health services both towards and away from modularity.\nResearch limitations/implications: Health services are highly heterogeneous in nature and the authors illustrate this with a wide range of examples from elderly care as the authors discuss the application of modularity in this context. Nevertheless, the authors recognise that modularity might suit some health services better than others. The findings provide potentially important information to health service managers and providers, enabling them to understand how modularity would benefit health service provision and where contradictions are to be expected.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the discourse on service modularity in general, and complements the literature on modularity with reference to both public and private health services.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The sustainability of corporate governance - considerations for a model
|
[
"Corporate governance",
"Business environment",
"Change management",
"Code of conduct",
"Sustainability",
"Risk management",
"Organizational behaviour",
"Organizational change"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: In a world becoming accustomed to change, there is an unprecedented series of dislocations, each of which, separately, would have caused major social and economic shock, just 20 years ago. We may believe that we can absorb each judder and recover, but then a further upheaval could force reactive response. Reviewing the anticipated changes, what are the likely consequences which will emerge and demand action by organizations?First, there will be underlying \"themes\".There is now a mistrust in the \"free market\" as a universal solution, and even though there is unlikely to be a return to pure \"Keynesianism\", there will certainly be a retreat from economic growth fuelled by corporate, government and personal debt. Governments fear the overnight transition from carefree consumers to puritanical savers, but there will certainly be a correction of savings ratios.There is a greater awareness of the reality of risk, at all levels. Not everyone will fully understand risk, but its assessment will creep into the way business is conducted, and that will have an influence on lifestyles. Most of the public reacted with incredulity at the way bankers, corporations and governments wilfully disregarded risk and obscured business dealings, often with personal greed as a driver, and without ever considering the corporate, community or national penalty.Consequently there is now a demand for greater transparency and ethical behaviour on the part of government, business and individuals.The outward demonstrations of environmental degradation will become ever more apparent in climate and costs. Demographic and employment change will be more gradual, as the population can only age predictably, and employment patterns will progressively alter in response to other changes in the commercial and social environment.Second, there will be regulatory and commercial responses to the changes in the financial, environmental and social world. There will inevitably be increased financial controls and regulation, which may not satisfy the \"hard-liners\" but will introduce risk and transparency, while seeking to promote economic growth. Environmental stabilization will not happen without regulation, despite wide recognition that future generations face a massive problem. Sacrifices in lifestyle will not be universally voluntary, and will probably need economic penalties and incentives for enforcement.Alternative sources of energy and resources, and new technologies will generally be more costly, sometimes significantly more so, which will consequently curtail purchasing power, both commercially and personally.Some markets will grow, e.g. Environmental Engineering, Information and Electronic Technologies, Renewable Energy and Health, while others will restructure and decline, e.g. Automotive, Aeronautical, Finance.Attitudes to employment and the status of work as part of lifestyle will change so that both employers and employees will, as a result require modified or novel contracts of employment. Universally growing demand for more comprehensive services, fuelled by technology and a growing sophistication in the population will place pressure on the ability of governments to finance and manage services. The call for \" less big government\" will not be a dismissive political slogan, but a reality, as governments will not be able to afford to finance all services on the current basis, without suffocating economic growth. The current inefficient modes of delivery of public services cannot continue. Alongside these financial, environmental and social changes, science and technology will continue to advance. As the concept of employment packages is eroded, the relationship between employer and employee will dramatically change, and even the \"social status\" of work will be questioned.The current strong association of \"sustainability\" with the environment is damaging, in that it seems to infer that managing sustainability is exclusive to the environment. Consistency is one of the most important of leadership and management qualities, and in the current context, it is more than ever, vital that every resource, financial, human, natural, environmental and social is managed in a sustainable way.The changes themselves, together with the consequential operational and social responses, will need to be delivered. Management is the process of delivery, and managers are the individuals commissioned with the task of delivering change under proper controls.This approach or model is driven by the principles of Sustainable Governance(c), which, in turn calls for an accompanying system of Assurance. A key feature is the focus on moving from the present to the future, and while the assessments can be simply carried out qualitatively, the associated quantification system can give perspective, measurement of progress and allows comprehensive benchmarking.The model is built of 12 elements, each of which is explained in detail the following. Some elements may seem elementary, but they are part of the whole picture and should be considered as fundamental to a new vision of the process of management.\nThe model elements: 1. Full application of every element of accountability\nAssessing the model elements: Summary\nThe process: Phase 1. Agree the Protocol consequence or impact ratings with the officers\nThe SG rating is therefore 57: Clearly this is not in an acceptable range so action must be taken. Focussing on the highest consequence protocols would reap the most benefit. For example if all of these (six protocols) were reduced in failure risk to 1 the total score would drop to 46 and the rating increase to 78. If all of the protocols were dropped into the lowest failure risk category the rating would be 85 so this is the highest that can be achieved without reducing the Consequence of failure of the protocols. Reducing this may be easier in some cases than in others so the strategy should look at the most feasible protocols. In this fashion the rating system can be a useful tool in determining the most effective and efficient sustainability strategy for the company.\nSummary: Corporate governance cannot be left to chance in the business climate of the twenty-first century. Public trust has been lost and Boards will need to be seen to be in control not only of the present but also of the future. All resources will have to be treated as finite and accountability will be a byword in all corporations. To be sustainable, corporate governance must cover all aspects of corporate resources and activities and it must also be measured in a more formal and transparent manner. This article has outlined a model that could be used for this purpose. It is taking measurement beyond the simplistic \"scorecard\" approach favoured in the past. It is a seed from which the authors expect to see a fertile growth and all comments are welcome to further the model and the process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to seek comment on a proposed new model for measuring and monitoring the sustainability of corporate governance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The unprecedented combination of the scarcity of finance, low growth, and environmental pressures, together with new attitudes to employment, makes an extremely challenging environment that demands a more comprehensive concept of sustainability. It is redefined here to encompass the management of all resources, whether they be natural, human, environmental financial or social, and \"Sustainable Governance(c)\" is a framework that creates and monitors a structure that husbands the way that all resources are managed for today and for a long term sustainable future. To meet the challenge of the changing world, a 12-point management model is proposed, together with a comprehensive rating system employed to analyse progress and benchmark competitive performance.\nFindings: - Corporate governance cannot be left to chance in the business climate of the twenty-first century. Public trust has been lost and boards will need to be seen to be in control not only of the present but also of the future. All resources will have to be treated as finite and accountability will be a byword in all corporations. To be sustainable, corporate governance must cover all aspects of corporate resources and activities and it must also be measured in a more formal and transparent manner. This article outlines a model that could be used for this purpose. It is taking measurement beyond the simplistic \"scorecard\" approach favoured in the past. It is a seed from which the authors expect to see a fertile growth and all comments are welcome to further the model and the process.\nPractical implications: - The choice facing organizations in the twenty-first century is either to react to each set of pressures that come along as they arise, or to take a hard look at the economic, environmental and social context in which they operate, and create a framework that will give them the ability to manage in a long-term sustainable structure.\nOriginality/value: - This supersedes the scorecard approach for monitoring corporate governance. It is new and untried but the authors seek input and comments from readers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Drivers of consumers' willingness to pay for halal logistics
|
[
"Malaysia",
"Willingness to pay",
"Halal food",
"Halal logistics certification"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: At the present time Muslims make up a quarter of the world population and many sources have revealed that 30 percent of the world population would consist Muslims by 2025 (Roberts, 2010). This increasing Muslim population will possibly alter the way economies operate and businesses work. Specifically, the \"halal\" concept will gain an elevated importance across continents all over the globe (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010; Zailani et al., 2015). Globalization has highlighted the \"halal\" concept not only in Muslim territories but also in non-Muslim lands with respect to food and service certification, product delivery standardization, and so on.\nLiterature review: Halal certification\nModel conceptualization and hypothesis development: Mohamed et al. (2013) identified environmental factors comprising social, economic, political, and technological factors that affect the decisions of the industry with regard to the halal business. Nevertheless, the most commonly used framework is the separation of environmental factors into the \"macro\" and \"micro\" environments. The former refers to economic, technological, governmental, social, demographic, and natural environment dimensions. By contrast, the micro environment includes the industry or competitive environments, suppliers, consumers, and competitors (Lowson, 2003). Factors are the motivators or incentives that impel businesses to implement concepts, approaches, or even strategies to satisfy the objectives of the organization (Hoffman, 2001). The current study focusses on the individual level; thus, the factors related to the individual, environment, capability, and image are deemed appropriate. Thus, examining the effect of these factors on the end consumers' demand for the halal logistics certification is fairly important. Figure 2 shows the proposed framework for the identification of drivers and outcome of willingness to pay for the halal logistics.\nResearch methodology: Data collection and the sample\nResults: Sample\nDiscussion: Logistics play a key role in protecting the halalness of any product through proper transportation, storage, and handling within the supply chain until the product reaches its final destination. Despite the vast halal market and the importance of halal logistics practices in preserving the halalness of a food product, third-party halal logistics service providers faced an insufficient demand for halal logistics. Understanding the determinants of the consumers' willingness to pay more and consequently higher demand for halal logistics is thus essential. Our findings suggest that the consumers' perception on halal logistics, concern on halal, and media coverage have positive and significant effects on willingness to pay for the halal logistics. Moreover, willingness to pay has a positive effect on the consumers' extent of demand for the halal logistics certification.\nImplications of the study: In terms of theoretical contribution, this study is the first to investigate the extent level and the drivers of consumers' willingness to pay for halal logistics. This sector is particularly important because it is a rapidly growing industry with a significant influence on ensuring the integrity of halal food at the point of consumption (Tieman, 2011). Understanding the important role of consumers' perception of halal logistics, concern on halal, and media coverage on consumers' willingness to pay for halal logistics and the consequent, higher demand suggest the need to educate consumers about the importance of halal logistics through media.\nLimitations and future studies: Although the aim of this study has been successfully achieved, its limitations have to be considered before making an overview of the results. For instance, the research tested and checked the hypotheses through survey forms and offered a cross-section nature of the research. This method restricted the possibility of involving causality in the relationships among variables. Therefore, the results obtained from the questionnaires are not precise because the research failed to identify the dynamic changes in individual, environmental, and logistics service providers' characteristics. For accurate results, a longitudinal research, which could be capable of assessing the relationships during a long period, is needed. Moreover, only Malaysian consumers made up our sample. Nonetheless, people's concerns regarding halal vary from country to country, especially among non-Muslim countries. Thus, future studies could apply the research model to other countries.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that motivate the consumers in Malaysia to pay for halal logistics and its consequences on their demand for halal logistics certification.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected through a survey responded 313 randomly selected consumers. Partial least squares technique was employed in the analysis.\nFindings: Results showed that consumers' perception on halal logistics, their concern about halal, and media coverage have positive and significant effects on consumers' willingness to pay for halal logistics. Furthermore, positive relationship exists between willingness to pay and the extent of demand for the halal logistics certification.\nPractical implications: The findings of the study will be useful for the policy makers and managers of halal food companies because they can guide them in increasing the demand for the halal logistics.\nOriginality/value: Although halal logistics play a key role in supporting the halal status of any given halal foods, the demand for this service is low. Thus, this study contributes to the advancement of knowledge on the drivers of consumers' willingness to pay for halal logistics.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How does intellectual capital align with cyber security?
|
[
"Intellectual capital",
"Boards of directors",
"Intellectual capital security governance",
"Executive management teams"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Rastogi (2002) claims that an organization's intellectual capital (IC) is extremely valuable, as valuable as any of its other assets. Dierickx and Cool (1989) argue that IC is actually the most valuable organizational resource, giving an organization its competitive advantage. There is evidence that IC makes up a large percentage of a company's market value (Blair and Wallman, 2000). Organizations routinely act to protect and secure their tangible information assets (Elson and LeClerc, 2006), so it makes sense that they should also act to protect and secure their IC assets.\n2. Information security and cyber security, what goes where? (Von Solms and Von Solms, 2018): Cyber security, as a topic, attracts considerable interest and attention from a wide spectrum of stakeholders (Martin and Rice, 2011). It is growing in importance and significance, with ever-expanding, long-term consequences and impacts (McMillan, 2019; Bianchi and Tosun, 2019). Stakeholders span the full spectrum - from the ordinary citizen using online banking, to companies' BoDs to nation states. BoDs are coming to the realization that protecting their respective companies' presence in cyber space is a corporate governance responsibility that cannot be delegated or neglected (Wootliff, 2019). BoDs are held accountable for the related cyber risks in their companies, together with the associated subsequent legal implications for possible negligence and/or ignorance (Zukis, 2019). The recent enactment of the European GDPR regulation (EU Parliament, 2018), with the punitive financial fines that can be imposed in the aftermath of data breaches, make the topic even more pressing in Europe. Other countries have similar legislation (e.g. Californians for Consumer Privacy, 2018; Michaelsons, 2018), reflecting the global importance of this topic.\n3. Positioning IC: What is IC composed of? Choong (2008) explains that IC \"is the result of the network effect of utilizing various intellectual, human, capital and organizational resources\" (p. 616). Choong carried out an exhaustive review of definitions and terminologies that are used by researchers to delineate and refer to IC. He points out, and demonstrates, that many use the term \"intangible assets\" (IAs) as a synonym for IC. His investigation concluded that there is general consensus that the essence of IC can be captured by a \"three-grouped framework\" (p. 622) which includes human capital, structural capital, and relational capital, but he also makes the case for augmenting this with intellectual property (IP), citing Marr and Schiuma (2001) to argue for its inclusion. Rastogi (2002) offers a different perspective, referring to IC as an organization's \"knowledge management nexus\" (KMN) being formed of a dense dynamic nexus of social capital, human capital and knowledge management.\n4. IC security: We have argued that IC is a knowledge-related concept and that knowledge and information, while related, are distinctly different concepts. Hence, in securing IC, we need to consider how IC-related knowledge should be secured, while benefiting from established information security measures for the informational components of IC. To consider the securing of knowledge aspects we consider knowledge security concepts, which Ilvonen (2013, p. 152) defines as:[...] the process of making and keeping the knowledge of people working at a company secure.\n5. IC security governance: simplifying and clarifying: The governance of information is important to modern-day enterprises. \"Cyber security governance\" has also become critical (Von Solms and Von Solms, 2018), calling for the direct attention and oversight of BoDs and executive management teams (AIG, 2019). We have situated IC security governance within the cyber governance space too, and plan to highlight BoDs' responsibilities in this respect.\n6. Conclusion: BoDs and executive management teams are responsible and accountable for the wellbeing of any modern organization. Since most, if not all, organizations are dependent on their IC, securing IC plays a critical role in ensuring the wellbeing of such an organization. Most organizations, worldwide, utilize cyber space. BoDs have to take cognizance of this reality and the opportunities this affords cyber criminals to damage the organization's IC.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to position the preservation and protection of intellectual capital as a cyber security concern. The paper outlines the security requirements of intellectual capital to help boards of directors (BoDs) and executive management teams to understand their responsibilities and accountabilities in this respect.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research methodology is desk research. In other words, we gathered facts and existing research publications that helped us to define key terms, to formulate arguments to convince BoDs of the need to secure their intellectual capital and to outline actions to be taken by BoDs to do so.\nFindings: Intellectual capital, as a valuable business resource, is related to information, knowledge and cyber security. Hence, preservation thereof is also related to cyber security governance and merits attention from BoDs.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper clarifies BoDs intellectual capital governance responsibilities, which encompass information, knowledge and cyber security governance.\nPractical implications: The authors hope that BoDs will benefit from the clarifications, and especially from the positioning of intellectual capital in cyber space.\nSocial implications: If BoDs know how to embrace their intellectual capital governance responsibilities, this will help to ensure that such intellectual capital is preserved and secured.\nOriginality/value: This paper extends a previous paper published by Von Solms and Von Solms, which clarified the key terms of information and cyber security, and the governance thereof. The originality and value is the focus on the securing of intellectual capital, a topic that has not yet received a great deal of attention from security researchers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Key variables to predict tie strength on social network sites
|
[
"Facebook",
"Social network sites",
"Algorithm",
"Tie strength"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Tie strength is a network concept that has attracted arguably the most research attention and thus this area of study has seen the most substantial contributions (Gilbert and Karahalios, 2009; Granovetter, 1973; Haythornthwaite, 2002; Marsden and Campbell, 1984). Tie strength is a quantifiable property that characterizes the link between two nodes, determining the ways, means, and expressions of communications between the nodes, as well as the motivations, needs, and desires for the communication (Granovetter, 1973; Haythornthwaite, 2002; Chu and Kim, 2011). People with strong ties (e.g. close friends) are more likely to exhibit greater similarities, and share and exchange more intimate information, than peoples with weak ties (e.g. acquaintances) (Haythornthwaite, 2002). Treating all relationships as equal may increase the level of noise in examining tie strength and degrade the performance of the predicting models (Xiang et al., 2010). Thus, understanding relational ties can help predict behavior more accurately and improve ways to disseminate information. However, in previous studies, participants were only asked to recall their closest friends, or in those studies questionnaires were used to measure the relationship strength (Granovetter, 1974; Mathews et al., 1998; Petroczi et al., 2007). Results of such studies based on one-sided statements have not been able to measure tie strength accurately because relationships are two-way communications, and also because the strength of ties is a changeable variable that is influenced quantitatively by the interaction between people, which has been challenging to examine in the past. Moreover, previous studies have captured these diverse and overlapping networks of relationships poorly because they failed to verify the frequency and duration of interactions.\n2. Research objective: The research objective in this study was to design an algorithm (predictive model) that can provide a quantitative and continuous measurement of the precise tie strength of relationships. To achieve the goals of the study, we developed a program and an online questionnaire to collect an objective data set from Facebook and integrate that data set with a subjective data set consisting of participants' opinions of the strength of their friendships on Facebook. Specifically, the model used a data set of 6,477 SNSs' ties and was able to distinguish between strong and weak ties with over 50 percent accuracy. The model contributes to the understanding of interactions on SNSs and provides an efficient method to examine tie strength on SNSs, and the parameters developed can be applied to estimate the tie strength of new test pairs in real time. In addition, the tie strength estimates can also be used to improve the range and performance of various aspects of SNSs, including link predictions, product recommendations, newsfeeds, people searches, and visualization. Such understanding of the structure of SNSs might lead ultimately to the design of algorithms that can detect trusted or influential users of SNSs.\n3. Theoretical background: 3.1. Tie strength\n4. Methods: 4.1. Study design and program development\n5. Results: Before examining the relationship between the interaction variables and the tie strength, certain friendship data were excluded to predict tie strength more accurately. The first exclusion rule is counting the score different between first item and sixth item. If the score of sixth item is lower than 50 and the score of first item is higher than 50, it means that the Facebook is not their major communication tool. These data records would bias the model and should be deleted. The second exclusion rule is based on Robers and Dunbar (2011) and Haythornthwaite (2002). They suggested that kin relationships would remain stable over time even if they interacted seldom. Accordingly, the kin relationships would also bias the result of this model. In this study, the program automatically detected and deleted the kin relationships. After all, 336 friendships were excluded in analysis. In total, 6,477 rated friendships, with the participants listing 3,675 male friends and 2,802 female friends. At last, a data set of 42,323 wall posts, 96,696 photos, 48,898 photo tags, 2,715 albums, 629 check-in records, 366 notes, 93 videos, 154,765 messages, 124,337 comments, and 217,998 likes were collected and analyzed.\n6. Conclusions: 6.1. Discussion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to predict tie strength using profile similarities and interaction data between users, and thus distinguish between strong and weak relationships on social network sites (SNSs).\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study developed a program and an online questionnaire to collect the data set from Facebook, and then integrated that data set with a subjective data set consisting of participants' opinions of the strength of their friendships on Facebook. The model developed here for predicting tie strength performed well when was applied on a data set of 6,477 SNSs' ties, distinguishing between strong and weak ties with over 50 percent accuracy.\nFindings: The results developed an algorithm (predictive model) that quantifies and measures tie strength continuously to bridge the gap between theory and practice. The results found that the variables in the dimension of emotional intensity had stronger effects than other interaction variables.\nOriginality/value: This study developed a predictive model that helps explain the meaning of interaction on SNSs, providing an efficient method to examine tie strength on SNSs. The tie strength estimates can also be used to improve the range and performance of various aspects of SNSs, including link predictions, product recommendations, newsfeeds, people searches, and visualization. Such understanding of the structure of SNSs might lead ultimately to the design of algorithms that can detect trusted or influential users of SNSs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Social network productivity in the use of SNS
|
[
"Social networks",
"Business performance",
"Knowledge management",
"Cost reduction",
"Japan"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, the usage of business blogs and social networking services (SNS) in Japan has steadily increased. The percentage of businesses operating those platforms in Japan increased by 2.4 percentage points in 2008 over the previous year to 6.8 percent, indicating an emerging trend of utilizing \"Web 2.0,\" a generation of technologies supporting user-driven media that enable active participation, for business activities (MIC, 2008).These platforms belong to the category of knowledge management systems (KMS), which are defined as \"a class of information systems applied to managing organizational knowledge [...] They are IT-based systems developed to support and enhance the organizational processes of knowledge creation, storage/retrieval, transfer, and application\" (Alavi and Leidner, 2001, p. 114). Knowledge management includes capturing insights and experience in order to make them available to the relevant organizational members. McAfee (2006) calls this new type of collaborative platforms, such as wikis, blogs, and group-messaging software, Enterprise 2.0 technologies which can make a corporate intranet into an efficient structure. McAfee (2006, p. 26) argues that:Enterprise 2.0 technologies have the potential to usher in a new era by making both practices of knowledge work and its outputs more visible.Among these knowledge management platforms, SNS are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). Social networking services \"allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others\" and there are different types of SNS which cater to different needs (Ellison et al., 2007, p. 1143). The degree to which a user shares its profile information, and information on connections with other users, is often decided by the user within a range of options supported by the site's architecture. Some sites support features such as electronic bulletin-board system, messaging, and blog.SNS are of special interest since they can foster knowledge creation. Davenport and Prusak (1998) argue that knowledge-creating activities take place between and within humans by means of connections and conversations. Furthermore, interconnectedness is essential in the connectionist view of knowledge which, unlike cognitivism, maintains that there can be no knowledge without a knower (Dalkir, 2005). Adopting this view, Von Krogh and Roos (1995) claim that knowledge resides both in the individuals of an organization and, at the social level, in the relations between the individuals. Intranet-based SNS, which facilitate business-related connections, can therefore be used as a supporting platform for knowledge sharing and knowledge creation activities.This present research focuses on those SNS oriented towards work-related contexts and located on a company's intranet, thus restricted to its employees. Intranets, which are a common application of knowledge management systems, have been shown to contribute to the creation of knowledge networks (Ruggles, 1998) and to allow rapid mobilization and assimilation of knowledge assets in virtual communities (Teece et al., 1997). Such business SNS tools were introduced to enhance communication in the organization beyond functional and divisional boundaries, as well as to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from more experienced managers to regular employees (Minetaki and Yoshida, 2006).This research first examines the effect of intranet-based SNS on interconnectedness and knowledge performance, and then assesses whether social capital and innovativeness influence the relationship between interconnectedness and knowledge performance. This study is quite unique in that it draws on a large empirical dataset about intranet-based SNS, which is otherwise scarce in the field.Section 2 presents the theoretical foundation of this research, followed in section 3 by the hypotheses and the research methodology. Then, section 4 describes the results of the questionnaire data analysis. Section 5 is a discussion of the study's findings and section six concludes the research.\n2. Literature review: This research's primary goal is to assess the effects of some cultural characteristics of organizations on the effectiveness of SNS use in improving their performance. More specifically, the authors are interested in evaluating whether social capital-rich and/or innovative organizations are better positioned to benefit from intranet-based SNS use. The effects of SNS use in this study are the increased interconnectedness among organizational members, the improved knowledge performance expressed in terms of reduced cost and time in accessing work-relevant knowledge, and the linkage between the two. The remainder of this section discusses each of these key concepts and the linkage between interconnectedness and knowledge performance will be explained in the next section.2.1 Knowledge performance\n3. Hypotheses and sample data: 3.1 Hypotheses\n4. Analysis: 4.1 Factor analysis\n5. Discussion: The majority of cases were found to have both average social capital and average innovativeness (n=609, 44.7 percent). In order for those companies to better take advantage of SNS use, this study shows that they should focus on improving social capital and innovativeness together, since the group higher in both was found to display higher social network productivity (R=0.796, p<001).The use of SNS, by nature, can foster productive connections in the workplace. As hypothesized, improvements in those business connections were found to translate into an improvement in knowledge performance (social network productivity). But some companies are better positioned than others to reap this benefit, and this analysis shows that companies' levels of innovativeness and social capital affect how much they can gain from a given amount of improvement in interconnectedness.It is therefore essential for practitioners to consider how to increase their levels of social capital and innovativeness. This study focuses here on organizational culture, defined as \"the shared rules governing cognitive and affective aspects of membership in an organization, and the means whereby they are shaped and expressed\" (Kunda, 1992, p. 8), as a driver of both social capital and innovativeness.Schein (2004, p. 17) considers the culture of a group to be \"a pattern of shared basic assumptions\" about external adaptation and internal integration. He goes on to assert that the shared assumptions about external adaptation issues include mission and strategy, goals, means, measurements, and corrections, and that the shared assumptions about internal integration issues consist of common language and conceptual categories, group boundaries, power and status, norms of intimacy, friendship, and love, allocating rewards and punishments, and explaining the unexplainable. Looking at Schein's definition of organizational culture, social capital, which consists of interaction ties, shared vision, and trust and trustworthiness (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998), is therefore directly affected by those shared assumptions about external adaptation and internal integration issues.First, interaction ties are supported by a common language and conceptual categories that help members communicate and understand each other, and by group boundaries which define inclusion and exclusion criteria. Second, a shared vision originates from the mission and strategy which deal with the group's core mission and primary tasks. Third, trust and trustworthiness derive from power and status, norms of intimacy, friendship, and love, and allocating rewards and punishments. Power and status distribute the pecking order and help manage feelings of anxiety and aggression, while norms of intimacy, friendship, and love are concerned with the rules of peer relationships, and the allocation of rewards and punishments supports reaching a consensus.Innovativeness itself is strongly linked to the firm's mission and strategy, and more particularly to their translation into goals, means, measurements, and corrections. The means show how goals will be reached, measurements address how goal accomplishments will be assessed, and corrections focus on the appropriate remedial and repair strategies.Cultures basically spring and diffuse from the beliefs, values, and assumptions of founders and leaders of organizations. With renewed success, the leader's assumptions become shared and create the ground for the organization's culture whose assumptions will then be taught to newcomers. The primary mechanisms responsible for embedding specific assumptions into the group's culture largely rest on what leaders pay attention to, how they react in critical situations, how they allocate resources, rewards and status, and how they recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate. These primary mechanisms are then supported by secondary articulation and reinforcement mechanisms ingrained in the firm's organizational structure, systems and procedures, rituals, design of physical space, and shared internal success and failure stories (Schein, 2004).For an organization to foster innovativeness for instance, innovativeness has to be found in these primary and secondary mechanisms. However, the degree of innovativeness is relative and depends on the firm's competitive position, mission, and strategy. In general, more innovative companies are more susceptible to learn from people in the organization by leveraging the knowledge of organizational members. These organizations are better capable of taking advantage of personal connections or networks that could then translate into better knowledge performance.\n6. Conclusion: SNS were found to mildly improve efficiency in accessing knowledge or in increasing the number of business contacts. Furthermore, this study reveals that in using intranet-based SNS, companies with both higher social capital and innovativeness displayed higher social network productivity defined as the relationship between interconnectedness and knowledge performance whereby an increase in the number of business contacts may result in a shortened and less costly retrieval of work-relevant knowledge. This research indicates that management should try enhancing the organization's innovativeness and social capital in order to draw the maximum benefit of using intranet-based SNS for sharing knowledge.Fostering social capital and innovativeness rests largely on the firm's organizational culture which guides and constrains the expected and accepted behavior of organizational members. Because established organizational cultures tend to have inertia and are difficult to change, leaders and managers must learn how to manage and draw on the culture of their organization to carry out their mission and strategy; if they do not become conscious of the cultures in which they are embedded, those cultures will manage them.This research, which used an existing dataset, has some limitations that should be addressed in further research: the use of SNS was treated implicitly and should therefore be measured independently and data on the respondents' organizations would be useful to reveal organizational clusters based on the constructs investigated. It is also important to note that the data used in this research provide a snapshot rather than a dynamic perspective of the influence of social capital and innovativeness on social network productivity. As a result, further research is needed to assess strategic positioning options in order to maximize social network productivity.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to focus on the effect of intranet-based social networking services (SNS) on the activity of the firm, in particular on the change in the number of business connections and on the time and cost-savings brought about by such SNS.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors hypothesize that the use of intranet-based SNS positively influences \"social network productivity\" defined as the relationship between interconnectedness and knowledge performance, whereby an increase in the number of business contacts may result in a shortened and less costly retrieval of work-relevant knowledge. Drawing on a large sample of Japanese respondents, a taxonomy based on levels of organizational social capital and innovativeness was used to assess the moderating effects of social capital and innovativeness on social network productivity.\nFindings: - SNS were found to mildly improve efficiency in accessing knowledge or in increasing the number of business contacts. More importantly, this study reveals that in using intranet-based SNS, companies with both higher social capital and innovativeness displayed higher social network productivity.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The use of SNS was treated implicitly and should therefore be measured independently, and detailed data on the respondents' organizations would be useful to reveal organizational clusters.\nPractical implications: - Because fostering social capital and innovativeness rests largely on the firm's organizational culture, leaders who want to implement SNS effectively should pay special attention to the culture of their organization.\nOriginality/value: - In the use of business SNS, practitioners need to consider particular organizational characteristics that may affect the effectiveness of intranet-based SNS.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Screening patents of ICT in construction using deep learning and NLP techniques
|
[
"ICT in construction",
"NLP",
"Deep learning",
"Information management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Research background\n2. Related work: Several attempts have been made to establish classifiers for automatic patent classification (Chakrabarti et al., 1998; Smith, 2002). Most of the studies, at the beginning, extracted the features from the structured data or metadata, such as keywords and citations (Michel and Bettels, 2001; Perez-Molina, 2018). In the recent decade, scholars prefer using unstructured data (Cambria and White, 2014; Collobert et al., 2011; Gimpel et al., 2011). These studies typically have three key steps: processing the textual data, vectorizing the patents and using machine learning methods to train the models. Focusing on the three key steps, this section describes a synopsis of the relevant literature. 2.1 NLP techniques for processing textual data\n3. The proposed approach integrating deep learning and NLP techniques: To screen ICTC patents from a patent collection, a binary classifier is developed to classify pieces of patents into two classes: ICTC-related or not. Figure 1 shows the overall procedure of the approach to achieve the classifier. The first step is to collect a database for training, incorporating the full texts of the instances annotated with target labels (the two classes). Then, NLP tools are used to process textual data to achieve clean texts. Based on the processed texts, N-gram and tf-idf algorithms are employed for the vectorization to represent each of the patents as a numerical vector that could be fed into the MLP that would be trained by gradient descent in which the hyperparameters are tuned. At last, a validation experiment is conducted by means of k-fold cross-validation in two data sets. The succeeding sections discuss these steps. 3.1 Data collection and annotation\n4. Results: 4.1 Results of hyperparameters tuning\n5. Discussion and conclusion: ICT applications are a key determinant to improve the level of coordination and collaboration in the AEC industry. Even though patents have been recognized as a valuable resource to provide technological knowledge, the patent offices have not provided a specific classification of ICTC patents. Acknowledging this research opportunity, the present study accurately and widely screens a corpus of ICTC patents, by proposing an approach based on deep learning and NLP techniques.Specifically, this study has made the following contributions. (1) This study contributes an approach to widely and accurately retrieve and collect a corpus of patents for domains like ICTC that does not exist as a specific classification in patents and hardly being represented by queries. Although patent offices provide elaborate classification schemes, they cannot satisfy all the requirements in the real world. Therefore, when a collection of patents does not exist in the classification schemes, query-based methods become the only possible way to search these patents. However, query-based methods were developed to retrieve relevant documents for a specific patent application rather than a set of patents. For the collections like ICTC that incorporates a variety of technologies, it is an extremely challenging task for the query-based methods to retrieve the patents simply by a query. (2) The proposed approach takes advantage of deep learning and NLP techniques. Although deep learning has become prominent in processing textual data, the previous studies in the AEC area mainly utilized machine learning methods to perform classification tasks, whose performance highly depends on feature selection because the traditional machine learning models could only learn the linear relations. In contrast, deep learning models are more advanced in learning non-linear relations by using the layers of neural networks, thus being more suitable for complex tasks with specific objectives. The validation results indicate that the MLP model outperforms the traditional machine models in classifying the ICTC patents. In addition, NLP techniques were employed to process the raw data. In the AEC area, most previous studies only utilized the N-gram, tokenization and stop-words removal, ignoring the advanced NLP tools such as lemmatization and POS. This study utilizes lemmatization and POS to convert the words into stems for generating more accurate N-grams from the textual data. (3) In practice, this study contributes a specific collection for ICTC patents, which is not provided by the patent offices. The collection widely and accurately covers the ICT applications in the construction, not only constituting a dictionary for accessing ICTC, but also identifying problems to be solved by the state-of-art ICTC inventions and recognizing all possible specific embodiments of ICTC.The present study is not without limitations. The feature extraction process is based on traditional BOW models, which does not take the semantic meanings in contexts into consideration. This limitation, however, has been largely offset by the proposed supervised MLP model, which learns complex relations between the inputs and outputs by training the deep layers of neurons. This could perform the prediction task with good performance without considering the semantic meanings. This study focuses on classifying ICTC and non-ICTC. Future research is needed to concentrate on more complex deep learning approaches that could automatically categorize the ICTC patents according to the technological components or the management issues in practice.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study proposes an approach to solve the fundamental problem in using query-based methods (i.e. searching engines and patent retrieval tools) to screen patents of information and communication technology in construction (ICTC). The fundamental problem is that ICTC incorporates various techniques and thus cannot be simply represented by man-made queries. To investigate this concern, this study develops a binary classifier by utilizing deep learning and NLP techniques to automatically identify whether a patent is relevant to ICTC, thus accurately screening a corpus of ICTC patents.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study employs NLP techniques to convert the textual data of patents into numerical vectors. Then, a supervised deep learning model is developed to learn the relations between the input vectors and outputs.\nFindings: The validation results indicate that (1) the proposed approach has a better performance in screening ICTC patents than traditional machine learning methods; (2) besides the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that provides structured and well-written patents, the approach could also accurately screen patents form Derwent Innovations Index (DIX), in which patents are written in different genres.\nPractical implications: This study contributes a specific collection for ICTC patents, which is not provided by the patent offices.\nSocial implications: The proposed approach contributes an alternative manner in gathering a corpus of patents for domains like ICTC that neither exists as a searchable classification in patent offices, nor is accurately represented by man-made queries.\nOriginality/value: A deep learning model with two layers of neurons is developed to learn the non-linear relations between the input features and outputs providing better performance than traditional machine learning models. This study uses advanced NLP techniques lemmatization and part-of-speech POS to process textual data of ICTC patents. This study contributes specific collection for ICTC patents which is not provided by the patent offices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Procurement risk management under uncertainty: a review
|
[
"Procurement",
"Risk management",
"Supply chain management",
"Literature review",
