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Experienced teachers' informal workplace learning and perceptions of workplace conditions	[ "Workplace learning", "Schools", "Teachers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Changes in society and educational reforms require from teachers that they keep adjusting and improving their practice. Also, it is generally acknowledged that teachers play a key role in implementing educational reforms (Hargreaves et al., 1998). However, teachers only incidentally receive opportunities to engage in ongoing formal professional development programs. After the induction phase in the early stage of teachers' careers, informal workplace learning (i.e. learning without systematic support for learning) is usually the only option for learning (Van Eekelen et al., 2006; Verloop et al., 2001). Nevertheless, teachers report that even when their learning is not systematically supported, they learn from all kinds of activities they undertake during their work (e.g. Dunn and Shriner, 1999; Kwakman, 2003; Lohman, 2006). However, the question remains what this informal workplace learning looks like and how it is embedded in teachers' direct work environment.Teacher learning has been studied in several different and often unconnected research traditions. In their review on teacher learning, Richardson and Placier (2001) distinguished two research traditions: research on individual teacher learning on the one hand and research on the school as a context for teacher learning on the other hand. Richardson and Placier (2001) note that these two bodies of literature \"largely stand on their own - almost entirely uninformed by each other\" (p. 937). In addition, Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2005) state that: \"there is an extensive literature on teacher development or continuing professional development, which is paralleled by a long-established literature on workplace learning, but there has been very limited connection between the two\" (p. 112). In this article we will argue that in both bodies of literature the relations between informal workplace learning and workplace conditions for learning are not evident. More specifically, building on insights from the literature on:* individual teacher learning;* the school as a context for learning; and* workplace learning.This article will further elaborate a conceptual framework of teachers' informal workplace learning.From a larger study into 32 experienced teachers' informal workplace learning in the context of an educational reform, we selected case descriptions of two teachers who considerably differed in their learning activities and outcomes. The aim is to highlight the relationships between teachers' informal workplace learning and their perceptions of the conditions for learning in their direct work environment. The research question was: \"What is the relationship between teachers' informal workplace learning and their perception of workplace conditions?\". As such, our research question does not focus on which conditions influence informal workplace learning, but on how conditions interact with informal workplace learning. We focus on a number of specific workplace conditions that the literature shows to be related to teachers' workplace learning. The rationale behind the research question is that more insight into teachers' informal workplace learning and how this is related to their perceptions of their workplace as a learning environment will be helpful to create and transform teachers' workplace conditions so as to facilitate teachers' ongoing development. In addition, insights into the role of learning conditions in their own work environment can assist teachers in their efforts to keep up to date with changing requirements.\n2. Theoretical framework: This section is aimed at identifying core constructs from the literature to build a conceptual framework of informal workplace learning that our study is based on. On the basis of our overview of the literature a number of gaps are identified that our study aims to address.2.1 Informal workplace learning\n3. Method: 3.1 Context of the study\n4. Summary of the case study data: Table II summarizes the findings regarding the two cases, and provides an overview of the number and type of learning activities found in the learning experience reports and in the observational and interview data we collected during the year. Important differences are that Miranda often engages in meaning-oriented reflection, both in her learning experience reports as well as during her teaching, while such activities were not found in the case of Paul. Another difference is that Miranda experimented with new classroom behavior during her teaching, while Paul was more often observed while struggling with his behavior. In the next section, the learning activities of Paul and Miranda will be described in more detail and in the subsequent sections they will be related to Paul and Miranda's perceptions of workplace conditions for learning.\n5. Findings on the two teachers' informal workplace learning: 5.1 Miranda's learning activities and learning outcomes\n6. Findings on the relation between teachers' perceptions of workplace conditions for learning and informal workplace learning activities: In this section, the two teachers' perceptions of workplace conditions for learning in their direct work environment are compared and related to their informal workplace learning activities.6.1 Autonomy\n7. Conclusions and discussion: 7.1 Relations between teachers' informal workplace learning and their perceptions of workplace conditions for learning\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore in detail how teachers' perceptions of workplace conditions for learning are related to their informal workplace learning activities and learning outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - From a sample of 32 teachers, a purposeful sampling technique of maximal variation was used to select two cases described in this paper. In a mixed methods design quantitative data are used to position the two teachers in relation to their peers. Qualitative data are used to describe the two cases in depth.\nFindings: - The findings show how the diverging ways in which the two teachers perceive and actively shape their workplace conditions help to explain differences in the teachers' learning activities and learning outcomes.\nOriginality/value: - Scholars have argued that informal workplace learning is embedded in interdependent practices that arise from the interaction between social practices and individual agency. The case studies provide insight into how workplace conditions for learning are shaped in this interaction and how perceptions of these conditions enable or constrain teachers' informal workplace learning.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Volunteering in older age: an organizational perspective	[ "Voluntary organizations", "Human resource management", "Elderly people", "Older volunteers", "Organizational perspective", "Active ageing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Many governments in Europe would like their older citizens to stay on longer in the labor market and engage in productive paid work. They would also like more citizens to support good social causes by giving money and/or time to the civil society organizations that promote such causes and to \"participate\" more in the formal and informal institutions of democracy and society at large; again, older citizens are especially being encouraged to be active in these ways - to volunteer.In this context, there is much research about the experiences of older volunteers and the effects of this upon them. There is much less evidence on the deployment of volunteers from the organizational point of view. This paper focusses on organizational perspectives on the involvement of older volunteers.It seeks to review the previous research evidence and introduce, selectively, new research findings based on case studies from eight European countries. The aim of the latter is to offer an initial sharpening of the issues relating to the policies and practices of voluntary organizations, including some considerations of national patterns and those related to the sector of activity. The remainder of this section is devoted to summarizing briefly some key aspects of volunteering in older age in Europe. Section 2 turns to the evidence on the benefits of volunteering to the individual and on the features of volunteering opportunities that encourage volunteer engagement and commitment. Section 3 explores the much more limited evidence available on the perceptions of voluntary organizations about deploying older volunteers and identifies certain research questions that have yet to be posed. Section 4 follows these lines of inquiry by drawing on European case studies that exemplify the challenges faced by voluntary organizations employing older volunteers and how they are beginning to tackle them. Section 5 offers some concluding reflections.1.1 Volunteering in older age in Europe\n2. Volunteering among older people - an individual perspective: 2.1 The benefits to individuals\n3. Organizational benefits of deploying older volunteers: From the limited availability of previous studies on organizational benefits of employing older volunteers, it is apparent that this is a relatively unexplored field. Warburton and Cordingley (2004) emphasize that older volunteers are often a good economic investment for organizations, bringing long-working and life-time experiences (Steinberg and Cain, 2004), skills and wisdom to their roles. Furthermore, they generally give more time and remain with organizations longer than do younger volunteers (Musick and Wilson, 2008). Thus, older volunteers bring various strengths cost-effectively to the organization, for example, through a strong commitment (Warburton and McDonald, 2009), yet there is actually weak recognition among organizations of its benefits. This aspect is important, because turnover of volunteers has been judged to be costly to organizations; for example, in an analysis showing that about 30 percent of USA' older adults drop-out of volunteering after one year of service (Foster-Bey et al., 2007).On the other hand, it is arguable that both older volunteers and voluntary organizations may make an assessment of positive and negative aspects (Hendricks, 1995; Hooyman and Kiyak, 2007; Butrica et al., 2009) in the decision to commit themselves to each other. From the organizational perspective, if \"cost-benefit analyses\" are applied to the employment of older volunteers, and if the costs begin to outweigh the benefits, there might be the possibility of a decline in the demand for older volunteers (Warburton and Cordingley, 2004). There is indeed some evidence that voluntary organizations make cost-benefit assessments as to whether or not to employ older volunteers, and that they may behave accordingly in devising recruitment and retention strategies. After having reviewed experiences of volunteering tasks selection or assignment according to the age, Musick and Wilson (2008, p. 417) conclude that age does seem to make a difference, and this could be due not only to changing individual preferences according to age, but also to discrimination against older volunteers by volunteer supervisors, for particular jobs.For this reason in our study we are interested to identify the organizational perceived \"costs\" and \"benefits\" of employing older volunteers, seeking to understand in which way organizations invest in older volunteers so as to reap the benefits to set against the costs, even because on the other hand, previous studies have demonstrated that organizational support explains much of the variance in volunteer performance and outcomes (Morrow-Howell et al., 2009).\n4. Deploying older volunteers: organizational policies and practices: The evidence reviewed above reflects the primary focus of previous research as being on volunteer behavior. Only indirectly, by examining the impact of volunteer program characteristics upon certain behaviors that voluntary organizations are likely to value, does this relate to the organization per se. Little research has addressed the organizational perspective directly. Moreover, there has evidently been some uncertainty as to the degree of relevance in a European context of the findings of the \"program-based\" studies of volunteer behavior when they are mainly concerned with US or Australian cases; the dearth of \"volunteer programs\" in Europe means that the link they provide between the individual and organizational perspectives is missing.This section draws on the initial findings of 74 case studies of voluntary organizations in eight European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK. The case study approach envisaged on-site interviews carried out, depending on the country, mainly in the period spring 2009 to autumn 2010 with heads, directors, leaders, human resources managers and/or volunteer coordinators of voluntary organizations, addressing nine organizations per country (with ten in Denmark and France). The case studies are not intended to be representative of the population of voluntary organizations. Rather, they seek to capture key generic types of VO and the socio-economic environments in which they operate. Case studies are also intended to be theoretically enriching, even if they are not empirically generalizable (Yin, 1994).It was planned to draw in each country three case studies from each of the three largest sectors (measured by the number of volunteers involved) and identified according to the international classification of non-profit organizations (i.e. ICNPO). The selection also took into account the volunteers' age composition so as to include both organizations with rather high or above-average shares of older volunteers (defined as aged 50 and over), and those with low or below average shares. No attempt was made to impose a strict criterion for the age distribution of volunteers. Rather, the aim was to study a sufficient number of voluntary organizations with relatively high and relatively low proportions of older volunteers so as to catch possible different mechanisms in behaviors and attitudes. To recruit voluntary organizations according to the targets mentioned above, the main channels were directories of voluntary organizations, regulatory bodies and experts in the field. Some adjustments to the theoretical sample due to national characteristics of third sector organizations are described in Principi and Lamura (2011). The final collection of cases is shown in Table II.Common interview guidelines were adopted, made up of six main sections and intended to be used flexibly according to the circumstances of the case:(1) case study background;(2) organizational view and policies (e.g. is there a preferred volunteer age profile: what are the benefits and costs of deploying older volunteers, what influence do age diversity policies have);(3) specific initiatives for older volunteers (e.g. type of recruitment campaigns: how to capitalize on the motivations and competences of older volunteers);(4) external aspects (e.g. demographic and labor market situations, developments in the policy environment, the scope for matching supply of and demand for volunteers of different characteristics);(5) possible future developments in \"age management\"; and(6) other general information.The body of cases studies produced in the project allowed us to illustrate key issues facing voluntary organizations when dealing with older volunteers.At first hand we might regard the benefits that civil society organizations derive from deploying volunteers as being self-evident. After all, volunteers work for free, sometimes not even being reimbursed fully for expenses incurred by doing so. Surely, this must mean that the organizations are able to achieve more with the income streams they have when less is spent on salaried staff. Certainly, the Swedish cases underline the importance of volunteer work \"as a prerequisite for financial survival\" (Andersson et al., 2010); only one religious organization with sufficient income from investments and public subventions through the tax system proved to be an exception to this.However, the notion of volunteers as a \"free resource\" must be qualified by recognizing that in more strategic approaches to volunteer deployment in Europe, there are \"costs\" as well as \"benefits\" involved in their recruitment and deployment or, at least, given the lack of financial data on human resource decision making, there are \"advantages\" as well as \"disadvantages\" expressed in more qualitative terms.4.1 Organizational perceptions of the advantages of engaging older volunteers\n5. Concluding reflections: 5.1 The case studies and previous evidence\nAcknowledgement: This research was funded by the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant FP7-216289 (ASPA). Consortium members: Per Jensen from Aalborg Universitet (Denmark), Annemarie Guillemard, Marielle Poussou-Plesse and Denis Duplan from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, CEMS/IMM (France), Frerich Frerichs and Paula Aleksandrowicz from the Research Centre for Ageing and Society (CAS) at the University of Vechta (Germany), Giovanni Lamura, Andrea Principi and Carlos Chiatti from the Department of Gerontological Research of the Italian National Research Centre on Ageing (INRCA) (Italy), Kene Henkens and Harry Van Dalen from Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, KNAW/NIDI (Netherlands), Joop Schippers and Wieteke Conen from Utrecht University (Netherlands), Jolanta Perek-Bialas and Konrad Turek from Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland), Dominique Anxo from Centre for Labour Market Policy Research, Linnaeus University (Sweden) and Robert Lindley, Beate Baldauf and Sheila Galloway from the University of Warwick (UK). For more information see: www.aspa-eu.com/\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to shed light on organizational perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of engaging older volunteers, and on how they might best capitalize on the availability of older volunteers in different countries and sectors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws from 74 case studies of voluntary organizations carried out in eight European countries, conducted mainly between spring 2009 and autumn 2010. On-site interviews adopting common guidelines were carried out with organizational representatives.\nFindings: - From the organizational perspectives, some disadvantages of engaging older volunteers are: difficulties matching older volunteers to tasks; problems relating to health and declining capacities; the need for special training efforts. Examples of perceived advantages are: considerable knowledge, skills, experience, reliability and strong commitment of older volunteers. In spite of the very different contexts, objectives and notions of \"performance\", cost-benefit assessments of older volunteers do not differ greatly from those generally held by employers about older employees. Countries differ considerably in the recognition of older volunteer potential.\nPractical implications: - Organizational policies and initiatives to capitalize on the availability of older volunteers are examined in the paper. Country and sector-related reflections show how different and changing are the environments for volunteering. Policy makers need to recognise these when implementing active ageing policies. Voluntary organizations should raise their awareness of the need for innovation in volunteer management, especially relating to older people.\nOriginality/value: - There has been much research about the experiences of older volunteers and how they benefit from the operations of civil society organizations. The perceptions of the organizations have, however, been neglected and these are explored in this paper.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Differences in access to information and communication technologies: Voices of British Muslim teenage girls at Islamic faith schools	[ "Communication technologies", "Inclusion", "Islam", "Learning methods", "ICT difference" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The South Asian diasporas in Britain are important to understand the fluidity of the Muslim community, which has strong ties to cultural and religious traditions. Islam is one of the most prominent religions in England with 5 per cent (2.7 million) of citizens stating their religious identity as Muslim. In some towns in northern England, Muslims represent approximately 50 per cent of the population, and they represent around 14 per cent of the population in large cities such as London and Manchester (Moosavi, 2012). After Anglicans and Roman Catholics, Muslims constitute the third largest faith community in the country. It is important to note that Muslim pupils are from diverse ethnic backgrounds, but the vast majority are from Pakistan (40 per cent), Bangladesh (20 per cent) and India (15 per cent) (Burgess et al., 2005). This diversity has limited implications for this study because we proceeded based on the premise that the unity of Muslim identity transcends ethnic backgrounds. This moves our understanding more closely to a type of strategic essentialism (Spivak, 1988). The pedagogical variant of this means that although they are multi-cultural in nature, it is the faith dimension of their lived experiences which provides the unifying character (Parker-Jenkins, 1995). The faith dimension is pivotal to religious and cultural identity. In Islam, the Quran acts as an educational compass. Even though there are some differences in the cultural context of Islamic schools, the underlying teaching and learning strategies demonstrate universal behavioural patterns rooted in a spiritual rather than a cultural construct (Sabki and Hardaker, 2012; Sabani et al., 2016).\nCharacteristic features of ICT access, use and difference: Four main differences between pupils were identified in the literature on the use of ICT in education: differences in pupil participation in ICT activities at school and their home; differences in knowledge about ICT and knowledge that is a consequence of learning with ICT; differences in pupil attitudes; and differences in pupils' ways of working with ICT. We now explore the research that has been conducted into ICT access and use, digital equity for social inclusion, and ICT differences in the context of gender, ethnicity and religion (see Table I). This research is intended to provide an insight into what is known about ICT differences in these four main areas, but has a particular focus on ICT, inclusion and Islam.\nMethodology: The principal focus of this research was to explore ICT differences through the ICT access and use of British Muslim teenage pupils at Islamic faith schools, and ICTs' perceived influence on learning. The methods of qualitative data collection used in this study endeavour to signify the value of the relationships between issues and also ascertain and explore individual's attributes to things (Livesey, 2005). This approach express provides a qualitative approach for how \"the world can be studied through the eyes of the people that are being studied\" (Bryman and Bell, 2003, p. 469). This approach seemed particularly pertinent for this study of a particular group within Muslim ethnic minorities.\nResults: We now present the empirical results of the data collected from the British Muslim teenage girls at Islamic faith schools in the UK. The pupils' names were replaced with pseudonyms for anonymity and confidentiality to achieve the trustworthiness of the research process (Rossman and Rallis, 2010). The interview data were analysed thematically following the template analysis guidelines (Crabtree and Miller, 1999; King, 2004, 2010). The themes that emerged from the data are discussed below.