"Supply risk"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Manufacturing industry nowadays has a very fierce competition and competes with price, quality and logistics (Roberta et al., 2014). To keep pace with the industry, many manufacturing companies begin to outsource the business which is not their core competency (Kremic et al., 2006). Indeed, the trend of outsourcing makes the supply chain more complex and hard to control. From a survey conducted by Computer Science Cooperation, there are about 43 percent of firms reporting that their companies are facing disruption risk (Tang, 2006a). Enterprises may face negative consequence of risk if they do not realize the impact and occurrence of the risk. Risk has been well defined as the variance of return in financial industry and risk can adversely affect the expected yield (Markowitz, 1952). Risk management is not only an important issue of financial industry and it also has a growing concern in supply chain management as uncertainty of the occurrence of an event in one function of supply chain can brings to undesirable chain effect for the supply chain network (Finch, 2004; Tummala and Schoenherr, 2011).\n2. Review methodology: Review methodology is based on CLR (Onwuegbuzie and Freis, 2016) which is a methodology of literature review. A flow chart of literature search procedure is depicted in Figure 1 to provide a clear picture of the review process and results. The selected papers were mainly published within 1995-2017 and the main electronic database includes Science Direct, Emerald, Scopus and Google Scholar. The keywords used to retrieve the relevant papers include risk management, supply chain management, supply risk, procurement, contract and sourcing. The papers are further filtered based on the relevance to the topic, number of citations and publication year. As described in Figure 1, over 153 papers from various journals, such as European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics and Operations Research are selected.\n3. Overview of PRM: In this section, a PRM classification is outlined and positioned within the supply chain risk management structure proposed by Tang (2006a) who defined Supply chain risk management as \"the management of supply chain risk through coordination or collaboration among the supply chain partners so as to ensure profitability and continuity.\" Furthermore, common procurement risks are identified to set our review scope in Subsection 3.1. In Subsection 3.2, the procurement risks and the related approaches are presented.\n4. Classification of PRM: In general, there are five main risks that occur in procurement process which are demand fluctuation, vague price information, unreliable yield uncertain lead time and disruption risks. To deal with the procurement risk, buyers may diversify the risk with multiple suppliers and purchase in multiple periods so as to enhance flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness to the business environment. Table II provides a general classification of procurement risk and the related research papers in particular type of risk.\n5. PRM strategies and modeling method: In order to explore the PRM from different point of view, the PRM structure in Figure 3 is proposed. First, as described in Section 1, buyers carefully review their purchasing requirement, whether it is cost sensitive or urgent. Different purchasing requirement may need totally different strategies. After understanding clearly about the requirements, it is then necessary to identify the procurement risks. In this paper, the various uncertainties existed in procurement are identified and examined in Sections 2 and 3, especially that the uncertain demand, price, yield, lead time and disruption risks are thoroughly investigated.\n6. Conclusions: In this paper, various uncertainties in procurement are examined. Especially, the uncertain demand, price, yield, lead time, disruption risks and multi-uncertainties are thoroughly investigated. After reviewing the published papers in the procurement risk domain, research problems are summarized and classified. This work also provides a review of the latest strategies to deal with uncertainties.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold, first providing researchers with an overview about the uncertainties occurred in procurement including applicable approaches for analyzing different uncertain scenarios, and second proposing directions to inspire future research by identifying research gaps.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Papers related to supply chain risk management and procurement risk management (PRM) from 1995-2017 in several major databases are extracted by keywords and then further filtered based on the relevance to the topic, number of citations and publication year. A total of over 156 papers are selected. Definitions and current approaches related to procurement risks management are reviewed.\nFindings: Five main risks in procurement process are identified. Apart from summarizing current strategies, suggestions are provided to facilitate strategy selection to handle procurement risks. Seven major future challenges and implications related PRM and different uncertainties are also indicated in this paper.\nResearch limitations/implications: Procurement decisions making under uncertainty has attracted considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. Despite the increasing awareness for risk management for supply chain, no detail and holistic review paper studied on procurement uncertainty. Managing procurement risk not only need to mitigate the risk of price and lead time, but also need to have sophisticated analysis techniques in supply and demand uncertainty.\nOriginality/value: The contribution of this review paper is to discuss the implications of the research findings and provides insight about future research. A novel research framework is introduced as reference guide for researchers to apply innovative approach of operations research to resolve the procurements uncertainty problems.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Knowledge management in doctoral education toward knowledge economy
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Innovation",
"Knowledge economy",
"Doctoral education",
"Knowledge workers",
"Research management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: There is a continuing discussion in both academia and business sector, arguing that an ideas-driven, global knowledge economy (KE) constitutes a promising scenario for the near future (Sundac and Fatur Krmpotic, 2011). In this context, universities and research centers revise their roles and objectives in order to get accustomed to the emerging economic environment (Deiaco et al., 2012). The strategic role of universities in enabling innovation and economic growth has become a key subject considering policies related to innovation and science in several countries' economies (Hughes and Kitson, 2012). In fact, universities and research centers constitute strategic factors in the KE, as highly skilled population is needed in order to create new knowledge and transform research outcomes into innovative products (Hughes and Kitson, 2012). Therefore, knowledge management (KM) practices in universities and research centers can be used as leverages, toward the direction of prosperity and long-term economic growth. What is more, Stephan et al. (2004) claimed that doctoral education in science and engineering is critical to the university's role in promoting economic development to the whole region and the country.\n2. Knowledge and KM: The question of the meaning and the definition of knowledge had occupied the minds of philosophers since the classical Greek era and has led to many epistemological debates (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). The Greek philosophers at fifth century BC began to consider questions about the meaning of knowledge, perception, memory and thought. According to Nonaka (1994), two types of knowledge can be distinguished, namely the tacit knowledge, which is based on personal experience and is hard to be transferred, and the explicit knowledge, which can be transferred and discussed.\n3. KE and the role of universities and research institutes: To begin with, a KE is one that uses knowledge as the key engine of economic growth (Suh and Chen, 2007). That tempts to result to higher value-added goods and services, which increases the probability of economic success in the current highly competitive and globalized world economy. The World Bank Institute's Knowledge for Development Program has developed a four-pillar framework to be used as the basis for a country's transition to a KE (The World Bank, 2013). More analytically, the first step is to understand the country's strengths and weaknesses, as well as, the strengths and weaknesses of actual and potential competitors. Accordingly, the country should then formulate its goals and develop the relevant strategy, including policies and investments, in order to achieve those goals.\n4. KM in universities and research institutes and the role of knowledge workers: To begin with, based on the notion that the knowledge-based society has already arrived, it is obvious that successful organizations in the global KE will be those that are able to identify, value, create and evolve their knowledge assets, utilizing knowledge as their main competitive tool (Rowley, 2000). In particular, considering higher education, according to Petrides and Nguyen (2008), KM can be seen a tool for continuous organizational learning, effective decision making and also as a tool that enables capitalization on the deriving improved knowledge creation and knowledge-sharing activities. Therefore, KM should represent a basic priority for universities and research centers, being implemented as an ongoing process. However, effective KM may require significant change in culture and values, organizational structures and reward systems (Rowley, 2000). Furthermore, academic and research institutions and their personnel have to recognize and respond to their changing role in a KE, managing the processes associated with the creation of their knowledge assets, including all staff and students and not only senior management, following an evolutionary process (Rowley, 2000).\n5. Doctoral education management objectives: To begin with, Wendler et al. (2010) concluded that graduate education programs are the key to long-term growth and the future of the innovation economy. Furthermore, according to Stephan et al. (2004), graduate students are key subjects in the creation of new knowledge and in technology transfer, as doctoral programs train individuals who, on graduation, provide training for future highly educated employees, which results in productivity growth, and consequently growth in tax revenues. They also serve as a talent magnet, attracting gifted students and faculty from outside the country, they provide a source of expertise for local businesses, enhancing the productivity of industries already established in the area (Stephan et al., 2004). Ultimately, successful graduate students enhance the global reputation of the institution, and also boost the country's profile of global success.\n6. Proposed framework and recommendations: To begin with, according to the best of our knowledge, there is no known definition of KM for doctoral education. However, KM for academic institutions is defined as: \"The organized and systematic process of generating and disseminating information, and selecting, distilling, and deploying explicit and tacit knowledge to create unique value that can be used to strengthen teaching-learning environment\" (Adhikari, 2010). Focusing on KM for doctoral education, we propose that the aforementioned definition should be enhanced, adding the element of knowledge application, as well as, the deriving need for research and development outcomes, except for learning and teaching optimization. Therefore KM for doctoral education could be defined as: \"The organized and systematic process of generating and distributing information, and selecting, processing, organizing and applying explicit and tacit knowledge to create unique value that can be used to strengthen learning, teaching, research and development.\"\n7. Conclusions: To sum up, it has been shown that knowledge and KM became critical success factors for competitive organizations, constituting the vision of an economy based on knowledge, known as KE, as a key to sustainable innovation and growth. Moreover, KM in universities and research institutes can be seen a tool for continuous organizational learning and effective decision making and also optimize knowledge processes, provide better awareness of the existing knowledge, improve the management of existing and new activities, reduce costs, and enhance academic and administrative services, as well. Therefore, KM should represent a basic priority for universities and research centers, being implemented as an ongoing process. On the other hand, it has been presented that despite the crucial importance of doctoral education, currently the management of quality is far from ideal. According to global directives graduate education needs to be broadened from its research focus to include a wider range of training for the students' careers, in the context of global KE, where collaboration between industry, universities, and government agencies is indispensable. PhDs are expected to develop career skills, as well as, \"soft skills,\" such as leadership, creativity and entrepreneurship, as well as, the capability for multi-disciplinary approaches and the utilization of their research findings both commercially and socially.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role and the scope of knowledge management (KM) in doctoral education, in the emerging knowledge economy (KE) context, and the recommendation of a framework for KM in doctoral education.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An extended literature analysis was contacted to elaborate the role and the scope of KM in universities and research institutions in the context of global KE, and the role of knowledge workers, including doctoral students, as well as, the current directions for doctoral education. Literature analysis is followed by synthesis of the proposed framework for KM in doctoral education toward KE.\nFindings: A framework for KM in doctoral education is proposed, which could be used to enhance quality of doctoral studies and could lead to research optimization and innovation growth. Finally, proposals are recommended for enhancing KM in doctoral education and utilize doctoral students as knowledge workers and change factors toward the notion of global KE.\nOriginality/value: The paper is an effort to start filling the literature gap in the emerging but under-researched subject of KM regarding doctoral education in the context of KE, with the purpose to enhance quality of doctoral studies and capture the socio-economic development advantages that come from training such a highly skilled workforce.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A health-care model of emotional labour: An evaluation of the literature and development of a model
|
[
"Health services",
"Carers",
"Patients"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Emotional labour was first defined by Hochschild (1983) and has more recently been described as the effort involved when employees \"regulate their emotional display in an attempt to meet organizationally-based expectations specific to their roles\" (Brotheridge and Lee, 2003, p. 365). These \"expectations\", or display rules, specify either formally or informally, which emotions employees ought to express and which ought to be suppressed. Whilst many employees want to portray emotions in accordance with display rules because they care about their clients (or perhaps simply wish to retain their job), there are likely to be many occasions when genuinely felt emotions do not concur with desired emotions. It is this emotional dissonance that leads to emotional labour.Hochschild (1979, 1983) argued that emotional labour is performed through either surface or deep acting. Surface acting involves managing the expression of behaviour rather than feelings. This is accomplished by careful presentation of verbal and non-verbal cues such as facial expression, gestures and voice tone in a way in which the person knows that are only acting. Deep acting, on the other hand involves the actor attempting to actually experience or feel the emotion that they wish (or that they are expected) to display. Feelings are actively induced as the actor \"psyches\" him/herself into the desired persona.Emotional labour is thought by many to be an important part of the role of many health care professionals and it has been the focus of much debate and empirical enquiry within a range of health care settings, especially within nursing. However, the research to date is limited in a number of important ways. First, as mentioned, much of the existing focus is limited to the nursing profession, despite the recognition that emotional labour is likely to be an important feature of other health-care settings. Second, a theoretical model driving the research direction seems to be lacking, resulting in a range of varied and interesting studies that are difficult to relate into a coherent whole.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the extensive literature on emotional labour within health-care settings in order to develop a health care model of emotional labour. This model should be able to drive future research enquiry (including that examining professions other than nursing) as well as highlighting those parts of the process into which health-care management interventions might best be placed.The current paper will begin with an evaluation of the literature on emotional labour, particularly within the health-care sector, before the new model is proposed. Implications of the model for research and practice will be outlined.\nEmotional labour in health care: Although emotional labour has been the focus of much debate and empirical enquiry within a range of health-care settings over the past decade or so, the most prominent of these is nursing with studies conducted in the context of general nurses (de Castro, 2004; de Raeve, 2002; Smith and Gray, 2000; Kelly et al., 2000; Henderson, 2001; Staden, 1998; Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987), learning disability nurses (Mitchell and Smith, 2003), mental health nurses (Mann and Cowburn, 2005; Majomi et al., 2003), midwives (Hunter, 2001), gynaecology nurses (McCreight, 2004; Bolton, 2000) and hospice nurses (James, 1989). The reasons for the preoccupation with nursing in this context are well-defined (and will be expanded upon next), but it is worth mentioning that other health care professions examined have included medical students (Smith and Kleinman, 1989; Lief and Fox, 1963) and clinical psychologists (Mann and Jones, 1996).Emotional labour and nursing\nImplications of the model for health-care management: The aim of health-care managers in respect of emotional labour must be to attempt to reduce its negative consequences whilst retaining the positive outcomes for both patient and carer. There are thus two parts of the model where input from managers would be most valuable. First, at the \"emotional labour inducing event\" stage; what can health-care managers do to reduce either the number or impact of such events? Second at the \"outcomes\" stage; what can they do to moderate the negative consequences of emotional labour performance?The answer to both questions must lie within the range of educational and training initiatives currently offered to health carers. Emotional labour still remains largely implicit within most health services; emotional labour is rarely being explicitly recognised or taught (Smith and Gray, 2000). Still today, the tendency in research and in nursing practice is to concentrate on more visible, measurable aspects of care and medical procedure. After all, as one nurse commented, \"you can't put feelings of intimacy in the patient's notes or record\" (in Smith and Gray, 2000, p. 41). Emotions continue to be professionalised in order to present a detached, impersonal image of medicine. If emotional labour continues to be devalued then the health service risks becoming blind to the emotional needs, not only of its patients, but also of its staff, with the associated negative implications on patient outcome and staff health and well-being.Acknowledgement of the role of emotions in terms of education within health-care training certainly appears to be patchy, with some provision better than others. A gynaecological nurse in Northern Ireland comments in McCreight's recent paper that she was not given guidance on dealing either with her own or her patient's emotions and consequently felt that she was inadequately prepared for a part of her job that is central to her role; for example, nurses were trained in recognising symptoms of miscarriage as well as appropriate forms of medical intervention, but not in the emotional aspects of such incidents. Nurses in Henderson's (2001, p. 134) study also frequently expressed their \"profound disappointment in the failure of nursing education to address the emotional requirements of the work\"; none of Henderson's nurses felt that their nursing education has \"in any way\" prepared them for the emotional cost of nursing. In a similar vein, a psychiatrist in the British Medical Journal laments that \"much of medical training seems to be focused on how to deal with things ... rather than how to cope with people\" (Persaud, 2004, p. 87).But how might this emotional training be achieved? Many nurses feel that these skills are best learned vicariously from more experienced colleagues: \"there are very experienced staff here...and basically what you do is you learn from them\" (Katlin, in McCreight, 2004, p. 6). This seems to reflect little change from the views of student nurses in 1992 who suggest that the skills needed to perform emotional labour are most frequently learnt informally in the workplace (Smith, 1992). This suggests that placements and other in situ elements of the training process are the best place to learn the emotional requirements of the job. Another suggestion is offered by McCreight who notes that training for gynaecological nurses which involved visits from bereaved parents was regarded as very helpful in helping nurses see things from the patient's perspective; this idea of \"patient-centred\" emotional skills training could be delivered across a wider range of disciplines; recovered patients, for example, could attend formal training days to share their experiences on the emotional aspect of the care delivery. McQueen, in her 2004 meta-analysis of emotional intelligence in nursing work, suggests that the training focus on self-awareness, self-regulation and social skills, whilst Cook (1999) points out that the current financial pressure on universities to teach in large groups is not conducive to these aims. Smith and Gray (2000) advise that reflective learning (including mentoring and storytelling techniques) is a useful way to learn these skills (although the emotional labour inherent in these learning processes themselves must be recognised).Initiatives leading to changes in the organisation of care in recent years may inadvertently effect the levels of emotional labour performed by care workers and this should be considered when considering future policies. For example, a drive to provide \"continuity of care\" from midwifes in the Department of Health's Changing Childbirth report (1993) may have important implications for a midwife's personal life that can result in increased emotional labour as they attempt to juggle home and work roles (Hunter, 2001).This leads to the issue of the effects of emotional labour on the labourer which have been outlined in detail earlier in this paper. It seems undisputed that continuous and chronic emotional labour performance can have significant negative outcomes on the health and well-being of the labourer, yet if emotional labour is barely acknowledged in the health service, how can its effects be monitored and treated? Thus, it is not just performance of emotional labour that needs to be taught in a formally recognised way, but also coping with the effects. Strategies that could be introduced to counteract the negative effects of emotional labour performance need to be both training and policy-led; for example, peer support programmes, changes in patient and resource allocation systems, stress management interventions, \"downtime\" schedules, work rotation schemes and debriefing programmes (see Mann (2002) for review).\nConclusions: There is a profound need to bridge the gap between medical and emotional aspects of care (Smith and Gray, 2000).The aim of this paper was to develop a health-care model of emotional labour that could be used to help health-care managers better deal with the causes and consequences of emotional labour for staff and patients. It has been shown that emotional labour is a crucial part of the role of many health care professionals, especially nurses, and that these skills are not adequately taught within health-care education programmes. Similarly, the stress and effects of mental health of emotional labour performance have also not been sufficiently acknowledged or addressed. Specific recommendations from this review include the following:* The study of emotional labour should be widened to include other professions outside of nursing such as doctors, counsellors (Mann, 2004), clinical psychologists and other health-care providers.* Emotional labour and emotion management should be formally recognised as a key skill in facilitating the patient journey and training, policy and education within health-care systems should reflect this recognition.* Emotional skills should be taught in innovative ways outside of the formal classroom setting and in small, appropriate groups encompassing reflective learning, mentor-led experiences and patient-centred sharing.* Health-care professionals should be offered training on coping with the effects to themselves of emotional labour performance both as part of initial entry-level training and as part of continuing professional development.* More research should be carried out to further develop the model, particularly in identifying causes of emotional labour within health-care settings and in differentiating the effects that different kinds of emotional labour performance might have.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to evaluate the literature on emotional labour in the health-care sector and the benefits and costs of such performance for both the carer and the patient. The aim is to develop a new health care model of emotional labour that has implications for health-care management in terms of policy and education as well as for future research in this field.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A new model to explain the antecedents and consequences of emotional labour within a health-care setting is developed that builds on existing research.\nFindings: - The model distinguishes between types of emotional conflict to which emotional labour-inducing events in health-care settings might lead. The negative and positive consequences, specific to health-care settings, of emotional labour performance are also outlined.\nPractical implications: - Emotional labour should be formally recognised as a key skill in facilitating the patient journey, with emotional skills being taught in innovative ways outside the formal classroom setting. Health-care professionals should be offered training on coping with the effects of emotional labour performance. Finally, more research should be carried out to further develop the model, particularly in identifying causes of emotional labour within health-care settings and in differentiating the effects that different kinds of emotional labour performance might have.\nOriginality/value: - The paper draws together previous research on emotional labour within health-care settings to develop a coherent model that can be used to guide future research and practice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Losses and expenditures caused by extreme events in Poland
|
[
"Disasters",
"Extreme events",
"Recovery",
"Climate",
"Losses",
"Expenditures"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The aim of the paper is to present problems related to the assessment of losses and expenditures related to disasters ensuing from weather and climate conditions. This analysis covers three aspects: an assessment of losses caused by weather and climate-related extreme events in Poland in 2001-2011, an estimation of expenditures on recovery and prevention of their impacts, and an assessment of the manner of collecting information on the losses and expenditures in Poland in terms of their reliability and completeness. Estimates of this type were carried out for the first time in Poland.\n2. The key aspects of loss analysis: Altered frequencies and intensities of extreme weather are expected to have mostly adverse effects on human systems (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007). The negative consequences of disasters caused by natural hazard arise in the form of damage, losses and macroeconomic effects (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2003; Torrente, 2012).\n3. Financing of recovery tasks: The recovery from the impacts of weather and climate-related events exceeds the financial capacity of the victims and requires an extended system for financing the recovery tasks. The resources of insurers and those from the state budget play an important role in the building of this system (Siwiec, 2012).\n4. Methods: 4.1. Methods applied to estimate losses\n5. Results: The results obtained (Figure 1) are the first so detailed estimates, which have been aggregated at the national level, of losses caused by weather and climate-related events and expenditures on recovery and prevention of the impacts of these events in 2001-2011[2].\n6. Conclusions: Data on damage and losses constitute a starting point for the efficient management of the risk of disasters. Moreover, they provide a basis for an assessment of the adverse impact of the climate and can be used in the process of adaptation to climate change. In particular, information on damage and losses enables an assessment of the results of risk management and adaptation strategies, documentation of an adverse impact of disasters and climate change on communities, the economy and the environment and monitoring of disasters and the impact of climate change, preparation of scenarios of damage and losses, with the determination of the probability of the occurrence of a disaster (Gall and Kreft, 2013).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present problems related to the assessment of losses and expenditures caused by weather and climate-related events in Poland.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data were collected by the direct questionnaire method from selected national and regional/local administration units.\nFindings: The direct losses in 2001-2011 were estimated at more than PLN56 billion. The greatest losses were estimated in agriculture and infrastructure. The total amount of losses were estimated at PLN90 billion. In 2001-2011, more than PLN45 billion was spent in Poland on recovery and prevention of the impacts of extreme events, with a large part of it consisting of damages and benefits paid out by insurance companies.\nResearch limitations/implications: Given the limitations related to the method for collecting information, the results may be underestimated. It is well-advised to consider information on such a type of uncertainty in the course of the future research.\nPractical implications: The results are of large importance for the building of public awareness and the making of political and investment-related decisions.\nOriginality/value: The estimates given in the paper are the first presentation of losses and expenditures caused by all the extreme events in the Polish territory which has been prepared on the basis of so many official information sources. The determination of \"bottlenecks\" related to the existing method for collecting information is a first step toward its improvement.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Procedural characteristics of the 4th Korean technology foresight
|
[
"Technology foresight",
"Procedural characteristics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: It is commonly believed that a nation's competitiveness is proportional to its science and technology (hereafter, \"S&T\") capabilities. Every nation across the globe has invested in research and development to increase future S&T capabilities. They have established S&T policies by engaging in S&T planning activities at the national strategy level. Technology foresight (hereafter, \"TF\") is one of these S&T planning activities. Although long-range forecasting study based on the Delphi technique was conducted by the Rand Corporation of the USA in 1964 (Gordon and Helmer, 1964), Japan was the first country to perform TF at the national level in 1971 (Miles et al., 2008; Okuwada, 2010; Su and Lee, 2010). During the 1990s, Korea (Shin, 1998), Germany (Cuhls, 2003), the UK (Georghiou, 1996) and others began to conduct TF. After the 2000s, other countries, including Finland (Konnola et al., 2009), Malaysia (Rahim and Mallek, 2011) and Russia (Sokolov and Poznyak, 2011), performed national TF.\n2. The history of TF in Korea: The Korean government's R&D investment (national R&D budget) had exceeded 1 trillion won in 1993. The Koreans needed to develop long-term strategies for S&T development so that it could systematically establish a national S&T policy. Therefore, Korea benchmarked Japan's TF results and the 1st TF was conducted in 1994 (Shin, 1998). As the first step, a survey of technology experts was performed to discover future technology that might be developed up to 2015, and as a result 1,174 future technologies were decided. Then, two-round Delphi survey was conducted to examine technology realization times, technology development levels, etc.\n3. Characteristics of the 4th Korean TF: The 4th TF was performed between 2010 and 2011 by KISTEP, which was designated as a managing organization of TF by the S&T Framework Law. It was conducted to discover future technologies that might be developed by 2035. Its goal was to provide basic data for the establishment of national S&T policy. This data included realization time and general public use time of future technology, importance of future technology, the need for government investment, realization measures for future technology, etc. based on the Delphi survey. In addition, it aimed to raise public awareness of the role and importance of S&T by providing future images led by the realization of future technologies. The final results of the 4th TF were reported to the National Science & Technology Commission in April, 2012.\n4. Conclusions and implications for S&T policy establishment: Because the Korean TF process was initiated with the 1st TF in 1994, it has continuously grown in importance. To address this, unlike the 1st and 2nd TF that solely included opinions of scientists, the 3rd TF introduced a procedure to discover future needs by examination of future society prospects. This allowed the discovery of future technologies related to future needs. In addition, to improve its relationship with the S&T Basic Plan performed every five years, the 3rd TF was revised in 2007. This provided a foundation for the construction of a virtuous cycle system within the S&T planning procedure. The Korean TF has provided basic data for the establishment of mid and long-term S&T strategy and S&T policy. However, if the TF process hopes to become established as the major process that operates in the virtuous cycle system within S&T planning, then it must expand its existing role. Therefore, the 4th TF attempted several improvements in TF processes that resulted in the seven characteristics described earlier in Chapter 3.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to describe procedural characteristics of the 4th technology foresight (TF) using search engines to discover emerging issues; analytic framework development to discover future needs; future technologies considering future needs as well as technology development; detailed description of future technology; analytical discussions of Delphi survey results; developing spatial-specific scenarios and illustrations; and examining possible adverse effects of future technologies. Korea performs TF every 5 years to establish science and technology policy and strategies. In the 4th TF, future technologies that might be developed by 2035 were discovered and Delphi survey was conducted to examine current development status, anticipated times of technology development and public use, plans to secure these technologies, etc.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper divides procedure employed in the 4th TF into three steps and explains seven characteristics related to its procedure.\nFindings: Improvement of the TF procedure will increase the reliability and applicability of its results.\nOriginality/value: This paper consists of original results which include improved procedure and its implication by researchers who participated in the 4th TF. It will provide a useful example for other nations, hoping to introduce TF to set up national science and technology policy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Aspiration, foreignness liability and market potential: How do they relate to small firms' international entrepreneurial orientation?
|
[
"Liability of foreignness",
"Aspiration",
"Host-country market potential",
"International entrepreneurial orientation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, one phenomenon has attracted considerable attention from researchers and practitioners alike in the field of international business (IB). That is, some small firms demonstrate strong international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO). IEO is defined in this study as the tendency to pursue innovative strategies, aggressively enter new foreign markets, and accept strategic and financial risks in the pursuit of new opportunities abroad (Miller, 1983). Yet for small firms, IEO generates several challenges. For example, small firms tend to suffer from unique resource gaps that are difficult to fill due to their size, and their limited financial, technical and managerial resources restrict their international activities (Brouthers et al., 2015). A growing body of IEO research has been investigating why small firms behave entrepreneurially in foreign markets despite their severe resource limitations (Coviello et al., 2011). However, these IEO studies have largely focused on how a firm's IEO influences its performance and suggest that firms pursue IEO mainly because IEO strenghtens firm performance. In other words, these IEO researchers have assumed a unidirectional relationship from a firm's IEO to its performance (for a review, see Covin and Miller, 2014). What remains unknown is how a firm's performance may influence its IEO. This issue is important for understanding the driving forces of IEO and consequently the mechanisms of IEO.\n2. Theoretical background: BTOF posits that entrepreneurs are boundedly rational and they regulate their behavior based on a firm's performance relative to aspirations (Cyert and March, 1963). When a firm falls short of aspirations, its entrepreneur will initiate a search for the problems and the solutions, and an organizational change occurs when the entrepreneur has identified a solution which he/she believes can address the underperformance (Argote and Greve, 2007). If the firm achieves or exceeds aspirations, an organizational change is then deemed unnecessary. In other words, under this circumstance, the entrepreneur is less likely to take actions oriented toward increasing the firm's performance (Powell, 2017).\n3. Hypothesis development: 3.1 Aspirations and IEO\n4. Methods: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Results: 5.1 Hypothesis testing\n6. Discussion and conclusion: By integrating BTOF perspective with IEO research, this study explores the effects of a small firm's performance feedback on its IEO. Entrepreneurs of small firms often have direct control over their firms' strategies and thus their psychology influences significantly their firms' strategic decisions. Entrepreneurs compare their firms' current performance to their past performance and to their competitor's performance to determine their firm's success or failure. Such comparisons influence their firm's IEO. Our results show that small firms demonstrate strong IEO when their performance is unsatisfactory, but their IEO diminishes when their performance is satisfactory. The mainstream management and entrepreneurship literature suggests that environmental uncertainty and market potential are important moderators of the relationship between firm strategies and performance (Aldrich and Mindlin, 1978; Smith and Cao, 2007; Zahra and Garvis, 2000). Thus, our study also investigates the moderating effects of LoF and HMP on the relationship between performance feedback and IEO. Our results show that LoF does not moderate the relationship when firm performance is either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Although LoF increases the cost of doing business in foreign markets, it is found not to affect IEO. We propose two rationales to explain this phenomenon. First, these MNEs may have conducted market research prior to their entry to the foreign market so their decision makers were confident in mitigating LoF. Thus, LoF did not affect how decision makers interpreted firm performance. Second, these MNEs might have established business networks or partnerships with local suppliers, distributors or customers in the host markets so to reduce LoF. As a consequence, LoF was no longer a significant barrier. In contrast, our study shows that HMP has varying degrees of moderating effects on the relationship of firm performance and IEO. MNEs could mitigate LoF through partnerships or learning-by-doing but they cannot change HMP. Therefore, HMP influences how decision makers interpret performance feedback which in turn affects their firms' IEO.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Using behavioral theory of the firm, the purpose of this paper is to examine how a small firm's performance relative to historical and social aspirations is related to its international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO). This study also explores two environmental factors, liability of foreignness (LoF) and host-country market potential (HMP), as the moderators for the relationship of performance and IEO.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses survey for data collection from Canadian small firms and employs regression models for data analysis.\nFindings: The results show that small firms demonstrate stronger IEO when their performance is below aspirations, but their IEO diminishes when their performance exceeds aspirations. The authors also found that a small firm's LoF does not moderate the impact of its performance feedback on IEO. However, the authors found HMP plays a moderating role when a small firm's performance is below aspirations.\nOriginality/value: This study investigates the relationship of IEO to aspiration and found that this relationship is moderated by HMP. The study advances our knowledge on small firms' international behavior.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Quality management and customer results: the tourist accommodation sector in Spain
|
[
"Quality management",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Spain",
"Critical factors",
"Tourist accommodation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the current economic context, characterized by a very competitive and changing global market, tourism enterprises seek tools to enable them to be successful in tourism markets. One of these tools is quality management, which allows them to improve their internal processes (Kaynak, 2003) and the quality of their services, leading to a significant improvement in customer satisfaction and employee and business performance (Becker, 1993; Ghobadian and Gallear, 1996). Furthermore, the implementation of any of the quality management standards (ISO 9001, EFQM-European Foundation for Quality Management, etc.) and subsequent certification allows companies to stand out from their competitors, which facilitates achieving success and surviving in tourism markets.\n2. Theoretical framework and hypotheses: 2.1 Quality management, quality of service and customer satisfaction\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Universe and field of study\n4. Results: 4.1 Measurement model\n5. Discussion: The results shown by the structural equation model are corroborated by other studies in different areas and countries. In this study, empirical evidence of the proposed relationships is shown, which is corroborated by the results that other researchers obtained. In this research, a positive relationship of leadership is confirmed with alliances and resources (H1), quality policy/planning (H2), employee management (H3) and learning (H4). These results are consistent with studies by Calvo-Mora and Garcia, 2005 (H1); Terziovski and Samson, 1999, Lee et al., 2003, Moon et al., 2011 - (H2); Black and Porter, 1995, Flynn et al., 1995, Samson and Terziovski, 1999, Moon et al., 2011 -(H3); Tari et al., 2007 (H4).\n6. Conclusions and limitations of the study: Researchers like Mao and Zhang (2012), Zeithaml et al. (1996, 2003) argue that to achieve appropriate levels and improve customer satisfaction, it is necessary to provide quality service. Considering that this is achieved and ensured through the critical factors of quality, it is very important to conduct studies that provide empirical evidence of how the critical factors perform on customer results. In this sense, the EFQM (1999) model shows that there is a relationship between the critical factors and customer results, but does not show how these critical factors influence customer results.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the critical factors of quality and customer results and also investigate the structure of relationships between the critical factors of quality, in the context of the tourist accommodation sector in Spain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A theoretical model is proposed together with the hypotheses to be tested and the data obtained in 186 tourist accommodation businesses certified under the \"Q for Tourism Quality\" are analyzed, with the technique of structural equations models.\nFindings: The results show that the antecedents of customer results are continuous improvement and quality policy/planning.\nOriginality/value: The practical implications of this paper focus on providing managers of enterprises of tourist accommodation with variables on which to perform in order to improve customer satisfaction; their leadership and commitment to quality are fundamental in the process of implementing the quality management system, which helps ensure that the company provides a quality service that influences customer satisfaction.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Waste identification and elimination in HEIs: the role of Lean thinking
|
[
"Lean thinking",
"Observation",
"Higher education",
"Waste"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite some well publicised setbacks, for example, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (Neveling, 2007) the use of Lean techniques is now commonplace across the breadth of the service sector, including financial services, transactional services and public services such as health and local government. Indeed health is the area of the public sector where there are the most reported uses of Lean (Radnor and Boaden, 2008). The last large service sector bastion to succumb to this \"lean onslaught\" is education generally and Higher Education (HE) particularly. However, are the principles and techniques of Lean appropriate to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)? Previous papers on Lean thinking applied to HEIs have concentrated on individual processes such as course design (Emiliani, 2004), curriculum design (Dey, 2007) or student assessment (El-Sayed et al., 2011). This paper takes a more holistic view by demonstrating how Lean thinking theories can be applied across all areas of HEI operations.\nWhat is Lean thinking: Womack and Jones (1996-2003) define Lean thinking as \"the endless transformation of waste into value from the customer's perspective\". Lean is both a management philosophy and a methodology, utilising various tools and techniques, aimed at improving quality and reducing waste (Waterman and McCue, 2012). In order to do this management need to take a systems approach to how they view their organisations. These systems consist of processes that deliver outputs (products and services) to internal and external customers. Examination of these processes will allow them to identify which ones are appropriate for the application of Lean tools (Radnor and Boaden, 2008). Lean is based on five core principles, based on the premise that organisations are made up of processes (Radnor and Boaden, 2008). These are:\nThe HE context: The last decade has witnessed a growth in the number of students entering HE in the UK. However, these increasing numbers coupled with a global recession have caused the UK Government to re-think how UK universities should be funded in England (Scotland and Wales have different funding arrangements). In 2012 publicly funded HE providers in England were allowed to charge students tuition fees of up to PS9,000 a year for a full-time course. This has created a more competitive environment within the sector. University Vice Chancellors are now also designated as Chief Executive Officers to reflect a more business orientation that includes income generation and commercial activity. Financial stability and sustainability are now viewed as requirements for survival. In order to increase operating margins and profits, HEIs have implemented initiatives to reduce or control costs (Comm and Mathaisel, 2005). One such strategy is the implementation of Lean principles and practices. Lean can, inter alia, improve quality, simplify, accelerate and improve processes, increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs (Dey, 2007). Unfortunately some managers view the use of Lean tools as a way to reduce headcount (Post and Slaughter, 2000) with LEAN being dubbed an acronym for Less Employees Are Needed. This misuse of Lean principles and associated negative connotations must be avoided if improvements are to be implemented quickly (Emiliani and Stec, 2004). Lean has its origins in the private sector (Barry et al., 2001) generally and the manufacturing sector particularly. There has long been a debate within the literature as to whether or not the two sectors are significantly different because the outcome would have major implications for the transference and applicability of models and initiatives between the two sectors. Edgett and Parkinson (1993) suggested that this debate began over 50 years ago when Regan (1963) attempted to classify services. He identified four characteristics that are now widely accepted as factors that distinguished manufactured goods from services, these are:\nLean and HEIs' performance indicators: The performance of publicly funded HEIs in England is measured against a set of indicators developed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. These indicators provide comparative data on the performance of HEIs in widening participation, student retention, learning and teaching outcomes, research outputs and employment of graduates and are about holding HEIs accountable for their use of public funds (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2013) (available at www.hesa.ac.uk).\nValue and the customer: Lean should be about delivering value as defined by the customer. This value judgement is based on their perception of the usefulness or necessity of a given service. However, defining the customer in the public sector generally and HE particularly has always been problematic. Normally this is the person who pays for and uses a product or service (Emiliani, 2004). Kollberg et al. (2007) argue that in healthcare, for example, the patient may be viewed as the primary customer since it is patients that justify the existence of such services, but other customers include the patient's family, society in general and government that funds the service. In the case of HE in England is the student customer? Although charged up to PS9,000 for tuition these fees are not paid up front. The student is able to take out a loan to cover their cost and pay that back once they are working and earning above the repayment threshold of PS21,000 per year. So is the customer the government who initially funds education, the student who is the primary recipient of the educational tuition service, future employees in industry or society at large (El-Sayed et al., 2011). In other words there seems to be multiple stakeholders in the education process. However, following Kollberg et al.'s (2007) argument about patients justifying the existence of healthcare services then it must follow that since students justify the existence of education services then they must be viewed as the primary customer. To complicate matters further customers can be \"internal\" or \"external\". Many employees in HE deal with only internal customers. From a systems point of view HEIs can be viewed as a series of systems and processes. There is, for example, a financial system, an administration system, an IT system and a facilities management system to cite but a few. All these systems contain processes and it is the processes that deliver the outputs that should add value to internal and external customers if they in some way transform the service, if they are done right first time and if the customer recognises their value (Munro et al., 2008). However, some processes perform functions that do not transform the service and the customer is not willing to pay for these activities. These are called non-value added activities or waste. Waste is the focus of this paper.\nWaste: Lean is a methodology to simplify and streamline processes by identifying and eliminating waste (Wedgwood, 2007). Waste as defined by Womack and Jones (1996/2003) is \"any human activity that absorbs resources but creates no value\". However, before waste can be removed it must be recognised and this is the biggest challenge for any service organisation (George, 2003). Once recognised its causes must be understood (Seddon et al., 2009) and these addressed if it is to be permanently removed. For a university many processes cross-functional and departmental boundaries. A consequence of this is many handovers and longer processes with more steps. The more steps and handovers there are the greater the likelihood of errors and subsequently waste.\nMethod: A convenience sample of six university academic staff was assembled with the aim of identifying waste in HEIs. The sample group had no previous knowledge of Lean thinking or Lean principles. However, as the group are directly related to the subject of study (HEIs) findings can be generalised to the wider population. Between them the group had over 75 years experience in HEIs having been employed at various universities as either full-time members of staff or as external examiners. Their task was a brainstorming task related to waste in HEIs. Brainstorming is a qualitative tool for generating ideas. All members of the sample group had previous experience of participating in brainstorming sessions. The group had to generate examples of waste that they had either personally observed or experienced. Observation as a data collection methodology has been widely used in many branches of social science research (Arumugam et al., 2012). Therefore the method used to identify examples of waste in HEIs is participant observation as espoused by the architects of the Toyota Production System, Shigeo Shingo and Taichi Ohno. The task lasted around 20 minutes. To aid the group and give their brainstorming session more structure a cause-and-effect diagram was displayed, visible to all participants, with the \"Effects\" box labelled \"Waste in HEIs\" and the main branches or bones labelled with the eight generic wastes. The facilitator described the eight wastes (Table I, column a) and the group were given their translation for HEIs (Table I, column b). The results of the brainstorming session are shown below (Table 1, column c). The brainstorming session was followed by a focus group discussion where members of the group swapped and confirmed more detailed examples of waste with each other. These examples are detailed below. Once the wastes had been identified the facilitator, knowledgeable in Lean principles and tools and techniques, identified possible Lean solutions that could eliminate the waste.\nResults: Table I shows each of the eight wastes (a) their translation for HE (b) and some HE examples of each waste (c).\nConclusions and implications: This paper set out to translate the eight wastes of Lean for HEIs and provide some examples of each waste. These objectives have been achieved. HEIs are a collection of systems, subsystems and processes in both academic and administrative functions. These systems and processes are not as efficient and effective as they could be. They contain many forms of waste that are costly to both the university and its customers. Lean concepts need to be applied, initially to recognise waste in current processes and then to eliminate that waste thus allowing the realisation of \"the gold in the mine\" of reduced costs, improved performance and increased customer satisfaction. This will not be easy given the culture of HEIs but with education and training senior executives should recognise the value of Lean at a strategic level and its potential impact at operations level.\nSocial implications: Lean has the potential to reduce the impact of government cuts, due to the continuing global recession, to publicly funded services such as health and education. HEIs are expected to shoulder their share of austerity measures and make each taxpayer's pound stretch that bit farther. In order to do this in a way that such cuts do not adversely impact services to customers, wasteful practices must be identified and eliminated.\nFuture research agenda: To-date, in HE Lean has been mostly been applied in administration, finance, HR, estates, library and other support services. If Lean is to avoid the fate of TQM it must also be applied to academic processes. There is a need to identify and eliminate waste in teaching-related and research-related processes as well as academic administration process. A comparison of performance across a range of measures (in both academic and administrative processes) between Lean and non-Lean HEIs would be a logical next step in researching the impact of Lean principles on HEIs. Like six sigma the collection of factual evidence in the form of hard data on improved processes (time and cost) and reduction in waste (costs) will be required in order to convert those sceptics (academic and non-academic) unwilling to be convinced by anecdotal evidence as to the potential of Lean across all areas of HEI operations.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to translate the eight wastes of Lean for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), identify some examples of each waste and to propose appropriate Lean solutions to those wastes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To identify wastes within HEIs a combination of observation and cause-and-effect analysis utilising brainstorming were employed using a convenience sample of HE academic staff.\nFindings: Once all eight wastes were successfully translated for HEIs a range of examples were identified in both academic and support services, including excessive movement of people, over production of materials, excessive inventory and waste of human resources. Appropriate Lean solutions to the identified wastes include the use of 5S, point-of-use-storage, process mapping/value stream mapping and level scheduling.\nResearch limitations/implications: The cited examples come from a limited number of observations in only a few HEIs. More valid and reliable data would come from a more extensive sample of HEIs.\nPractical implications: In order to improve bottom-line performance in times of constrained resources HEIs can reduce waste and hence costs of poor quality by using Lean thinking and accessing, what Joseph Juran (1962) called, \"The gold in the mine\". This can be done without reducing the level of services.\nSocial implications: Particularly in a recession, HEIs need to show that they are using government funding (public money) in the most efficient and effective way possible. Lean thinking can help achieve both these objectives.\nOriginality/value: Previous papers on Lean thinking applied to HEIs have concentrated on individual processes such as curriculum design or student assessment. This paper takes a holistic view demonstrating how Lean thinking theories can be practically applied across both academic and administrative areas of HEI operations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