\nConcluding comments: Our qualitative empirical research explored issues related to ICT differences through access and use by British Muslim teenage girls in Islamic faith schools and ICTs' perceived influence on learning. Our study sees many similarities with mainstream schools on the challenges of ICT becoming more ubiquitous in our daily lives. The essence of our findings are focussed on new insights into the symbiotic relationship between ICT access in the home and the school, how formal or informal teaching is facilitating by subject-specific online resources, and finally how ICT differences, for some, leads to digital inequity through access restrictions to content knowledge and the associated teaching styles.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Most research on information and communication technologies (ICT) differences has been related to gender and ethnicity, and to a lesser extent religious affiliation. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this field of research by situating the discussion in the context of British Muslims and extending current research into ICT differences beyond gender and ethnicity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper explores the ICT differences in access and use by British Muslim teenage girls at Islamic faith schools, and ICTs' perceived influence on learning. The qualitative research was undertaken by conducting 45 semi-structured interviews with British Muslim teenage girls in Islamic faith schools.\nFindings: The study provides tentative findings that Islamic faith schools are not only framed by the wider diverse Muslim community, but also by the supplementary schooling of madrasahs. The findings suggest that the home use of ICTs was reinforced rather than compensated for by the Islamic faith schools. This seemed to inhibit many pupils' access to online educational resources. The authors found that didactic instruction was prevalent and this provided tentative insights into the types of digital inequity experienced by many pupils.\nOriginality/value: The research into ICT differences in the UK adopted the premise that the unity in Muslim identity increasingly transcends ethnicity and gender in the Muslim community.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Customer-to-customer interaction quality, promotion emotion, prevention emotion and attitudinal loyalty in mass services	[ "Customer-to-customer interaction quality", "Friend-interaction quality", "Neighbouring customer-interaction quality", "Audience-interaction quality", "Promotion emotion", "Prevention emotion", "Attitudinal loyalty" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As advancements in digital technology enhance the connectivity of consumers (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2018), service managers and academics are increasingly interested in customer-to-customer (Hereafter, C2C) interactions (Heinonen et al., 2018). C2C interactions are known for influencing not only the service experience and value creation (Heinonen et al., 2018) but also brand loyalty (Kim and Choi., 2013) for some services (e.g. collective consumption contexts such as mass services, Bruce et al., 2019; Ng et al., 2007; Nicholls, 2010). Successful C2C interactions can be realized by orchestrated management customized for each type of interaction since C2C interactions have diverse forms: (1) direct / indirect interaction (Martin and Pranter, 1989), (2) on-site / off-site interaction (Harris et al., 2000), (3) customer / non-customer interaction (Nicholls, 2005), (4) positive / negative interaction (Heinonen et al., 2018) and (5) friend- / neighbouring customer- / audience-interaction (Kim and Choi, 2016).In order to successfully facilitate C2C interactions, service managers need to comprehend the characteristics of paths from each type of C2C interaction to brand loyalty. Previous research investigated the relationship from peer-to-peer interaction to loyalty via customer experience quality (Kim and Choi, 2013), but the literature on C2C interaction is incomplete as Kim and Choi (2013) focussed on the effect of overall C2C interaction despite its complex nature. Provided that this view is too narrow and there are potential gains from a holistic approach that incorporates various types of C2C interactions, this research explores C2C interaction more in depth by breaking it down into three types. In addition, this study investigates the relationship between C2C interaction and emotions. It is surprising that the effect of C2C interaction on emotions has not been investigated yet as interaction with others is likely to elicit specific emotions, which has an influence on consumers' overall service experience. We propose a hypothetical model to investigate the relative influence of C2C interaction quality on attitudinal loyalty through promotion emotion and prevention emotion in the context of mass services. To help comprehend the impact of inter-customer interactions, we investigate the influences of three types of C2C interaction quality (i.e. friend-, neighbouring customer- and audience-interaction quality) following the typology used by Kim and Choi (2016).The present research makes two theoretical contributions. First, this study contributes to service research by advancing knowledge concerning C2C interactions as we examine the paths from each type of C2C interaction quality to attitudinal loyalty in mass service settings, where various kinds of inter-customer interactions typically take place. Despite the importance of C2C interaction, the paths from inter-customer interactions to attitudinal loyalty have not been explored intensively in the previous research (Kim and Choi, 2013) and only been examined conceptually (Heinonen, 2018). This research is intended to contribute to service research by providing an integrative framework regarding the types and outcomes of C2C interactions and validating the relationships using empirical research. Second, despite the importance of C2C interaction, previous research on C2C interactions has provided limited findings regarding the outcomes of C2C interaction (Kim and Choi, 2013). Heinonen et al. (2018) posit that C2C interactions create significant value for customers, but the outcomes of C2C interaction in particular emotions have not been studied much in previous research. This study contributes to advancement in service literature by empirically investigating the relationship between C2C interaction and attitudinal loyalty via post-consumption emotions (i.e. promotion emotion, prevention emotion). The main contribution of this study lies in assessing the relative influence of three types of C2C interactions on emotions and loyalty.To test the model, we gathered self-administered data using an online survey. Then, the hypothesized influential paths were examined through structural equation modelling. The remaining part of the current research is organized as follows. The following section specifies the hypotheses. Next, the method section addresses examination methods. After that, the results section presents the results and discusses the findings. Finally, the study concludes with discussions of this study's implications and limitations, suggesting future research directions.\n2. The research model and theoretical background: C2C interaction, which refers to \"the exchange of information, emotions and feelings between customers\", has not been studied much in previous research despite its importance (Lin et al., 2020, p. 2). According to Kim and Choi (2016), C2C interaction quality denotes \"the perceived judgment of the superiority of customers' interaction with other customers\" (p. 386). We build on the previous research work of Kim and Choi (2016) to develop a comprehensive model on the role of three types of C2C interaction quality in evoking promotion and prevention emotions, thereby influencing attitudinal loyalty. The proposed model (see Figure 1) posits that the perceived quality of friend-interaction evokes both promotion and prevention emotions. On the other hand, neighbouring customer-interaction quality evokes promotion emotion, whereas audience-interaction quality triggers prevention emotion. These promotion and prevention emotions are the antecedents of attitudinal loyalty. This research empirically validates the proposed relationship in the model shown in Figure 1. 2.1 Customer-to-customer interaction quality\n3. Hypotheses development: 3.1 Friend-interaction quality and promotion and prevention emotions\n4. Research methodology: We collected data through an online survey using experience sampling. Every respondent was requested to recall the latest experiences at theme parks and public transportation with purchase pals (e.g. friends). These services were chosen based on Ng et al. (2007)'s mass service typology and pilot study. Subsequently, she/he was requested to answer questions about those experiences. Even though the experience sampling method does not resolve every restriction of treating retrospective life accounts, it is effectively used in the services management research area (Huang, 2008). 4.1 Thesample\n5. Theanalysis and results: 5.1 Themeasurement model\n6. Discussion and implications: 6.1 Theoretical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The current study aims to explore the relationships between three kinds of customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction quality and brand loyalty via customer promotion and prevention emotions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In order to test the model, we gathered self-administered data through an online survey. The relationships were examined using structural equation modelling (SEM).\nFindings: The findings show that the influence of customer-to-customer interaction quality on promotion/prevention emotion varies: friend-interaction quality evokes both promotion emotion (high-arousal feelings) and prevention emotion (low-arousal feelings), whereas neighbouring customer-interaction quality elicits promotion emotion, and audience-interaction quality elicits prevention emotion. Moreover, the findings show that enhancing both promotion and prevention emotions is crucial to improve customer attitudinal loyalty in mass service settings, and the strength of the link from promotion emotion to attitudinal loyalty is stronger than that from prevention emotion.\nPractical implications: The authors suggest that marketers should focus on facilitating effective friend- and neighbouring customer-interaction to enhance promotion emotion.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to a stream of research on customer-to-customer interaction by exploring the relative influences of three kinds of customer-to-customer interaction quality on customer attitudinal loyalty via post-consumption emotions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The conceptual ecology of digital humanities	[ "Collaboration", "Humanities", "Project management", "Pedagogy", "Interdisciplinarity", "Digital humanities", "Sustainability", "Cyberinfrastructure" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Neither the traditional nor the digital humanities can succeed alone as well as they can together(Hayles, 2012, p. 61).\nIntroduction: Numerous digital humanities scholars see their field as unprecedentedly robust. They point to new publications, funding, journals, organizations, projects, positions, networks, centers, and institutes (Alexander and Davis, 2012; Greetham, 2012; Jewell, 2008; Klein, 2015; Meister, 2012; Nowviskie, 2015; Siemens and Sayers, 2015; Svensson, 2012b). Waltzer (2012) deems digital humanities a legitimate scholarly foundation while Liu (2012, 2013) characterizes digital humanists as nearly legitimate partners with so-called traditional humanists.\nComputing in the humanities and the cradle of digital humanities: Setting a foundation for digital humanities, humanities computing focused on textual data - often on an unprecedented scale - from its effective gestation with Roberto Busa's Aquinas concordance (started in 1949) (Deegan and Tanner, 2004; Rockwell and Mactavish, 2004; Svensson, 2009; Witmore, 2012).\nDigital humanities: definition and scope, inclusivity, and criticism: Definition and scope\nDigital humanities and/in the academy: Institutional position\nWork: Digital humanities embraces ten complementary modes of work: digitization, crowdsourcing, archives and databases, digital curation, texts, editing, visualization, geospatiality, gaming, and code. A variety of tools undergirds these practices.\nOverarching concerns: As noted above, digital humanities face familiar challenges such as definition, scope, inclusivity, criticism and their position in the scholarly communication infrastructure and in institutions of higher education. Six other broad issues merit attention: interdisciplinarity, collaboration, cyberinfrastructure, project management, sustainability, and education.\nConclusions and directions for future research: \"During a period of transition it may be particularly difficult to determine where we are in the unfolding of that transition,\" temporizes Greetham (2012, p. 442). The conversation over DH's substance - and over its hype - remains vigorous. In proselytizing mood, Johanson (2016) pronounces, \"Future possibilities are almost realities\" (p. 124). In similar spirit, Alexander and Davis (2012) stress the field's innovative possibilities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to dissect key issues and debates in digital humanities, an emerging field of theory and practice. Digital humanities stands greatly to impact the Information and Library Science (ILS) professions (and vice versa) as well as the traditional humanities disciplines.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper explores the contours of digital humanities as a field, touching upon fundamental issues related to the field's coalescence and thus to its structure and epistemology. It looks at the ways in which digital humanities brings new approaches and sheds new light on manifold humanities foci.\nFindings: Digital humanities work represents a vital new current of interdisciplinary, collaborative intellectual activity both in- and outside the academy; it merits particular attention from ILS.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper helps potential stakeholders understand the intellectual and practical framework of the digital humanities and \"its relationship\" to their own intellectual and professional work.\nOriginality/value: This paper critically synthesizes previous scholarly work in digital humanities. It has particular value for those in ILS, a community that has proven especially receptive to the field, as well as to scholars working in many humanities disciplines. Digital humanities has already made an important impact on both LIS and the humanities; its impact is sure to grow.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Annexing new audit spaces: challenges and adaptations	[ "Independence", "Bourdieu", "Audit report", "Accreditation", "Accounting profession", "New audit spaces" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Professional auditing has long been marked by dynamism and fluidity. Throughout their history, audit firms have been proven to be highly adaptive, responding and innovating amid dynamic and competitive markets. In recent decades, audit markets have experienced substantial change, characterised by a high degree of concentration and \"tiering\" of firms and expansion into a set of occasionally polemic consulting services, as well as the emergence of a series of \"new audit spaces\" offered by a combination of different actors and firms. The very nature of auditing has changed as the boundaries have been redrawn (Miller, 1998), with some new audit practices moving into the very core of auditing while others remain at its periphery.\n2. Mature but evolving: developments in audit practice: Reviews of the history of auditing as a practice have consistently underlined its fluid and dynamic nature. Brown (1962) documents that the objectives, methods and emphasis on internal controls in auditing have changed dramatically in the past 400 years, shifting from the detection of fraud to the determination of \"true and fair\" financial position. Table I illustrates key trends, including an enhanced reliance on internal controls and a decrease in detailed testing.\n3. Theoretical considerations: To critically examine the expanding reach of audit-styled practices into a range of new areas, we draw on key theoretical tenets from the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Broadly speaking, Bourdieu's work is focused on dynamics and struggles for power and how order is maintained within social worlds. It offers a suite of interrelated analytical concepts - social structure (the field), power relations (constructed and exchanged through various forms of capital) and internalised attitudes and behaviours (habitus) (Malsch et al., 2011, p. 198) - that aid understanding of a given domain's \"logic of practice\", including its dominant structures, prevailing power relations, accepted actions and practices and struggles to both sustain and disrupt these elements.\n4. Analysis: In this section we critically examine attempts at jurisdictional expansion in order to identify major adaptations and transformations at the intersection of financial auditing and other fields. It is structured around four major themes: independence; reporting; professional accreditation; and the nature of the audit role. We argue that development of new audit spaces has important implications for each of these themes, all of which are major structuring principles in financial auditing.\n5. Discussion: This paper had two research objectives. First, we aimed to deepen our understanding of how the advent of new audit spaces, and the essential attributes assigned to them, have reoriented the fundamental features of audit. Second, we explored the implications that this reorientation has had for the attempts by professional accounting elites (e.g. the Big-4 and professional accounting bodies) to extend their jurisdiction into new audit spaces. Our analysis unveils how core elements of financial auditing can be clearly distinguished from emerging new audit services. This is true with respect to the nature of the audit role, the operation of independence, participating practitioners and the degree of standardisation of reporting. These differences are summarised in Table IV (adapted in part from Lindberg (2007, p. 347)). This section elaborates on these differences in terms of issues and challenges they present for attempts by accounting elites (e.g. the Big-4 PSFs and professional accounting bodies) to seize commercial opportunities presented by new audit spaces. We also present some reflections for the accounting profession from the emergence of new audit spaces.\n6. Conclusion: As Miller (1998, p. 605) argues, accounting is most interesting at its margins. In the context of professional auditing, it is at the margins that we see new practices added to the repertoire of professional audit firms. It is at these margins that auditing intersects with other semi-autonomous fields and bodies of expertise. It is also at the margins that auditing comes to be linked to the demands, expectations, and ideas of diverse social and institutional agencies. New audit services are not merely oddball relatives in the auditing family, but rather important growth areas for the profession.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine attempts at jurisdictional expansion in the audit field. Specifically, the authors critically analyse the professional implications of \"new audit spaces\", that is, novel auditing and assurance services that have emerged at intersections between audit and other fields such as the environment, the public sector, sport and education. The purpose is two-fold. First, to better understand the dynamics of new audit spaces, and second, to highlight the major challenges and adaptations prompted by these dynamics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice, the authors highlight and problematise four issues central to the construction of new audit spaces: independence; reporting; professional accreditation; and the nature of the audit role.\nFindings: The audit profession has experienced mixed success in seeking to annex new audit spaces; in some instances, practices initially located at the margins of auditing have moved towards its centre, while elsewhere projects have been abandoned, colonised by others or remain in flux. In these ventures, the accounting profession is brought into competition with other bodies of expertise and modes of practice. In new audit spaces, core elements of auditing, as conventionally conceived, are transmogrified as they travel.\nOriginality/value: This analysis calls into question some of the \"sacred cows\" of auditing and challenges the transferability of the capitals and habitus of the accounting profession in other domains. Future research avenues are suggested.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Occupational segregation and the gender earnings gap in China: devils in the details	[ "China", "Gender discrimination", "Occupational segregation", "Wage discrimination" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gender earnings gap in China with a focus on the role of differences in the occupational distribution of males and females - hereafter referred to as occupational segregation. Particular attention is paid to its two components as detailed subsequently. The \"explained\" component is due to differences between males and females in their endowments of characteristics that influence occupational attainment. The \"unexplained\" component is due to differences in their occupational distribution when they have the same endowments of characteristics that influence that distribution. The latter component is often attributed to occupational discrimination, although as always the case in the discrimination literature, it can also reflect the effect of unobserved factors. Particular attention is also paid to how this picture differs depending upon whether only broad occupational groups are used (as is common in the literature due to data limitations) compared to the use of more detailed sub-occupations (as are available in our data set).\n2. Literature review: 2.1. The impact of occupational segregation on the gender pay gap: international evidence\n3. Methodology: The traditional gender pay decomposition methods, as suggested by Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973), decompose the overall gender pay gap into a component due to differences between males and females in their endowments of wage determining characteristics (\"explained\" portion) as well as a component due to differences in pay they each receive for the same wage determining characteristics (\"unexplained\" portion, often attributed to discrimination since it reflects differences in pay for the same wage determining characteristics).