BASIC Lab: a software tool for supporting the production of knowledge in research organizations through the management of scientific concepts
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Capitalization",
"Research organizations",
"Bibliographic systems"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Nowadays, publicly funded basic research is seen as a major source of information and knowledge (see Salter and Martin, 2001). In fact, according to Chalmers (1991), \"the goal of science is to produce knowledge about the world\". However, there are multiple definitions of knowledge. It is therefore important to define our understanding of this notion. After looking into several definitions, we can propose the following definition based on the work of Frank (2003) and Simoni (2001): Knowledge is a temporally stabilized comprehension resulting from interpretations of information, human experience and reflections based on a set of beliefs, which resides as fictive objects in people's mind and is suitable for transformation into actions.Therefore, given that science produces knowledge, we could ask ourselves if it is possible to improve the process that allows this production of knowledge and if there are any methodologies that could facilitate this activity.As an answer to these questions, we propose the use of knowledge management. According to Wunram et al. (2002), this \"is the systematic, goal oriented application of measures to steer and control the tangible and intangible knowledge assets of organizations, with the aim of using existing knowledge inside and outside of these organizations to enable the creation of new knowledge, and generate value, innovation and improvement out of it\". Thus, we can see the coherence between this approach and scientific activity. Therefore, the question that arises is how to go about it, which means defining how to manage and capitalize the knowledge produced, and how to rationalize and instrument activity. Nevertheless, the introduction of knowledge management into the scientific environment is not currently backed by a well-defined methodology. Thus, the introduction of this practice in the scientific environment needs to be studied in detail.In order to do so, we relied on a phenomenon that we have observed in the scientific environment in recent years: the introduction of quality management in research organizations as a way of better structuring their activities. We have seen that it leads to a range of ideas about the way activities are performed. Apart from the usual revision of the procedures used for performing administrative activities, questions about the way documents, scientific data and research projects are managed start to appear. This might suggest that the introduction of knowledge management practices could be facilitated through the introduction of quality management, as it is the personnel themselves who start wondering about ways of improving the development of activities. This is reinforced by AFNOR (2001) that proposes the use of quality management to support the development of research activities by using an approach that consists of \"co-producing quality, the knowledge and know-how associated, by the ensemble of the involved parts within the framework of a progressive and continuous learning process\". Consequently, our approach has been to study the experience of some research organizations that have invested a part of their efforts in quality management. We have tried to observe the impact this methodology could have on the knowledge management practices used at these organizations. Our aim is to define ways to introduce knowledge management practices into research activities. The objective is to support the knowledge production process, by providing researchers tools that facilitate the development of daily activities and allow the capitalization of knowledge.In the first part of this article, we describe the research methodology and some characteristics of research organizations. In the second part, we will present the observed knowledge management practices of a few research units trying to implement a quality management system. In the third part, we present an approach for addressing the implementation of knowledge management at research projects. In the final part, we present the basis for the definition of a tool aimed at supporting this approach.\nThe context: The research methodology\nKnowledge management in research organizations: If one takes the objectives of knowledge management, as defined by Steels (1993), as being \"to promote knowledge growth, knowledge communication and knowledge preservation\", one can see a coincidence with the role one could define for research organizations. For this reason, we will propose some key elements related to the subject of knowledge management.The current knowledge management practices resulting from the implementation of quality management\nAn approach for addressing the implementation of knowledge management in research organizations: We are interested in finding ways to profit from the knowledge produced throughout the completion of research projects. However, Wunram et al. (2002) indicates that \"the approaches that start with the goal of capturing all the knowledge of the employees are predetermined to fail\". It is thus necessary to define the knowledge that is more beneficial to research activities.Which knowledge to capitalize?\nProposal of a tool for capitalizing knowledge through bibliographical research: BASIC Lab: It is important to clarify, that by bibliographical work we mean all the interactions that a researcher, a project team and even a laboratory as a whole, has with bibliographical sources. Specifically, that is all interactions from the moment a researcher starts looking for the available knowledge which could probably be useful for treating a scientific question, to the moment he/she produces new documents (notably publications), containing his/her findings (or the findings of a project team). This includes the research, annotation and analysis of documents, as well as the selection and manipulation of useful concepts until the production of new concepts, usually incorporated in new documents. The idea is to support the researcher in the completion of this work, and by doing so, to capitalize, at least, part of the knowledge acquired and produced.Functional analysis\nConclusions: Our research started with the objective of defining ways of improving the knowledge production process in research organizations. We studied the experiences of some research organizations engaged in quality management, as we observed that this process leads to a range of ideas about the way documents, data and projects are managed, which could be favorable for the introduction of knowledge management practices.In order to look for ways of establishing the concrete methods of implementing this kind of practices, we analyzed the activities performed during the research process and the information used and generated by these activities. This enabled us to observe that a very important aspect is the management of the knowledge produced and acquired during the realization of projects. A part of this knowledge is materialized in the form of artifacts.Subsequently, the schematization of the way in which research projects are undertaken allowed us to identify three kinds of artifacts:1. those related to the bibliography;2. those related to the management of projects; and3. those related to intermediate results.In order to find ways to capitalize these three kinds of artifacts, we studied two main approaches:1. methodological tools; and2. software tools.Regarding methodological tools, we did not find any tool we considered adapted to the bibliographical research activity. Regarding software tools, we assessed the current depth of supply and the lack of tools that could facilitate the capitalization of knowledge acquired from bibliographical research. Given this situation and the transversal character that this work has relating to different research domains, we decided to work towards the definition of a tool focused on the capitalization of the artifacts produced when carrying out bibliographical research.Subsequently, an examination of the technical options available led us to note that there is no tool which includes the management of scientific concepts. The latter are the basic elements handled by researchers when dealing with bibliography in the context of research projects. For that reason, we decided to concentrate on the definition of a tool that could provide support to researchers during the completion of bibliographical work by allowing the manipulation of scientific concepts. To do so, we did a functional analysis and a scenario-based analysis that helped us to model this system with UML. These activities have allowed us to establish the basis for the specification of a software tool, which we called BASIC Lab. We have already developed a prototype of the tool and intend to experiment it during the coming months.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The important role of publicly funded basic research has been widely recognized. The knowledge produced is made available to society, who could use it for innovation and in this way contribute to economic growth. Thus, it is important to support scientific activities. Proposes to examine how researchers could profit from approaches such as knowledge management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Some research organizations were studied and their knowledge management practices analyzed. Special attention was paid to the realization of research projects.\nFindings: - An approach is proposed based on the capitalization of all the artifacts managed during the bibliographical activities performed by researchers.\nResearch limitations/implications: - At the current state of advancement of the project, only a prototype of the software tool has been developed.\nOriginality/value: - As sociology studies have observed that a fundamental aspect of science is the modification and construction of new concepts, it is proposed to include the support of the management of scientific concepts as a way of assisting this knowledge production process. In conclusion this work gives the basis of the definition of a software tool that should help to accomplish this activity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Impact of individual cultural values on hotel guests' positive emotions and positive eWOM intention: Extending the cognitive appraisal framework
|
[
"Positive emotions",
"Pride",
"Pleasure",
"EWOM creation intention",
"Individual culture"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The importance of positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has been widely acknowledged by researchers and practitioners in the hospitality and tourism sector (Law et al., 2014; Leung et al., 2017; Serra Cantallops and Salvi, 2014; Schuckert et al., 2015). Literature shows that positive eWOM from previous customers influences customers' decision-making process (Xie et al., 2011); product evaluation and trust (Filieri, 2016); hotel booking intentions and attitudes (Ladhari and Michaud, 2015); and purchase decisions (Mauri and Minazzi, 2013). Consequently, positive eWOM helps companies to gain competitive advantage over their rivals (Serra Cantallops and Salvi, 2014), to improve business performance (Kim et al., 2016; Phillips et al., 2017), such as room sales (Ye et al., 2009) and hotel occupancy rate (Viglia et al., 2016), and to boost corporate reputation (Loureiro and Kastenholz, 2011).\nLiterature review: Cognitive appraisal theory\nMethodology: Data collection\nResults: Descriptive analysis and correlations\nDiscussion: Theoretical contributions\nLimitations and future research: Given the newness of the indulgence versus restraint cultural dimension, hospitality scholars should conduct more research on this cultural dimension. For example, data of this study come from the USA. Although the USA is a country that embraces diverse individual cultural values, making it a suitable choice for this study, it is worthwhile to validate the findings of this study with data from other regions, such as Europe or Asia. The potent role of pleasure in the service consumption context has been well-documented in literature (Han and Jeong, 2013; Jang et al., 2012). Therefore, indulgence that is strongly connected with the feeling of pleasure may consistently function as the most fundamental individual cultural value leading to positive eWOM intention across all countries, or the strength of the associations among variables may be modified from one country to another with the country-specific dominant cultural value playing a key role in the model. This is an interesting question to probe in the future.\nSummary and concluding remarks: Thanks to advanced technology, virtual communication is becoming a norm. Thus, eWOM is playing a more significant role in maintaining repeat business and attracting new customers than ever. Building on the cognitive appraisal theory framework (appraisal - emotions - behavior), this study illustrates the underlying psychological process of how individual cultural values lead to positive eWOM intentions via positive emotions that hotel guests experience during their stay. The results show that collectivism, power distance and indulgence have a positive influence on pride, and that indulgence has a positive effect on pleasure. In addition, both pleasure and pride have critical effects on eWOM creation intention, with the effect of pleasure being stronger. We hope that hospitality industry practitioners become more sensitive to each guest's individual cultural values and that their hotels prosper in today's global environment.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to extend cognitive appraisal theory by integrating customers' individual difference factors, specifically cultural values. This study examines the effect of individual cultural values on hotel customers' positive emotions and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) creation intention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Online surveys were administered via MTurk. Adults with a recent hotel stay were invited to participate in this study. In all, 331 valid questionnaires were used for data analysis.\nFindings: The results show that collectivism, indulgence and power distance have positive effects on pride, and that indulgence has a positive effect on pleasure. Both pleasure and pride have significant impacts on eWOM creation intention, with the effect of pleasure being stronger.\nPractical implications: This study deepens hotel practitioners' understanding of the formation of hotel guests' eWOM creation intention and offers suggestions on how to facilitate eWOM advocacy.\nOriginality/value: This study highlights the versatility of cognitive appraisal theory with the inclusion of individual cultural values in the hotel eWOM context. This study delineates the underlying psychological process of how individual cultural values lead to positive eWOM intention via positive emotions that hotel guests experience during their visit. This psychological process is understudied, yet critical for the success of hotel companies that cater to many culturally diverse guests.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Designing and delivering online curriculum in higher education: riding the perfect storm
|
[
"Online learning",
"Curriculum development",
"Education",
"Statistics",
"E-learning",
"Mathematics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Declining numbers of traditional-age high school graduates, changing student demographics, and struggle with student retention and success are dominating problems that create what can be termed a \"perfect storm\" in higher education. Having a diverse ever-changing college population is challenging: it is crucial to understand what current and prospective students want and need to be able to do upon graduation in order to increase retention and encourage degree completion.\nStrategy 1: scheduling choices: Many universities are now focussing not only on attracting new students but also keeping existing students on curriculum paths with the hope that they will graduate within a reasonable time. It has become imperative to recognize and understand what current and future students want and develop innovative opportunities to increase student access to degree and certificate programs that are flexible in time and location. One approach is to create numerous scheduling options varied in time, sequential course arrangements, and delivery options in order to meet the needs of students with different levels of preparation and learning styles. For example, one UA department diversified its course schedules in many directions to create accelerated sequences of different general education courses, offering flexible pathways to graduation (Figure 2).\nStrategy 2: redesigning the curriculum: Today, a major goal of education is the ability to find suitable work at suitable pay upon graduation. Therefore, preparing students for the workforce is a major consideration in curriculum design, but it is not enough to ensure degree completion. Students need to be engaged and persistent in order to remain motivated and therefore succeed. According to Davis (2009, p. 31), \"Most students respond positively to a well- organized course taught by an enthusiastic instructor who has a genuine interest in students and their learning\". However, enthusiasm and expertise are not enough; faculty must also be prepared to help students meet their needs. There are two factors that must be considered when designing curriculum: what to teach and how to teach it.\nStrategy 3: developing a wide spectrum of delivery modes: The second factor influencing curriculum design, \"how to teach it,\" motivates consideration of mode of delivery. A US census report on enrollment and work status reveals that 19.7 million students were enrolled as undergraduates in 2011, and 72 percent worked, with 20 percent working full-time (Davis, 2012, p. 1). Students who are balancing studies with work as well as other aspects of their personal lives can benefit from having options in the selection of courses, especially when one of those options includes online delivery (Chernikova, 2015). The Open Education Database (2012) summarizes ten advantages to taking online classes, including \"Convenience and flexibility\" (para. 6) and the opportunity to \"Avoid commuting\" (para. 10). Many universities have responded to the demand for convenience and flexibility by adding not only online courses but entire online programs; in fact, 69.1 percent of chief academic officers report that \"online learning is critical to their long-term strategy\" (Allen and Seaman, 2013, p. 4). While some institutions may envision new programs with entirely online delivery, it is probably more common to have existing face-to-face courses approved by the institution for online delivery, one course at a time.\nConclusion: Our collaboration on this project began with the very concrete task of converting assessments for online delivery and grew to include theoretical discussions related to curriculum design as a whole. In the safe environment of a face-to-face class, we introduced online course elements, including assessment tools, in order to test them and determine if they could help students achieve course-level learning objectives in an alternative way. The pilot proved the adequacy of online assessment tools even though the questions asked had to be modified, both to work within the LMS quiz tool and to allow for automatic grading of questions with clear \"correct\" answers. Additional resources were developed and utilized to enhance students' interaction with content, with the instructor, and with each other, considered a best practice for online course design by Quality Matters (2014). The students were engaged with the process and happy to offer their feedback. The success of the pilot with online assessments in a Spring 2015 face-to-face course led to the first fully online offering of the course in Fall 2015 with student learning outcomes comparable to those in the traditional course.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: In a time that could be described as a \"perfect storm\" in higher education, faculty and administration have been exploring all possible tools to attract students and help them stay on a curriculum path so they can graduate within a reasonable time. The purpose of this paper is to explore three strategies for riding the storm in a large mid-western USA university.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors identify three strategies for increasing student retention and course completion, including: increased choices in scheduling; redesigning the curriculum; and offering multiple options for mode of delivery. In addition, the pilot of these strategies in a Technical Data Analysis class will be described and evaluated.\nFindings: Providing choices in scheduling courses (strategy 1), redesigning the curriculum to offer flexible pathways to graduation (strategy 2), and offering students options in delivery modes (strategy 3) increase the likelihood of student success, allowing them to find a way out of and therefore escape the \"perfect storm\" that higher education finds itself in today.\nPractical implications: Flexibility in scheduling courses by offering multiple delivery modes increases student access while maintaining the same learning objectives and outcomes.\nOriginality/value: This paper addresses a known challenge in higher education and offers three strategies to improve retention and completion.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Human resource management based on the index of Islamic human development: The Holy Quran's approach
|
[
"Islam",
"Human resource management",
"Human development index",
"Islamic approach",
"Beliefs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Human resource management (HRM) is used to refer those activities conducted in order to attract and coordinate HR in each country (Scroggings and Benson, 2010). HR is among the most important capitals. This resource is so crucial that the countries assume it as the first planning priority for their future. HR managers in various countries lead their countries toward the realization of the future goals based on the dominant values. Naturally, the value system varies in different countries and especially in Islamic and non-Islamic countries. Such a difference requires that the countries conduct a great deal of attempts and researches aiming at acquiring conformity between this science and their own value system (Mellahi and Budhwar, 2010).On the other hand, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (1991) points in its report to the concept of human development; its difference with HR development; and introduces the human development index; then it defines these concepts as follows: human development is a process in which the people's options increase; HR development or human capital management is a set of activities such as attraction, providing, education and training, increase of knowledge and efficiency and motivating which lead to HR development. With regard to the above definitions, we may state the differences of the two concepts: human development emphasizes on the options' power and human's option range, while the HR development thinks of the power of creativity, pioneering, productivity in the light of developing the knowledge and skill acquiring. Actually, HR development in the form of a social process is a facilitator of realizing the human development. Human development index for evaluating, measuring and comparing the countries' development scale is achieved from the harmonious average of the following three indexes:1. income per capita (measures the economic situation and possessing the worldly welfare);2. life expectancy at the beginning of the birth (measures the health situation); and3. literacy rate (measures the level of the knowledge and wisdom) (UNDP, 1990).The question asked by each Muslim researcher is: \"may we create a developed Islamic society relying on those indexes, so that in such society, human development is realized out of the Islamic thought fundamentals?\". Apparently, the answer may not be positive; because it is for certain that the Islamic thought fundamentals differ from those accepted and noted by the development experts and the global dominant approach. Especially, this approach is based on the liberal capitalism economy dominated over the open market in economic-managerial aspect of the human development; and the economic interaction and the related system accepted by the Islamic thought - both inside and outside of it - differ seriously from those in liberal thought.Therefore, in order to realize the favorable Islamic society and to achieve the religious development, one has to answer the following basic question: what are the economic-managerial indexes of the human development based on HRM from the viewpoint of the Islam and The Quran? The answer relies on the presumption that the Holy Quran has called itself the book of human guidance (The Holy Quran, Chapter Al-Bagarah (2) Verse 2). It has not refrained from any guidance and stated whatever provides and secures human's real perfection (The Holy Quran, Chapter An-Nahl(16), Verse 69). Therefore, the concept of human development which is an index of conditions for acquiring a better and superior life may be implied from The Holy Quran text; also indexes proportionate to the Islamic thought can be formulated and presented for various HR aspects including economic-managerial one, relying on The Quran cognition.So, Section 2 considers the literature with the HRM core and with an Islamic approach and with regard to the Islamic requirements of the human development. Section 3 has been devoted to methodology and the basic model for the Islamic human development index planning. Section 4 presented the quasi-system of the economic action along with the proportionate Islamic human development indexes. The Section 5 is conclusion.\n2 Literature review: 2.1 Reconstruction of the HRM based on the Islamic thought\n3 Methodology: The main goal of this research is to explain the human development's economic-managerial indexes from the viewpoint of the Islam, stressing on The Holy Quran to develop HR. This research is an applied one with regard to the kind, nature and the main goal of the research and is conducted using a hermeneutic method.3.1 Hermeneutic method\n4 Planning indexes of the Islamic human development: 4.1 Quasi-system of economic action in human development\n5 Conclusion: Human has two kinds of needs: material and spiritual ones, containing animal (material) and ultra-animal (spiritual) aspects. If these needs are satisfied in a correct and appropriate way, he/she will acquire his/her natural and spiritual perfection. So, the material aspect is perfect when it is at the service of the spiritual dimension; and the spiritual perfection means that the natural human achieves the innate life and becomes the symbol of the God. According to the principles and assumptions of the development in Islamic approach, development is defined as a process in which human's individual and social life changes based on the pure Islamic thought, fundamentally to meet spiritual and material needs in all aspects of the life. Also, human development from the viewpoint of Islam is, \"the process of extending the human capacities through the justification of instincts and meeting material and spiritual needs aiming at overcoming the internal and external contradictions based on the Islam's comprehensiveness. The purpose of this process is the growth of the faith and the righteous deeds in the way of comprehensive justice to achieve the Hayat-e-Tayyebeh.Therefore, according to the principles of the human development in Islamic approach, the indexes considered by international communities for measuring human development are not suitable; because they are based on the prevalent approaches toward human development, i.e. extending the human's options for a better life. In Islamic approach, human development occurs when his capacities improve so that he becomes able to manage internal and external contradictions and conflicts; and step forward in the route of the faith and the righteous deed and in the space of the widespread justice to reach the God proximity and to replace the natural life by the Hayat-e-Tayyebeh.One of the main aspects of the human development in Islam is economical-managerial dimension which is in charge of satisfying human needs and facilitation of solving the internal and external conflicts to achieve the spiritual perfection. To determine the basic indexes of this aspect, we applied the theory of mutual action and the development principles of the Islam extracted in hermeneutics of the economic action quasi-system under the conditions of the realized human development. These indexes consider and measure the most vital dimensions of the economical-managerial aspect of the human development which are as follows: sufficiency and confidence (in meeting the basic needs), sustainable welfare, active participation (economic), kosher livelihood, justice (in distribution of material values and economic opportunities), construction and amendment and donation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Human development is the most modern development approach. However, the proposed human development indexes for implementation of Islamic human resource management (HRM) do not suffice to realize the Islamic developed society. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic-managerial indexes of human development based on HRM from the viewpoint of Islam and The Quran.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper applies the hermeneutic method and considers the question: \"what are the proper human resource (HR) economic-managerial indexes from the viewpoint of Islam?\".\nFindings: - Referring to the Islamic development basics and goals, it analyzes economic interaction among Muslim activists in an objective situation of the human development from the viewpoint of Islam and finally, it proposes human development economic-managerial indexes among other required indexes, through planning an acceptable economic quasi-system.\nOriginality/value: - In the Islamic approach, human development occurs when a person's capacities improve so that he/she becomes able to manage internal and external contradictions and conflicts; and steps forward in the route of the faith and the righteous deed and in the space of the widespread justice to reach the God proximity and to replace the natural life by the Hayat-e-Tayyebeh.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The true motives behind the adoption of QLASSIC-CIS 7: 2006: As a quality assurance initiative in construction industry
|
[
"Awareness",
"Motivation",
"Construction industry",
"QLASSIC assessment system",
"Quality assurance initiatives"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the year 1987, the ISO 9000 standards were introduced by the International Standardization Organization (ISO) into the construction industry to serve as a quality assurance system as it was based on the existing British Standards 5,750, introduced earlier by the British Standards Institution group. As mentioned by Dale (1994), such introduction of quality reference standards allows the international quality systems to be integrated in a more convenient manner, allowing the systems to be acknowledged widely.\nThe optimistic and pessimistic views regarding QLASSIC-CIS 7: 2006: QLASSIC-CIS 7: 2006 serves as a system to evaluate the standards of workmanship in a particular construction project against a set of approved standards. In this study, the ISO 9000 standards are used as a reference for QLASSIC as it is a rather low-profile quality assessment system presently. However, not every construction company which seeks the adoption of QLASSIC truly aims to improve the quality of the company or to satisfy the requirements of its customers. Some companies have their true motives which remain unrevealed to the customers, leading to the need for the adoption. Carlsson and Carlsson (1996), Jones et al. (1997) and Lee (1998) mentioned that there are companies which seek certification resulting from reasons of external nature although there are companies which may be able to improve their internal performance if the reason of such companies seeking certification is internally based, whereby also supported by Singels et al. (2001), Williams (2004) and Prajogo (2010). Such reasons can also be derived as motivational aspects.\nThe need for empirical study: As mentioned previously, a quality assessment system such as QLASSIC yields both benefits and disadvantages to the certified construction companies. In addition, hopeful construction companies would also encounter barriers to successfully obtain the certification of QLASSIC. It is important that QLASSIC is properly executed as QLASSIC paves way toward an effective implementation of TQM in the future. Therefore, an empirical study is required to determine the relationship between the different true motives and barriers in pursuing QLASSIC certification and the results of QLASSIC implementation after the certification of QLASSIC resulting in various consequences to the affected construction companies. The true motives of seeking QLASSIC certification remain the key determinant in determining the success of implementing QLASSIC as the initial phase of such TQM implementation has a large impact and impression on the trust and support of a company's management and personnel and if executed correctly, can contribute to such benefits in the long-term as mentioned by Ahire and Rana (1995).\nEmpirical study methodology design: Quantitative research method was adopted in order to test the above issues. The questionnaire composed for two parts: awareness and adoption of QLASSIC system; and the factors that influenced the adoption of QLASSIC system.\nData analysis and discussion: Objective (1)\nConclusion: The basic conclusion drawn from this study is that motivations and barrier factors drive the construction companies; the contractors, to QLASSIC adoption are particularly significant for its real contribution. The adoption of QLASSIC assessment is not significantly affected by the awareness whereas the motivations and barrier factors do, which answered the first (1) objective of this study.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate contractors' awareness level and adoption of QLASSIC assessment system in construction industry and to identify the variables that influenced the adoption of QLASSIC assessment system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Quantitative research method was adopted in order to test the above issues. The questionnaire composed for two parts: awareness and adoption of QLASSIC system; and the factors that influenced the adoption of QLASSIC system. Those contractors who registered under grade 6 and 7 are the scope of respondents in this study.\nFindings: The adoption of QLASSIC assessment is not significantly affected by the awareness whereas the motivations and barrier factors do. It was discovered that the contractors perception on QLASSIC adoption are basically due to the significant factors; the internal motivations and barrier. The major influencing factors are internal motivation factors, external motivation factors and barrier factors.\nOriginality/value: This study reveals the true motives behind the adoption of QLASSIC assessment in the construction industry, where this finding significantly contributes to the understanding of contractors' perception on this quality assurance program for the construction industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Managing organisational knowledge through recruitment: searching and selecting embodied competencies
|
[
"Recruitment",
"Collective capabilities",
"Embodied knowledge",
"ILM",
"OLM",
"Software services firms"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A number of studies have found labour mobility to be a crucial channel for transferring knowledge across organisational boundaries (Power and Lundmark, 2004; Boschma et al., 2009; Argote and Miron-Spektor, 2011; Herstad et al., 2015). Compared to explicit and generic elements of knowledge (know-why), tacit and specific elements (know-how) are distinctively personal (Becker, 1964; Lam, 2002; Polanyi, 1958; Gertler, 2003), and therefore difficult to transfer in a disembodied manner, without losing value (Gold et al., 2001; Asheim, 2007; Jensen et al., 2007). The creation of customized, technology-based services is closely tied to the tacit and non-standardised intellectual capital of individuals (Nowak and Grantham, 2000; Lam, 2002). Such capital is reflected in the technical skills and previous project experiences that individuals have obtained through their career paths. Because the exploitation of embodied experiences are fundamental to the value creation of high-end services firms (Dougherty, 2004; Lusch and Vargo, 2014), recruitment is a critical mechanism for accessing cutting-edge knowledge existing external to the firm.\nRecruitment: competence search and selection: Recruitment expresses the firm-specific capabilities to identify and access individual expert competencies developed in external firms and institutions, and the processes of selecting and integrating these into the cognitive domains of the firm (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Herstad et al., 2015). Phillips and Gully (2015) argue that recruitment is a key managerial function enabling the creation, development and maintenance of a firm's competitive advantage, and must therefore be aligned to other HRM functions of the firm. The manager's role in recruitment processes is evident through its primary function of enforcing the operational routine of the firm, by solving task-specific competence demands. In addition, the manager's role is crucial in creating a meta-routine of which the operational routine of the firm is continuously being revised (Knott, 2001). According to the latter, recruitment relates to a broader understanding of how a firm manages its dynamic capabilities (Teece et al., 1997), that is, for example of how the skill-composition of the work force influences a firm's sustainable competitive advantage (Barney, 1991). The following framework conceptualise how recruitment relates to organisational learning and renewal (Inkpen, 1998; Segelod and Jordan, 2004; Singh and Agrawal, 2011).\nRecruitment processes in software services firms: The software industry has been one of the fastest growing segments of the larger knowledge-intensive services sector (Tsang, 2005; Trippl and Todtling, 2010), and the growth of the industry reflects the comprehensive diffusion and use of ICT globally (Antonelli, 2003). The industry is characterized by rapid changes in technology (e.g. new computer languages, the development of cloud technologies), paralleled by continuously evolving market demands (e.g. growth of mobile technology software services applications). Cohen and Fields (1999) found that high degrees of inter-firm mobility among technologists is a defining characteristic of the labour market in Silicon Valley. The authors argue that employees' loyalty is more strongly tied to the craft of innovation than to a particular company. As employees move between firms, their paths overlap and create networks of information-sharing that facilitate diffusion of technological capabilities and know-how (Cohen and Fields, 1999; Almeida and Kogut, 1999; Agrawal et al., 2006).\nEmpirical analysis: search spaces and recruitment channels: Managers connect their organisations to the external environment by activating different channels and sources. A majority of the informants described recruitment as a more or less continuously running activity. Promoting the firm as open for new employees was for some seen as a part of their employer branding activities, as being solely a matter of their employee search and selection processes. One informant, the COO of an e-learning technology firm described recruitment in the following way: \"In a firm like ours, and in particular when we are investing in new niche services, to win in the labour market is all-important to us, quite simply\". An HRM director of a software technology firm providing services to the energy sector stated that they never recruited anyone to \"fill an empty chair\"; rather, candidates had to show capacity to be a resource capable of creating their own space in their working environment. These two statements underpin how the capabilities of firms evolve by the virtue of continuous inflow of employees, and echo the work of Maister (1982), in which high-end service firms compete in two closely inter-related markets simultaneously.\nConclusions and implications: A firm's capacity to connect to external sources of knowledge is critical to the development of organisational capabilities (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Teece et al., 1997; Inkpen, 1998). Nevertheless, few studies have analysed HRM decisions affecting knowledge transfer across organisational boundaries. In response, and guided by two research questions, this paper has presented an in-depth investigation of recruitment practices in 12 Norwegian software services firms. The first research question emphasises the actions taken by firms and their managers to connect to and attract interest from candidates in external labour markets. The results suggests that managers and executives are taking an active role in connecting their organisations to external knowledge sources, exhibiting a high degree of awareness of how these processes influence their technological capabilities and market positions. Search is a more or less a continuously running activity, involving activities and mechanisms at different organisational levels. Recruitment processes can be initiated from structured decisions and serendipitous events, but also 'bottom up' by the community of experts that constitute the services-providing organization. External searches are managed by the use of open and closed channels. In closed searches, managers preferred recruiting through the personal networks of internal members, because this channel is associated with lower risk. The personal networks embedded in the internal community of the firm are therefore critical to prospective learning opportunities and to the dynamic capability of the firms (Teece et al., 1997; Cohen and Fields, 1999).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The creation of customized, technology-based services is highly dependent on experience-based knowledge embodied in individual expert employees. Therefore, knowledge upgrading through recruitment is fundamental to advanced services firms. Paying particular attention to the role of pre-existing knowledge bases and organisational contexts, this paper aims to investigate how software services firms search and select new employees. By doing so, it addresses an underdeveloped part of the human resource management (HRM) literature that concerns the relationship between recruitment and organisational learning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The analysis uses qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews with HR managers and executives in 12 software firms located in the Norwegian capital, and supplementary information from technologists' CVs. The firms are strategically chosen to support conceptual development and to allow theoretical generalizations that have relevance for practitioners, and for future research.\nFindings: The findings point to a challenging tension associated with the need to create stable individual knowledge linkages internally in consultancy-based business environments where technologists tend to develop their careers through external labour market mobility.\nPractical implications: Mangers should reflect upon the balance between external and internal competence investments. The creation of an organisational labour market represents one way of co-investing in integrative capabilities and thus of avoiding over-dependency on external sources of knowledge.\nOriginality/value: The study provides a conceptual model linking recruitment to organisational learning, and emphasises the importance of knowledge management functions at the intersection between external labour markets and the internal organisation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The impact of self-congruity (symbolic and functional) on the brand hate: A study based on self-congruity theory
|
[
"Self-congruity theory",
"Brand hate",
"Functional incongruity",
"Symbolic incongruity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In today's world, self-congruence plays an essential role in the characteristics of customer behavior, affecting brand satisfaction (Cifci et al., 2016), product attributes (Astakhova et al., 2017), marketing effectiveness (Islam et al., 2017, Van Quaquebeke et al., 2017), brand choice (Wallace et al., 2017), brand evaluation (Japutra et al., 2018) and brand loyalty (Kaap-Deeder et al., 2016). In the literature about marketing, psychology and consumer behavior, scholars agree that consumers purchase only the brands that align with their self-concept (Vikas and Nayak, 2014). According to self-congruity theory (Sirgy, 1986), individual behavior is dependent on the product's image (e.g. what type of person uses it) and the consumer's self-concept. Sirgy et al. (1991) defined self-image congruence as the \"notion of the cognitive matching between value expressive attributes of a given product (brand or store) and consumer self-concept.\" To complement past research on reasons to purchase, interest in anti-consumption research has increased and scholars are keen to find answers about why customers reject certain brands (Astakhova et al., 2017; Japutra et al., 2018). Research indicates that anti-consumption behavior originates from both socio-environmental factors and self-concept (Claiborne and Sirgy, 2015; Islam et al., 2018; Kressmann et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2009).\nHypotheses development: Self-congruity framework\nResearch methods: Sampling and procedure\nFindings: Data analysis\nDiscussion: The current study has proposed a conceptual model based on self-congruity theory to understand the key determinants responsible for brand hate. The findings of the research indicate that ideal self and actual self are negatively related to symbolic incongruence. In addition, the store environment characteristics are also negatively related to functional incongruence. Moreover, the results reveal that symbolic and functional incongruence both lead to brand hate. The findings are consistent with past literature (Hegner et al., 2017; Kasiri et al., 2017; Kucuk, 2016a). All hypotheses in the conceptual framework were accepted except H3. Brand hate is currently considered a new phenomenon in the marketing literature since only limited research has been conducted on negative relationships (brand hate) in the past (Hegner et al., 2017; Lee et al., 2009). This study proposes a model based on self-congruity theory, which was used to measure brand hate determinants and test how these antecedents change the behavior of consumers toward the brands. The findings of this research conclude that symbolic incongruence and functional incongruence are the main causes of brand hate.\nLimitations and future research: The current study, like all research, has limitations. First, data were collected only in fast-food chain franchises in the capital city territory of Pakistan. Therefore, it is hard to generalize the findings of this research for customers from different cultural backgrounds. For example, future scholars should collect data for different food brands from other countries to determine if different contexts will affect the proposed relationships in dissimilar ways (Suh and Kwon, 2002). A comparison between high-context and low-context cultures could be valuable for future research. Second, the current study examined the impact of symbolic and functional incongruence on brand hate. Further studies should also account for other variables that could influence brand hate. For instance, scholars have found that bad experience is also a key determinant of brand hate so it would also be worthwhile to examine the effect of unmet expectation (bad experience) on symbolic and functional incongruity, and that of bad experience on brand hate in the other sectors. Third, this study used a direct scoring method to measure the brand hate for fast food. Future scholars should use alternative methods to measure functional and symbolic congruence and use an experimental design that gives a better understanding of the predictive power of the congruence measures and the relationship between self-incongruence and brand hate. Finally, it would also be of interest to find out which component of symbolic incongruence (actual self or ideal self) has the greater influence on brand hate. Therefore, future scholars could explore the results considering other consumer values (e.g. hedonic vs utilitarian) and personalities (e.g. neuroticism).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of symbolic and functional incongruity on brand hate. According to self-congruity theory, symbolic and functional congruence are a critical phenomenon in consumer buying decisions. Therefore, the present study develops a theoretical framework based on self-congruity theory to examine the key determinants of brand hate.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected only in fast-food chain franchises in the capital city territory of Pakistan. Therefore, it is hard to generalize the findings of this research for customers from different cultural backgrounds.\nFindings: The results of the study reveal that symbolic and functional incongruence are the primary factors responsible for brand hate among Pakistani fast-food customers. Customers carefully consider both self-image and product attributes when purchasing products.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research uses the cross-sectional method, which limits the findings' usefulness in other sectors.\nPractical implications: The current research helps policymakers understand the key determinants of brand hate, showing that symbolic incongruence is the primary antecedent. Therefore, policymakers and corporate leaders should consider that Pakistan is an Islamic country where consumer choices of food are not only derived from food quality, food hygiene and service quality, but also the symbolic image (i.e. halal food) is a vital determinant of consumption.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature by discussing the above issue and presenting quantitative data. This research extends the literature by testing and validating a conceptual model that includes two types of congruence (symbolic and functional) to study brand hate. The proposed conceptual model provides a novel, theoretical, self-congruity point of view on brand hate.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Natural plants in hospitality servicescapes: the role of perceived aesthetic value
|
[
"Experiential value",
"Customer loyalty",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Environmental aesthetics",
"Hospitality servicescape",
"Natural plants"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Recent research highlights the importance of environmental aesthetics in hospitality management (Kirillova and Chan, 2018). As an atmospheric element, nature can significantly contribute to the aesthetic experience of the hospitality servicescape (Kirillova et al., 2014). There has been a stream of research on the effects of atmospherics in service environments (Heung and Gu, 2012; Kim and Moon, 2009; Lin, 2009; Ryu and Jang, 2007). Some of these studies have focused on analyzing specific atmospheric elements, such as color, music (Herrington, 1996; Milliman, 1986; Yalch and Spangenberg, 1990) or ambient odors (Gueguen and Petr, 2006; Mitchell et al., 1995; Spangenberg et al., 1996). However, while natural plants are frequently used as ambient elements in physical service settings, and particularly in hospitality service environments, there has as yet been only scarce research on their possible behavioral effects (Brengman et al., 2012).\nTheoretical framework: The role of experiential value in hospitality customer satisfaction judgments and loyalty\nMethod: Research design, sampling and data collection\nResults: The main effect of the experimental condition (the presence of indoor natural plants) on perceived aesthetic value and customer satisfaction was assessed with ANOVA analysis. A total of 11 individuals had inconsistent replies and were removed from the data set. The mean values of the ratings of the two variables were significantly higher in the experimental group exposed to plants (p < 0.05). Aesthetics were rated significantly higher [MPlants = 6.12, SD = 0.68 vs MControl = 5.81, SD = 0.80; F(1, 106) = 4.35, p = 0.039], confirming H1. The experimental group also rated customer satisfaction significantly higher [MPlants = 6.28, SD = 0.59 vs MControl = 5.91, SD = 1.03; F(1, 106) = 5.12, p = 0.026]. The remaining dependent variables of service excellence [MPlants = 6.32, SD = 0.69 vs MControl = 6.16, SD = 0.74; F(1, 105) = 1.37, p > 0.10], escapism [MPlants = 5.73, SD = 1.09 vs MControl = 5.85, SD = 1.06; F(1, 106) = 0.30, p > 0.10] and customer loyalty [MPlants = 5.87, SD = 1.08 vs MControl = 5.58, SD = 1.21; F(1, 106) = 1.75, p > 0.10] did not vary significantly between the experimental and the control group, although values in the condition with plants were somewhat higher in all cases but escapism. Correlations of observed variables are presented in Table III. The three dimensions of aesthetics, escapism and service excellence correlated positively among each other and with customer satisfaction (r = 0.53, r = 0.41 and r = 0.67, respectively; p < 0.01), and the latter related positively to customer loyalty (r = 0.65; p < 0.01). These results provide initial partial support for H2-H4.\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the effects of natural plants on satisfaction and loyalty in the hospitality servicescape and provides a theoretical framework explaining the underlying processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An experimental study (plants vs no-plants) was conducted in a restaurant with a sample of 119 individuals. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and bootstrapping moderated mediation analysis (Hayes, 2013).\nFindings: The results of the study confirmed significant effects of indoor natural plants on consumers' satisfaction and loyalty, mediated by the experiential value components of aesthetic value, service excellence and escapism. The absence of an interaction of these influences with consumers' connectedness to nature indicates that the beneficial effects of indoor plants universally affect all individuals, independent of their personal degree of feeling connected with nature.\nPractical implications: Indoor natural plants as ambient elements in restaurants can improve satisfaction and loyalty by enhancing the dimensions of aesthetics and escapism of the service experience, as well as the perception of service quality.\nOriginality/value: This is the first experimental study analyzing the effects of indoor plants on customer satisfaction and loyalty conducted in a real-life restaurant setting using actual plants. The findings contribute theoretically by providing an integrated conceptual model of the satisfaction and loyalty effects of atmospheric stimuli (i.e. plants) in the hospitality servicescape, which offers a process explanation based on the mediating influence of aesthetic value and the sequential mediations of aesthetic value - service excellence and aesthetic value - escapism.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Extension to alliance: Aaker and Keller's model revisited
|
[
"Brand extensions",
"Brand identity",
"Product management",
"Brand management",
"United Kingdom"
] |
[
{
"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.Replications and extensions of previous studies are essential for the development of knowledge and provision of support for previous study findings. One area that has been the subject of such replications is brand extensions (Bottomley and Holden, 2001).\nBrand alliances: As a form of equity release, brand alliances present a viable alternative to brand leverage as the value of extension opportunities is questioned (Kumar, 2004). Rao and Ruekert (1994) suggested that brand alliances take two on distinct forms: of physical product integration or complementary useIn physical product integration, one brand cannot be used without or separated from another. For example a Dell PC with an Intel Centrino chip, Diet Coke and NutraSweet, an M and M Cookie bar from Betty Crocker and Mars or Adidas training shoes with Goodyear soles. In complementary use, either of the brands involved can be consumed independently from the other, as in the case of the various alliances between consumer brands such as BMW and Bose and the iPod (Bulik, 2004).Brand alliances are most effective when they are used to improve and enhance signals of product quality that a brand is trying to make to the market (Rao and Ruekert, 1994; Rao et al., 1999). If the alliance signals lower levels of product quality than the signals given off when the brands are used separately, then the value of the proposed alliance would have to be questioned.Brand alliances can also be classified by the form they take, either physical or symbolic. Physical alliances occur where two or more brands are integrated into a new product in the form of an ingredient brand/component brand, that is, a branded component or ingredient in a final product with reference to both brands (Simonin and Ruth, 1998; Rao et al., 1999), composite brand extensions, where two existing brand names are combined on a new product, the names used together in a composite format (Park et al., 1996; Aaker, 1997), bundled products with two or more brands either from one or many owners in an offering providing greater variety (Simonin and Ruth, 1998) and true product combinations of two brands combined in a single existing product offering with both brands providing a signal to the consumer (Simonin and Ruth, 1998).In Symbolic alliances, brands are used to provide added meaning to a consumer through the transfer of their associations. For example joint advertising where brands are used together to illustrate compatibility or assist market entry (Samu et al., 1999), co-advertising of two brands communicating via a single themed message (Park et al., 1996), joint sales promotion with brands promoted jointly to enhance sales of the brands when separate products (Varadarajan, 1986), co-packaging (Park et al., 1996) and celebrity endorsement utilising a celebrity to juxtapose the brand with endorser qualities (Erdogan, 1999).For the purposes of this study a set of hypothetical physical alliances are proposed using the concept of a composite brand extension as defined by Park et al. (1996) and Aaker (1997).Structure of the paper\nConceptual model: In the conceptual model, (Figures 1 and 2) it is proposed that a consumer's attitude towards a brand extension (att.ex) or brand alliance (att.all) is the dependent variable (A&K, 1990; Bottomley and Doyle, 1996). Att.ex and att.all are operationalised by combining the mean scores for consumer evaluations of the overall quality of the brand alliance (q.ex) or brand alliance (q.all) with the likelihood of a consumer purchasing the product of the brand extension or alliance (p.ext or p.all), such that att.ex=q.ex + p.ex and att.all=q.all + p.all. The independent variables in the model are the quality of the original brands prior to their being used in an extension or alliance (q); the quality of the second named brand (partner brand) in the brand alliance (qpb); the fit between the original product classes and the new product class (f.ex and f.all) and finally the perceived level of difficulty the firms may have in making the new extension (d.ex) or the perceived level of difficulty the two brands combined would have in making the new alliance product (d.all).Thus att.ex=b1q + b2f.ex + b3d.ext and att.all=b1qpb + b2f.all + b3d.all.Model literature\nMethodology: Stimuli\nResults: The study is now reported on and is divided into two parts. Part one details the results of the brand extension study and part two focuses on the brand alliances. Overall, means for the extensions and alliances for each of the dimensions are reported on in Table II.All the brands chosen were familiar to the respondents, as it has been shown that more familiar names performed better in new product introductions than unfamiliar ones and the logic for choosing brands that respondents did not know was flawed (Claycamp and Liddy, 1969; Carpenter and Nakamoto, 1989; Aaker and Keller, 1990: Simonin and Ruth, 1998). The means for familiarity towards the brands on a seven-point Likkert scale (1=not at all familiar and 7=very familiar) were Swatch (5.87); Sony (6.50); British Telecom (5.77); Filofax (4.14); Calvin Klein (6.02); Vidal Sassoon (5.36); Benetton (5.93); Ambre Solaire (4.80); Crest (4.57); Sure (4.42) and Oral B (5.05).Part one - brand extensions\nManagerial implications: Management teams have always been careful when looking for brand alliance partners. Often the decision to \"make\" or \"buy\" is a financial or economically motivated decision. This study shows that there are strong consumer-based brand equity issues that need to be considered. The elements discussed highlight a number of areas that have been shown to have a significant impact on consumer attitudes about alliance products and their intention to purchase these products.The study has highlighted a number of issues that are central to aiding managers in making choices as to whether to grow their business using either their existing brand names or via an alliance with another brand. The A&K model provides a sound framework for identifying factors that can influence the creation of a successful brand extension but some of these factors do not have such force when two brands work together in an alliance.Managerial focus on quality issues to the detriment of other areas such as fit should be treated with caution. The study's findings lend support to those who suggest that quality is a pre-requisite for competing in markets and that other areas of the alliance - such as the brands being perceived to fit together - should be given focus as long as the selected partner delivers an acceptable level of quality. Managers should be mindful that a combination of firms' resources and skills strengthen the chance of alliance success through making the process of manufacture easier. The study has also indicated that where the brands do fit well together customers are more likely to buy the resulting brand.\nConclusions: The study highlights a number of issues that have implications for managers and academics when choosing between brand extensions and brand alliances as brand leverage strategies. This section provides the closing observations on the study and offers a series of proposals for the direction of future research and brand strategy. As a qualifying statement, it should be remembered that the study was made using a limited series of real brands in hypothetical alliances producing fictitious products. Because of this, any generalisations away from these brands, alliances and product categories should be treated with caution.Quality of original brand\nFuture research: This study has extended the work of A&K regarding variables in brand extensions. It has highlighted key area for investigation into alliance products. This area of marketing would benefit from adapting work done in a consumer environment to one that focuses on industrial products. The author believes that there would be a similar results when these variables are reviewed in an industrial context.This study has looked at alliances that involved \"physical\" leverage options. Applications of the framework of the study to \"symbolic\" products and alliances could extend further rich areas for investigation and be of extensive use to managers and application of the study's framework beyond the \"Physical\" and \"Symbolic\" to include service/service and service/product alliances should also be investigated.In this study, a \"make or buy\" model for brand leverage has been suggested as a route for further research. The research could productively examine the potential for a formal model that combines consumer, financial and economic data to predict conditions for success of a leverage strategy as an extension or an alliance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Since publication, Aaker and Keller's seminal paper on brand extensions has received acclaimed support and criticism. This paper aims to return to the original work and extend the frameworks presented to brand alliances. The study seeks to examine the dimensions used in the original model and attempt to identify whether the brand extension dimensions can be applied to brand alliances.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using quantitative research techniques through a structured study using 11 real brands in eight hypothetical alliances over 260 respondents, the study examines the reapplication of the brand extension framework to brand alliances.\nFindings: - The study has found that, though some extension elements apply to alliances, the role of fit takes on particular importance, whereas difficulty of making assumes a minor role, and that the basic extension framework can be applied to brand alliances.\nResearch limitations/limitations: - The study used real consumer brands in hypothetical extensions and alliances with student samples from the UK. Different results may be found using alternative samples and with real brands.\nOriginality/value: - The paper adds value to the literature and to practitioners' understanding of brand leverage by identifying that, though Aaker and Keller's study framework is applicable to brand alliances, the role of fit between partners takes on a central role to the detriment of difficulty of making.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
"Machinery" or "spirit" of the welfare state: institutional change as institutional inertia
|
[
"Social policy",
"Governance",
"Institutional theory",
"Political sociology",
"Welfare state"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Much has been said about institutional change and the forms it might take. There is abrupt or incremental change, path departure or path dependency, and many sub-forms between. This strand of research is highly relevant in times of institutional reforms and changes. A puzzle, however, remains, and it concerns the empirical phenomenon that there might be institutional inertia despite seeming change. One reason for this remaining puzzle is, as I argue in this paper, that the ongoing theoretical reflections have a certain blind spot: \"institutional constellations\" and their characteristics. This paper therefore analyses the \"layering\" of an institution which results in an institutional constellation. Although they look roughly similar and are formed by comparable ingredients, these newly established institutional constellations can differ profoundly. This is presumably due to the fact that the characteristics of institutions depend on the regulating principles (the \"spirit\") implemented in them. To validate this hypothesis, in what follows I analyse in depth the institutional layering in two social protection systems.\n2. Literature review: There is a broad and growing body of literature on the issue of institutional change. This literature is partly a reaction to the two main concepts of contemporary international institutional comparison: the varieties of capitalism approach and the welfare regimes approach. Roughly speaking, both concepts originally assume institutional inertia (Streeck and Thelen, 2005). Institutions in capitalisms (Hall and Soskice, 2001) are rather unlikely to change, which is due to their complementary character and the resulting losses in efficiency that change may cause. Welfare institutions (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Pierson, 2000) are not likely to change because of their stable setup with various long-term obligations, and powerful constituencies and politicians' interests. This assumption of institutional inertia, or path dependency, is opposed by the concept of path departure or paradigmatic shift (Pierson, 2000; Hall, 1993) when radical change is taking place. Institutional theory also increasingly reflects upon incremental change, and identifies four main forms of it (for an overview see Mahoney and Thelen, 2010; Streeck and Thelen, 2005): displacement, layering, drift, and conversion. The first term refers to the removal of existing rules by new ones, entailing a radical break with previous institutional configurations. Drift refers to changed impacts of existing rules accompanying shifts in their environment, i.e. it refers to inertia on the surface while identifying a growing gap between formal rules and actual circumstances (Hacker, 2005). Conversion (Thelen, 2003) refers to a changed implementation of existing rules by the refashioning of existing institutions. Finally, layering (Schickler, 2001) means the introduction of new rules on top of existing ones and is the type of change analysed in this paper. It takes place, as Mahoney and Thelen (2010, p. 17) put it, typically when \"institutional challengers lack the capacity to actually change the original rules\". Guardiancich (2011), again, further developed the concept of \"survival and return\" as put forward by Streeck and Thelen (2005), which is the phenomenon by which, despite abrupt processes of change (here: layering), the core institutional structures survive. For him, replication depicts a situation in which institutional replacement does not take place, as the new institution is devoid of significant structural reform elements and retains the old logics of action, while reaction captures those structural transformations where, as a result of subsequent demands, the old incentive structures are reintroduced and contaminate the new arrangements. Thus it may be that what happens in the welfare institutions, analysed here is either replication or reaction.\n3. Methodological framework: In this contribution the question shall be answered in how far layering has to be interpreted as institutional change. Point of departure is the outsourcing of parts of social protection systems to newly established institutions that supplement the former institution (layering). The newly established institutions thereby are market based and particularly invest in financial markets (financial marketisation), and they are strongly tax subsidised (fiscalisation). Whether these at first sight are extensive changes that have to be interpreted as institutional change or institutional inertia, however, depends on the effects they have on regulating principles.\n4. Analysis: In the following, we will see how far and in what way the reformed social protection systems of the two countries have undergone considerable change in the redistributive principles. This will be done in three steps. First, I will show the regulating principles of the former single institution as the point of reference. This will be followed, second, by an analysis of the regulating principles in the current institutional constellation. To do this I will show what the regulating principles are in the newly established institutions, i.e. in the welfare markets. Then third, I will analyse the combination of institutions, i.e. the institutional constellation, to find out which of the regulative principles are dominating the constellation.\n5. Discussion: Both the German and the Dutch old-age protection systems have been reformed, and institutions have been established to replace parts of the former single-pension institution. The pension reforms are characterised by layering, financial marketisation and fiscalisation, whereby now, reaching the TSPL depends more strongly on regular income from employment since investments in the second institutions are derived from income, and this has thereby reduced the redistributive mechanisms of both pension systems. Participation in the second institution is individualised and voluntary in the case of Germany, and collective and obligatory in the case of the Netherlands. For low-income earners, the institutional linkage (Franchise in the Netherlands, the \"subtraction principle\" in Germany) results in their insufficient participation in the second - for full coverage necessary - institution.\n6. Conclusion: The aim of this paper was to answer the question: how far layering, marketization, and fiscalisation of welfare institutions have to be interpreted as institutional change. For this reason, these developments were analysed in two old-age protection systems. Pension (and welfare) scholars easily identify comprehensive shifts, mostly called path departure, in the various pension systems. Public schemes, they argue, have been transformed into hybrid or multi-pillar systems. This observation is correct. This paper, however, refers to institutional and welfare state theory which is concerned not about the \"machinery\" of the system, but about the \"spirit\" of it as Marshall termed it. And to understand change in the \"spirit\" of old-age protection systems, I analysed their former and current regulating principles.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: Much has been said about institutional change and the forms it can take, whether it is abrupt or incremental, path breaking or path dependent. This strand of research is highly relevant in times of welfare institutional reforms and changes. A puzzle, however, remains, and it concerns the empirical phenomena that there might be institutional inertia despite seeming change. One reason for this remaining puzzle is, as argued here, that the ongoing theoretical reflections have a certain blind spot: \"institutional constellations\" and their characteristics. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to analyse the \"layering\" of a welfare institution which results in an institutional constellation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Such newly established institutional constellations, though they look roughly similar and are formed of comparable ingredients, can differ profoundly between themselves. This could be due to the fact that the characteristics of institutions depend on the regulating principles (the \"spirit\") implemented in them. To validate this hypothesis, the author analyses in depth the institutional layering in two traditionally different social protection systems: the Dutch and the German pension systems.\nFindings: In both cases, as the author shows, the traditional regulating principles are also implemented in the newly established institutional constellation, so that in the end pension systems do not change but differ as they did before.\nOriginality/value: The empirical phenomenon of institutional inertia despite seeming change has not yet been explicitly addressed. This is the case since the ongoing theoretical reflections have a certain blind spot: \"institutional constellations\" and their characteristics which are the focus of this paper.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Practical wisdom for management from the Chinese classical traditions
|
[
"China",
"Management",
"Management theory"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In a number of western countries and beyond, there is a continuing search for \"meaning\". A growing segment of civil society, some academics and public intellectuals, enlightened private and public sector thought-leaders, realize that the society we have created and the planet we have managed are experiencing a crisis. It is as if we are running into a wall. The recent financial upheaval, the threat of climate change and ecological degradation and the increasing proliferation of social problems such as the growing rich-poor gap, all contribute to questioning past successes and achievements. At the same time, the world has never been so capable of creating material value, to enhance wealth at the global level, while technology has never been more able to demonstrate better its achievement and its potential. We create more value than at any other time in history, but we also destroy value because of short termism; and we fail in distributing that value in equitable ways. Even as technology has never demonstrated its capacity better (e.g. in IT, bio-technology, genetic engineering, etc. ...), we remain incapable of decreasing the frequency of natural disasters or to manage risks effectively. Our global economic system produces environmental externalities which only one planet can no longer absorb. Such a worrying state of the world induces us to question our model of development, our life styles and our obsession with growth.\nPresentation of the papers: The first group of papers focuses on the value of practical wisdom from Confucianism:* Po Keung Ip (National Central University Taiwan), \"Practical wisdom of Confucian ethical leadership - a critical inquiry\".* Hongguo Wei and Shaobing Li (Beijing Normal University), \"Confucian nurturing doctrine of xin (heart-mind): its enlightenment to organization research.\"* Lili Zhao and Juliet Roper (University of Waikato), \"A Confucian approach to well-being and social capital development.\"* Mike Thompson (China Europe International Business School), \"Chinese hedonic values and the Chinese classical virtues: managing the tension.\"* Chung-ying Cheng (University of Hawaii), \"Confucian global leadership in Chinese tradition: classical and contemporary.\"* Paul McDonald (Victoria University of Wellington), \"Maoism versus Confucianism: ideological influences on Chinese business leaders.\"The second group of papers focuses on origins of Chinese classical traditions and Daoism:* Yan-nan Gou and Jing Dong (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics), \"Structure and evolvement of leadership: a study based on Book of Changes.\"* Xuezhu Bai (China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong), \"Taoism and its model of traits of successful leaders.\"* Ansgar Gerstner (Coaching and intercultural consulting, Shanghai), \"Leadership and organizational patterns in the Daodejing.\"The third group of papers reflects the various streams of thought within the classical Chinese traditions and their contemporary relevance:* Benoit Vermander (Fudan University), \"Chinese wisdom, management practices and the humanities.\"* Qinqin Zheng, Miao Wang (Fudan University) and Zhiqiang Li (China Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong), \"Rethinking ethical leadership, social capital and customer relationship.\"* Hendrik Opdebeeck (University of Antwerp) and Andre Habisch (Catholic University Eichstatt-Ingolstadt), \"Compassion: Chinese and western perspectives on practical wisdom in management.\"Finally the Guest Editors wish to express their gratitude to a number of individuals without whom this issue would have been much more arduous to prepare: firstly of course to the authors gathers in this special issue, who have taken time to explore an evidently recondite area of interdisciplinary management scholarship. A special thanks to Mr Antonio Scarafino at the EABIS office in Brussels, who has been editorial assistant and coordinator of this volume, from the issuing of the call for papers, through his careful and timely handling of all the contributions and reviews in association with the papers here included. We are most grateful to all others concerned. We are also grateful to Professor David Bevan, Academic Director of EABIS for assisting with text editing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to provide an overview of this special issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The guest editorial introduces the papers in this special issue, focusing on practical wisdom for management from the Chinese classical traditions.\nFindings: - Chinese culture increasingly will permeate international culture and move from peripheral to mainstream status. To ignore this in management education would be a grave oversight.\nOriginality/value: - The issue offers insights into the value of practical wisdom from Confucianism, the origins of Chinese classical trditions and Daoism, and the various streams of thought within the classical Chinese traditions and their contemporary relevance.\n",
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] |
Towards an integrated approach to the recognition of professional competence and academic learning
|
[
"Work-based learning",
"Competence",
"Curriculum development",
"Higher and degree apprenticeships",
"Professions",
"Qualifications"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Universities and professional bodies both have a role in recognising the knowledge, understanding and skills of individuals, yet there remains a degree of tension in terms of what each may think they are recognising. For example, universities may not generally consider that their programmes aim to develop and recognise \"competence\", particularly if this is understood narrowly as the ability to complete identified tasks to a standard. Barnett (1994) highlights \"the limits of competence\" with regards to his conception of higher education, both when it is defined as \"academic competence\" and particularly as what he calls \"operational competence\". For Barnett, the limitations of academic competence are associated with its focus on mastery within an identified disciplinary knowledge domain, while the limitations of operational competence lie in the emphasis on outcomes and skill performance. Both conceptions are found wanting as a basis for higher education by Barnett to the extent that they underplay the role of values, understanding and criticality in the context of \"life-world\" unpredictability.\nProfessions, entry-routes and competence: Professions can be defined very roughly in an Anglophone tradition as occupations that set their qualifying requirements at the equivalent of degree level or above, and are normally (though not universally) subject to some form of authoritative membership association or regulatory body. Professions have traditionally been concerned with defining and structuring entry-routes, so that practitioners have an adequate grounding in the theory, practice and ethos of the profession before they can work independently, and with ensuring that adequate standards of practice are upheld. The dominant pattern of professional entry during the latter half of the twentieth century can be described as a sequential model, where the would-be practitioner learns first the \"science\" or disciplinary knowledge underpinning the profession, followed by its \"applied science\" or tools and techniques, and finally its practice (Schon, 1983; Bines, 1992). Until fairly recently the main concern of formal programmes and assessment has been with the first two of these stages, with the third stage frequently left to a period of supervised practice that would effectively be signed off by the employer.\nThe case studies: Collaboration between universities and employers, professional bodies or industry sectors to create programmes that are academically accredited and located substantially in the workplace is now well-established, and predates the development of HAs by at least a decade (Nixon et al., 2006; Lester and Costley, 2010). Programmes of this type generally involve a partnership between professional or industry interests and a university to develop a programme that satisfies academic criteria while also meeting professional and organisational goals (e.g. Banim and Evans, 2008; Bravenboer, 2011). The following case studies illustrate three different approaches to integrating academic learning and professional accreditation, all in collaborations where Middlesex University is the academic partner. The first is a HA that is designed to lead to a work-based degree as well as enabling students to gain access to qualified status with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) or Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) on completion. The second is an integrated programme for commercial pilots that includes achievement of a degree alongside a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) professional pilot's licence. The third is an agreement between the University and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), where the learning outcomes from the university's work-based programmes have been mapped to the institute's membership grades and enable graduates to gain professional membership.\nImplications for practice and policy: As discussed earlier in the paper, there has been a growing trend for professions to look beyond standardised entry-routes, to place more emphasis on the practice-based phase of development, and to evolve ways of expressing competence that are simpler and more sophisticated than both the lists of knowledge, skills and behaviours that were once widely used, and the functionally oriented approach used in NOS. This might have been expected to open up an array of new routes into professional-level careers or at least to have preserved non-graduate routes where these previously existed (cf. Milburn, 2009). In practice, while there are good examples of this such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) non-graduate route, the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health's practice-based scheme, and the Institute of Conservation's open-access practising assessment, in the majority of professions routes of this type have accounted for only a small number of entrants, sometimes no more than single figures annually (Lester, 2009). Many professions that have created routes of this type have tended to struggle with recruiting and supporting entrants to take them, and with managing the related support structures and processes. Factors contributing to this situation include limited resources to develop and maintain the required infrastructures and support systems, limited availability of potential training posts, a lack of incentive to promote alternative entry-routes while the supply of graduates has remained strong, and a (generally misplaced) fear that non-standard entrants will be less capable than those coming through traditional pathways.\nConclusions: A presumption that academic learning and professional competence are different enough in nature to preclude them being recognised through the same qualification or assessment process is frequently made both in universities and in bodies concerned with occupational competence, leading to a separation of programmes and certification for each. This presumption is reasonable if academic learning is defined as limited to acquiring the theoretical principles, knowledge-base and know-how relevant to the profession (Schon's \"science\" and \"applied science\"), and competence with the ability to meet practising standards in a narrow, technical sense. However, if the former is also recognised as concerned with critical thinking, reflection, evaluation and making judgements aligned with a consideration of professional values, and the latter defined in the more expansive sense suggested by the Engineering Council or Epstein and Hundert, a conception much closer to Barnett's idea of metalearning can be arrived at. This leaves barriers to integration more as a matter of organisation, logistics and regulations than one of underlying philosophy.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the benefits of reclaiming the idea of professional competence and challenges fragmented approaches to academic qualification and professional recognition. It is argued that academic programmes that are integrated with the requirements for professional recognition can resolve the potentially unhelpful differentiation between \"theory\" and \"practice\" and between \"knowledge\" and \"competence\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: Three contextualised case studies are presented to demonstrate a range of possibilities for developing academic programmes that integrate professional competence in the fields of construction, aviation and management.\nFindings: It is argued that the examples described provide some evidence that where competence is conceived of as a matter of open on-going professional development, it can be effectively integrated and aligned with the intended outcomes of academic qualifications. Furthermore, that the examples described demonstrate that the idea of professional competence can operate to ground knowledge in practice contexts and ensure that professional values are positioned as a requirement of being qualified.\nOriginality/value: The diversity of the examples provided across three distinct sectors illustrate the potential for wider curriculum development opportunities for higher education practitioners. The need to align professional body recognition with academic qualification for higher and degree apprenticeships may also indicate significant implications for policy in this area. The cases presented provide evidence that academic qualifications can be developed that are at the same time recognised by employers as delivering a professionally competent workforce. This kind of development activity can provide both an incentive for employers to pay for education and training and opening opportunities for career progression for those in work.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Lithium monitoring: should tracking prescriptions be implemented to improve outcome? An evaluation of potential practice change
|
[
"Medical prescriptions",
"Mental health services",
"Process efficiency"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Lithium has been shown to be effective in improving the long-term course of affective disorders. It is the gold standard treatment for Bipolar Disorder (British Association for Clinical Psychopharmacology, 2003). However, there has been a shift of prescribing away from lithium and reluctance among patients to take it. The reasons for this change include a perception among physicians that lithium is complex to prescribe and concerns about side effects such as poor renal function, hypothyroidism or acute toxicity or risk of deliberate overdose (Goodwin et al., 2003; Young and Hammond, 2007; Johnson and McFarland, 1996; Perlick et al., 2004). National guidelines (the British National Formulary) address the need for monitoring of lithium levels and renal and thyroid function.Adherence to lithium treatment has been measured through self-report, serum levels, and medication pick-up rates (Perlick et al., 2004; Colom and Vieta, 2002). Some studies have shown that self-report of low adherence to lithium is associated with admission to hospital (Scott and Pope, 2002), suicide and relapse (Johnson and McFarland, 1996). Clinical experience is that many of those admitted to hospital have stopped their lithium treatment. We have set out to look at whether monitoring prescription pick-up would be likely to be useful in identifying this at an early stage and preventing relapse.\nMethod: We carried out a service evaluation of lithium monitoring and prescription collection locally. We identified all individuals who had had a lithium blood test between 1 April 2005 and 31 March 2006 from a hospital laboratory database. These made up the total group (n=773).The British National Formulary recommends measurement of lithium levels every three months. We ascertained in how many quarters of the year each person had their lithium level checked.We identified all patients being prescribed lithium from the records of eight city and rural general practices. These made up the GP group (n=119). Patient details including demographics, medication, diagnosis and admission dates were obtained from GP and psychiatric records.We measured rates of prescription collection from GP pharmacy records. A literature search found no standard for satisfactory adherence to lithium prescription collection, but we considered 80 per cent collection to be adequate (Osterberg and Blaschke, 2005).We examined whether or not there was a correlation between collection of prescriptions and adequate lithium level monitoring, using Fisher's exact test. This was in order to evaluate whether identifying those patients with low frequency of monitoring could alert clinicians to low rates of prescription collection.We also identified all those from the GP group who had been admitted to hospital during the study period (1 April 2005 to 31 March 2006). Prescription collection and recent lithium levels were examined in this group to ascertain whether poor collection and low lithium levels are associated with admission.All those in the total group who had had a lithium level greater than 1.6 mmol l-1 during the study period were identified. The reasons for toxicity and outcome were ascertained from hospital and GP records.We sought approval from the Chairman of the Cambridge Local Ethics Committee to carry out this study and were advised that we did not require specific ethical approval or consent.\nResults: In the total group there were 773 individuals who had been identified through lithium blood testing. A sub-group of 119, who were prescribed lithium, were identified from GP records.Demographic and clinical characteristics in each group\nDiscussion: The majority of patients in the GP group had serum lithium monitoring at least twice a year (87 per cent). It should be recognised that blood monitoring is a two-way process between clinician and patient and, although the British National Formulary recommends blood tests four times a year, patients may not be offered blood tests this frequently. The Quality Outcome Framework for mental health recommends less frequent monitoring. It is important that trusts also have policies on lithium monitoring which are audited as part of the clinical governance process.It is possible that there are patients who are on lithium and have not had any serum levels checked. However, all patients identified through prescription in the GP group had had at least one level done, which suggests that the biochemistry database is an accurate method to identify patients.There is a high level of prescription collection - 84 per cent of the GP group had collected at least 80 per cent of their scripts. The usual system of repeat prescription relies on the patient requesting medicines when needed rather than a prescription being supplied without request. Ordering and collection of prescriptions is, however, only the start of the process of medication adherence. Combining several methods of measuring treatment adherence would be needed to ascertain this more accurately.We did not find any correlation between lithium monitoring and prescription pick-up. Those who collected all their prescriptions were just as likely to have only had their levels checked once or twice in the year. A system whereby patients with poor monitoring are identified is unlikely to be helpful in alerting clinicians to poor prescription pick-up.We had expected that the rate of hospital admission would be higher in those collecting less than 80 per cent of their prescriptions or with those patients with sub-therapeutic levels, but this was not the case. Previous studies (Scott and Pope, 2002) have shown that psychiatric hospitalisation is reduced in those who report higher levels of adherence to medication. This contrast suggests that only detailed methods of estimating adherence are likely to be useful in identifying those at high risk of re-hospitalisation.We showed that a high rate of prescription collection is possible. It has been described in the literature that concern over side effects and toxicity may affect willingness to prescribe or take lithium (Perlick et al., 2004; Young and Hammond, 2007). We found a low rate (less than 1 per cent per patient year) of deliberate overdose in a population known to have a high risk of suicide. There were no deaths associated with high levels of lithium. Potentially toxic levels above 1.6 mmol l-1 occurred in 2 per cent of patients, indicating that problems with the toxicity of lithium are not common.These results cannot be uncritically generalised to all those with affective disorders. These data are from the full range of patients being prescribed lithium and are likely to contain a group who have been selected for adherence over years and who have found the treatment useful. This selection would be biased against those who are poor adherers and so would not contain the full range of those who have lithium treatment initiated.\nConclusion: The monitoring of adherence needs to be done at an individual clinical level, as reliance on prescription records is not sufficiently sensitive.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study seeks to compare rates of blood lithium monitoring with rates of lithium prescription collection in order to evaluate whether identifying patients with low frequency of monitoring could alert clinicians to poor prescription collection. It examines whether routine monitoring of lithium prescription pick-up would be likely to reduce admissions to hospital, as a way of identifying those who were poorly adherent with treatment. It also ascertains the frequency of lithium toxicity and its outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The frequency of monitoring of lithium was assessed through laboratory results of 773 patients. A sub-sample of 119 patients on lithium was found through general practice records and the rates of medication collection determined. Admission data were examined to assess whether this was related to a failure in blood monitoring or prescription collection.\nFindings: - A total of 87 per cent of the GP group had lithium levels measured at least twice a year and 84 per cent collected more than 80 per cent of prescriptions. It was found that those patients not collecting their prescriptions were a different group from those who did not have their blood levels monitored. Admission rates were not higher in those who were less efficient at picking up prescriptions. Two per cent of the total sample had lithium levels above 1.6 mmol l-1. There were no fatalities associated with high levels.\nOriginality/value: - It is important to assess the real potential benefits of additional monitoring rather than assuming that increased surveillance will improve the outcome.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Escalation of commitment and information security: theories and implications