\n4. Data and summary statistics: We use the China census (2005) to conduct our analysis of gender occupational segregation and gender earnings inequality. The original survey consisted of 2,585,481 observations. This figure was substantially reduced by only selecting employed individuals who were between 16 and 65 years old. Self-employed individuals were excluded since the income of self-employed individuals may involve profit instead of employment income. We also limit our sample to those employees who had urban registration status and those who worked full time (working at least 35 hours per week). Among the total sample of 246,000 individuals, 58.1 percent were males (142,827) and 41.9 percent were females (103,173). The sample size is sufficiently large and the occupation classifications sufficiently detailed that we are able to estimate the effect of occupational segregation across six broad occupational groups as well as 39 sub-occupations within these groups. This enables us to examine the sensitivity of the results to the level of occupational disaggregation. We first present the results for the six broad occupation groups.\n5. Analysis and results: 5.1. Multinomial logit estimation and predicted female occupation attainment\n6. Conclusions: Our results based on the six broad occupations highlights that the male-female pay gap is virtually completely explained by wage discrimination defined as females being paid less than males within the occupation groups, even when they have the same endowments of wage determining characteristics. Occupational segregation explains virtually none of the overall male-female pay gap. This relative unimportance of occupational segregation is consistent with other Chinese studies that are restricted to using broad occupational groups, although the evidence is often mixed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gender earnings gap in China with a focus on the role of differences in the occupational distribution of males and females.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use a procedure to model occupational attainments and decompose differences in earnings into an inter-occupational portion due to differences in the occupational distribution between males and females, and an intra-occupational portion due to differences in pay. The analysis is based on Chinese census data.\nFindings: The authors find that the male-female pay gap is virtually completely explained by wage discrimination defined as females being paid less than males within the occupation groups based on six broad occupations. Occupational segregation explains virtually none of the overall male-female pay gap, and in fact the \"segregation\" slightly favors women. However, the picture changes substantially when the analysis is conducted at the more disaggregate sub-occupation level within each of the six broad groups. Wage discrimination remains the prominent contributor to the pay gap across the disaggregated sub-occupations in each of the broad occupations. But there is considerable heterogeneity in the effect of occupational discrimination within the sub-occupations within the different broad occupational groups.\nSocial implications: When females have the same occupation-determining characteristics as men, they are in lower paying sub-occupations within the professional group and to a lesser extent within manufacturing and operations jobs. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect of occupational discrimination within the sub-occupations in the different broad occupational groups.\nOriginality/value: The paper systematically examines the degree to which the gender earnings gap in China is due to the differences in occupational distributions of males and females, highlighting that the conventional Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions can under- or over- estimate the unexplained portion of the gender pay gap by controlling or not controlling for differences in the occupational distribution of males and females. The paper also shows that previous studies that have examined occupational segregation across aggregate occupational groups can mask important differences in the effect of occupational discrimination within the sub-occupations in the different broad occupational groups.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managing change after the merger: the value of pre-merger ingroup identities	[ "Integration", "Social Identity Theory", "Ingroup", "Intergroup", "Post-merger" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) continue to be a common growth activity for big businesses seeking to add successful brands to their global portfolio. Recent examples of this include Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia and Kraft's (now Mondelez) acquisition of Cadbury, where the larger conglomerate purchases the smaller company with the intent of maintaining the acquired company's successful brand offering. In the post-merger organization, workers of the acquired company continue to operate under their pre-merger brand; however, the company which they had come to know and love is now housed under a new corporate owner. With a change of ownership, who do these employees now identify with? Can a Nokia employee still work for the company holding a belief in its mission and values, or has this ideology been evaporated with a change of ownership? This type of merger is referred to as a joint-brand merger (Basu, 2006; Napier, 1989), where merging organizations are combined yet both pre-merger brands are maintained in the post-merger organization. Combining organizations under this type of structure is particularly difficult when departments undergo a substantial integration process, leaving previously competing teams working side by side under combined management structures. Although this has become a common growth strategy for big businesses, integration approaches for this type of M&A have received little attention.\nSIT and post-merger integration: Achieving positive organizational identification in the post-merger company is critical for successful integration. Employees who show stronger organizational identification have exhibited less conflict, higher levels of motivation, improved job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviour (Giessner et al., 2011; Van Dick et al., 2006). SIT research has been used to better understand these dynamics and provide strategies to help achieve post-merger organizational identification.\nSIT integration and the joint-brand context: In M&A integration, SIT promotes intergroup-based strategies to diminish status differences between merging groups. These strategies are used to remove the common status and dominance barriers to successful integration (Seo and Hill, 2005) using measures such as intergroup social interaction (Rouzies and Colman, 2012), enhancing intergroup permeability (Terry et al., 2001) and establishing a new corporate identity (Terry et al., 2001). The thrust behind this approach is to remove the employee's identification with their existing organization, and replace it with identification aligned to the newly formed organization. This is an intergroup-based single-identity approach to M&A integration; where a single post-merger identity is established through intergroup initiatives. Although this strategy is frequently discussed, it is counterproductive in a joint-brand M&A which requires both brands to be maintained.\nExamining the role of pre-merger ingroup identification: Continuity has shown to be an important factor in M&A integration. Some studies claim that the issue of continuation contributes directly to M&A success and failure, citing the inherent discontinuities of merger strategies as the main inhibitor of positive integration (Ullrich et al., 2005). Research has found that post-merger identification is dependent on the sense of continuity of pre-merger identity (Rouzies, 2011; Van Knippenberg et al., 2002). Pre-merger organizational identity; separate from work group identity, has shown to have the strongest correlation with positive post-merger identification (Bartels et al., 2006).\nCase study: Blue Bank and Green Bank: In 2003, Blue Bank purchased Green Bank to form the New Zealand-based organization \"Teal Bank Limited\". Blue Bank and Green Bank were two of the five major banks competing in the New Zealand market, and the acquisition heralded the formation of what would be New Zealand's biggest bank. Although analysts remained positive about the prospects of the acquisition, the integration of both organizations would be one of the most challenging in New Zealand banking history.\nMethodology: The research question posed for the study was, \"What are the effects of the ingroup development intervention in the post-merger joint-brand context?\" The research question had two important dimensions. The first identified the \"ingroup development intervention\" as the primary cause for change, and the second involved gauging the effects of the change within the case study environment. The intervention itself was designed to facilitate pre-merger ingroup identification within each brand. In terms of assessing the effects of the intervention, the research focused primarily on changes that occurred on the level of ingroup and intergroup dynamics.\nResearch findings: The ingroup development intervention facilitated pre-merger ingroup identification by using common identity building tools; in this case, enhanced communication (Empson, 2004) and intergroup differentiation (Balmer and Dinnie, 1999). Although identity as a variable is difficult to measure, what could be drawn from the interview transcripts was that communication and distinctiveness within the ingroups had increased. The analysis showed the following.\nDiscussion: SIT research is divided on the value of pre-merger identification in the M&A integration process. Previous studies have found that pre-merger identification fosters ingroup bias and intergroup discrimination (van Leeuwen et al., 2003; Van Dick et al., 2006; Van Vuuren et al., 2010), while conflicting research advocates for the role of pre-merger identification as a critical component of successful integration (Bartels et al., 2006; Rouzies, 2011; Ullrich et al., 2005; Van Knippenberg et al., 2002). The conflicting results are explained by variances in the M&A climate which differ between each integration process. The discussion below outlines the variances which help to explain the positive relationship between pre-merger identification and post-merger identification witnessed in the findings.\nConclusion: The research provides new insight into the application of SIT to M&A integration. Normative SIT literature has provided pathways for understanding M&As, much of which has centred on establishing intergroup-based single-identity approaches for post-merger integration. The study found that the ingroup development intervention facilitated pre-merger identification which resulted in positive post-merger identification and intergroup relations. These findings are similar to previous studies in the field, however, the research progresses our understanding of the use of pre-merger identification by validating the contextual factors and mediators which allowed this effect to occur. These included:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that pre-merger identification plays within a post-merger setting. Social Identity Theory (SIT) has conflicting reports on the role that pre-merger identification plays in post-merger integration. The current research explores a case study where enhancing pre-merger identification resulted in positive post-merger identification and intergroup relations; progressing knowledge in the field by analysing the contextual factors that facilitate this outcome.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research follows a case study design applying integration method for the study of changes over time. Two sets of in-depth semi-structured interviews underwent content analysis to derive thematic findings. Case detail was also provided to frame the results.\nFindings: Findings of the research showed that the integration strategy used to facilitate pre-merger ingroup identification reduced the perceived status differences between groups, moderately improved ingroup relations, and significantly improved intergroup relations.\nPractical implications: For strategic planners involved in managing change during a merger, the findings provide an alternative integration strategy to be used within a joint-brand structure. The research also provides several analysis points that managers can use to design appropriate integration strategies.\nOriginality/value: The findings are important for the application of SIT to mergers and acquisitions, which commonly view pre-merger identification as a barrier to integration. The current study outlines the contextual factors which strengthen the relationship between pre-merger identity and post-merger identification.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Socio-economic determinants of employment in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Jammu and Kashmir	[ "MGNREGA", "Elite capture", "Female participation rate", "Jammu and Kashmir" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Right to work and livelihood are two most basic requirements of an individual to live a dignified life. Constitution of India promises both right to work and livelihood to Indian citizens as given under Article 39(a)[1] and Article 41[2] of the constitution of India[3]. These two rights can be inferred from Article 21 of the constitution; Right to Life and Liberty, which is a Fundamental Right of every Indian citizen. These guiding principles prompted the government to start a number of public works-based employment programmes since 1980s like National Rural Employment Programme 1980-1989; Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme 1983-1989; Jawahar Rozgar Yojna 1989-1999; Employment Assurance Scheme 1993-1999; Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojna since September 2001 and National Food for Work Programme since 14 November 2004. These schemes met with a number of problems, both inbuilt and man-made, during implementation. Some of these problems were; less community participation as the schemes were formulated and implemented by a centralised bureaucracy, supply-driven schemes, poor monitoring and social accountability as a result leading to wastage of resources, leakages and corruption; inadequate employment generation; low participation rate of women, etc. (Pankaj, 2012). As a result, the goals which these schemes were expected to fulfil remained largely unfulfilled. In contrast, Maharashtra Employment Generation Scheme (MEGS)[4] adopted entitlement and demand-based approach wherein a minimum income through a minimum number of employment days became a legal entitlement, guaranteed through an act of the state legislature (Pankaj, 2012).\n2. Some problems with the scheme: 2.1 Delayed wage payments\n3. Performance of MGNREGS in J&K[14]: MGNREGS was implemented in J&K in a phased manner. Phase I in 2006 covered three backward districts, Doda, Poonch and Kupwara, which was extended to two more districts in Phase-II; Anantnag and Jammu. During the third and final phase, it was extended to the entire state of J&K. J&K is not among the best performing states in MGNREGS implementation. To begin with, the difficulties with respect to implementation of MGNREGS arose from, first; the special constitutional status of J&K which does not allow any automatic extension of the act passed by the central government to the state and second; the lack of proper implementing agencies given that panchayats in J&K are governed by J&K Panchayati Raj Act, 1989 which does not ensure same degree of power for these decentralised institutions as 73rd constitutional amendment act. As a result, the state was forced to opt for an alternative and relatively weak institutional strategy to implement MGNREGS (Malla, 2014).\n4. Data and methodology: The analysis draws from survey of three panchayats of Lar block of district Ganderbal of J&K.The data were collected during winter of financial year 2011-2012. This district is situated towards north of Srinagar, the summer Capital city. Ganderbal comprises of four administrative divisions, namely: Lar, Ganderbal, Kangan and Wakura and 136 villages. It has a population of 2, 55,631 out of which 24.23 per cent falls below poverty line, the literacy rate is 55.08 per cent against the state average of 55.5 per cent and national average of 64.8 per cent (Planning and Development Department, J&K, 2012-2013).\n5. Analysis of survey data: Below I show some of the summary statistics from the survey data. The share of males participating in the scheme is much higher than females, 79 and 21 per cent, respectively. About 77 per cent of the participating workers are in the age group of 18-45 years. This is mainly because MGNREGS requires workers to do manual unskilled labour. The mean number of days of employment provided per participating household is 43 which is much less than the 100 days guaranteed under the scheme to each household.\n6. Econometric methodology: I use a multi-variate OLS regression model for my analysis. The dependent variable in my model is number of days worked under the scheme at household level in Model 1 and at individual worker level in Model 2.\n7. Policy recommendation and conclusion: During the survey, I found serious administrative negligence in implementing the scheme, no worksite facilities, no unemployment allowances are provided to the workers, there are no boards at the worksite which give information about the work which is being undertaken, entries are not made in the muster roll at the worksite (some workers confessed of never having seen the muster roll), mandatory one third share of females is not at all maintained, contractors are used to carry out the projects, delayed wage payment is common, work is not provided on demand, etc. Out of 103 sample households, only seven have been provided 100 days of employment. This is so even when 100 days of employment per household is a right enshrined in the constitution. Huge amounts of funds are siphoned off through intermediaries by involving the officials at block office to get fake bills passed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to look at the socio-economic determinants of employment in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) at both household and individual level. My results show that there is no discrimination in provision of employment to backward classes. Out of all the Indian States, J&K has lowest female participation in the scheme. My results show that women are discriminated against in provision of employment. Worksite facilities, like creche, can positively affect female participation in the scheme.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author uses multi-variate OLS regression model to analyse the data collected through primary survey of three heterogenous villages of district Ganderbal of J&K.\nFindings: The author finds clear evidence of discrimination against females in provision of employment along with slight evidence of elite capture of the scheme. The author also finds negative relationship between the number of children in a household and the number of workdays which highlights the importance of worksite facilities to increase female and overall participation for the scheme to be successful.\nResearch limitations/implications: The possible limitation could be small sample size but given that this is the first study of its kind in the J&K State, researchers can build up on it.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the first research papers which looks at the performance of MGNREGS in J&K in such detail. No comprehensive study of this magnitude and rigour has been undertaken in J&K till now.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Burnout, eating behaviour traits and dietary patterns	[ "Survey", "Burnout", "Dietary patterns", "Food choice", "Eating traits" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Occupation-related factors contribute substantially to health and well-being (Shuck et al., 2017) and this is reflected in rising incidence of chronic illness among academics (Brown and Leigh, 2018). University staff experience relatively high workload demands (Ahsan et al., 2009) which may adversely affect job performance and produce burnout (Maslach and Leiter, 2014). Burnout is \"a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced accomplishment which is a special risk for individuals who work with other people in some capacity\" (Leiter and Maslach, 1998, p. 347). The Job Demand Resources Model (Demerouti et al., 2001) holds that greater effort is required to do a job where demands are high (e.g. time constraints; role conflict; workload; etc.), leading to exhaustion and if resources are scarce, leading to disengagement. Occupational burnout occurs, therefore, when job demands exceed employees' resources for managing tasks (Schaufeli, 2017) and is common in occupations involving numerous direct interactions with people, such as those who work in education (Schaufeli and Salanova, 2014; Childs and Stoeber, 2012). Whereas resources are associated with greater commitment to the job and less burnout (Bakker et al., 2003), high job demands lead to burnout and associated detriments to health (Schaufeli, 2017). Recent meta-analysis (Lesener et al., 2019) has implied that the relationship between job demands or resources and burnout is reciprocal. Whilst job demands lead to reduced work engagement, which increases job demands, resources improve well-being, which leads to further investment into work. Burnout may encourage less healthy eating behaviours (Alexandrova-Karamanova et al., 2016; Stewart-Knox, 2014; Gorter et al., 2000) and has been linked to overeating (Mikalauskas et al., 2018; Armenta-Hernandez et al., 2018; Warren et al., 2013).\nMethod: Sampling\nMaterials: The design was cross-sectional using self-administered questionnaire. Questions were on demographics, perceived stress, emotion regulation, burnout, eating behaviour traits and dietary habits. Emotion regulation data were omitted as incomplete. Perceived stress was removed from this analysis because of its low Cronbach's a (0.547).\nProcedure: Ethical approval was granted by the University ethical committee. Volunteers were given an information sheet and required to give prior, written consent. Data were collected on-line during April-August 2015.\nData analysis: Data were analysed using Jamovi (version 0.9.5.12) and R (version 3.5.1). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation using R library \"psych\" (Revelle, 2018) was used to determine dietary patterns from FFQ data. Taking factor loadings of 0.5 or above and eigenvalues>1, initial results indicated six components. Given two components that explained the least variances were not interpretable, the PCA was re-run assuming four components which together accounted for 55.7 per cent of the total variance in frequency of consumption. Taking factor loadings of 0.5 as cut-off, there were four factors (Table I), each representing a distinct dietary pattern: junk/fast food+chicken and low fruit/vegetables; meat/fish; grains/dairy; beans/nuts. Neither eggs nor sweets loaded onto any factor. The four component scores (dietary patterns) were entered into multiple regression analyses as dependent variables. Multiple linear regression analyses were then undertaken to determine associations between gender, age, burnout (MBI) and eating behaviour traits (TFEQ) (independent variables) and the four dietary patterns (dependent variables). Significance was assumed at p<0.05. See Table II for the descriptive statistics of the independent variables.