|
[
"Information security",
"Escalation of commitment",
"MIS",
"IT management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Information security is a critical component of managing information systems (IS) as increases in security risks lead to mounting losses for organizations worldwide (Campbell et al., 2003; PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2016). Thousands of data loss incidents are reported each year with hundreds of millions of data records compromised (Open Security Foundation, 2016). The growing field of research in information security is dedicated to both technical and managerial solutions to information security challenges and has seen a steady progression from focusing on the technical aspects of information security to increased attention to individual behavior (Stanton et al., 2005; Hagen et al., 2008; Willison and Warkentin, 2013) and information security culture in organizations (Van Niekerk and Von Solms, 2010; Da Veiga and Martins, 2015).\nEscalation scenarios in information security decisions: Information security challenges encompass a wide range of threats, both internal and external (Loch et al., 1992). Willison and Warkentin (2013) present an extended taxonomy of IS security threats driven by both human and non-human factors. External human threats include hackers and corporate espionage, while external non-human threats are driven by natural disasters and infrastructure failures. Internal threats also include ones posed by non-human factors such as infrastructure failures, as well as ones posed by the firm's employees because of non-compliance with the information security policy (ISP) and malicious computer abuse by the firm's insiders.\nEscalation of commitment theories: Theoretical and empirical research on escalation of commitment has identified a number of factors that contribute to the escalation process. Managerial literature typically views escalation as a puzzle, an irrational process driven by psychological and organizational factors. In contrast, economic studies focus on the rational explanations for continued investment in projects and technologies after negative information has been received regarding their chances for success.\nPreventing escalation of commitment: implications for decision-makers: The decision to escalate commitment to an IT investment may be the outcome of both irrational and rational decision processes. Irrational escalation by decision-makers in both the Investment scenario and the Compliance scenario is a decision error for the firm and should be prevented. The process of reversing commitment to a failing course of action is known as de-escalation. Process theories of de-escalation outline the sequence of actions that must take place to effectively stop commitment to a failing IT investment. Monteleagre and Keil (2000) identify four stages in the de-escalation process - problem recognition, re-examination of the prior course of action, search for an alternative course of action, and implementation of the exit strategy. Pan et al. (2006) present three stages of de-escalation - unfreezing the commitment to create motivation for change, adjusting attitudes and behaviors based on new information, and finally refreezing the commitment to stabilize the implemented change. These process models of de-escalation recognize the sequential nature of decisions affected by escalation. Re-examination of commitment to an information security investment or policy and identification of alternative courses of action is required for the process of de-escalation. Such re-examination may be facilitated by the presence of de-escalation factors.\nImplications for future research: Escalation of commitment research is prominent in the management literature in general, and in the studies on management of information systems (MIS) in particular (Staw and Ross, 1987; Keil et al., 2000; Desai and Chulkov, 2009). However, the issue of escalation has not been explored in the information security context. A goal of this conceptual study is to provide a comprehensive review of the theories addressing both rational and irrational escalation of commitment to inform future research. Studies on escalation behavior in information security will benefit from a comprehensive view that includes irrational and rational escalation theories identified in prior studies in other areas of MIS.\nConclusion: Escalation of commitment in IT projects is a complex multi-stage process (Mahring and Keil, 2008) that has been studied in a variety of MIS contexts; however, research on the impact of escalation on decisions related to information security is still in early stages. Psychological and organizational determinants contribute to irrational escalation of commitment that is a decision error for both the manager and the firm. Escalation of commitment driven by the economic factor of reputation concerns in a principal-agent environment is rational for the manager, but not the firm. Both of these types of escalation may be prevented with de-escalation techniques including a change in management or rotation of duties, monitoring, benchmarking and establishing clear milestones for review. If decisions on information security at a firm involve real options, then the value of future flexibility and information received from continuing investment in a security policy or solution needs to be included in the decision. Premature termination of an IT investment that has a positive value of real options is value-reducing for the firm.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to explore the challenges that the escalation of commitment poses to information security.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two distinct scenarios of escalation behavior are presented based on literature review. Psychological, organizational and economic theories on escalation of commitment are reviewed and applied to the area of information security.\nFindings: Escalation of commitment involves continuation of a course of action after receiving negative information about it. In the information security compliance context, escalation affects a firm when an employee decides to break the firm's information security policy to complete a failing task. In the information security investment context, escalation occurs if a manager continues investment in policies and solutions that are ineffective because of psychological, organizational or economic factors. Both of these types of escalation may be prevented with de-escalation techniques including a change in management or rotation of duties, monitoring, auditing and governance mechanisms.\nPractical implications: Implications of escalation of commitment behavior for information security decision-makers and for future research are discussed.\nOriginality/value: This study complements the literature by establishing the context of escalation of commitment in decisions related to information security and reviewing managerial and economic theories on escalation of commitment.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Total value in business relationships: exploring the link between power and value appropriation
|
[
"Value",
"Business relationships",
"Value appropriation",
"Power",
"Customer value",
"Supplier value"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Concepts such as value and power are at the heart of business relationships. Value has always been important for sales organisation and it has long been argued that the aim of any enterprise is to offer products and/or services that are of value to customers (Brandenburger and Stuart, 1996). Conversely, the professionalisation of the buying function within organisations is aimed at unpacking supplier offers to ensure value for money (Ramsay, 2005). Value is, therefore, critical for the success of a firm. Additionally, the relative power between two parties within a business relationship has a significant influence on the initial formation of the relationship and the subsequent sharing of value within the business exchange (Cox, 1999). Although both power and value are critical elements in business relationships, they are more often than not implicitly present, rather than explicitly defined. This lack of a clear understanding of what value means for the buyer and supplier, as well as who has power, can cause significant relationship difficulties and may well be one of the reasons that many relationships fail. Therefore, it is important to develop a conceptual model that can provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of what constitutes value and power within business exchanges.\n2. Arriving at a definition of value: 2.1 Defining customer value\n3. Sharing total value in business relationships - value appropriation: It is evident from the discussion thus far that both customer and supplier value are created from, inter alia, buyer-supplier relationships. However, this tells us little about the way in which the total value created in these relationships is shared. There are some authors who would argue that although collaborative relationship or partnerships, in some circumstances, may result in creating more money and resources (i.e. growing the pie) than an arms-length relationship, this does not mean that the results will necessarily be shared equitably (Cox et al., 2004; Cox and Chicksand, 2005). Research suggests that individual firms within an industry will try to extract or appropriate as much money and/or resources as possible for themselves (Mizik and Jacobson, 2003). Indeed, this is the logical outcome of many business relationships. Although we acknowledge that there are other perspectives, we contend that understanding the power dynamics between buyers and suppliers is key to explaining how total value is shared in the supply chain. The reason for this, we contend, is that there is a link between the relative power of buyers and suppliers and who appropriates more of the total value.\n4. Discussion and conclusion: First, in this paper, we have highlighted the need to define value more robustly. In presenting our view of total value in business relationships, we have argued that the value of the relationship is the sum of the customer and supplier value, including both tangible and intangible benefits and sacrifices (Figures 3). This conceptualisation of value from both buyer and supplier perspectives has practical relevance, as collaborating parties must be clear about the potential benefit and sacrifices to fully understand the context of the business relationship.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider how value can be better defined and to understand the drivers of value appropriation in business relationships. In doing so, the authors explore the role that power plays in determining the sharing of value in those relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper contains a conceptual discussion about value and the appropriation of value in business relationships, which leads to the development of a methodology for assessing the sharing of value.\nFindings: In this paper, the authors have developed a view of total value in supply chain relationships. They argue that the value of the relationship is the sum of the customer and supplier value, including both tangible and intangible benefits and sacrifices. In addition, they maintain that the appropriation of value in a business relationship is reliant upon: the power both parties possess; the direct and tangible value each party has to offer; and the indirect and intangible value that each has to offer. They also provide a methodology, which can be used to determine the sharing of value between two actors within a business exchange.\nResearch limitations/implications: In arriving at the conceptualisation of total value and in the discussion of value appropriation in business relationships, the authors drew upon extant literature. However, a limitation is that they were unable to fully consider all the academic discourse centred on value and value appropriation.\nOriginality/value: The discussion brings together the issues of customer value and supplier value to the concept of \"total value\". Thereafter, it links the contentious issue of buyer and supplier power, so as to better understand the appropriation of value in business relationships.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Women's leadership and well-being: incorporating mindfulness into leadership development programs
|
[
"Well-being",
"Leadership",
"Mindfulness",
"Leadership development",
"Gender",
"Leader development",
"Women leaders"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Although both men and women experience heavy workloads and high levels of stress in leadership positions, women often face extra challenges in negotiating the workplace and are underrepresented in leadership roles. These extra challenges place an additional demand on the emotional and physical resources of women leaders, which has negative implications for their health and well-being. Despite this, leadership development programs rarely address gender differences. According to a literature review from Phillips and Grandy (2018), we need to rethink current leadership development programs for those who identify as women. One way to provide women leaders with tools to mitigate the impact of the gendered challenges of leadership on health and well-being is to incorporate mindfulness practices and training into development programs.\nConclusion: Women in leadership roles face a number of additional challenges and demands which can result in negative health consequences and poorer well-being. Despite this, many leadership programs do not acknowledge how gender can influence leadership experiences. Phillips and Grandy (2018) propose that leadership development programs should be designed to address the varied development needs of women, and suggest the incorporation of mindfulness as a means of preventing and mitigating negative consequences of stress on women's health and well-being.\nComment: The review is based on \"Women leader/ship development: mindfulness and well-being\" by Phillips, T and Grandy, G, published in Gender in Management.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: Leadership development programs should include tools and strategies to help women cope with the unique challenges facing them in leadership roles. One such tool is mindfulness, which could help reduce stress and promote greater well-being.\nPractical implications: The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers' hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
High-performance work systems and influence processes on employees' attitudes : Perspectives from China
|
[
"Job satisfaction",
"Affective commitment",
"High-performance work systems",
"Personal flexibility"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Strategic human resource management studies have suggested that the use of high-performance work systems contributes to firm performance (Cappelli and Neumark, 2001). However, despite their positive effects on firm performance in theory, such systems can sometimes be difficult to adopt in practice (Lawler, 1994). Managers facing this challenge need a greater understanding of the processes of implementation and control necessary in the course of transforming high-performance work systems into performance. Opening up the \"black box\" of the contribution made by high-performance work systems to overall performance is a key step in ensuring that high-performance work systems operate smoothly and meet requirements.\n2. Employee perspectives of high-performance work systems: High-performance work systems describe a group of separate but complementary human resource practices, including comprehensive recruitment and selection procedures, incentive compensation and performance-management, extensive employee involvement and training in accordance with the organisation's goals, the aim of these practices is to improve employee and firm performance by improving the competence and attitudes of the workforce, and increasing employees' motivation (Takeuchi et al., 2009). When receiving information on the practices of high-performance work systems, employees undertake a process of interpretation necessary for comprehension. This social or psychological process bridges the gap between the theoretical objectives of high-performance work systems and employee actually realised high-performance work systems. Ultimately, therefore, individual performance - and thus firm performance - is fundamentally informed by employee perspectives of high-performance work systems, rather than the underlying high-performance policies put in place by the organisation. Specifically, employee perspectives of high-performance work systems are influenced by both external and internal factors.\n3. Personal flexibility: \"Personal flexibility\" refers to the diversity of orientations and styles within a workplace, the ability to manage uncertainty or ambiguity, and the willingness to acquire and make use of new skills and behavioural patterns (Iles et al., 1996). Personal flexibility can be expressed in the following terms: skill variety, broad behavioural scripts and autonomy (Wright and Snell, 1998; Hackman and Oldham, 1980). An employee's skill variety is determined by the number of qualifications the employee has obtained and the number of skills he/she has mastered, along with the degree of variety in his/her skill set. \"Broad behavioural scripts\" refer to the pool of potential behavioural patterns that motivates each employee to adapt uniquely to situation-specific demands. Autonomy describes the degree of discretion an employee is permitted - whether by the organisation or by his/her own skills or behavioural patterns - when responding to a task. Studies based on human-capital theory argue that cultivating a high level of personal functional flexibility - that is, the capacity to respond effectively to many different tasks and requirements - may increase employees' satisfaction and motivation, thus giving their organisation a competitive advantage (Wright and Snell, 1998). In light of these benefits, some scholars have sought ways to increase personal flexibility by enlarging the pool of possible skills and behavioural patterns, and promoting autonomy, and argued that high-performance work systems that include extensive and synergistic developmental HR practices could foster employees' personal flexibility (Wright and Snell, 1998). These arguments indicate that greater personal flexibility may have a role in mediating the process by which employee perspectives of high-performance work systems improve employees' attitudes to work. In the following, we will analyse separately the mediatory roles of skill variety, broad behavioural scripts and autonomy, with reference to our first hypothesis.\n4. Methods: 4.1 Sample and data collection\n5. Discussions: 5.1 Research implications\n6. Limitations and future research: Several limitations of the research must be acknowledged. An important limitation that requires explanation derives from our use of cross-sectional data. Cross-sectional data cannot provide causal explanations for the relationships proposed in our hypotheses. For instance, we test the positive effect of employees' perceived high-performance work systems on employees' attitudes; yet, considering that the data were collected at the same time, we cannot exclude the alternative possibility that positive attitudes among employees are responsible for engendering optimistic assessments of human resource management. Future research should make use of longitudinal data from the organisational setting to test the causal order of the relationships established in the hypotheses.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between employee perspectives of high-performance work systems and employee outcomes, i.e. job satisfaction and affective commitment, and to propose ways of increasing the positive effects of high-performance work systems on firm performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data were collected from 370 employees in the Chinese manufacturing industry during 2010. The Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) method was used to test each of the eight hypotheses deriving from the conceptual framework.\nFindings: The paper finds that: employee perspectives of high-performance work systems have a positive effect on both job satisfaction and affective commitment; and breadth of behavioural script and level of autonomy mediate the relationship between employee perspectives of high-performance work systems and their attitudes towards that organisation (job satisfaction and affective commitment); however, skill variety did not mediate the relationship between employee perspectives of high-performance work systems and employees' attitudes in the data set used.\nPractical implications: The findings of the paper suggest that managers can improve employees' attitudes by integrating effective high-performance work systems in their working environment. Even more interestingly, it appears that by encouraging broad behavioural scripts or allowing employees more freedom to apply their skills, managers can improve employees' attitudes more significantly than by encouraging employees to acquire a variety of skills.\nOriginality/value: Using signalling and psychological-contract theory, the paper shows the dominant influence of employees' perceived high-performance work systems on employees' attitudes via behavioural scripts and autonomy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An activity theory approach to information security non-compliance
|
[
"Information security",
"Activity theory",
"Information security policy compliance",
"Employee compliance",
"Non-compliance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Information security breaches that are caused by employees have become common occurrences in many organizational contexts, including healthcare, business, financial, educational and governmental (Identity theft resource center, 2018; Verizon, 2019). More notably, employees' non-compliances with information security policies (ISP) are expected to increase in the near future (Navigant, 2017; Verizon, 2018). While many organizations have implemented ISP to avoid information security breaches, many employees continue to engage in non-compliant behaviors such as sharing passwords, copying sensitive data on universal serial bus (USB) drives or leaving their computers unlocked (Siponen and Vance, 2010; Stewart and Jurjens, 2017).\nAnalysis of past research on information security policies non-compliance: Information security violations occur when employees contravene an organization's ISP, which provides them with instructions about what they should do to safeguard their organization's information and technology resources (Bulgurcu et al., 2010). According to Siponen and Vance (2010), frequently encountered information systems (IS) security violations include failing to lock or log out of workstations, writing personal passwords in visible places, sharing passwords with colleagues or friends, copying sensitive data to insecure USB, revealing confidential information to outsiders, disabling security configurations, using laptops carelessly when they're outside the organization, sending unencrypted confidential information and creating easy-to-guess passwords.\nActivity theory: AT is a cultural-historical theory proposed by Vygotsky (1987) in the 1920s and early 1930s and further developed by his colleague Leont'ev (1978, 1981). According to AT, an activity represents human behaviors within their minimal meaningful social context, and it is:\nApplying at to non-compliance contexts: This section examines how an AT-lens can be used for better understanding the context of non-compliance, by first interpreting AT components and the theory's principles in non-compliance contexts, and then by developing eight propositions that can be examined in future research on non-compliance.\nResearch implications and conclusion: The above considerations and propositions suggest several research implications. First, they provide a new theoretical lens for understanding non-compliant behaviors in IT contexts, and hence, they can be used as an initial framework for future studies. Based on the above propositions, Table IV suggests initial guidance for future research models that will try to better understand and explain employee non-compliance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce activity theory (AT) as a new theoretical lens to the field of information security non-compliance by explaining how research in that field can benefit from AT and to suggest eight propositions for future research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on AT, the paper suggests that employees, IT systems, task characteristics, information security policies (ISPs), community and division of labor can be viewed to form an ensemble that is labeled activity. Their characteristics and/or the relationships that exist between them in organizational contexts are hypothesized to influence non-compliance behaviors.\nFindings: The paper suggests that AT provides a broad lens that can be useful for explaining a large variety of non-compliant behaviors related to information security.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper focuses only on non-compliant behaviors that employees undertake with non-malicious intentions and offers avenues for future research based on the propositions that are developed in the paper.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides a useful step toward a better understanding of non-compliant ISP behaviors. In addition, it proposes and explains new research areas in the non-compliance field.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Industrial clusters in Mexico and Spain: Comparing inter-organizational structures within context of change
|
[
"Clusters",
"Networks",
"Resource‐based view",
"Social capital",
"Mexico",
"Spain",
"Innovation",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Knowledge management",
"Change management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As competition among firms has increased in dynamic environments, the source of competitive advantage has migrated from tangible resources to knowledge that can be created within organisations (e.g. Wei et al., 2011) or between them (e.g. Bathelt et al., 2004; Hotho and Champion, 2011); Jansen et al., 2011). In this vein, Aage and Belussi (2008) suggest that fashion firms should scan external information sources and build interpretative and creative capabilities developed together with external agents in order to compete. As shoes have become fashionable products that are increasingly valued based on their aesthetic or symbolic attributes, the footwear industry can be considered an example of this general trend.Continuous changes and compression of time determine the dynamics of the footwear industry in the contemporary economy (Johnsen, 2010). Nowadays, product development in the footwear industry implies pervasive variations in physical attributes such as shapes, colours and patterns based in fashion trends. As in many industries (Hotho and Champion, 2011), these goods have short life cycles as a consequence of new technologies and manufacturing practices that reduce spatial and temporal distances. Therefore, firm competitiveness in this fashion-driven industry largely depends on the ability to respond to rapidly shifting trends. The implications are evident:* design and marketing activities relegate manufacturing operations;* producers should react in very short time to orders; and* mass production techniques must be combined with the capability to supply customized products.Obviously, this trajectory has altered the way on how manufacturing and innovation processes are organized.According to the World Footwear Market report (SATRA, 2009), the Far East and Brazil concentrate most of the manufacturing activities of the industry. Nowadays, more than ten billion pairs of shoes are manufactured in the three Asian giants (India, Vietnam and specially China) and Brazil. In Europe, the largest producer country is Italy, but Spain retains a significant share of production (108 million pairs). Regional aggregation also shows how Mexico ranks second among the American countries, producing (170 million pairs). Although these figures leave little space for doubts about the global nature of the footwear industry, paradoxically, only countries like Italy and Brazil have mainly attracted research attention due to their innovation performance or the particularities of their industrial organisation systems (Schmitz, 2006; Boschma and Ter Wal, 2007; Amighini and Rabellotti, 2006, among many others). In fact, Mexico and Spain have been relegated in the academic literature relatively (exceptions are Rabellotti, 1995, 1998; Verdu-Jover et al., 2011; or Belso-Martinez, 2008).This paper does not aim at testing the theoretical concepts underlying our analysis and discussion. This paper aims at comparing and explaining knowledge networking in two footwear agglomerations with the help of well-known theoretical bodies such as the micro-economics of innovation, grounded in the Resource Base View (Barney, 1991; Andersen, 2011) and the Social Capital Approach (Granovetter, 1973; Burt, 1992), and the industrial districts/cluster perspective (Bathelt et al., 2004; Porter, 1990)1. By considering the mentioned theoretical frameworks, we assumed the relevance of specific firm-level determinants, messo-level determinants and external factors when explaining the nature of each knowledge network.To such end, we selected the Leon-Guanajuato cluster (Mexico) and the Vinalopo cluster (Spain). Both clusters were deliberately chosen because they represent systemic configurations clearly identified in previous research (e.g. Boix and Galletto, 2006; Rabelloti, 1995, 1998). In doing so, we implicitly recognized that knowledge and innovation processes are too complex (Kao et al., 2011; Akehurst et al., 2011; Dabic et al., 2011) to assume that they exhibit the same shape in every place. Additionally, we selected these two cases with the intention of providing new evidences on footwear clusters that have been less explored by academic researchers.Qualitative evidences and Social Network Analysis based on firm and expert interviews were used to address a crucial research question: How do both clusters differ with regard to their knowledge networks and how can these differences be explained by using the above-mentioned theoretical bodies? Accordingly, the more precise sub-questions would be: What are the differences with regard to the structure of the knowledge network and how can we explain them? Which differences can we identify with regard to actors' characteristics and their cognitive position and how can they be justified? Who are the key knowledge partners in each cluster and what are the implications derived from their relevance? Where are crucial actors located and how intense are the external connections of the intra-cluster actors?The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Next section reviews the theoretical framework on the pertinent aspects of internal resources, networks and industrial clusters. This is followed by a characterization of the two geographical areas analysed. Section 4 describes the methodology and presents the results of the study. Finally, the paper culminates in a discussion of the research and the main limitations and implications of the findings.\n2. Theoretical framework: 2.1 Industrial clusters, knowledge transfers and innovation\n3. Analysis of the two industrial clusters: 3.1 The Leon-Guanajuato cluster\n4. Research methods: 4.1 Methodology\n5. Comparing knowledge networks: the main empirical findings: The comparative analysis of the Mexican and Spanish knowledge networks was undertaken in four stages. First, we characterized the main actors applying secondary and qualitative data. Second, using information from the survey, we explored their cognitive positions in the network and highlighted the differences across the two clusters. Third, we observed the structure of the two knowledge networks using subgroups/factions techniques. Fourth, combining information about external openness and the cognitive position, we identified differences in learning patterns.5.1 The actors in the selected clusters: characteristics and differences\n6. Discussion, conclusions and implications: The aim of this study was to empirically examine and explain how industrial clusters differ with regard to their knowledge networks by applying the micro-economics of innovation and the industrial cluster/district approach. This purpose was achieved through the collection of qualitative data in the Leon-Guanajuato cluster and the Vinalopo cluster. Below, we discuss the main findings grouped into four major blocks:1. the role of actors in each cluster;2. the cognitive position of these agents;3. the structure of the knowledge network; and4. the relationship between cognitive position and external openness.First, the scarce internal resources and absorptive capacity of the Mexican manufacturers hinders their innovative capacity, as well as the exploitation of opportunities arising from their relationships with actors involved in technical aspects. Conversely, the solid internal assets allow their Spanish counterparts an accelerated absorption of technical knowledge, making external relationships extremely beneficial for their competitiveness. Although specialised players and leading firms in the Leon-Guanajuato cluster have accumulated valuable capabilities, weak vertical linkages have forced them to vertical integration strategies in order to ensure quality standards, and in-house innovation based on extra-district inputs to avoid opportunistic behaviours and upgrade. Surprisingly, their smaller Spanish counterparts can sustain their crucial advantages in product design and marketing simultaneously, thanks to the local vertical and horizontal relationships (Ho et al., 2011). Design bureaus, offshoring or international sourcing are frequent practices, but cooperation with traditional suppliers or institutions remains crucial (e.g. involvement in public founded R&D projects).Although the structure and composition of the institutional systems of both clusters show remarkable similarities, we found differences in the role of the actors involved. Business associations are quite important in both clusters, but the relevance of these organizations seems to be higher in the Mexican case. The limited resource base and internationalization provide multiple opportunities for policy inducement through these institutions. Additionally, Mexican technological players (research centres and universities) are basically suppliers of specialized services; while INESCOP and several departments of intra-cluster universities are also strongly involved in R&D activities at local and global scale. In other words, they have become brokers of knowledge, as defined in our theoretical framework.Second, a particularly illuminating finding emerges when actors' cognitive positions are considered. Local auxiliary industry and technological centres are the main sources of knowledge in the Vinalopo cluster, while only institutions and non-local actors play this role in the Leon-Guanajuato cluster. This evidence is tightly related to the above-presented result, and endorses our literature review (Giuliani, 2007; Morrison and Rabellotti, 2009; Boschma and Ter Wal, 2007). Sources of knowledge in the Vinalopo cluster sustain manufacturer's innovativeness, because they present the necessary internal assets to successfully absorb the external knowledge. However, the limited capabilities exhibited by the Mexican industry constrains both product and process innovations.Qualitative evidences provide us some clarifying insights. For many years, low labour cost and barriers, delayed the arrival of Asian competitors to Mexico. Just recently, manufacturers have been forced to reconsider their strategies due to raising costs and the dismantling of tariffs and quotas, trying to intensify their international operations and improve their manufacturing capabilities. In this vein, business associations become powerful platforms to increase the Mexican share in the global footwear market. They insufflate managerial knowledge highly absorbable by owners and managers. Quite the reverse, suppliers in the Leon-Guanajuato cluster are not enough skilful to sustain this kind of strategies. Although backyard linkages have developed during the last decade, the weak internal resources and the potential opportunistic behaviour (minimal trustful atmosphere) still limit common learning practices and knowledge transfers. Such an insight also explains why research centres have not further developed their R&D activities.Conversely, the traditional openness of the Vinalopo cluster has led to a faster penetration of the Asian footwear, and the subsequent response of the Spanish manufacturers in terms of internationalization and the implementation of upgrading strategies (product design and manufacturing). High labour cost in Europe forced manufacturers to accumulate internal resources by interacting with skilful local suppliers and/or research centres. Although interactions with non-local suppliers are frequent, the dynamic auxiliary industry has facilitated the achievement of higher collective efficiency rates.Third, this research provides valuable findings on how each knowledge network is structured. As per density, concentration and betweenness values, direct interactions between the actors analysed are high either in the Leon-Guanajuato cluster and the Vinalopo cluster. However, important differences emerge when both structures are carefully examined. In Mexico, the core-periphery structure obtained indicates the prominent institutional role in terms of knowledge creation and diffusion. The CICEG, CIATEC, Universities and ANPIC, transfer knowledge to a wide periphery, where all local manufacturers locate. Knowledge circulates mainly from this cohesive group of institutions to manufacturers and local suppliers. Regarding the Vinalopo cluster, a larger group of actors is in charge of knowledge creation and diffusion. The vast majority of the clustered actors engage in interactions and knowledge sharing, while cheap inputs suppliers are relegated from this cohesive group. In general terms, our evidences corroborate previous literature suggesting heterogeneity and sub-structures at the intra-cluster level.Fourth, when connecting the cognitive positions and the external openness positions, further interesting results emerge. Local institutions are the knowledge gatekeepers in the Mexican cluster, while research centre and auxiliary industry, occupy this position in the Vinalopo cluster. Insights obtained in our in-depth interviews clarify these results. On the one hand, universities and CICEG are in charge of importing latest managerial practices, and their dissemination at the local level. In our opinion, Spanish owners and managers share experiences using their traditional linkages. Leading position at the global scale and the trustful atmosphere moderate the relevance of these activities in the Vinalopo cluster. On the other hand, the gatekeeper position of the auxiliary industry corroborates its role as providers of innovative inputs thanks their external connections with global leading actors.Remarkable implications for practitioners and policy makers arise from these findings. First of all, similar actors may relate differently to innovation processes depending on the specific socio-economic context. In consequence, innovation policy cannot be defined universally, and it has to adapt objectives and action lines to the concrete reality on which it operates. Programs should integrate and coordinate different actors by considering their weight and role. Additionally, although strengthening interactions between intermediary organizations and local firms is desirable, attention should be paid to the information and knowledge transferred. Intra-cluster institutions should scan local knowledge gaps in order to fulfil them according to firm's resource base. If, technological and product development capabilities should be enhanced in Mexico, then further efforts in these aspects are advisable, Institutions should not rely exclusively in managerial knowledge transfers, and should try to synthetise-elaborate more to improve the mentioned capabilities.The last policy implication is related to the role of clusters as engines for sustainable innovation and growth thanks to the ability to regenerate of their productive structure. On one hand, local actors should be open to extra-cluster in order to become learning territories, and avoid declining trajectories. On the other hand, competitiveness in the Vinalopo cluster relies on a set of local actors densely interconnected. Particularly, the auxiliary industry, footwear firms and institutions work together in order to achieve higher collective efficiency and innovation performance. However, in the Leon-Guanajuato cluster, crucial actors like the auxiliary industry and some manufacturers remain relegated. Economic activities are more anchored to the Spanish territory, and Mexican policies should try to improve the connections between actors in order to avoid risks such as delocalisation or dis-embeddedness.Our findings also have valuable implications for practitioners. Local firms should accumulate internal assets in order to benefit from both intra-cluster and extra-clusters linkages. Without a minimum threshold, organisations will not be able to absorb the knowledge generated outside their boundaries. In addition, key players usually exchange knowledge with skilful partners that have valuable knowledge to share. So, managers should build internal assets in order to engage in fruitful cooperation, and they have to increase the emphasis on knowledge possessed by the organisations. Human resources policies emerge as a powerful tool to develop this intangible resource. Particularly, training or coaching may help to learn the behaviours required for knowledge sharing and acquisition. Furthermore, cooperation with local institutions should be expanded to rapidly configure firm's knowledge base. Managers should view institutions not only as sources (brokers) of knowledge, but also as facilitators of common learning practices and knowledge sharing between companies due to the norms and trustful atmosphere they generate. Our final managerial implication highlights the convenience of a careful combination of intra-extra cluster linkages to maintain long-term competitiveness. Although managers should devote efforts to both spheres, they should emphasize one or the other depending on strategic purposes.This study has some limitations that need to be mentioned. First of all, the methodology and sample profile constrain the generalisability of findings to population. Future research should consider different methodologies and larger samples in order improve the robustness of the results. Second, groups of firms are treated as \"black boxes\", further research should descend to a rigorous firm-level analysis for a deeper understanding of intra-cluster heterogeneity and knowledge flows dynamics. Finally, our knowledge conceptualization merges together different types of knowledge. Next papers should pay particular attention to disentangling potential differences derived from a reconsideration of this rough conceptualization.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structure of knowledge networks and the geographical patterns of knowledge networking in mature industrial clusters. To such end, it is assumed that proximity is not really what matters in innovation, but rather the embeddedness of firms into localised networks, enhancing collective learning and knowledge diffusion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research is contextualized in the footwear industry and applies the microeconomics of innovation (grounded in the resource based view and social capital approach) and industrial clusters/districts as theoretical frameworks. Methodologically, the paper adopts an exploratory perspective and employs a qualitative approach to conduct a cross-case analysis of the Leon-Guanajuato cluster (Mexico) and the Vinalopo cluster (Spain).\nFindings: - Firstly, this paper endorses recent research trends suggesting that knowledge is unevenly and selectively distributed among clustered firms. Secondly, it evidences how internal resources determine a firm's access to valuable repositories of knowledge. Thirdly, key knowledge players are usually involved in extra-clusters networking, indicating that mere reliance on localized knowledge may result in declining trajectories.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Because the case study approach and qualitative methodologies are used, readers are advised not to generalize the findings. The research on the subject matter is offered as a means to substantiate or refute the latest research premises, and provide evidence on the selected clusters.\nOriginality/value: - This paper shows how knowledge networks differ depending on geographical specific characteristics and the resources of the main players. Managers-owners should be conscious that being close to one another is not enough. It should be combined with both solid internal resources and access to repositories of knowledge outside the cluster. Policy makers should prepare customized public programs based on the particular structure of each cluster.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Knowledge elicitation techniques in a knowledge management context
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Knowledge elicitation techniques",