\nResults: Determinants of dietary patterns\nDiscussion: As predicted, given previous research which has identified associations between burnout and less healthy eating (Alexandrova-Karamanova et al., 2016; Lallukka et al., 2008; Gorter et al., 2000), burnout (depersonalisation) was associated with more frequent fast/junk (+chicken and less-frequent fruit and veg) food consumption. Contrary to expectation, more frequent consumption of fast food was associated with less burnout (exhaustion). This variable explained a relatively small proportion (6 per cent) of the model. A possible explanation for this finding is that the relationship between burnout (exhaustion) and fast-food intake is circular. Exhaustion leads to fast-food consumption which serves to counter exhaustion and in doing so, reinforces further intake of fast-food and so on. Contrary to previous research which has found that males consume more fast-food than females (Daniuseviciute-Brazaite and Abromaitiene, 2018; Jansen et al., 2017; Saquib et al., 2016; Black and Billette, 2015; Morse and Driskell, 2009), our data showed no sex differences in the fast food intake pattern. That our sample was 78 per cent female, however, may have rendered this null finding less reliable.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this research has been to investigate whether burnout and eating behaviour traits were associated with food intake.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Participants (n=109) 78 per cent female, mean age 39 years, were recruited from various occupations within a UK university to complete an on-line survey. Dietary habits were measured using Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and eating behaviour traits using the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ) R18.\nFindings: Principal component analyses of FFQ responses revealed four dietary patterns: fast/junk food (+chicken and low fruit/vegetables); meat/fish; dairy/grains; beans/nuts. Dietary patterns were examined using multiple regression analysis as outcome variables with age, gender, burnout and eating behaviour traits as explanatory variables. More frequent consumption of \"junk/fast food\" was associated with lower TFEQ-Cognitive Restraint, higher TFEQ-Uncontrolled Eating (UE), lower MBI-Emotional Exhaustion and higher MBI-Depersonalisation. More frequent consumption of beans/nuts was associated with higher TFEQ-UE and higher MBI-Emotional Exhaustion. Models for meat/fish and grains/dairy dietary patterns were not significant.\nResearch limitations/implications: Burnout may need to be considered to reduce junk food consumption in higher education employees. Causality between burnout, eating behaviour traits and food consumption requires further investigation on larger samples.\nOriginality/value: This appears to be the first study to have explored associations between burnout, eating behaviour traits and dietary patterns.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Participative change toward digitalized, customer-oriented continuous improvements within a municipality	[ "E-Government", "Digitalization", "Municipality", "Internal shared service centre", "Participative action research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In order to become more citizen-oriented, many municipalities are presently not only digitalizing their external but also their internal services (Reinwald and Kraemmergaard, 2012; Gagnon et al., 2010; Baldwin et al., 2012). Actors within these municipalities want to organize their service processes in ways that help them to easily adapt to continuously changing customer demands as well as to IT-types of opportunities (e.g. Snellen, 2005; Weick and Quinn, 2005; Reddick, 2011). The effective establishment of a continuously improving service culture requires a change process, with the active involvement of all employees and managers (Osborne and Brown, 2005, 2011; Sminia and Van Nistelrooij, 2006). Effectuating a continuously improving culture in the public sector is viewed by many as a risky change process especially now that public agencies are being encouraged to reduce their reliance on costly, external change consultants. Hence, there is a great need for more knowledge and insights on self-managing changeovers in public services (Tidd and Bessant, 2011; Obermeier, 2010; Medaglia, 2012).\nThe theoretical framework: Organizational dynamics can be studied from a variety of perspectives. Boonstra (2005) distinguishes three approaches to organizing change: planned change, OD, and continuous change. Planned change is considered suitable when the socio-technical problem is known, is not complex, and the solution to the problem is either within reach or is accessible in times of need. Planned change involves a top-down steering of the change process in order to gain techno-economic benefits (or outcomes). Managers use their positions to steer the change; they define the norms, the planning, and the required (human) resources. The non-managerial employees are assumed to attain the change objectives as part of their jobs. This change approach is very common in public organizations, especially for IT-driven change processes (Ho, 2002). Planned change practices are often seen from a managerial rather than from an employee-participative perspective (Sanabria and Rodas, 2015; Mizrahi, 2015).\nResearch context, method, and procedure: Research context\nResults: organization behavioral criteria of the change process: The theoretical framework will now be used to analyze the human behaviors in this internal changeover. The data show how the seven actor groups participated in the OD process, including their perceived differences and similarities on key change aspects, summarized in Tables I-III. Table I shows their views after the first interview round. We present the differences between the actor groups with regard to: their perceived roles during the change process; and their degree of satisfaction of various change topics. Table II shows the variety of the answers given by the actor groups, in terms of the key change goals and the level of customer orientation. Table III shows the actor groups' shared views on the process of attaining a continuously improving culture. Table III was distilled from the open discussions (i.e. the second interview round) and was fed back to all the participants during the third interview round. After discussing the data of Table III with them, the action researchers categorized them.\nResults: OD lessons learnt: Now we will use additional insights in order to explain four change process lessons learnt.\nDiscussion: This study sheds light on a large municipality that engaged in internal service digitalization during an 18-month OD process while simultaneously aiming to establish a more customer-oriented, continuously improving culture. The case shows the various degrees of involvement of managers and service employees, both at the start and during the OD process. Even though the desired culture is not rooted yet, the digitalization results are considered a success by all stakeholders, including their customers. The impact of this OD-change process can be assessed by three facts. First, the customer demands were taken into consideration while redesigning the work processes; the work group knew their customers. Second, the level of cooperation of the workfloor employees was high during the change process and afterwards. Third, the customer satisfaction with the internal services was significantly improved. After the digitalization was completed in the Summer of 2012, an interim team manager was recruited for the newly established, integrated service unit, the SSC. She held group interviews with the customers; they noted the ESP as a major step forward. Moreover, a new unit leader was appointed at the beginning of 2013; she established a process that enabled daily customer-led service improvements. This kind of persistent service- and change-oriented leadership is needed for a newly established SSC to evolve toward a continuously improving culture (e.g. Bowen and Schneider, 2014; Van Dun and Wilderom, 2012). Furthermore, an internal customer survey was held in 2015. The preliminary results indicate a significant service performance improvement. The involved actors saw and see the ESP and the new unit in which it became embedded (the SSC) as a small but necessary innovative step. However, most other comparable Dutch municipalities which have not undergone such an OD process or chosen a non-participative, top-down change approach have not integrated and digitalized their internal service provision to an equal quality level.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a newly constructed organization behavioral lens for participative action research (PAR) may aid a public-sector organization in successfully digitalizing its internal shared services. In addition, the intervention is aimed at fostering a continuously improving type of learning culture on the workfloor of a new service unit.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In a large Dutch municipality, the installation of a new digitalized process of offering internal services was studied. A PAR method, the so-called Fourth Generation Evaluation, was used on seven internal actor groups. This method enables various intra-organizational actors to reflect collectively on the ongoing change progress. Their explicit views on the change were communicated to all actors and the change agents.\nFindings: The study describes the attempt of establishing a continuously improving learning culture during an internal digitalization process: substantial participation of the non-managerial employees was enabled. The paper highlights the practical value of the internal digitalization approach used, and concludes with four change process lessons learnt for those wanting to initiate a continuously improving culture on the workfloor.\nResearch limitations/implications: Even though the findings are based on one case, they may be of interest to other public/private organizations aiming to establish a continuously improving culture within workfloor units that interact, on a daily basis, with (internal) customers.\nOriginality/value: The paper offers a theoretical framework and a matching practical approach to the process of creating an internal shared service unit that aims to evolve further into a customer-oriented, continuously improving culture.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Blinds up or down? The influence of transparency, future orientation, and CSR on sustainable and responsible behavior	[ "Corporate responsibility", "Consumption", "Sustainable", "Consumer research", "Transparency", "Cosumerism", "Future orientation", "Responsible" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed (Albert Einstein).\nConceptual background and hypotheses: Conceptual model\nStudy 1: The aim of Study 1 is, first, to test the extent to which transparency impacts sustainable and responsible consumption by consumers (H1). Second, Study 1 tests the moderating effects of future orientation and CSR on the relationship between transparency and sustainable and responsible consumption (H2 and H3).\nStudy 2: Study 2 aims to explore how involvement influences the effects of transparency, future orientation and social responsibility on sustainable and responsible consumption. Specifically, we test consumer involvement as an additional boundary condition of the impact of transparency for brands with varying degrees of future orientation and social responsibility. As noted in prior research, involvement is a key factor in consumer decision-making (Laurent and Kapferer, 1985; Saqib et al., 2010; Walsh et al., 2008), and we investigate whether the moderating role of future orientation and social responsibility is affected by consumer involvement contexts.