"Knowledge engineering"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Contemporary management theory views knowledge as one of the key sources for the creation and maintenance of a sustainable competitive advantage in a post-industrial economy (Kogut and Zander, 1992; Grant, 1996; Teece, 2004). Thus the question of how to ensure that organizations extract as much value as possible from their knowledge is topical from both conceptual and practical viewpoints.However, knowledge and experience in an organization initially belong not to the organization itself, but to the individuals it employs (Grant, 1996; Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001). This fact, related to the very nature of knowledge, makes organizations dependent on both the good will and capabilities of employees in applying that knowledge for the organization's sake, and sharing it as needed by the organization. While some authors have discussed the transformation of individual into organizational knowledge (e.g. Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001; Nonaka, 1991), many sources remain pessimistic about the extent to which knowledge can be detached from an individual (Grant, 1996; Flood et al., 2001). So the question of what managers can do (if anything) to transform their employees' knowledge into organizational knowledge, or at least to share it as much as possible among various individuals in an organization, remains largely open.The aim of this study is to enhance the choices that can be made by organizations of how to extract knowledge (both tacit and explicit) from employees. The authors do this by bridging knowledge management (KM) and knowledge engineering (KE) and its accomplishments. KE is a discipline that also deals with managing knowledge, but from a different perspective, and it has a rich history of achievement over several decades (Burton et al., 1990; Cooke, 1994; Kendal and Creen, 2006). Surprisingly, although both deal with knowledge, KM and KE discourses have been developing in parallel and to the best of the authors' knowledge have rarely converged. In this paper the authors aim to bridge this gap and introduce some KE tools that can extend KM discourse; they propose a map that can guide the choice of tools.To meet these goals, this paper is structured as follows. It starts with an overview of the existing knowledge management literature on the transformation of individual into organizational knowledge. Next, the authors briefly introduce knowledge engineering as a field of science and explain how it can help with the \"bottlenecks\" identified in the knowledge management literature. Then the authors review a number of knowledge elicitation methods developed within KE and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. The paper concludes with some implications for both knowledge management theory and practice, as well as with directions for future research.\n2. Knowledge of individuals: knowledge management perspectives and \"bottlenecks\": The idea that most of the knowledge and experience in an organization belongs not to the organization itself, but to its employees, has received growing recognition in the KM community during the last decade. Human nature recurs throughout knowledge management literature as a serious barrier to full and efficient usage and creation of knowledge in an organization (Thomas et al., 2001; Cabrera et al., 2006). First, it is linked to the tacit component, inherent in the knowledge an individual possesses (Spender, 1993). Second, there are motivational and other individual barriers that may inhibit knowledge-sharing processes from both the knowledge owner's and knowledge recipient's sides (e.g. Husted and Michailova, 2002). Therefore, discussion of the approaches and tools that can help organizations to manage their employees' knowledge has been intensive (e.g. Robertson and Hammersley, 2000; Currie and Kerrin, 2003; Cabrera and Cabrera, 2005).Nevertheless, KM discourse has been recently criticized for over-focusing on the organizational level of analysis and not paying enough attention to the knowledge-related behavior of individuals (Foss and Felin, 2006). Indeed, there has been much discussion on knowledge sharing (e.g. Argote and Ingram, 2000; Husted and Michailova, 2002; Bock et al., 2005), yet very few sources discuss the question of how knowledge owners obtain something to share. In other words, if a lot of human knowledge is tacit and to a certain extent not even recognized by the owner, what can and should individuals do to extract this knowledge from their own minds, in order to make it available to share with others?One of the few sources that address this issue is the SECI model of knowledge creation proposed by Nonaka (1991), further developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). Developing the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge, they suggested that the creation of new knowledge in organizations can be described with a four-stage spiral model. The second phase of this model, articulation or externalization, involves transformation of the tacit into explicit knowledge. How can this be achieved?Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that of all four conversion modes, the externalization phase is the most difficult and time-consuming. To help externalization, they recommend the extensive use of metaphors, analogies and models in all discussions in a company, and also to create conditions for the open dialogue of employees with each other and with managers and for the development of communities of practice. These tools can be very useful; however, they are also subject to some limitations.The key issue is that the tools and methods proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi for externalization can be labeled as \"individual-driven\". Indeed, they make an implicit basic assumption about the proactive position of the knowledge owner, who is viewed as inherently willing to make (a lot of) effort to identify, articulate and share his/her knowledge, as well as being capable of completing this task. The literature on human behavior suggests that in order to perform an activity well, an individual needs to have simultaneously motivation, opportunity and the ability to perform (usually referred to as MOA, e.g. Blumberg and Pringle, 1982). The MOA framework applies to the knowledge-related activities and performance of an employee (Kelloway and Barling, 2000; Foss and Minbaeva, 2009). Although it is just one of the concepts used to describe human behavior, the authors propose that MOA might be very useful for analysis of knowledge-related behaviors in organizations, as it incorporates the elements of both individual and organizational levels of analysis and allows discussion of the interplay between them; it counteracts the recent criticism that the KM literature has been overlooking micro-level issues and inter-level relationships (Foss, 2007).Based on the MOA model, the authors argue that Nonaka and Takeuchi's vision of the knowledge owners inside an organization is somewhat idealistic. First, the frequent lack of an individual's motivation to share knowledge (sometimes referred to as knowledge hoarding) has been widely acknowledged (e.g. Husted and Michailova, 2002; Bock et al., 2005; Cabrera et al., 2006). Second, organizations have frequently been blamed for not providing sufficient opportunities for knowledge sharing (e.g. Curtis and Leon, 2002; Miles et al., 2009). The notion of \"opportunity\" in an organizational setting may refer to a wide array of issues that include organizational structure, job design, task requirements, communication channels, provision of ICT, and organizational norms and values; in other words, to organization-level determinants of behavior (e.g. Hendriks, 1999; Jones et al., 2006; Foss et al., 2009). Externalization of one's own tacit knowledge is one of the steps in the knowledge sharing process, and thus is also liable to lack of motivation and opportunity. The third element of the MOA framework, capability, has received less attention in the knowledge management literature. Nevertheless, there is evidence that some individuals are more capable of externalizing and sharing their knowledge than others (Minbaeva and Michailova, 2004; Reinholt et al., 2011). Therefore, it is quite unrealistic to suppose that all knowledge owners in an organization will be sufficiently motivated, capable and have a chance to invest their efforts into transferring their experience into explicit knowledge, and thus the applicability of the individual-driven tools is highly limited. Further, these tools, being individual-driven, mainly consider individual or small group tacit knowledge. Yet tacit knowledge may also exist at the collective level (Spender, 1996). Therefore, there is a challenge to elicit organization-wide tacit knowledge, especially if not all members of the collective have an \"ideal\" MOA disposition. In addition, the tools proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi may have some cultural limits to their applicability (e.g. Glisby and Holden, 2003; Andreeva and Ikhilchik, 2011), meaning that they may not be equally efficient in different cultural contexts, organizational, industrial or national.Based on this discussion, the logical question arises - what other tools might there be that managers can use in order to ensure the best possible flow of knowledge externalization in their companies? The authors suggest that knowledge engineering can inform this, and turn to its accomplishments in the next section.\n3. Knowledge of individuals: insights from knowledge engineering: 3.1 Bridging knowledge engineering and knowledge management\n4. Conclusions: This paper makes several contributions to the contemporary discourse on managing knowledge in organizations. First, it bridges two different streams of academic research that are usually treated as independent: knowledge management and knowledge engineering. Second, it suggests how KM practitioners (either specially assigned analysts or any organizational members that are interested in eliciting knowledge) can choose the appropriate method for concrete knowledge elicitation, using the taxonomy and the mapping of methods proposed here. Third, it may serve as a starting point for further investigation of practical KM techniques. Last, but not least, it draws the attention of KM practitioners to the role and qualifications of the knowledge analyst who serves as a mediator between the expert's knowledge and the company's knowledge memory. The role of the analyst has been discussed for decades in KE, but has been unfairly overlooked in KM discourse and practice, and this paper tries to close this gap.The analysis provided here also enriches the discussion on innovation in the organization. If, as Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) posit, transformation of tacit into explicit knowledge is one of the cornerstones of knowledge creation, the better an organization is able to elicit tacit knowledge from its employees and share it across organization, the more innovative it can be.This paper focused on enriching the tools and techniques of KM with findings from KE. However, the authors suggest that cross-enrichment of these two disciplines could work both ways. For example, discussion of knowledge elicitation methods in KE is dominated by two limitations of the experts: the cost of their time, and the tacitness of their knowledge. Yet, as KM discourse suggests, the motivation of an expert (as well as his/her inclination to knowledge hoarding) may also influence the outcomes of knowledge elicitation techniques. Therefore, the KE field can benefit from a better understanding of the motivational dispositions of an expert. This is one of the possible future directions for bridging and enriching these two disciplines.Another future direction for discussion between KM and KE refers to the potential for application of other knowledge elicitation methods in the KM context. For example, the proposed classification may be enriched by a group of so-called indirect knowledge elicitation methods that includes computer-based methods (CBM) such as data- and web-mining techniques. Data mining, also known as knowledge discovery, is the practice of automatically searching large stores of data for meaningful patterns (knowledge). With the advances in the process of data collection, the 1990s witnessed an explosion in the growth of data available online. This, coupled with the stellar advances in computing technologies, really improved the image of \"data mining\". The web is the largest dynamic and online store known today, and web mining refers to the process of extracting knowledge from web pages by exploring their contents, the hyperlinks that connect these pages, or usage patterns of users (Snasel and Kudelka, 2009). This paper did not discuss CBM as these methods do not involve any interaction with an expert and thus fall outside the focus of this paper; however, they might be of interest to knowledge managers. Another area of potential interest is a group of analytical methods that comprises specialized sophisticated techniques that can work with different modes of knowledge. For example, visual-aided techniques help to organize the hierarchical cluster diagram (classification) by card-sorting (Moody et al., 1998) and image-ranking procedures. These techniques can reveal the tacit preferences and priorities in decision making by traditional paper methods that involve the use of stimulus cards and/or pictures/images. These methods are secondary to the ones discussed in this paper as they can be applied only after the initial knowledge has been elicited with the help of the methods described, but they can also enrich the repertoire of the analyst's knowledge elicitation techniques from a knowledge management perspective.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - A significant part of knowledge and experience in an organization belongs not to the organization itself, but to the individuals it employs. Therefore, knowledge management (KM) tasks should include eliciting knowledge from knowledgeable individuals. The paper aims to argue that the current palette of methods proposed for this in KM discourse is limited by idealistic assumptions about the behavior of knowledge owners. This paper also aims to enrich the repertoire of methods that can be used in an organization to extract knowledge (both tacit and explicit) from its employees by bridging KM and knowledge engineering and its accomplishments in the knowledge elicitation field.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper is based on extensive literature review and 20 years of experience of one of the authors in applying various knowledge elicitation techniques in multiple companies and contexts.\nFindings: - The paper proposes that the special agent (analyst) might be needed to elicit knowledge from individuals (experts) in order to allow further knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. Based on this idea, the paper proposes a new classification of the knowledge elicitation techniques that highlights the role of analyst in the knowledge elicitation process.\nPractical implications: - The paper contributes to managerial practice by describing a systemic variety of knowledge elicitation techniques with direct recommendations of their feasibility in the KM context.\nOriginality/value: - The paper contributes to a wider use of knowledge engineering methodologies and technologies by KM researchers and practitioners in organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Inducing the internationalisation of family manufacturing firms from a transition context
|
[
"Owner-manager",
"Family-owned firms",
"Inducing internationalisation",
"Transition country context"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recent studies have analysed the early internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), albeit defining them differently (McDougall et al., 1994; Oviatt and McDougall, 1994; Knight et al., 2004; Masango and Marinova, 2012). These SMEs have started their internationalisation either when established or soon after, and some of them are family firms. Nonetheless, ownership specificity has rarely surfaced when studying the internationalisation of SMEs (Crick et al., 2006). Claims that the internationalisation of family SMEs follows a traditional internationalisation pathway due to risk aversion, limited managerial capabilities and restricted finance have raised doubts concerning their early internationalisation (Graves and Thomas, 2004, 2008; Thomas and Graves, 2005). Yet, many such firms are fast to engage in international activities, though ostensibly through less risky internationalisation modes such as exporting (Bilkey and Tesar, 1977). The way in which these firms induce their internationalisation necessitates a better understanding, especially when considering their contextual embeddedness (Sim, 2006), to understand why they decide to go abroad.\n2. Theoretical background: Early internationalisation is a contentious concept in internationalisation literature more so in relation to its speed than to its drivers. While speed has provided no consensus (Hurmerinta-Peltomaki, 2003; Acedo and Jones, 2007; Masango and Marinova, 2012), it is invariably related to market conditions and entrepreneur specifics. Early internationalisation presents an impediment to family firms, as they are usually small with restricted finances facing the challenge of substantial fixed, sunk costs of operating abroad (Pedersen and Shaver, 2011). Extant studies claim that they need ample time to accumulate resources needed for overseas operations. Hall and Tu (2004) argue that fixed costs associated with international expansion may be too high for family firms due to their liability of smallness (Aldrich and Auster, 1986). Some research findings claim that family firms' owners-managers usually adopt a long-term perspective on internationalisation (Moss et al., 2014), which makes such firms late internationalisers (Gallo and Garcia Pont, 1996; Jaskiewicz et al., 2015). A study by Ivanova et al. (2015, p. 299) on family firm internationalisation suggests that \"family involvement in ownership and management is found to be rather restrictive than enabling internationalization\", whereas external input in ownership and management has a positive impact on internationalisation.\n3. Methodology: As this paper explores how family firms (Chrisman et al., 2010) from a transition context induce internationalisation, a topic barely studied in family business literature, a qualitative research approach has been adopted (Reay and Zhang, 2014) to reveal the specificities of inducing family firm internationalisation in a transition context. As suggested by Myers (2009), we deliberately asked the people who induced the internationalisation to address how and why they induced internationalisation using face-to-face interviews. Thus, the unit of analysis is the internationalisation inducement defined by the entrepreneur-, firm- and context-specificity communicated through the words of the decision-maker. The interviews started with a friendly greeting and settling in questions trying to establish cultural ignorance and to allow the interviewees to express themselves and give as much detail as possible. The interviews were planned so as to exclude the interviewers injecting themselves into the interaction (Bernard, 1995) and to allow the interviewees to answer in their own terms and experiences. The questionnaire included structured questions, such as: When did you establish your company? What is the firm's ownership? When did internationalisation start? What was your education, professional and international experience when internationalisation started? These were followed by descriptive questions, such as: Could you please describe what motivated you to go abroad? How in actual terms did the internationalisation begin? Why did you go overseas? Can you please explain when and how you induced internationalisation - what information did you search for and how did you start selling abroad? What facilitated the process of going abroad? Can you please point out whether there was any institutional support and how it was provided to you when you decided to sell overseas? What was the role of the family ownership in initiating internationalisation? Example questions were also asked, like: You mentioned numerous motivating factors, could you give examples and explain them? Also, process questions were used, such as: Can you please describe the steps of the initial internationalisation in terms of timing, people involved, sequence of key events that led to the first export deal? All questions aimed to get a thorough understanding of the factors that enabled internationalisation inducement, the key actors and their actions.\n4. Research findings: Data show that all sample firms have induced internationalisation through exporting within zero to two years of establishment (Table II), thus being early internationalising SMEs, despite their liabilities of smallness and newness (Stinchcombe, 1965).\n5. Discussion: This paper contributes to the understanding of internationalisation inducement of family firms in a transition context by showing that Bulgarian family manufacturing firms internationalise early and exhibit mostly proactive behaviour in finding international clients. It is the defined international mindset (cognition) and internationalisation thrust (action driver) that pushed owners-managers to induce internationalisation through contacts in their social spaces. Owner-manager's internationalisation mindset and thrust are supported by relevant education, foreign language proficiency and previous experience enabling a targeted search for foreign clients. Similar results are reported by Daszkiewicz and Wach (2014) in Poland, where family firms proactively seek internationalisation to survive and grow. The straightforward decision-making process within the family, safeguarded by the fusion of ownership and control, abates the dissuading impact of lacking institutional support and unfavourable pressures of the home country context. Our findings show that family ownership and control leads to swift decision-making (Ramasamy et al., 2012) and enactment of the decision to internationalise. In line with Calabro et al. (2012) and Zahra (2003), our study finds that in a transition context, full family ownership and management has not been a deterrent to early internationalisation, claimed by Sciascia et al. (2012) and Mitter et al. (2014) based on research in developed country contexts, in the USA and Austria, respectively.\n6. Policy implications, limitations and future research: The importance of the paper for policymakers is related to the recognition that family-owned firms, which are substantially contributing to the economy, should be supported to develop their social spaces through encouraging and enabling linkages between socio-economic actors that can expand the bounded sociality of firms (Gelbuda et al., 2014). Such an approach may spur proactive search of contacts for internationalisation inducement and effectively increase the number of internationalising family firms. Moreover, the nurturing of international orientation requires investment of state resources to create relevant knowledge and experience, generate self-awareness and encourage entrepreneurial spirit in next generations of family firm entrepreneurs. This can only be done by education-business-institutional linkages, national and local development platforms and a better integration of business education with accumulated knowledge and experience in SME internationalisation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the internationalisation inducement in family firms with domestic capital operating in a specific industry in a transition country. Examining the effect of entrepreneur-, firm- and context- specific factors, it provides an insight into the start of internationalisation via exporting and its initiating features.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study uses a qualitative research approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews from informants with conclusive decision-making power and analysed using a combination of inductive and deductive coding.\nFindings: The findings show that the sample firms internationalise early exhibiting mostly proactive behaviour in finding international clients. Owner-manager international orientation and commitment combined with contacts in his or her social spaces lead to early export inducement despite the fusion of ownership and control, and regardless of transition context volatility and inefficiency.\nResearch limitations/implications: The limitations include the sample size and its industry embeddedness limiting generalisability. The key implications are that family firms need support to develop their social spaces through encouraging and enabling linkages between socio-economic actors that can expand the bounded sociality of the firm.\nOriginality/value: The owner-manager orientation, objectives, commitment and characteristics, coupled with the straightforward decision-making process that is safeguarded by full family ownership, can abate the dissuading role of the perceived lack of institutional support for small and medium-sized enterprise internationalisation in a transition context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Do aggressive pro forma earnings-reporting firms have difficulty disclosing intellectual capital? Australian evidence
|
[
"Intellectual capital disclosure",
"Market reaction",
"Aggressive pro forma earnings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The rise of the \"new economy\", which is driven by information and knowledge, has led to an increased interest in intellectual capital (IC) in recent decades. In this new-economy age, only firms that account for their IC can positively influence the investment decisions and the value of firms (Holland, 2003; Bukh et al., 2005; Bukh, 2003; Joshi et al., 2013). Firms that do not disclose IC generate information asymmetries and a lack of transparency, so this deficiency in IC reporting means that financial reporting partially loses its relevance (Barth et al., 2001; Vafaei et al., 2011). Therefore, allowing for sufficient IC disclosure would enhance the value relevance of accounting numbers to investors (Lev and Zarowin, 1999; Barth and Clinch, 1996).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Pro forma earnings\n3. Theoretical framework and hypotheses development: According to signalling theory, signalling makes investors and other stakeholders reassess the value of a firm before making decisions (Whiting and Miller, 2008). Firms have several ways of signalling information about themselves, of which voluntary disclosure of positive accounting information is considered one of the most effective (Watson et al., 2002; Xiao et al., 2004). Studies found that increased voluntary disclosure leads to an increase in stock price. This means that due to the significance of IC for future wealth creation and forward-looking benefits, voluntary IC disclosure could be a very effective means for firms to signal their superior quality (Healy et al., 1999; Whiting and Miller, 2008). Voluntary disclosure of IC could distinguish firms with a strong IC base from low-quality firms (Williams, 2001). This could mean that a firm's share price would rise with adequate IC disclosure, which in turn means that failure to provide relevant information about IC could weaken a firm's financial position and reduce its competitiveness (Lev and Zarowin, 1999; Barth and Clinch, 1996).\n4. Research design: 4.1 Data and sample selection\n5. Empirical results: 5.1 Descriptive statistics for the sample\n6. Additional testing: 6.1 Testing aggressive pro forma earnings reporting\n7. Conclusion: This paper is based on signalling theory to examine whether aggressive pro forma earnings-reporting firms have difficulty signalling sufficient IC and how investors react to this aggressive pro forma earnings reporting. This paper provides new insight into the relationship between sufficient IC disclosure and earnings management, arguing that low-quality-reporting firms are less likely to voluntarily disclose sufficient IC because they find it difficult to imitate IC. Motivated by the incentive to increase the firm's market valuation, low-quality-reporting firms engage in aggressive pro forma earnings reporting to influence investor perception. Using content analysis and time-industry fixed-effects regression models, this paper finds a negative relationship between sufficient IC disclosure and aggressive pro forma earnings reporting, suggesting that aggressive pro forma earnings-reporting firms are less likely to disclose sufficient IC. In addition, this paper finds that investors react favourably to aggressively reported pro forma earnings figures, and believe that pro forma earnings have greater incremental value-relevance information than do statutory earnings, meaning that these firms use aggressive pro forma earnings disclosure to influence investor perception of firm performances.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether aggressive pro forma earnings-reporting firms are difficult in relation to signalling sufficient intellectual capital (IC), and how the market reacts to aggressive pro forma earnings reporting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Content analysis of 610 annual reports of Australian firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange 200 is used to obtain IC information. Fixed-effects logistic and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are used to examine the hypotheses.\nFindings: The study finds that aggressive pro forma earnings reporting is negatively and significantly associated with sufficient IC disclosure. Moreover, this paper finds that investors react favourably to aggressive pro forma earnings reporting, and believe that pro forma earnings have greater incremental value-relevance information than statutory earnings.\nResearch limitations/implications: The coding framework used in this study comprises 33 IC items. Other studies have used coding frameworks comprising fewer or more varied IC items. Therefore, when comparing the results of this and other studies, the interpretation of the findings must recognise the differences in approach.\nPractical implications: Sufficient IC disclosure may help investors to distinguish high-reporting-quality firms and low-reporting-quality firms. The paper demonstrates that aggressive pro forma earnings-reporting firms, which are low-reporting-quality firms, are less likely to disclose sufficient IC.\nOriginality/value: This paper is the first to examine the relationship between aggressive pro forma reporting and IC disclosure. Moreover, this paper built a theoretical framework based on signalling theory to develop research hypotheses, which extend the research on IC underpinned by signalling theory.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Ageing employees and human resource management - evidence of gender-sensitivity?
|
[
"Gender",
"Human resource management",
"Age",
"Ageing employee"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Ageing has become a necessary focus of interest in today's society. The workforce in Europe is ageing as a result of the baby-boom generation born in the 1940s combined with the current low birth rate. The ageing population has a great impact on social insurance and pension systems, which are challenged within the existing models of social support (Bengston and Lowenstein, 2003; see Ilmarinen, 2006). It has been claimed, for example, that ageing population will lead to lower proportions of workforce in industrialized nations, which threatens productivity as well as the ability to support an ageing population (Krug, 2002; see Powell and Cook, 2009). Therefore, the need for the workforce to continue working into later life has been stressed in recent years. For example, several steps have been taken in order to close the early exit routes and raise the employment levels of ageing employees in many European countries (Henkens et al., 2008; Walker, 2005). However, at the same time ageing employees are still frequently found to be as the main victims of downsizing or restructuring (Buyens et al., 2009).\nAgeing and gender in the field of HRM: Usually, age is understood in terms of chronological age, referring to one's calendar age. However, the concept of age is multidimensional. For example, Sterns and Doverspike (1989) have given the often-cited fivefold distinction of age: in addition to chronological age there is functional age, psychosocial age, organizational age and lifespan age. Functional, physical or biological age relates to changes in health, fitness, functioning and appearance. Psychosocial age is related to the self and the social perception of age: subjective age defines how old a person feels, with which age cohort he or she identifies, and how old he or she desires to be, whereas the social perception of age focuses, for example, on the age at which society perceives an individual to be older, the definitions and stereotypes of older employees and the implications for HR decisions of labelling an employee as older (Kooij et al., 2008; Uotinen, 2005; Laslett, 1989; Doering et al., 1983). Organizational age refers to seniority and organizational tenure, but it can also refer to career stage, skill obsolescence and age norms within the organization (Kooij et al., 2008). The lifespan concept can best be measured by an individual's life stage or family status (Kooij et al., 2008; Sterns and Doverspike, 1989; Sterns and Miklos, 1995). Relational age, on the other hand, describes how an individual's age compares with the actual or perceived age distribution within the organization, work team or supervisor-subordinate dyad (Armstrong-Stassen and Lee, 2009). The age-based conceptualizations are interrelated (Kooij et al., 2008), and the meanings that are related them are socially and culturally constructed (Uotinen, 2005). An alternative method of measuring age is work ability (Tepas and Barnes-Farrell, 2002), emphasizing the point that the ability to work should not only be seen in terms of changes in a person's functioning, but rather a process of human resources (physical, mental and social capacities, health, education and competence, values, attitudes, and motivation) in relation to work demands, the work environment and management (Ilmarinen, 2006).\nMethodology: Integrative literature reviews are usually conducted in order to address either mature or new topics (Torraco, 2005). This study falls on the latter category. Due to the fact that the topic concerning ageing employees in the field of HRM is relatively new, and it has not yet undergone a comprehensive literature review, our aim is to map the territory. Many of the studies related to ageing employees and HRM have been empirically driven; therefore, we believe that there is a need for an integrative literature review, which organizes the present research.\nAnalysing studies relating to ageing employees and HRM: We first organized articles into four broad research strands: age management, retention, ageism and gender-sensitive studies. However, we acknowledge that this categorization is overlapping. After that we analysed the level of these studies and the scope of HRM. Finally, we evaluate how these strands of research fit to the Legge's (2005) HRM models. Based on our literature review, it can be argued that the term \"ag(e)ing\", \"older\" or \"mature\" employee was used synonymously in the analysed studies. However, the threshold of the ageing differed from the age of 40 (Buyens et al., 2009) to age of 50 (Armnstrong-Stassen and Templer, 2005; Armstrong-Stassen and Cattaneo, 2010; Winkelmann-Gleed, 2012). For example, Ilmarinen (2006) has defined ageing employees as 45 and over, and justified it by the fact that this is the period when major changes occur in work ability and that this \"early\" definition of ageing employees provides better possibilities for implementing actions to raise low participation rates among ageing employees and prevent early retirement. In the analysed studies, age was understood dominantly as a chronological age. Studies which recognized the gender aspect were in minority. However, there were studies which treated gender as a background variable (Buyens et al., 2009).\nConclusions: Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the different research strands concerning studies related to human resource management (HRM) and ageing employees. More specifically, the paper analyses how age and gender are understood and conceptualized in these studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An integrative literature review concerning ageing employees and HRM with special reference to gender is the approach taken in this paper.\nFindings: Recent studies relating to HRM and ageing employees were categorized and analysed. The paper concludes that there is a need for a more holistic understanding of the concept of age in studies related to ageing employees and HRM and also argues that the intersection of age and gender is under-researched in the field of HRM.\nPractical implications: Based on literature review the paper outlined directions for how gender-neutral age management studies may be extended. A pluralist understanding of age and gender would help to understand the different needs and expectations that ageing employees may have in terms of HR practices and policies. Institutional practices and legislation can promote equality, but organizational contexts, both internal and external, should be scanned in order to recognize possible ageist or age-blind practices. Ageing women in particular have the burden of being recognized in terms of chronological stereotyped changes that might damage their work and career.\nOriginality/value: Research on ageing employees and HRM with special reference to gender is limited and therefore an integrative literature review is needed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
New applications for importance-performance analysis (IPA) in higher education: Understanding student satisfaction
|
[
"Service quality",
"IPA",
"Student satisfaction",
"Importance-performance",
"Service-product bundle"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An increasingly market-driven higher education (HE) sector is forcing managers to rethink their business models as they strive to increase productivity and global competitiveness (Spender, 2014; Tian and Martin, 2014). In a particularly turbulent business school environment (Davies, 2016), there is increasing pressure for institutions to meet industry-based standards and deliver increasingly high quality programmes (Vaughan and Woodruffe-Burton, 2011), as well as conducting research that is more relevant to non-academic stakeholders (De Onzono and Carmona, 2016). Business schools and universities are continually seeking to improve their performance in order to attract and retain the best possible students, recruit exceptional staff and improve their financial position (Mazzarol and Soutar, 2012; Willcoxson et al., 2011). Increasing attention is being placed upon rankings in global and national university league tables. Rankings are partially determined by the student experience, satisfaction and employability, which drive institutional image, brand equity and reputation (Thomas et al., 2014; Mazzarol and Soutar, 2012). Satisfaction is closely linked to future income and recommendations (Chan et al., 2003; Fornell, 1992). This paper uses importance-performance analysis (IPA) in an attempt to better understand student satisfaction which is an increasingly important metric for measuring performance in the HE sector.\nService quality in HE: Quality and excellence represent the aspirations of many organisations including educational institutions, as attainment of both is likely to provide a competitive advantage. It is widely accepted that organisations are operating in extremely challenging environments where it is important to continuously enhance quality to be competitive (Baron et al., 2009; Parasuraman et al., 1985). Universities are increasingly competing for both local and international students (Pfeffermann, 2016; Paswan and Ganesh, 2009). HE service characteristics include intangibility, perishability, heterogeneity and inseparability. These characteristics make it difficult for increasingly demanding students to make choices between university providers, unless they are aware of the quality of education provision. Service quality is therefore a discerning factor for HE institutions seeking to set themselves apart from their competitors and produce high quality graduates (Chong and Ahmed, 2015; Arif et al., 2013). Higher quality is driven by a combination of excellent learning processes as well as student satisfaction relating to the service delivered. Service quality necessity in HE has been discussed from the specific viewpoint of students as consumers (Joseph et al., 2005; Russell, 2005; Tan and Kek, 2004; Oldfield and Baron, 2000). New business models mean universities are increasingly taking a more business-like approach while attempting to meet and exceed the needs of students as clients (Gruber et al., 2010). Managers are attempting to monitor service quality as they strive to increase student satisfaction and profitability.\nIPA: The IPA or IPA model (Martilla and James, 1977) is a tool that can be used to support organisational improvement and marketing strategy development, affording versatility through customisation. Versatility underpins the assessment of \"importance\" and \"performance\", thus steering \"priority improvement areas\". It is achieved by modifying the models' structural composition. An example of this is the adoption of specific scale sizes for particular applications (Slack, 1994). The IPA model provides a matrix that can enable decision makers and stakeholder groupings to illustrate the most important service attributes as perceived by consumers. A high level of performance (which in this paper relates to student satisfaction) with these priority characteristics is closely linked with an enhanced likelihood of service recommendation (Sheng et al., 2014). As illustrated in Figure 1, an attractive and interesting feature of the IPA model is that the results may be graphically displayed on a two-dimensional grid after examining the mean importance and performance ratings of the service attributes. Presentation of the results on the grid will help managers to interpret the data and to identify areas that need attention. The four quadrants are labelled as Quadrant A (Concentrate here); Quadrant B (Keep up the good work); Quadrant C (Low priority); and Quadrant D (Possible overkill). Due to its usefulness in identifying areas for better allocating resources, the IPA model has been adopted in many sectors. Applications in the education sector have, however, been limited (e.g. Angell et al., 2008; Daud et al., 2011; Douglas et al., 2006; O'Neil and Palmer, 2004; Yildiz, 2013). Therefore, there is a need for more research that highlights that potential usefulness of IPA in an HE context, which may help address the lack of applications in this sector in the future.\nStudy design and data collection: Instrument development, piloting and testing\nStudy findings: Participant overview\nConclusion and implications: An increasingly competitive and market-driven environment means managers and institutions in the HE sector are increasingly seeking new business models to improve organisational and strategic performance. Student satisfaction is one element of performance. In this study, we apply an IPA model to assess the extent to which students are satisfied with their experiences and the extent of any gap in their expectations. Service priority areas have been categorised for consideration as a consequence of this assessment. This prioritisation has the potential to result in a more effective and efficient allocation of resources, and hence, recognition of priority areas for improvement.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The constantly evolving higher education (HE) sector is creating a need for new business models and tools for evaluating performance. In this paper, an overview of the importance-performance analysis (IPA) model and its applicability as a management tool for assessing student satisfaction in the HE sector is provided. The purpose of this paper is to apply IPA in a new and novel manner, undertaking analysis at three levels; the individual student, for individual attributes and at a construct or factor level which combines individual attributes that are correlated. A practical application is illustrated, assessing the gap between the importance placed on specific student satisfaction attributes and corresponding levels of student-perceived performance realised.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The \"service product bundle\" (Douglas et al., 2006) is refined based on focus group evaluation. Survey responses from 823 students studying across four Malaysian private universities are analysed using factor analysis and the IPA model utilised to identify importance-performance gaps and explore the implication of the iso-rating line as well as alternative cut-off zones.\nFindings: Factor reduction of 33 original measurement items results in eight definable areas of service provision, which provides a refined and extended management tool of statistically reliable and valid constructs.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is undertaken in a private business school context in Malaysia. Further research could focus on other universities or countries, as well as faculties such as computing and engineering or explore other elements of education-based performance.\nPractical implications: The research method and study outcomes can support HE managers to allocate resources more effectively and develop strategies to improve quality and increase student satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: Distinct from other IPA-based studies, analysis is undertaken at three levels; the individual participant, for individual items and at the factor level.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A framework for configuring sales support structure
|
[
"Sales support",
"Sales transactions",
"Role stress",
"Selling",
"Sales force",
"Stress",
"Performance levels"
] |
[
{
"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 often necessary to use sales teams to effectively and efficiently meet the needs of customers (Brown et al., 2005). For example, Weitz and Bradford (1999, p. 244) suggested that team-based selling is important \"because an individual salesperson does not possess the knowledge or intrafirm influence to propose and implement a program that has the potential for building a competitive advantage for the buyer-seller dyad\". Yet salespeople often believe that they are spending too much time on non-productive activities, such as technical support, approving sales, paperwork, internal meetings and data entry (e.g. Barber and Tietje, 2008; Jaramillo et al., 2006; Cummings, 2004). Accordingly, many firms are replacing \"lone wolf\" salespeople with relationship managers who are supported by a diverse group of employees inside and outside of the sales department (Bradford et al., 2010). Moncrief and Marshall (2005, p. 16) explain that salespeople are \"very expensive assets\" and that a salesperson's time is better spent making calls on qualified prospects and building existing customer relationships than on less productive activities. However, to our knowledge, extant research has not identified when it is appropriate to provide support for specific sales activities. This is important because it is not necessarily more efficient to have employees specialize in a subset of sales activities given the costs associated with providing sales support (e.g. Pinker and Shumsky, 2000).Previous research has identified a number of selling conditions in which it is beneficial for multiple employees to work together in the sales process, such as high workload (Jones et al., 2005), high customization (Moon and Armstrong, 1994; Jones et al., 2005), high complexity (Ustuner and Godes, 2006; Pinker and Shumsky, 2000; Weitz and Bradford, 1999), and high risk (Moon and Armstrong, 1994). We contend that individual sales activities vary across similar dimensions - workload, customization, complexity, and prequalification risk. Hence, some activities may have a higher workload, others may have higher customization, and still others might be relatively high on both. We argue that the appropriateness of assigning a sales activity to a particular sales support structure will vary based on these underlying dimensions. For example, if the workload of an activity is low, it may be most appropriate to have salespeople support themselves; yet, if the workload of an activity is very high, salespeople would have difficulty performing the activity well and would be more prone to role stress (Cullen et al., 2008; Singh, 2000).When sales support is necessary, it can be provided within the sales force or by an external group. Moon and Armstrong (1994) explain that the selling center includes all of the sales and non-sales employees who participate in the selling process. Customer transactions often require a variety of sales activities, such as customer contact/selling, manual labor, delivery, installation, technical consultation, data entry/reporting, coordination or prequalification (e.g. Barber and Tietje, 2008; Moncrief et al., 2006; Sumrall, 1992). It is possible to assign some of these tasks to a core sales team and others to external centralized departments. However, only the core sales team is required to participate in the sales transaction (Moon and Armstrong, 1994). Thus, salespeople do not have control of sales activities handled outside of the core selling team, even if the sales activity plays a key role in the sales transaction. Accordingly, Ustuner and Godes (2006) argue that managers should consider creating dedicated support teams when product offerings are complex so that salespeople do not have to spend time coordinating intra-organizational networks.To our knowledge, the extant literature has not systematically examined how sales activities should be delegated within the selling center. Hence, while it is acknowledged that salespeople often receive support, the following questions remain:* When is it appropriate to provide dedicated support for a specific sales activity?* If dedicated support is appropriate, why assign sales activities to external departments if it is more difficult for salespeople?Thus, from the existing literature it is not clear when it is appropriate for sales activities to be the responsibility of salespeople (self-support), a cross-functional selling team (core team support), or a centralized external department (external support). Therefore, in this study, we will examine the conditions in which it is appropriate to provide sales support and whether the support should be part of the core selling team or an external group. Afterwards, we present managerial guidelines for allocating sales activities and then discuss directions for future research.\nSales support: Sales support structure\nDiscussion: In this section, we answer our research questions and then discuss the influence of sales strategy, purchasing situation, and sales conditions. Our first research question is \"When is it appropriate to provide dedicated support for a specific sales activity?\". The answer is that salespeople should handle sales activities that are light to moderate in workload, relatively easy to learn - particularly when turnover is high - and not related to prequalifying risky customers. Our model highlights the importance of allocating risky prequalification sales activities to sales support. Assigning these activities to salespeople could lead to higher sales revenue, yet decrease sales performance. Furthermore, while it may seem intuitive to provide support for activities that have a high workload or are complex, salespeople frequently complain that \"a large portion of their productive time is wasted in non-selling tasks instead of pursuing sales opportunities that can help them meet their performance goals\" (Jaramillo et al., 2006, p. 25). As sales gurus often advise salespeople to become experts in every aspect of their job (e.g. Greer, 2008), it is understandable that sales managers may feel reluctant to provide sales support. Accordingly, our model can help managers to determine the right conditions in which to offer support.The second question is \"When dedicated support is appropriate, why assign sales activities to external departments if it is more difficult for salespeople?\". This answer depends largely on customization and prequalification risk. Core team support is best when sales activities need to be customized yet have either a high workload or a high learning curve. However, core team support will not be as beneficial when prequalification risk is high because salespeople could potentially influence the prequalification process. For risky prequalification sales activities, or for sales activities that have high workload and low customization, external support is most appropriate. As not all activities have the same characteristics, it may be desirable to use different types of support for different activities. For example, coordination and technical support might be handled by the core team, while financing might be allocated to an external department.It is important to point out that the characteristics of each sales activity dimension will vary not only by industry but also by sales strategy, purchasing situation, and selling conditions. For sales strategy, firms can be transaction-oriented, in which they focus on maximizing the profitability of each discrete transaction, or relationship-oriented, in which they focus on building mutually beneficial partnerships in order to maximize long-term profitability (Weitz and Bradford, 1999). For example, in order to meet the specific needs of customers, firms with a relational strategy will need to customize many sales activities more than firms with a transactional strategy. However, firms with a transactional strategy will sell to greater numbers of different customers, increasing the workload of sales activities related to processing new customers. Similarly, as strong relationships increase the harm caused by cheating (Mishra et al., 1998), firms with a relational strategy will have more prequalification risk than firms with transactional strategies. Hence, the dimensions of sales activities will often depend on sales strategy. As Geiger and Finch (2011) found that firms often pursue transactional strategies towards smaller customers and relational strategies towards larger customers, it is possible that a sales activity might have different characteristics even within the same firm. Accordingly, we recommend that firms using both strategies consider a different sales support structure for relational and transactional customers.Similarly, purchasing situation will likely impact sales activities as well. We posit that many sales activities, such as technical support and internal coordination, have very different dimensions for a major capital equipment purchase than for a supply reorder. As such, the appropriate sales support would be different. For example, the medical/dental supply firm mentioned earlier sells both capital equipment and basic supplies to dentist offices. As the sales activity dimensions of each purchase type are different, they use separate channels of distribution. For medical equipment sales, they use a core team consisting of a salesperson, several technicians, and a coordinator, as well as an external financing department when credit/leasing options are needed. For medical supply reorders, they use several external departments consisting of an automated ordering system and a centralized logistics department. The salesperson is only required for answering questions. Accordingly, it may also be beneficial to consider a different sales support structure for each purchasing situation.Finally, sales activity dimensions change in response to environmental conditions. For example, after the 2007 financial crisis, banks tightened lending standards to customers and business (De Haas and Van Horen, 2010). As credit became more difficult to obtain, many customers who were previously qualified could no longer receive credit; hence, the prequalification risk for a variety of sales activities relating to new customer development would also increase. Similarly, the release of a new technology would likely alter the workload and complexity of technological support.\nManagerial guidelines: Based on our framework and discussion, it is possible to develop a decision model for assigning sales activities to sales support (shown in Figure 2). These normative guidelines are meant to assist managers in deciding how to structure sales support for any given sales activity with the ultimate aim of increasing overall sales performance. We discuss five questions managers should answer when deciding whether to allocate a sales activity to salespeople, the core sales team, or an external department.Q1. Does the sales activity involve qualifying risky customers?As discussed above, prequalification of customers is important when the cost of selling to poorly qualified customers is high. If the risk of selling to poorly qualified customers is low, then prequalification activities can be left to salespeople or the core selling team. However, the stricter the prequalification process, the more role stress salespeople will feel and the more likely they will shirk on prequalification activities in order to increase performance on other sales activities. Hence, we recommend that when prequalification is important, the final decision for said activity should be handled by a department outside of the sales force. Therefore, if the answer is \"yes\", the risk of selling to poorly qualified customers is high, managers should use an external support structure for prequalification, where the \"approver\" role is outsourced to an external department. If the answer is \"no\", continue to Q2.Q2. Can salespeople handle the workload of the sales activity comfortably?This question assesses whether it is even plausible to have a single salesperson responsible for the activity. Sales managers should assess the workload of the sales activity and compare it with the working hours of salespeople. If a single person cannot handle the workload comfortably, then some sort of team structure must be implemented. Furthermore, managers must consider what they believe is a reasonable pipeline of customers for salespeople. If a single transaction takes most of the salesperson's working hours, salespeople will have very little time to work on more than one transaction at a time or prospect for more customers. If salespeople can handle the workload of a sales activity continue to Q3; otherwise skip to Q5.Q3.Does it require considerable expertise?Even if salespeople can handle the workload of an activity comfortably, it may still be desirable to provide salespeople assistance if there are a variety of complex skills involved. Similar to workload, managers should assess the amount of time and effort it will take for a salesperson to become competent on the sales activity. The longer it takes to learn the sales activity, the higher the costs in terms of wages, lost selling time, and training. If the activity requires considerable expertise, continue to Q4. If not, we recommend self-support, as the costs of using specialized support will be greater than the benefits of specialized support.Q4. Is turnover high?A key question for determining the value of training salespeople on a sales activity is whether the turn-over of salespeople is high or low. In addition to training costs, many complex sales activities require time on the job to accumulate skills and expertise. If salespeople have high turnover, they may not have enough time to become competent at complex sales activities. In that case, it is better to assign those activities to specialists with lower turn-over. Hence, if turn-over is high, continue to Q5. Conversely, if turn-over is low, it may be worthwhile to train salespeople on the activity, to avoid bottlenecks in the selling process (Pinker and Shumsky, 2000). Therefore, we recommend self-support.Q5. Is customization high?If the workload is high or complexity and turnover are high, then managers should provide dedicated sales support. The choice between providing support as part of the cross-functional selling team and an external departments depends on the degree of customization required for each sales activity. As explained before, external support has the advantage of economies of scale but is less able to customize offerings, while core team support has fewer economies of scale but is far more agile. Therefore, if customization is high, then the sales support should be integrated into the core selling team, in order to ensure customer needs are satisfied. If customization is low, then sales support should be provided externally, in order to maximize the efficiency of providing the support.\nFuture research: Salesperson-sales support conflict\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to examine when it is appropriate to provide dedicated support for a sales activity, and in cases where support is desirable, to explore the choice between core team support and external support.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Sales transactions typically require a diverse range of sales activities, including customer contact, scheduling appointments, internal meetings, processing orders, and preparing financing applications. This research develops a framework for understanding how to structure sales support for specific sales activities.\nFindings: - Each sales activity has four dimensions, i.e. workload, customization, complexity, and prequalification risk. Support structure (self-support, core team support, and external support) moderates the influence of the four sales activity dimensions on sales activity performance and salesperson role stress. These, in turn, impact overall sales performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This research presents a broad conceptual model of sales support structure. Further research should test this framework using empirical data.\nPractical implications: - Normative recommendations are made for managers about how to allocate sales activities to sales support.\nOriginality/value: - This research proposes four relevant dimensions of sales activities that should be considered when allocating sales activities to members of the selling center. The framework will help managers, academicians, and business students understand how sales support structure impacts sales performance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Supervisor support in transfer of training: looking back at past research
|
[
"Self-efficacy",
"Supervisor support",
"Transfer of training",
"Motivation to transfer",
"Trainee characteristics",
"Training motivation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Defined as the degree to which trainees apply to their job the knowledge, skills, behaviour and attitudes gained in training (Holton et al., 1997), transfer of training is an important element in the criteria of training effectiveness, which helps both employees and organizations improve their performance (Bhatti et al., 2013). In their seminal work on transfer, Baldwin and Ford (1988) have summed up the broad factors responsible for training transfer as: trainee (or individual) characteristics (ability, personality and motivation); training design (principles of learning, sequencing and training content); and work environment (support and opportunity to use). Of these factors, we have made an attempt in this study to explore the role of supervisor support as a component of work environment in transfer of training, on the basis of review of existing literature.\nNeed for research: Need for transfer research from an organizational perspective has been perceived by several researchers (e.g. Ford and Weissbein, 1997; Burke and Hutchins, 2007; Brown and McCracken, 2009). Nijman (2004) opines that although there is a strong common assumption that support from supervisors has a positive effect on transfer of training, more research is needed to test its validity. Bhatti et al. (2013) have concluded that previous researchers have not been able to get fruitful results about the roles of supervisor and peers in training transfer and that the conflicting results mostly found in literature are due to lack of understanding about the kind of support at each level of training. The authors have hence suggested further clarification of such roles in the training transfer process before, during and after training, as the timing factor needs to be considered while examining support.\nSupervisor support: Supervisor support, one of the social support variables in the celebrated Learning Transfer System Inventory (LTSI) model of Holton et al. (2000), is described as the extent to which supervisor-managers support and reinforce use of learning on the job (Holton et al., 2000). Such support takes the form of encouragement to a trainee to use newly learnt skills, assistance in identifying situations to use such skills, guidance in the proper application of the trained skills, provision of feedback, positive reinforcement of new applications and improvements, etc., all of which facilitate positive transfer of training (Elangovan and Karakowsky, 1999). Other important forms of such support affecting transfer include: discussion on the use of new learning, involvement or familiarity of supervisor with the training and positive feedback (Lim and Johnson, 2002 as cited by Nijman et al., 2006).\nInfluence of supervisor support on transfer of training: divergent findings: Several authors (e.g. Kontoghiorghes, 1998; Gumuseli and Ergin, 2002; Cromwell and Kolb, 2004) have noted a strong positive correlation between supervisor support and training transfer. Burke and Hutchins (2007) observe that there are studies arguing about strong or moderate relationship between the variables and have also found studies showing mixed results; the authors suggest further research to clarify or to build on the correlation between training transfer and supervisor support. In their meta-analysis, Blume et al. (2010) reported moderate relation between the constructs. Findings of the study by Facteau et al. (1995) depict a mixed relationship: supervisor support has been found to directly influence perceived transfer of training, but with negative correlation, and to indirectly impact perceived transfer through pre-training motivation, with positive correlation. There also are other instances (e.g. Clark et al., 1993; Nijman et al., 2006; Bhatti et al., 2013) that have established that supervisor support usually influences training transfer indirectly, through any mediator.\nConcluding remarks: An extensive analysis of literature available on the influence of supervisor support on training transfer leads us to the conclusion that while there are studies that show a direct-indirect relationship between the constructs, there also are researchers who have established a positive-negative or even mixed influence. Supervisor support is most commonly seen to affect transfer indirectly when trainee characteristics have been used as mediators. We may hence deduce that the influence of supervisor support on transfer of training is contextual and nothing can be said affirmatively on their relationship.\nPractical implications of the study: This study focuses on supervisors as one of the \"stakeholders\" (Bhatti et al., 2013, p. 273) in a training programme. The thorough review of extant literature is expected to be of help to academicians and practitioners alike. Our findings point out that emphasis must not remain restricted to the content of a training programme, but should be extended to the work environment, especially supervisor support at each stage of a training programme. As Dermol and Cater (2013) point out, training cannot produce results unless management continuously supports it and is involved in it; such support should not only be formal but also informal. HR managers hence need to collaborate and co-operate with supervisors. Trainers should train supervisors about how to support trainees before, during and after training.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Of the various factors directly or indirectly influencing transfer of training, supervisor support as a work environment variable is found to have diverse relationships with transfer, further complicated with the perspective of time. The purpose of this paper is to bring together findings from past research to have a better insight on the impact of supervisor support on training transfer.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative approach has been adopted to review existing research on the selected constructs.\nFindings: Literature reveals divergent influences of supervisor support on transfer: some researchers have established a direct-indirect relationship, some opine a positive-negative relationship and few show mixed results. Usually the relation is found to be indirect when trainee characteristics have been used as mediators. The authors may infer that the influence of supervisor support on transfer is contextual and nothing can be said affirmatively on their relation.\nPractical implications: Supervisors can harness trainee characteristics by enhancing their motivation to learn and motivation to transfer. They can familiarize trainees with the programme, discuss how to apply newly learnt skills to jobs, set goals and provide timely feedback. Trainers should train supervisors about how to support trainees before, during and after training. Overall, organizations must structure the role of supervisors in a way that would ensure maximized training transfer and effective management of a training programme.\nOriginality/value: This study provides a better understanding of the association between supervisor support and training transfer, taking into consideration all dimensions, namely positive or negative, direct or indirect and even mixed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Store atmosphere and impulse: a cross-cultural study
|
[
"Retail",
"Store atmosphere",
"Culture",
"Impulse purchase behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Store atmosphere is a decisive factor determining whether consumer expectations are satisfied, affecting the impression consumers have about their shopping experiences (Turley and Milliman, 2000; Laksono, 2013). Given the dynamic and competitive nature of retail market, which includes the growing presence of digitalization and omnichannel retailing (Verhoef et al., 2015; Hagberg et al., 2016), the identification of competitive advantages and differential factors that increase attractiveness to consumers has become a central concern (Lecointre-Erickson et al., 2018). In such a way, store atmosphere factors can determine the success or failure of a business enterprise (Bitner, 1992; Cox et al., 2016).\nTheoretical framework: Consumers often perform decision-making processes within the store environment (Turley and Milliman, 2000; Zhou and Wong, 2004; Mohan et al., 2013). The stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model proposed the idea that environmental elements in the store are stimuli causing consumer responses (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). In this context, \"organism\" refers to the internal processes between external stimulus and consumer behaviour, and includes perceptual, physiological, emotional and cognitive features (Jung Chang et al., 2014). Finally, \"response\" denotes the final effect or behavioural reaction displayed by the organism or consumer (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974; Jung Chang et al., 2014).\nMaterials and methods: A conclusive and descriptive study was designed based on quantitative analysis. Regarding data collection, a face-to-face survey was performed in fashion retail stores located in shopping malls in Brazil and Germany, providing a multiple cross-sectional data set derived from two independent samples, with individuals interviewed only once, following Malhotra's (2006) guidance.\nResults: Sample profile\nConclusions: Nearly all factors of store atmosphere (environment, design, layout, music and staff/employees) have an influence on consumers' positive emotional response to environmental stimuli, confirming our H1a-H1e. In this sense, our findings confirmed previous studies (Jung Chang et al., 2014; Mohan et al., 2013; Roschk et al., 2017) by demonstrating the role of those factors both in Brazilian and German contexts.\nLimitations and future work: First, our results cannot be generalised due to the type of sampling (non-probabilistic and by evaluation). Since data collection was performed on different days and times, we had limited control over intervening internal and external factors. Participant profile was also limited since only consumers of a particular store were analysed.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of store atmosphere on consumers' positive emotional responses and impulsive purchase behaviour. In addition, it analyses the moderating role of culture characteristics and situational variables on this influence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study carried out a quantitative face-to-face on-site survey of a retail fashion brand in two countries, Brazil and Germany. This paper extended the original model of Jung Chang et al. (2014) based on environment, design and social features (staff) by adding store atmosphere factors such as layout, music and lighting (Mohan et al., 2013), thereby defining store atmosphere as the way customers perceive and experience the combination of all those factors.\nFindings: Data analysis from 313 consumers by structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) showed that most factors influence consumers' positive emotional responses, but no significant difference between countries. However, the effect of emotions on impulse purchase behaviour is stronger among collectivist consumers (Brazil) than among individualists (Germany).\nOriginality/value: This study sheds light on the links between store atmosphere and retail market in Brazil and Germany, framing its conclusions in the context of a comparison between cultures. The paper extends the growing research in the area by exploring the moderating role of the individualism-collectivism dimension of national culture in consumer buying behaviour by comparing the strength of various relationships across shoppers from individualistic vs collectivistic cultures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
HPWS and unethical pro-organizational behavior: a moderated mediation model
|
[
"Performance management",
"Human resource management",
"Work engagement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The past few decades have witnessed a substantial amount of research on unethical behavior in the workplace, referred to as conduct violating the accepted moral codes of society, such as counterproductive work behavior, fraud. A common assumption among these works is that unethical behavior is conducted for the interest of the self. However, many studies have recognized that employees might engage in unethical behaviors serving the benefit of their organizations (Lee et al., 2017). For example, employees hide negative information about their company or products from customers for the interests of company. Umphress et al. (2010) call this behavior as unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), which is broadly conceptualized as \"actions that are intended to promote the effective functioning of the organization or its members (e.g. leaders) and violate core societal values, mores, laws, or standards of proper conduct\" (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). UPB refers to a number of ethical relevance on a societal level and may potentially produce destructive consequences on organizations and external stakeholders, even though the intention is to benefit the organization (Umphress and Bingham, 2011; Vadera and Pratt, 2013). At present, organizations have more external stakeholders, such as governments, stockholders, communities and customers exerting pressure on managing employees' behaviors to reduce their illegal and unethical conducts (Trevino et al., 2006). So it is urgent for us to explore the potential motivation for UPB and examine the mechanisms which conduce to account why employees would conduct this unethical behavior. In addressing this question, prior studies have indicated numerous individual-level factors including Machiavellianism (Castille et al., 2016), organizational identification (Chen et al., 2016), psychological entitlement (Lee et al., 2017), and interpersonal-level factors including transformational leadership (Effelsberg et al., 2014), ethical leadership (Miao et al., 2013) and employee-organization relationships (Wang et al., 2018) that help to explain why employees engage in UPB, thereby advancing our understanding of behavioral ethics considerably. Interestingly, however, little is known about the potential role management contextual variables that play in predicting UPB.\nLiterature review and hypotheses: HPWS and UPB\nResearch method: Sample and procedure\nAnalyses and results: Testing the measurement models\nDiscussion: Drawing on the social exchange theory and social identity theory, we built a moderated mediation model which confirmed by the results of data analysis. We found that HPWS were positively related to UPB, and extended the literature by proving that psychological ownership mediates this relationship. Moreover, we found that moral identity moderated the relationship between psychological ownership and UPB. Finally, we examined the moderated mediation model that the effect size of HPWS on UPB through psychological ownership was moderated by the boundary condition of moral identity.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of employees' perceptions of high-performance work systems (HPWS) on unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), and explores the mediating role of psychological ownership and the moderating role of moral identity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The hypotheses were tested by using two-wave survey data that were collected from 306 employees in Chinese enterprises.\nFindings: This study found that HPWS were positively related to UPB, and psychological ownership partially mediated this relationship. Results also revealed that moral identity negatively moderated the relationship between psychological ownership and UPB, and the indirect effect of HPWS on UPB via psychological ownership was weaker for employees high in moral identity.\nResearch limitations/implications: The generalizability of the findings is limited, and the cross-sectional data cannot draw any clear causal inference among variables.\nPractical implications: Managers should pay attention to the \"dark side\" of HPWS and incorporate ethics in the HPWS. Moreover, organizations should provide correct guidance for their pro-organizational behaviors to avoid employees doing bad things for good reasons.\nOriginality/value: This study first extends HPWS research to employee's UPB, uncovers employees' psychological ownership toward organizations as the pivotal mechanism underlying this relationship, and indicated moral identity can regulate employees unethical behavior.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Technological innovation among internationality active SMEs in the Czech economy: Role of human and social capital of CEO
|
[
"Transition economies",
"International entrepreneurship",
"Technological innovation",
"CEO personal attributes",
"International SMEs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been argued to suffer from a relative lack of resources when compared to large, established corporations (Bohata and Mladek, 1999; Musteen and Ahsan, 2013). This has an impact on their strategies, including internationalization and entrepreneurial initiatives (Manolova et al., 2008). The relative lack of resources is coupled with a number of other disadvantages for SMEs in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). These economies, still coping with the legacy of centralized planning, are characterized by ineffective legal enforcement, poor institutional support, high levels of corruption, lack of financing and a poor resource base (Dabic et al., 2012; Khanna and Palepu, 1997). The challenging domestic environment and insufficient organizational resources are particularly consequential for internationally active SMEs in these economies, which, given the increased domestic competition, depend largely upon the international market for their success.\nTheoretical background: Transitional economies: challenges to technological innovation\nHypotheses: An important source of acquiring human capital is through professional training and experiences (McGee et al., 1995). It is therefore not surprising that extensive research links CEOs' human capital with firms' strategic choices. The underlying assumption is that CEOs' background and experience shape their cognition, knowledge and skills. This in turn impacts their decision choices (Herrmann and Datta, 2002). For internationally active SMEs in CEE, two forms of human capital are likely to impact technological innovation - CEOs' functional background and their international experience with foreign customers. This line of reasoning underpins the hypotheses developed in the next section.\nMethods: Sample\nData analysis and results: Table I reports the means, standard deviations and zero-order correlations. The mean age of sample firms was only nine years, and the firms had, on average, 30 employees. About 31 per cent of the firms in our sample were in the knowledge-intensive sector and received about 40 per cent of total sales from foreign markets. The respondents had, on average, a little less than a year of foreign experience, which is not unusual in a transition economy. Most of the CEOs/firm founders were male (97 per cent), were, on average, 47 years old and held typically an undergraduate college degree. On average, the respondents had five international personal connections and spent about 40 per cent of their career in output functions. Table II provides additional characteristics of the sample based on industry segmentation. As the table shows, the sample represents a broad range of manufacturing industries (with metal constructions for the building industry being the most represented).\nConclusion and implications for theory and practice: Set in the Czech Republic, our study explored how CEOs' human and social capital impacts a firm's commitment to technological innovation, an important competitive strategy for internationally active SMEs. SMEs account for about 50 per cent of the Czech economy (European Commission on Industry and Enterprise, 2010), thereby playing a critical role in its growth. We sought to gain a better understanding of factors that drive these relatively resource-poor firms to invest in technological innovation despite their short-term orientation and complex domestic environment. Technological innovation can be problematic for transition economy firms given their short-term horizons. When coupled with internationalization, it can be viewed as too risky. Our results indicate, however, that CEOs' human and social capital, measured in terms of their expertise in output functions including marketing and R&D, foreign customer knowledge and the number of personal contacts in the international market, can enhance their commitment to technological innovation. In other words, our study suggests that despite the institutionally weak domestic environment and the inclination to compete on cost (particularly in international markets), small firms from CEE countries, such as the Czech Republic, innovate technologically when managed by CEOs characterized by certain forms of human and social capital. These findings may be particularly interesting for international entrepreneurship scholars, since the international entrepreneurship literature has primarily focused on international activities of SMEs in developed or large emerging economies. In this study, we shift the lens to a small Central European economy that faces unique challenges given its socialist imprints.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the impact of human and social capital of CEOs of internationally active small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Czech Republic on their firms' approach to technological innovation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study sample was drawn from data collected from the population of Czech manufacturing firms. The final sample included 153 SMEs that met the criteria for inclusion in the study. The authors employed robust regression analysis to test their specific hypotheses.\nFindings: This study found that human capital (in the form of CEOs' professional background and foreign customer knowledge) and social capital (conceptualized as embeddedness in the international markets) of CEOs in the Czech Republic impacted their firms' approach to technological innovation. Specifically, firms headed by CEOs with professional background in output functions (R&D and marketing) are more likely to invest in technological innovation. The same was found true for firms led by CEOs who possessed a strong knowledge of international customers and were socially embedded in international markets.\nOriginality/value: This study makes a twofold contribution to the extant literature. First, it develops and tests the theoretical link between human and social capital and technological innovation among internationally active firms. Second, it highlights factors that positively influence technological innovation in the context of a small Central European economy, a setting that has been generally viewed as unfavorable to such innovation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Linking knowledge processes with firm performance: organizational culture
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Organizational learning",
"Knowledge creation",
"Organizational culture",
"Tobin's q",
"Matched sample comparison group",
"Intellectual capital"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859) lamented the lack of missing links in the form of transitional fossils with anatomical features bridging two groups of organisms. However, Darwin predicted that missing links would be discovered to support his theories (Prothero, 2008). In the field of anthropology, it is today recognized that the missing link does not need to illustrate a perfect developmental mid-way between organisms but merely needs to demonstrate some aspects of the transition linking the two groups (Prothero, 2008). Researchers and theorists in the field of knowledge management have struggled to identify organizational enablers that link knowledge processes with firm performance. As in anthropology, it may be possible to identify aspects of organizational dynamics that link knowledge processes with firm performance.Research has demonstrated that knowledge management initiatives contribute to improving firm performance (Bharadwaj, 2000; Wu, 2008). Lee and Choi (2003) explored enabling factors that facilitate the leveraging of knowledge management processes to translate into improved performance. Lee and Choi confirmed that elements of organizational culture, most significantly trust, bridged the gap between knowledge management processes and firm performance. Yet despite an abundance of research on organizational culture, Christopian (2008, p. iii) argued that there are \"no currently known theories that adequately explain what or how the key characteristics of organizational culture actually impact strategic deployment of knowledge management initiatives\". Holsapple and Wu (2008, p. 31) asked \"what is the nature\" of the link between knowledge management and firm performance and continued to suggest that the systemic link between knowledge management and firm performance is unknown.Daud and Yusoff (2010) surveyed business owners and senior managers at firms in Malaysia and concluded that enterprise performance and indeed survival is dependent on the speed at which companies leverage knowledge processes relative to competitors. Daud and Yusoff (2010, p. 139) observed \"Knowledge that an employee fails to share is of little value to an organization\" hinting about the possibility of an intangible quality of organizational culture as a possible mediating factor in firm performance. As with virtually all other quantitative and qualitative studies in the field, Daud and Yusoff collected opinions and perceptions from executive and senior managers from which to base data and conclusions. This approach, while common and informative, overlooks an important element of knowledge processes. That is, knowledge exists at all levels and in all functional departments in an organization. Senge (1990) pointed out that successful organizations have the ability to leverage learning by individuals at all levels of an organization. Over the past two decades, Ikujiro Nonaka and his associates introduced and developed the concept of knowledge conversion from tacit to explicit and back to tacit in a spiral process originating at the individual level and spiraling to group and organizational levels (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka and Konno, 1998; Nonaka and Toyama, 2005; Nonaka et al., 2001; Nonaka et al., 2000; von Krogh et al., 2000). The basis of the process is the SECI cycle (socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization) describing the cyclical process of converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge and back again to tacit knowledge in the form of new knowledge that adds to the body of organizational knowledge.The challenge facing researchers of the \"missing link\" is to develop an instrument that collects perceived cultural attributes that enable knowledge processes to translate into superior firm performance. Further, establishing relationships between these intangible elements of social interaction with accepted measures of enterprise value, operating performance, and growth is absolutely essential to building a practical model. Figure 1 illustrates the perceived link between knowledge processes and firm performance.In the study described in this article, cultural elements perceived by all employees in an organization as needed to make the organization a great place to work are used as the benchmark. Financial performance of firms demonstrating high levels of great place to work attributes are compared to companies not so identified and subjected to statistical analysis for relevance and significance.\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Knowledge processes\n3. Research model: 3.1 Gap in the research\n4.0 Research method: 4.1 Sample selection\n5. Hypothesis testing: The primary research question provided the overriding structure to the design and conduct of this study. Specifically: To what extent do elements of organizational culture enable organizational learning or knowledge creation (knowledge processes) to influence firm performance? The findings supported the hypotheses for operating performance and growth rate but produced mixed results for firm value. Testing firm value, H1a comparing price/earnings ratio of matched companies was not supported while hypothesis H1b comparing Tobin's q was supported. Tests for operating performance, hypotheses H2a, H2b, and H2c (comparison of operating margin, operating income per employee, and return on assets) provided statistically significant support for all three hypotheses. H3a for average annual growth rate was supported. Results of hypothesis testing are displayed in Table III.Analysis of the statistical data comparing the benchmark and control groups of companies shows that the mean price/earnings ratio of 23.7 for the benchmark group is 146 percent of the mean for the control group but the p-value of 0.25 indicates that this difference is not significant between the matched pairs. The average Tobin's q for the benchmark group is 2.47 is 154 percent of the q ratio for the control group and the p-value of 0.00 indicates that the difference is significant between the matched pairs. Average operating margin for the benchmark group was 16.8 percent. Operating margin for the benchmark group is 147 percent of the control group and a p-value of 0.03 indicates that the difference between the matched pairs is significant.Average operating income per employee for the benchmark groups was $96,737 million that is 163 percent of the control group and a p-value of 0.01 indicates that the difference between matched pairs is significant. Average return on assets for the benchmark group is 9.2 percent, which is 177 percent of the average ROA for the control group and a p-value of 0.02 indicates that the difference between the matched pairs is significant. Average annual growth rate for the benchmark group was 15.9 percent that is 135 percent of that for the control group and a p-value of 0.01 indicates that the difference between matched pairs is significant.\n6. Limitations and conclusions: 6.1 Limitations\n7. Implications for future research: The results and conclusions from this study contribute to body of knowledge in leadership and management as well as knowledge management, organizational learning, and knowledge creation collectively described as knowledge processes by identifying possible links between cultural enablers of learning within organizations and firm performance. Identifying quantifiable relationships between knowledge processes and firm performance has proven elusive as demonstrated by the few empirical studies in the field. However, the results of this study suggest that companies where leaders successfully cultivate a culture of trust, pride, and camaraderie have a greater probability of generating superior financial results. If leaders are able to increase the level of key elements of organizational culture that enable knowledge processes to function effectively then the organizations may gain greater access to that 80 percent of the total knowledge base existing in the minds of members in the form of tacit knowledge. Effective knowledge processes ultimately contribute to creating valuable intangible assets and intellectual capital for the organization that generates value, operating performance, and growth. Continued exploration to identify practical ways to accomplish this represent significant opportunities for continued research.Quantifying intangible assets is difficult in and of itself and identifying a quantifiable link between intangible elements of organizational culture has been rare. Use of the matched sample comparison group (MSCG) technique employed in this study was similar to that used by Bharadwaj (2000) and Wu (2008) and when combined with non-parametric statistical testing techniques offers a powerful way to continue exploring relationships surrounding knowledge processes and the effect on different aspects of firm performance. Applying the MSCG methodology to various industry segments, geographical location, and organizational types along with other instruments designed to identify other cultural elements offers many opportunities for continued research.The study had numerous limitations such that caution should be used before making generalizations. The sample size, although in the same range as similarly designed studies conducted by Bharadwaj (2000) and Wu (2008) was small in relation to the number of publicly traded companies in the United States and minute in relation to all for-profit companies worldwide. Limiting the samples to public companies was necessary in order to have access to financial data but clearly many opportunities exist for future research with samples from large populations including privately held firms, governmental organizations, not-for-profit organizations, and organizations outside the United States of all types.The Great Place to Work(r) Institute does not release information to the public other than lists of the 100 Best Companies. As a worldwide organization, The Great Place to Work(r) Institute publishes lists of the best companies operating in areas throughout the globe. Similar studies using GPTW lists of companies from different geographical regions, industries, or market segments represent a significant opportunity for further research. Further, the Great Place to Work(r) Institute does not release detailed data on the dimensions of the study (credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie) to other than participating companies for their internal use only. Continuing research exploring these and other dimensions of organizational culture that enable knowledge processes represent significant opportunities for future research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a matched sample comparison group study of elements of organizational culture that enable knowledge processes to drive superior firm performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A matched sample comparison group approach was used to compare firm performance among matched pairs of public companies. Companies demonstrating high levels of trust (benchmark group) were matched with firms of similar size in the same industries demonstrating lower levels of trust (control group).\nFindings: - The benchmark group generated significantly superior value, operating performance, and had higher average annual growth rates than matching firms in the control group. Firms with higher relative levels of trust embedded in the organizational culture are more likely to outperform similar firms with lower levels of trust.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The findings are based on surveys and financial performance of companies with securities traded on stock exchanges in the USA and may not represent other organizational forms, other geographic, economic, or cultural environments.\nPractical implications: - This study begins to identify a link between knowledge management, organizational learning, and knowledge creation (collectively knowledge processes) with firm performance.\nSocial implications: - Identifying elements of organizational culture that link knowledge processes with firm performance is essential to developing a leadership model that reinforces enabling cultural attributes.\nOriginality/value: - Many researchers have identified a lack of empirical research linking knowledge processes with firm performance. This study begins to fill the research gap with evidence that elements of organizational culture, specifically trust, enable firms to convert knowledge and learning initiatives into tangible performance recognized by financial markets.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Drivers and inhibitors of the compromise effect - a conceptual overview
|
[
"Familiarity",
"Need for cognition",
"Approval motivation",
"Compromise effect",
"Lay rationalism",
"Task involvement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A plethora of empirical studies demonstrates that consumers' buying decisions depend on the context in which they are embedded (Dhar and Simonson, 2003; Simonson and Tversky, 1992). One of the most researched context effects is the compromise effect (Chang et al., 2012). Under the compromise effect, consumers avoid extreme options when making consumption decisions and show a preference for options that take the position of a compromise between them (Simonson, 1989; Muller et al., 2012; Kim and Kim, 2016).\nDeveloping a basic conceptual model: Research on the compromise effect can generally be categorized into the following three connected areas that cover basal aspects to which the occurrence of the compromise effect is typically attributed: uncertainty regarding choice outcomes and attribute weighing, the loss aversion rationale and cognitive processing (Figure 1). Under uncertainty (future performance, social outcome and temporal preferences stability) individuals ascribe roughly equal weight to all relevant attributes of choice options within a choice set and in extension to the choice options themselves; consequently they are likely to opt for the low risk/loss alternative, namely, the compromise (Chernev, 2005; Coupey et al., 1998). Thus, a compromise option is a means to avoid greater loss (Simonson, 1989; Sheng et al., 2005) because it is not the ideal choice, yet never the entirely wrong one either, which also provides easier justification to others when evaluation is expected (Neumann et al., 2016; Chernev, 2005; Chuang et al., 2013). Yet the selection of the compromise option implies complex cognitive processing, as it is difficult to reconcile multiple conflicting criteria while making compensatory trade-offs (Simonson, 1989; Dhar and Simonson, 2003).\nRegulatory focus: Regulatory focus refers to how individuals approach pleasure and avoid pain through strategic means of self-regulation as prevention and promotion orientation (Pham and Higgins, 2005; Higgins, 2005). Individuals under promotion focus look at positive outcomes, have goals of advancement, accomplishment or gain and seek to take advantage of opportunities, whereas prevention-focused individuals look at negative outcomes, are driven by protection, safety and responsibility goals and seek to avoid making mistakes (Mourali et al., 2007; Levav et al., 2010; Pham and Higgins, 2005). Individuals with prevention focus judge possible outcomes in terms of what was lost or not and display reflective decision making (Das, 2015). In consequence, they may favor compromise options, which come with fewer disadvantages in comparison to extreme options (Pham and Higgins, 2005), and thus, are less risky/come with a lower potential for loss (Ryu et al., 2014; Kim and Kim, 2016; Mourali et al., 2007). Empirical research provides support for this notion, as Mourali et al. (2007) and Ryu et al. (2014) find that under prevention orientation, individuals frequently choose compromise options, while a promotion focus diminishes the compromise effect. Hence, considering the previous works and the fact that prevention and promotion focus are orthogonal constructs that should be approached independently (Gorman et al., 2012), we propose:\nNeed for cognition and cognitive load: Need for cognition or the \"tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking\" (Cacioppo and Petty, 1982, p. 116), is often used in research to operationalize cognitive resources (Drolet et al., 2009). Drolet's et al. (2009) study suggests a complex interaction of motivation and ability to engage in cognitive effort. Specifically, individuals with a high need for cognition, that is, who are motivated to engage in cognitive activity, seem to reflect deeply on their self-goals, materialized in their values, constraints and preferences (Drolet et al., 2009). Consistently, Petty et al. (2009) show that individuals with high need for cognition are more likely to think about and evaluate their own thoughts. These individuals use an elaborate method for information seeking and processing, engaging in more effortful attribute processing (Mantel and Kardes, 1999; Fortier and Burkell, 2014). Consequently, rather than being compelled by the loss-minimization and justification rationales that lead to a compromise choice, individuals with high need for cognition rely on greater self-goal clarity in choosing the extreme option that provides the most value (Goukens et al., 2009; Drolet et al., 2009).\nRegulatory fit: Individuals experience regulatory fit when their goal orientation is congruent with the actions employed in pursuit of that goal such as an eagerness in promotion focus and vigilance in prevention focus (Avnet and Higgins, 2003; Higgins, 2005). Research shows that when regulatory fit occurs, individuals \"feel right\" about their decisions. This fosters confidence, engagement in evaluations, and the assignment of greater value to objects and outcomes; in non-fit cases, evaluation decreases (Avnet and Higgins, 2006; Avnet and Higgins, 2003; Higgins, 2005). Levav et al. (2010) find that the compromise effect is stronger if all the relevant product attributes (as means to achieve goals) are compatible with individuals' regulatory orientation. This is due to the greater choice conflict resulting from multiple valid alternatives serving a set goal and the compromise option functioning as \"tie breaker\" in difficult choice settings (Dhar et al., 2000; Dhar and Simonson, 2003; Yoo et al., 2017).\nFamiliarity: In a product knowledge context, familiarity relates to the wealth of past experiences with a product and other forms of product information stored in memory (Okechuku, 2014; Kent and Allen, 1994) and known to facilitate information retrieval, interpretation and decision making (Malhotra et al., 2010; Sheng et al., 2005; Sinn et al., 2007; Gilliland and Johnston, 1997). The greater the familiarity, the more links between product attributes and evaluative criteria expedite comprehensive product attribute evaluation (Sheng et al., 2005; Malhotra et al., 2010; Okechuku, 2014). As individuals with high product familiarity know, which product attributes carry greater weight in need-satisfaction (Marks and Olson, 1981; Malhotra et al., 2010), they are more capable of differentiating between choice options and consequently display greater confidence in their decisions (Malhotra et al., 2010). Therefore, they can choose the extreme option that best serves their goals instead of resorting to the rationale of a loss-minimizing compromise choice (Sheng et al., 2005; Sinn et al., 2007). With a low level of product familiarity, individuals experience uncertainty and risk derived from insufficient information on attributes' value (Sheng et al., 2005; Chang et al., 2012). This may result in choice making based on reason instead of clear attribute preferences - the compromise effect (Simonson, 1989; Simonson and Nowlis, 2000). Empirical research provides support for this mechanism. Specifically, Sheng et al. (2005) and Sinn et al. (2007) show that when individuals who are less familiar, and thus, face greater uncertainties with a product or a brand, favor compromise options to minimize the possible loss. As a basis for the subsequent model-extension we propose:\nExtensions to the conceptual model: The following section extends the notions of interrelatedness of known compromise drivers discussed so far by introducing task involvement, lay rationalism and approval motivation and by discussing the interdependencies between known and new drivers.\nLay rationalism: Lay rationalism refers to the tendency to resist affective decision-making behavior driven by feelings and instead to base decisions on reasons and rationalistic attributes (Hsee et al., 2003; Hsee et al., 2015). As such it leads to the very heart of compromise behavior as the result of a choice based on reason (Simonson, 1989). Lay rationalism may, through experiential/hedonic and rational judgment, explain why individuals come to contradictory conclusions when indicating the product they would enjoy versus the one they would actually purchase (Hsee et al., 2003). This notion is in agreement with Kim and Kim's (2016) and Neumann et al.'s (2016) findings that compromise effects are more likely to occur in choices that involve utilitarian products or consumption, as opposed to hedonic products or consumption. Utilitarian consumer behavior is cognitively driven and goal focused; choice evaluation results from the calculation of advantages and disadvantages. Hedonic consumer behavior is mostly feeling-based and guided by emotional gratification (Roy and Ng, 2012; Botti and McGill, 2011; Kim and Kim, 2016). Okada (2005) shows that individuals select the hedonic option when evaluating one single product at a time but choose the utilitarian option when two products are presented simultaneously. This is because utilitarian consumption is easier to justify than hedonic consumption, since, in the latter context, individuals may often experience a sense of guilt as benefits are harder to quantify and even perceived as wasteful (Okada, 2005; Sela et al., 2009; Kivetz and Simonson, 2002; Kim and Kim, 2016). Thus, the preference for utilitarian options has been positively associated with the need for justification (being easier to justify), and the level of internal conflict of which option to choose (Khan et al., 2005; Okada, 2005; Kim and Kim, 2016), two conditions positively related to extremeness aversion and to compromise behavior (Khan et al., 2005; Okada, 2005; Simonson, 1989). As more lay-rationalistic individuals put less emphasis on feelings (intrinsically hedonic), they are more likely to value and choose utilitarian options to the detriment of hedonic ones (Hsee et al., 2015). In conformity with the findings that both compromise effect and lay rationalism can be associated with utilitarian decisions, and that a high level of lay rationalism implies a strong focus on reasons while a compromise option provides such reasons and justifications (Neumann et al., 2016; Kim and Kim, 2016; Hsee et al., 2015) the present paper proposes a positive effect of lay rationalism on compromise choice. This assumption is reinforced by the possible association between lay rationalism and need for justification (Hsee et al., 2015), the latter being also a driver of compromise behavior (Khan et al., 2005; Okada, 2005).\nApproval motivation and the social motivation of loss aversion: Early studies show that human behavior is driven by the need for social approval, which implies that individuals have a predisposition to secure favorable evaluations from others to avoid disapproval (Martin, 1984; Branningan, 1977) or in other words to conform to norms by following group expectations (Kim et al., 2018) through matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Approval motivation, i.e. the desire to be viewed favorably by one's peers, can be viewed as a counterpart to social desirability. However, while the latter focuses more on the broader need to present a positive image in general (Martin, 1984), approval motivation is more concerned with potential social loss suffered when diverting from choices of which others would approve. Preferences of others are characterized by more uncertainty than personal preferences (Simonson, 1989), which shifts decision-makers' focus from \"desirability to justifiability\" (Sela et al., 2009). Therefore, based on the premise of the compromise effect that unfavorable evaluation by others can cause a social loss, avoidable through selection of an easily justifiable compromise option, approval motivation can be posited as a driver of compromise behavior. As literature proposes, the loss-aversion premise of the compromise behavior is closely linked to justification of a choice in expectation of evaluation by others (Neumann et al., 2016; Sheng et al., 2005; Chang et al., 2012). Individuals' greater risk when choosing an extreme option is typically more difficult to justify to others and would, therefore, receive more criticism from others in case of a poor choice (Simonson and Tversky, 1992; Simonson, 1989). The easier justification of a compromise option correlated with a lower probability of \"error and regret\" (Dhar and Simonson, 2003, p. 148), and thus, lower likelihood of criticism, makes a product in such a position more valuable to the decision-maker (Simonson, 1989; Simonson and Nowlis, 2000). Specifically, because the compromise option combines attributes (Drolet et al., 2009; Mourali et al., 2007; Sheng et al., 2005), irrespective of the evaluators' preferences, they will not judge a compromise option to be as bad a choice, as an extreme option at the \"wrong\" end of the spectrum of choice options. As individuals with higher approval motivation may experience higher pressure to justify (associated with judgment), they may try to anticipate how their decision will be evaluated by others; hence they may be more inclined to make choices based on good reasons and finally select the option that is easier to justify and not necessarily the \"best\" one (Simonson, 1989; Simonson and Nowlis, 2000; Chang et al., 2012).\nConclusion: This paper aims to enrich compromise effect literature by reviewing and consolidating previous findings regarding drivers and inhibitors of compromise behavior. Considering the existing investigations in the three essential areas of compromise research, the present study offers a review of several drivers and inhibitors previously shown to affect (in isolation) compromise behavior but also argues for and proposes additional untested interactions between them. These foundational considerations were then extended by three additional, potentially highly relevant drivers and context factors - task involvement, lay rationalism, approval motivation - and the possible interaction effects between empirically confirmed and yet unconfirmed variables.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review numerous known drivers and antecedents of compromise behavior, proposing a basic categorization of the various contributions. This is done with the goal to integrate drivers and antecedents, previously largely discussed in isolation of one another, into a single conceptual model. This sheds light on the issue of previously overstated or understated relevance of individual drivers. The picture is completed by the proposition of new potential drivers of the compromise effect like lay rationalism and approval motivation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper takes a conceptual approach in reflecting on prior findings from the field of compromise effect research and adjacent fields to develop a number of propositions aggregated in a conceptual model.\nFindings: A number of previously overlooked, but potentially highly relevant interaction effects among known drivers of the compromise effect are proposed along with the proposition of several new drivers.\nOriginality/value: This conceptual paper offers a novel, broadly applicable categorization of compromise effect research. Further, it seems to be the first paper dedicated to an extensive review of established drivers of the compromise effect to examine the interdependence and possible interaction effects and of those drivers. Additionally, completely new potentially relevant drivers are discussed in detail and integrated into a conceptual model.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Executive development through insider action research: voices of insider action researchers
|
[
"Executives",
"Insider action research",
"Management development"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As a manager in the R&D organization at a biofarma company, I made the following observation. We were fairly good at sharing scientific medical knowledge about our products, but when it came to sharing management knowledge, such as knowledge about project management capabilities - experience of how to cut time in our process, how to build relationships with collaborating partners, or project planning logic and tools - we were less successful.\nFirst, second and third person practice as a foundation for executive learning and development: The framework of first, second and third person practice has been articulated by (Torbert and associates, 2004; Fisher et al., 2000) to reflect the practices of leaders as they engage in action inquiry, that is inquiring into how they act with a view to transforming their managerial practice and their organizations. First person practice focuses on individuals learning about themselves. It typically finds expression \"upstream\" where individuals learn about their own inner world - for example, their personality profile, values, preferred ways of knowing and learning and how they influence others by the way they act (Boyatzis et al., 2006). It finds expression \"downstream\" where their \"upstream\" learning is enacted in how they enact their executive roles. In the setting constituted by this paper, first person downstream learning is about learning about self through enacting the executive role. So in our view, a central process of executive development is about individuals' on-going learning about themselves.\nThe two cases: We describe now the insider action research experiences of two of the authors as they led significant change initiatives in their own respective organizations. These experiences are presented in first person voice and provide direct access on how they understood their experience as helping them develop as leaders. The focus is on the reflections on experience of the two executives, rather than a detailed account of the insider action research initiatives in which each of them engaged.\nDiscussion: The two brief cases describe above illustrate how the insider action research approach triggered and enhanced simultaneously executive development and company performance Table I provides a summary of the two cases, under the headings of some of the basic demographics of the companies, the logic for the initiatives (the why), the research question that guided the effort (the what), the collaborative research processes and mechanisms (the how) and, the outcomes in terms of research output and competencies. Each of the two companies was a large complex system. Each firm undertook large-scale change initiatives: how to enhance knowledge creation and dissemination in an R&D environment and how to positively influence individual acceptance of organizational changes. Each initiative involved the creation and working with teams, which were set up to progress the respective initiatives and to deliver research outcomes. Each initiative produced both tangible outcomes for the firms and research output for the scholarly community.\nConclusion: This paper has sought to address the fundamental question \"can insider action research approach trigger and enhance simultaneously executive development and company performance\". Furthermore, the paper demonstrate how the framework of first, second and third person practice is useful in capturing the range of experiences and challenges that the insiders face as they work to develop and lead change in their organizations. In our view, extending the acquisition of basic business disciplinary knowledge to the development of the competency (knowledge and skills) to design, facilitate and lead change by means of insider action research provides added value to executive education programmes. Insider action research is an approach that facilitates executive development, creates new knowledge and develops change leadership capabilities. In this paper we claim that a radically different executive education orientation is needed, one that integrates the intense engagement of the individual executive with endeavours to improve or change organizational performance. Insider action research provides such a contribution.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the fundamental question \"can insider action research approach trigger and enhance simultaneously executive development and company performance\". To answer this question the framework of first, second and third person practice is useful in capturing the range of experiences and challenges that the executives face as they work to lead change in their organizations. Insider action research is an approach that facilitates executive development, creates new knowledge and develops change leadership competencies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Insider action research.\nFindings: Insider action research offers a value-added approach to management development and executive education programmes. It extends the acquisition of basic business disciplinary knowledge to the development of the competency (knowledge and skills) to design, facilitate and lead change by the rigours of the action research process and through a focus on first, second and third person practice.\nResearch limitations/implications: Action research is particular and generates actionable knowledge in localized settings. Further cases in how executives engage in insider action research as they lead change in their organizations are needed to extend this underdeveloped approach.\nPractical implications: Yet, despite wide spread executive educational programmes and the rhetoric about the need to make executive education more relevant to organizational needs, an astonishing number of business leaders claim that executive programmes and executive degrees fail in addressing the emerging needs of business leaders. Insider action research provides a radically different executive education orientation.\nOriginality/value: Insider action research is an approach that facilitates executive development, creates new knowledge and develops change leadership capabilities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Gender wage gap and its effect on test scores of immigrant students
|
[
"Mathematics",
"Immigrants",
"Gender Gap Index",
"Test scores",
"I26",
"I21",
"J16"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The gender wage gap is a critical issue for both academic researchers and policy makers to consider. The gender wage gap is widely observed and so has been formally studied (Bartolucci, 2013). One potential explanation for the gender wage gap is that it might reflect differences in cognitive skills. In fact, a gender gap exists in educational achievement, for example as measured by school test scores (e.g. Dee, 2007; Goldin et al., 2006; Cornwell et al., 2013; Stoet and Geary, 2013; Fortin et al., 2015). Graduates with higher test scores in mathematics are observed to attain a higher educational level and earn higher income than others (e.g. Altonji, 1995; Levine and Zimmerman, 1995; Rose and Betts, 2004; Joensen and Nielsen, 2009). Girls' scores in mathematics are also observed to be lower than those of boys (Guiso et al., 2008; Fryer and Levitt, 2010; Stoet and Geary, 2013). Relative lack of mathematical skills among girls is thought to be one of the factors supporting the gender wage gap. Economic incentives are thought to play an important role in learning and hence in improving cognitive skills[1]. Many researchers have attempted to empirically examine the economic incentives associated with educational achievement (Angrist and Lavy, 2009; Kremer et al., 2009; Leuven et al., 2010; Fryer, 2011; Bettinger, 2012; Angrist et al., 2014). Increasing numbers of researchers have focused on the gender gap in mathematics and its relationship with empirical economics (e.g. Ellison and Swanson, 2010; Guiso et al., 2008; Fryer and Levitt, 2010; Niederle and Versterlund, 2010).\n2. Data: Concerning individual-level data, I use data from PISA, a triennial worldwide test of academic achievement among 15-year old conducted since 2000. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development coordinates the implementation of PISA. The PISA test conducted in 2012 assessed three subjects, namely mathematics, science knowledge and reading literacy[3]. Over 485,000 students from 68 countries took the PISA test in 2012. WEF-GGI provided the data on the gender gap in modern society. Especially, this paper focused on the wage gap between males and females from an economic viewpoint. Following the method of Guiso et al. (2008) and Fryer and Levitt (2010), PISA 2012 data are matched with WEF-GGI 2011 data to examine the association of the gender gap with academic test scores. In previous works (Guiso et al., 2008; Fryer and Levitt, 2010), national average PISA data are matched with WEF-GGI data. In contrast, in this paper, individual-level PISA data are matched with country level WEF-GGI data, which allow controlling for individual-level characteristics of students. As is exhibited in Table AI, among 68 countries, 63 are used for estimations because WEF-GGI data cannot be obtained for five countries. In comparison with PISA 2003, which provided the data for previous works (Guiso et al., 2008; Fryer and Levitt, 2010), the number of countries participating in PISA 2012 increased to 68, from 41 previously. Fryer and Levitt (2010) argued that estimation results changed when the sample was restricted to that of \"TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study)-PISA overlap.\" To check the robustness of the estimation results, this paper also used subsamples of countries equivalent to the \"TIMSS-PISA overlap\" samples. Reverse causality seems to exist between the gender wage gap and gender test score gap because well-educated females can find work that pays high wages. To reduce the possibility of reverse causality, this paper restricted the sample to students who were migrants from other countries because students were unlikely to have been the decision makers regarding immigration and so the gender wage gap of their country of residence was, to a certain extent, exogenously given. Consequently, the sample size reduced to about 19,000 individuals in the baseline model, representing 62 countries[4].\n3. Ecometric specification: The variables used in the regression estimations are shown in Table I, which indicates definitions and basic statistics (mean and standard deviation). The estimated function of the baseline model takes the following form:(1)\n4. Results: Table II indicates the results of the mean difference test of test scores between boys and girls[5]. Consistent with existing works (Guiso et al., 2008; Fryer and Levitt, 2010; Stoet and Geary, 2013), mean score for MATH is 11 points higher for boys than girls, with this difference being statistically significant at the 1 percent level. In contrast, mean scores for SCIE and READ are higher for girls than boys. With respect to READ, the difference is 39 points, and is statistically significant at the 1 percent level, which is in line with Fryer and Levitt (2010) and Stoet and Geary (2013). However, for SCIE, the difference is only two points, and is statistically significant at the 10 percent level. Thus, the gender difference for SCIE is less clear than for MATH and READ.\n5. Conclusions: This paper examines how the gender wage gap influences the test scores of female vs male students. Using PISA 2012 matched with the gender wage gap sourced from WEF-GGI 2011, we compare the effect of the wage gap among the areas of mathematics, science and reading. Key findings are that a decrease in the gender wage gap leads to a decrease in truancy by female students, which in turn improves the test scores of female students in mathematics, science and reading. Even after controlling this channel, decrease in the gender wage gap improves the test scores of female students in mathematics and science, though not reading. Combining the indirect and direct effects of the gender wage gap: for female students, each 1 percent decrease in the wage gap relative to males leads to a 0.20, 0.13 and 0.06 percent increase in test scores for mathematics, science and reading, respectively.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how gender equality influences difference in cognitive skills between genders. For the closer examination of Guiso et al. (2008), restricting the sample to immigrants allows us to reduce the possibility of reverse causality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using PISA 2012 matched with the gender wage gap sourced from World Economic Forum's Global Gender Index 2011, the author compares the effect of the wage gap among the areas of mathematics, science and reading.\nFindings: Decreased gender wage gap leads to girls exhibiting a reduced incidence of lateness and skipping school compared with boys, which in turn improves girls' test scores in mathematics, science and reading. The direct effect of the decreased wage gap on test scores exceeds its indirect effect on performance owing to influencing school attendance.\nOriginality/value: The findings of this paper provide evidence that higher female wage level relative to male wage level incentivizes female students to attend school, resulting in their achieving higher test scores not only for mathematics, but also for science and reading.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Observed food safety behaviors among consumers and employees in university food courts
|
[
"Smartphone",
"Food safety",
"Observation",
"Consumers and employees",
"University food courts"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Food safety remains a top public health concern. Approximately 47.8 million foodborne-related illnesses occur annually in the USA, costing healthcare economy over $150 million (Scallan et al., 2011; Scharff, 2012) and causing consumer distrust in the food supply (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013; Laksanalamai et al., 2012). Consumption of food away from home (FAFH) has increased significantly (Medeiros and Salay, 2013) with one half of total food expenses in 2013 spent on FAFH in the USA (US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 2014). In particular, sales rocketed to 37.0 percent of total FAFH sales in 2013 from only 4.3 percent in 1954 (USDA ERS, 2014), which raises the need for investigation of current food safety practices in this type of foodservice in order to develop successful interventions to control the risk of cross-contamination.\n2. Material and methods: 2.1 Development of observational tool and rubric\n3. Results: 3.1 Sample demographics and other characteristics\n4. Discussion: This study assessed food safety behaviors among consumers and employees in university food courts, focusing on food handling behaviors and related hand sanitization practice. Using smartphone-based observations, we identified food safety practices among employees that contribute to increased food safety risks. Both consumers (3.1 percent) and employees (0.8 percent) showed very low rate of adherence to hand hygiene practices. The most frequently observed behaviors requiring hand sanitation among consumers were handling of exposed RTE foods, electronic devices and touching unsanitary surfaces with bare hands. Employees were also touching surface or tables, exposed RTE foods, and clothes with bare or gloved hands. Although the frequency of direct hand contact of exposed RTE foods during food consumption or preparation is the highest or the second highest among consumers and employees, respectively, hand sanitization practices before touching/handling the exposed RTE foods were observed in minimal number of transactions, warning against the perils of current food safety status at university food courts.\n5. Conclusions: In summary, the findings of this study revealed poor food safety practices and hand sanitization behaviors among both consumers and employees at university food courts. Inherently, the observed characteristics of the pattern of food safety behaviors among consumers and employees were found to be different but the compliance rates of hand sanitization practices when required were minimal in both cases, raising the pressing needs of developing effective risk communication strategies at university food courts. Another important finding of this study was that consumers displayed different food safety behaviors during food consumption depending on gender, observed ethnicity, and party size. Considering these factors, the food safety authorities would be able to promote the most effective and efficient ways to deal with food safety education and practice strategies at university food courts.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine food safety behaviors of consumers and employees at university food courts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a smartphone-based observation technique, a total of 149 consumers and 34 employees were observed at three food courts at a mid-western university in the USA. The observational tool recorded 30 sequential transactions of each individual, allowing researchers to identify the compliance rate to the rubric. Both descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of variance were used for data analysis.\nFindings: This study found a low compliance rate of food safety practices among consumers and employees at university food courts. Consumers' food safety practices varied depending on gender, observed ethnicity and party size, while none of those factors was significant for employees. Specifically, females, Caucasians, and lone diners showed higher non-compliance rates than those of males, non-Caucasians and group diners.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results of the study raise the pressing needs of developing effective risk communication strategies at university food courts for both consumers and employees in order to reduce the potential risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.\nOriginality/value: University food courts are not only major foodservice operations for on-campus populations as well as off-campus visitors and the local public, but also the presence of shared dining area pertains the potential risk of foodborne illnesses. However, lack of attention has been paid to the food safety issues at university food courts, and especially food safety behaviors of consumers. This study extended the knowledge of previous food safety literature by adopting a smartphone-based observation technique and developing a rubric customized for consumers and employees at university food courts.\n",
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Thailand tourism forecasting based on a hybrid of discrete wavelet decomposition and NARX neural network
|
[
"Discrete wavelet decomposition",
"Nonlinear autoregressive neural network with exogenous input",
"Nonstationary time series"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Tourism is vital for several countries, as a result of a large consumption of money for businesses with their goods and services as well as the opportunity for employment in the service industries, including airline transportation and accommodation services. As a consequence, tourism both directly and indirectly contributes a significant share to nation's gross domestic product (GDP). Unlike manufacturing, retail trade or construction, tourism industrial product and services, e.g., hotel rooms, airline seats and car rentals have a perishable nature; they cannot be inventoried. Hence, to avoid the financial cost of excess capacity or the opportunity costs of unfulfilled demand, tourism management planning is crucial. In this process, the accurate forecast of tourism volume in the form of arrivals is especially important because it is an indicator of precise future demand, thereby providing basic information for subsequent managerial planning as well as decision and policy making. Management sectors, including private as well as government ones can use such basic information to plan their future operations and to foresee the need for facilities and infrastructure development.\n2. A brief review of NARX neural network and DWD: NARX forecasting neural network has been applied for modeling discrete-time nonlinear dynamical systems (Leontaritis and Billings, 1985; Norgaard et al., 2000). In this network, the next value of the dependent output signal at time t+1 is regressed on previous values of the output signal and exogenous input signal. Thus, the NARX model can be mathematically represented as:\n3. The proposed DWD-NARX: The proposed hybrid forecasting method, DWD-NARX serves as a combination of DWD and the SP-architecture NARX. However, one of the key issues for the success of tourism forecasting is a suitable selection of an appropriate exogenous input factor. With regard to tourism forecasting, the exogenous input factor is carefully constructed based on economic theory; it should influence the way in which tourists make their decision regarding the destination choice. By this reason, an exogenous input factor at time t is defined, here as a relative price variable u(t) which is a ratio that measures the weighted average consumer price index in Thailand relative to that in some particular number of original countries, adjusted by the relevant exchange rates (Song et al., 2003). One to seven top-ranked original tourist countries have been considered. Those seven top-ranked countries sequentially include Malaysia, China, Japan, Korea, UK and USA and Singapore, in descending order. The computation of such relative price u(t) is shown as follows:\n4. Experimental results: Thailand tourism monthly dataset over January 1999 to December 2013 (Ministry of Tourism and Sports, 2014) is focussed in the experiments. In total, 80 and 20 percent of total 180 data are successively processed in training and testing phases. To evaluate the forecasting performance, tenfold cross-validation is incorporated in the experiment using rolling forecasting window (Hyndman, 2010) that moves the training window and keeps it of fixed length in forecasting time horizon. Figure 3 demonstrates an example with respect to the structure of training and testing datasets for each fold of cross-validations; where gray and white boxes consecutively represent training and testing interval periods.\n5. Managerial implications: The proposed DWD-NARX, which combines DWD with NARX forecaster is accounted as a bridge for the gap between computer-science/engineering theory and industrial management practice. Wavelet analysis, here referred as DWD represents computer-science/engineering-oriented theory; whereas the nonlinear autoregressive neural network using relative price as an exogenous input factor, referred here as NARX can be regarded as an efficient forecasting tool for managerial forecasting practice. Without DWD, NARX alone can yield over 26 percent better forecasting performance based on the median of MAPE than BPNN, RNN and GRNN; on the other side, NARX with the use of DWD provides more than 63 percent MAPE-based forecasting improvement over NARX alone for the unseen, different sets of testing cases, as seen in the previous section. The powerful capability of feature extraction, belonging to DWD causes both low forecasting error rate and model overfitting. Such high performance along with few overfitting forecast play a key role in enhancing demand-side tourism management. This leads to more suitably consolidated management planning, which in turn precedes high-performing managerial decision making. Moreover, the generalization potentiality of DWD to extract and analyze trends as well as various types and levels of changes from the trend, hidden in nonstationary time series contributes to some important implication. Such implication indicates that the proposed model is not only limited to Thailand tourism forecast, but is also possibly applied with nonstationary time series forecast, related to other management domains. However, the exogenous input factor is to be empirically reconsidered on domain-by-domain or case-by-case basis, for the sake of effective forecast.\n6. Conclusion: This paper presents a hybrid forecasting method, namely DWD-NARX for coping with nonstationarity problem, usually existed in nonlinear tourism time series that highly possibly degrade the forecasting performance. DWD is capable to handle high-level nonstationary time series; it has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for analyzing particular aspects of data such as trends, breakdown points, discontinuities in higher derivatives, hidden in the time series data. Based on DWD, such hidden features can be extracted in time domain in the form of approximate as well as fine and coarse detail components at various frequency resolution levels. In this work, the potent capability of the wavelet analysis as an effective feature extraction tool for enhancing forecasting performance is insisted. Each extracted feature set at a specific resolution level along with a particular type of exogenous explanatory input are fed into the nonlinear autoregressive of neural network with exogenous factors (NARX), a powerful class of dynamic nonlinear forecasting systems. The exogenous variable, here defined as the relative price with respect to six top-ranked original tourist countries is taken into an account. Within the scope of this work, such relative price has been found to yield the most well-suited correlation associated with the tourist arrivals amount. This confirms, in a certain level the explanatory efficiency of the exogenous input to predict the tourism data.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: Accurate forecast of tourist arrivals is crucial for Thailand since the tourism industry is a major economic factor of the country. However, a nonstationarity, normally consisted in nonlinear tourism time series can seriously ruin the forecasting computation. The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid forecasting method, namely discrete wavelet decomposition (DWD)-NARX, which combines DWD and the nonlinear autoregressive neural network with exogenous input (NARX) to cope with such nonstationarity, as a consequence, improve the effectiveness of the demand-side management activities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: According to DWD-NARX, wavelet decomposition is executed for efficiently extracting the hidden significant, temporal features contained in the nonstationary time series. Then, each extracted feature set at a particular resolution level along with a relative price as an exogenous input factor are fed into NARX for further forecasting. Finally, the forecasting results are reconstructed. Forecasting performance measures rely on mean absolute percentage error, mean absolute error as well as mean square error. Model overfitting avoidance is also considered.\nFindings: The results indicate the superiority of the DWD-NARX over other efficient related neural forecasters in the cases of high forecasting performance rate as well as competently coping with model overfitting.\nResearch limitations/implications: The scope of this study is confined to Thailand tourist arrivals forecast based on short-term projection. To resolve such limitations, future research should aim to apply the generalization capability of DWD-NARX on other domains of managerial time series forecast under long-term projection environment. However, the exogenous input factor is to be empirically revised on domain-by-domain basis.\nOriginality/value: Few works have been implemented either to handle the nonstationarity, consisted in nonlinear, unpredictable time series, or to achieve great success on finding an appropriate and effective exogenous forecasting input. This study applies DWD to attain efficient feature extraction; then, utilizes the competent forecaster, NARX. This would comprehensively and specifically deal with the nonstationarity difficulties at once. In addition, this study finds the effectiveness of simply using a relative price, generated based on six top-ranked original tourist countries as an exogenous forecasting input.\n",
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] |
Measuring team learning behaviours through observing verbal team interaction
|
[
"Team working",
"Team learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Interest in the concept of team learning started booming in research and practice when Senge (1990) stated \"that learning teams are an essential element of a learning organisation\". In the years after the publication of Senge's book, an increasing number of studies about this topic were published in different fields of scientific research (for a review see Decuyper et al., 2010). Team learning was found to have a positive influence on different aspects and levels (individual-team-organisation) of organisational functioning. Within the team itself, its occurrence enhances the emergence of, for example, shared vision about the goal of the team, enhanced knowledge of the skills of other team members and better team performance on a team level (Boon et al., 2013; Edmondson, 1999, 2013; Veestraeten et al., 2014). It also has positive influences on individual team members. Team learning enhances, for example, individual learning (Sweet and Michaelsen, 2007), self-efficacy and motivation (Johnson and Johnson, 1994). On an organisational level, it enhances, inter alia, continuous growth of the organisation by collective discussions, sharing and building of information, creation of innovative products and actions (Dochy et al., 2014).\nTeam learning: Team learning is expressed through interaction processes between team members during which they organise and integrate interdependent acts or input through cognitive, verbal and behavioural activities to organise team work effectively and create valuable team output (Marks et al., 2001). Based on the systematic review of literature from different research traditions, Decuyper et al. (2010) identified eight fundamental team learning behaviours that they divided into basic team learning behaviours and facilitating team learning behaviours.\nThe present study: The main goal of this study is to examine the characteristics of the actual team learning behaviours by means of studying real team interactions instead of team members' perceptions of team learning behaviours. Starting from the definition of team learning behaviours and the items that are used to measure them in previous questionnaire research (Boon et al., 2013; Savelsbergh et al., 2009; Van den Bossche et al., 2006; Veestraeten et al., 2014), a coding system is created to identify the actual team learning behaviours by studying actual team interaction starting from sequences of observed individual verbal contributions. This study addresses following research questions:\nMethod: Participants\nResults: In this section, an overview of the findings concerning characteristics of team learning behaviours based on studying the individual verbal behaviours is given. First, the results concerning the structure and composition of BTLB are presented; next, a similar overview is presented for FTLB.\nConclusions & discussion: The different insights about the BTLB and FTLB generated as a consequence of the analysis of this study are described in the following paragraphs. Additionally, a discussion is set up to critically reflect on these conclusions.\nLimitations: This study itself as the topic of this study (the method of observation of team learning behaviour) has limitations. The main limitation of this study is that the findings are based on three project teams, which makes the generalisability questionable. However, the findings were very consistent over the three project teams. And the small sample also creates the opportunity to get very fine-grained information about team learning behaviours. Related to this, the main limitation of this coding method of analysis is that it is time-consuming to apply due to its detailed approach.\nImplications for theory and practice: When comparing the results of the current study to the existing theory about team learning and previous questionnaire research investigating team learning processes, it can be stated that more detailed knowledge was created concerning the characteristics of the different types of BTLB and FTLB that were observed. This enhances the insights in theory of team learning behaviour, specifically concerning the distinction between individual contributions to the team and team learning efforts. This creates a range of new opportunities to enhance the quality of data collection and related insights on team learning behaviours, both quantitative and qualitative.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to explore, as an answer to the observed lack of knowledge about actual team learning behaviours, the characteristics of the actual observed basic team learning behaviours and facilitating team learning behaviours more in-depth of three project teams. Over time, team learning in an organisational context has been investigated more and more. In these studies, there is a dominant focus on team members' perception of team learning behaviours.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A coding schema is created to observe actual team learning behaviours in interaction between team members in two steps: verbal contributions by individual team members are coded to identify the type of sharing behaviour and, when applicable, these individual verbal behaviours are build up to basic and facilitating team learning behaviours. Based on these observations, an analysis of team learning behaviours is conducted to identify the specific characteristics of these behaviours.\nFindings: An important conclusion of this study is the lack of clarity about the line of demarcation between individual contributions and learning behaviours and team learning behaviours. Additionally, it is clear that the conceptualisations of team learning behaviour in previous research neglect to a large extend the nuances and depth of team learning behaviours.\nOriginality/value: Due to the innovative approach to study team learning behaviours, this study is of great value to the research field of teamwork for two reasons: the creation of a coding schema to analyse team learning behaviours and the findings that resulted from this approach.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Media relations
|
[
"Information media",
"Press relations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is almost no single industry without competition. Media is an industry where the competition is intense and it has been used for various purposes by organisations regardless of their size and country of origin. Hence, businesses and organisations need the media for a rainy day; therefore effective and intimate relationship, in which respect and understanding of each party's interest is carefully considered, must be exercised. Journalists and reporters are busy people whom getting hold of is difficult in the dog-eat-dog world of the so-called information era. Thus the best possible way of contacting them should be identified by responsible individuals at organisations. This is a vital task which needs extreme care and skills to establish and manage effective media relations (MR).\nMR and its originality: Media are s now part of almost everyone's everyday life throughout the globe. Rapid growth of new media and impacts of media, in general, is inexorable, particularly by presence of the internet, interactive and digital media. Once a press release and/or news are aired, it is done and surely would have impacts; however small they are. Technology changed the world and facilitated building up relationship with media and interacting with a wider audience than ever before. Based on Lifetips (2007), the terms \"public relations\" and \"media relations\" are still used interchangeably by many; however they are not exactly the same. Hence, drawing a clear line between the two terms is crucial in order to understand each of which roles better. MR addresses the relationship that firms build up with journalists, editors and analysts; whereas PR expands that relationship further to the general public. However, MR and PR cannot be separated in the dynamics of the twenty-first century and its turbulence. Surprisingly, according to Bland et al. (2001) there are still some practitioners who dedicate less time to MR.Media has been divided into \"traditional media\" and \"new media\" by many scholar and practitioners (Cutlip et al., 2006; Higgins, 1999). They are both equally important to organisations. Despite incredible growth of interactive and digital media, there are still some traditionalists who want to read about organisations' activities on hard copies rather than going on-line or press the \"red button\" on their digital TV (Digitalstore, 2007). This is why there are numerous of newspapers and magazines - as of traditional media - published every year. However, the internet as a new media is still booming throughout the world; although some argue that its growth is getting stagnant. New media is a new challenge, which has surely changed what the media used to be.Cutlip et al. (2006, p. 252) discuss that inclusion of new media as part of the process of social changes. Therefore, there is enough evidence to suggest that, World Wide Web (WWW) is now becoming an important communication tool on which MR can be effectively exercised. White and Raman (1999) argue that the WWW is the first controlled public relations (PR) mass-media, but is not filtered through gatekeepers. Here, skills and passion are needed to take advantage of this new experience. Before the internet, advertising was the only way to transmit controlled messages via the mass-media. Hill and White (2000) mention organisations tend to strengthen corporate identity, gather data, provide information to their stakeholders and the media via WWW.According to Fulton and Guyant (2002), the internet gives the opportunity to all organisations and businesses to pronounce their operation worldwide. It also allows direct and more effective communication with their key public regardless of geographic factors and barriers. For example, if something occurs in China now, within a few minutes it will be broadcasted throughout the world. The internet bypasses all the geographic barriers, but countries' rules and regulations, in which the organisation may have stakeholders, must be considered for legal purposes. Being successful in managing this, the media would be more interested to get in touch with such organisations. This in turn adds values to the company's publicity.\nHow to approach the media and journalists: According to Cutlip (1976, pp. 19-21) in the early years of PR, practitioners endeavoured almost exclusively to get attention in the mass-media for their organisations. Building up relationships with the media is a hard task and maintaining it, is even harder. A well established MR is the best avenue to create positive impression in the eyes of strategic public. It is important to have someone well trained and experienced available and accessible within an organisation; someone who can wisely disseminate information and understand what the journalists and reporters mean by certain phrases. If problems arise, an experienced spokesperson from the senior management (Wells and Spinks, 1998), should deal with the media to communicate complete and appropriate information. This is about credibility and reliability of content which an organisation can deliver to its public.It is crucial to businesses and organisations to remember that they operate within communities, in which they have substantial audiences. Media is one of their key audiences (Wells and Spinks, 1998). Thus co-operation with the media is essential and the key to succeeding in establishing as well as maintaining relationships with the media. This is all down to communication skills and attitude of individuals. Before contacting the media, having an idea about what type of journalists and or reporters you are going to talk to is incredibly important. This is essential to bear in mind, as we are between two generations: traditional; and modern.There is no complete consensus between the two yet; although both have great ideas. Therefore younger practitioners and scholars need to listen to and learn from experienced practitioners in businesses and organisations.Learning process never stops and skills are always vulnerable to obsolence; this is particularly true in the media industry and MR activities. Hence this calls for regular knowledge update and following up relevant news by organisations. As it implies, MR is serious and real therefore it requires real management and importantly engagement of skilful individuals with great communication skills. Communication is an art and a science. It is art because a human being creates and delivers its purpose. It is a science, because we learn and experiment stuff; where we can give solutions to complexities. This is about innovativity and creativity as basic principles of gathering attention of the media for what organisations may have to say to their public. One way of maintaining good MR is to keep updating available data and evaluate the organisation performance constantly. Therefore, enhancing effective communications is essential. Nothing can replace the need for strategically planned communications.Through professional approach and appreciating reporters' and journalists' limited time, organisations can attract their attention more effectively. For example giving space and time to them to get back to you rather than bothering them by constant calls and e-mails. This does not help but ruins relationships; everything should be carefully assessed and planned in the first place. Furthermore, the information should be designed in a way to encourage the reporters to get back to you as quickly as possible. However, follow up is an important task for organisations to ensure the effectiveness and appropriateness of what is taking place with respect to the organisation purposes. The information should be structured in a way that prevents future speculation and manipulation.\nMR and its role in community image of organisations: Organisations continuously strive for developing their image and improving their long-term relationship with key publics (Grunig, 1990). Wells and Spinks (1999a) suggest ethics and honesty enhance positive \"media exposure\" while dealing with publics. This [positive media exposure] needs to be taken into the core of every organisation's activities, in order to increase chances of improving the organisation's community image. Young (1984) suggests that media network is an opportunity to every organisation to communicate information to the public. Thus, well established media relations offer organisations and businesses a higher exposure to publics and community. However, sustaining community image will not happen, unless organisations and conglomerates practice concrete MR. Therefore, they need to be on-line, in papers, on TV and radios accompanied by positive comments. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to have good news; dissemination of bad news needs to be well structured and justified in order to save the organisation image and reputation in public minds.Zikmund and D'Amico (1995) argue that press releases create a favourable image in the public minds; which would benefit the long-term strategic vision of an organisation. Wells and Spinks (1999b) discuss that organisations employ various communication channels to reach their target audience by following \"effective communication systems\" principles. Image and reputation of an organisation circulate the business blood where, businesses are a country's blood. Livingstone (2007) mentions that we can no longer imagine our lives without media and communication technology. MR plays an invaluable role, as they almost simultaneously get an organisation's messages across to publics. However, MR cannot be established overnight and importantly it is not confined with crises occurrence. Gumpert (1997) and Higgins (1999) both suggest that the future of PR and MR will be on the internet. This indicates the importance of new media to organisations and need for its adoption.\nRole of business and organisations: Organisations need to endeavour to enhance public trust through effective MR, therefore they need to regularly emphasise their positive and fair activities. Accordingly MR would assist organisations for developing their reputation and reliability in a cost effective manner (Young, 1984). As of the dynamic nature of business environment, companies sometimes are surprised by issues and crises around them. To clarify the necessity of MR and its impact, Bland et al. (2001) argue that good MR would contribute to strategic objectives of organisations; in which various channels need to be utilised by organisation for fulfilling their strategic purposes.The media look for all sources of information to find out about an event which they feel is newsworthy. Therefore, being the source to the media is critical, as information will be genuine and immunised from manipulation of outsiders. This is about collaboration with the media and providing them with first-handed news, which inevitably strengthens MR. Explaining the importance of an issue to journalists and reporters, is part of \"grooming relationship\" with the media; this will be of \"value in the future\" (CDPR, 2007).It is crucial to businesses and organisations to convince the media experts, journalists, reporters and analysts to listen to what they have to say. Therefore, special skills and expertise are the key factors in developing media relations. Grunig (1989) in his discussion about the four models in PR, mentions that, asymmetrical communication PR tends to \"persuade publics\" whereas; symmetrical communication PR means to \"reach a compromise between the interests of the organisation and its publics\". Therefore, selecting the right media, the right journalists and the right reporters are deemed critically important to organisations to get their message across to their target public.\nConclusion: Consequently, it appears that organisations need to evaluate the effectiveness of their relationships with media on a regular basis; as effective MR enhances organisation image (Hill and White, 2000). MR is remarkable however, it is essential to think of the end result; which is the disseminated message to the publics. There are many opponent arguments in the world of PR and MR based on ongoing changes in all aspects of business. The twenty-first century is the era of communications and collaboration in which the technology is evolving and directs the world as it goes along. The media alongside new technology has been improved over the past couple of decades; this enables organisations to set their story and shape or tailor their corporate image more effectively. Well established MR can disable speculation and rumours, if organisations take a strategic approach and co-operate with the media.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to identify all important aspects of media relations researched by others and write a succinct literature review in order to facilitate the data gathering procedure for the future research in the field. Reliable references are quoted to fulfil the purpose of this paper.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper aims to provide an easy to read literature review about media relations and explain terms by appropriate examples. This is done by reading other articles from previous research and reviewed contemporary issues in terms of media relations that businesses face and how they manage the whole process.\nFindings: - Throughout the course of the work, it was found that many small to medium-sized businesses and organisations do not actually plan for their media relations and have limited knowledge of the concept. However larger organisations and conglomerates have a good understanding of media relations and use it as a powerful PR tool. Just a few of them integrate their media relations with other components of PR and this can allow some speculations.\nOriginality/value: - Media relations should not be used when issues and crises rise; it is essential to have constant liaison with top media owners in order to be informed about what is going on in the market. This allows adopting/changing strategies when needed in order to earn more public trust, as well as proactively identifying potential issues. Such flexibility and relationship with the media helps businesses to hinder potential issues from being turned to any kind of situation, which may harm own brands and publicity. Therefore customers feel valued and the government trust that particular business activity, because it is in favour with the society. Hence it gives invaluable credit to the business of the company.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
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