\nGeneral discussion and implications: Given the general depletion of resources, rising pollution levels and wastage of limited resources such as food and raw materials (Financial Times, 2016; The Economist, 2015), the study of sustainable and responsible consumption is desperately needed. There is a particular sense of urgency in terms of identifying ways of how customers can be encouraged to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption. In this research, we study some of the potential drivers of customers' willingness to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption and explore some of the critical boundary conditions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore how and when a business' transparency leads to greater willingness to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption by consumers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected in two studies. Study 1 collected data from 219 consumers in a large shopping mall. Study 2 followed an experimental approach and used data from 327 participants.\nFindings: The current research contributes to theory by hypothesizing and demonstrating when transparency is associated with higher willingness for sustainable and responsible consumption. Critically, the positive benefits of transparency vary according to a business' future orientation, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and levels of customer involvement.\nPractical implications: An important societal and practical implication of the current research is that business should not be expected to only focus on transparency in isolation but rather also needs to consider levels of perceived future orientation, CSR and levels of customer involvement to strengthen sustainable and responsible behavior effectively.\nOriginality/value: This research builds on and extends current knowledge by exploring the key role of business' transparency in influencing sustainable and responsible customer behavior and examines critical boundary conditions for the observed effects.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managing knowledge assets for open innovation: a systematic literature review	[ "Open innovation", "Knowledge management", "Open innovation processes" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Along with the recent evolution of the industrial ecosystem, scholars and practitioners have been increasingly posing attention to the open innovation (OI) paradigm, as a valuable innovation strategy to increase the competitive advantage of organisations (Dahlander and Gann, 2010; Chesbrough and Bogers, 2014; Bogers et al., 2017). In particular, the OI paradigm may be conceptualised as \"a distributed innovation process that involves purposively managed knowledge flows across the organisational boundary\" (Chesbrough and Bogers, 2014, p. 4). Indeed, organisations embracing this paradigm aim at managing the purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate their internal innovation processes and better exploit the outcomes of internal innovative efforts, respectively (Chesbrough, 2003; Chesbrough et al., 2006). Hence, it clearly emerges that knowledge assumes a pivotal role in the OI paradigm, being it a key resource to establish and sustain the competitive advantage of firms (Grant, 1996).\n2. A theoretical framework to systematise the literature: Knowledge and innovation management are two streams of research strongly intertwined (Bagadur and Gelade, 2006; Darroch, 2005; du Plessis, 2007). Indeed, knowledge is increasingly being regarded in the management literature as the most relevant resource of a firm (Grant, 1996). In detail, it is particularly relevant to sustain firms' innovation processes and, in turn, promote the achievement (or retention) of a sustainable competitive advantage (Kogut and Zander, 1992; McEvily and Chakravarthy, 2002), thus ensuring their survival. Given this prominent role of knowledge in supporting the competitive advantage of firms, it becomes clear that firms should establish proper KM practices to be effective and efficient in coding, storing, sharing, transmitting and leveraging their knowledge assets (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). Therefore, proper KM activities may favour firms' innovative performance (Alegre et al., 2011; Darroch, 2005).\n3. Methodology: To retrieve the group of articles to be included in the literature review, we followed the principles for systematic review originally proposed by Tranfield et al. (2003). Indeed, as argued by many subsequent studies (Ardito et al., 2015; Savino et al., 2017; Natalicchio et al., 2014; Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Keupp et al., 2012), the systematic review can be considered as an analytical review scheme that is necessary to effectively evaluate the contributions of a given body of the literature, in that it entails the adoption of a clear and reproducible set of phases that allows scholars to improve the overall quality of the review process (Tranfield et al., 2003).\n4. Literature findings: In the following, we discuss the main findings available in the academic literature about the relevance and use of KM practices to support and sustain the adoption of the OI paradigm. Specifically, as previously mentioned, the analysis is split into three sections, according to the OI processes framework: the first section deals with the inbound OI process, the second presents the findings related to the outbound OI process and, finally, the last section pictures the extant understanding about the coupled OI process.\n5. Discussion and future research directions: This paper reviewed the management literature discussing OI from a KM perspective by providing an in-depth analysis of the empirical results grouped on the basis of the three main OI processes, namely, inbound, outbound and coupled OI processes. Building on this framework, we identified central issues and spot research gaps. Table I presents a summary of our findings and identified research gaps.\n6. Conclusions: In conclusion, the present research contributes to the extant literature on OI by shedding new light on the role of KM practices for sustaining the purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation processes. Specifically, we review the existing literature in the attempt to provide an overview of the KM practices that should be adopted to manage the three main OI processes, i.e. inbound, outbound and couples OI processes, highlight the most significant research gaps and, ultimately, open the doors to further investigations. Therefore, it is our belief this article may represent a relevant starting point for future studies on OI because it helps scholars to analyse the OI paradigm from a KM lens.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Knowledge assumes a pivotal role in the open innovation (OI) paradigm. Yet OI has been scantly investigated by adopting a knowledge management (KM) lens. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of the KM practices analysed by prior literature to support OI activities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To perform a valuable literature review, the steps for systematic review proposed by previous studies have been adopted. These steps have yielded a final sample of 34 articles. Afterward, the authors have distinguished and analysed the identified articles according to the three main OI processes, i.e. inbound, outbound and coupled OI processes.\nFindings: This research groups and highlights the most relevant KM practices to support OI activities on the basis of the inbound, outbound and coupled OI processes.\nOriginality/value: Despite knowledge is the most relevant resource exchanged in OI activities, this is the first attempt to highlight how knowledge should be managed in an OI context by adopting a KM lens. Furthermore, the authors also identify relevant topics that have been so far understudied, which the authors suggest as future research directions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Do channel integration efforts pay-off in terms of online and offline customer loyalty?	[ "Multichannel retailing", "Offline loyalty", "Online loyalty", "Channel integration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In order to remain competitive and relevant for their customers, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have added online channels, becoming multichannel retail companies or brick-and-clicks (Gallino and Moreno, 2014; Verhoef et al., 2015). Although pure online players have been found to perform better than brick-and-clicks (Herhausen et al., 2015), multichannel retailers have a competitive advantage over pure players based on the potential synergies between their offline and online channels. However, as Badrinarayanan et al. (2012) and Herhausen et al. (2015) report, brick-and-clicks are struggling to achieve those advantages, and this may be due to a lack of channel integration. In fact, IBM (2015), based on a survey and an Omnichannel Capability Index produced from it, concludes that there is room for improvement in the multichannel strategies of European retailers.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 MCI\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Scale items' development\n4. Data analysis and results: 4.1 MCI dimensions\n5. Conclusions: This paper contributes to the literature on multichannel retailing in two main ways: first, by developing a scale to measure MCI, and second, by demonstrating that MCI has strong effects on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Very few studies have focussed on customer-perceived MCI, and the scales employed were not based on a thorough evaluation of the domain of the construct, nor did they fully capture the meaning of MCI in the present multichannel context. It is also relevant to highlight that the present study uses an adequacy-importance model (Schramm-Klein et al., 2011), considering not only to what extent the customer perceives the retailer's MCI but also how relevant it is for him/her. Furthermore, the separate effects of MCI on offline and online loyalty have seldom been investigated, except by Herhausen et al. (2015), who explain the indirect influence of online-offline channel integration on behavioural intentions both offline and online.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of multichannel integration (MCI) on customer loyalty. The specific objectives are to provide an appropriate reliable measure of the construct, and to analyse the impact of MCI on offline and online loyalty, both directly and by mediation of customer satisfaction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper focusses on the retail apparel sector of Spain and the UK. The authors applied a scale development process and tested the model with data of 761 multichannel apparel shoppers. The proposed theoretical model was estimated through EQS 6.1 and a mediation test was calculated.\nFindings: The findings show, first, that the construct of channel integration has two dimensions: reciprocity, which refers to the possibility of crossing the channels while shopping, and coordination, which refers to the alignment of offline and online offers. Second, that MCI affects positively both offline and online loyalty both directly and through satisfaction, which partially mediates the relationship.\nResearch limitations/implications: Culture might play a moderating role in the relationships found that are not analysed.\nPractical implications: The findings have implications for the managers of multichannel retail companies as they help to understand the benefits of channel integration in creating a loyal customer base both online and offline.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the literature on multichannel retailing in two main ways: first, by developing a scale to measure MCI, and second, by demonstrating that MCI has strong effects on customer satisfaction and loyalty.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Intercultural training for Taiwanese business expatriates	[ "Intercultural training", "Training needs", "Business expatriates", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Taiwan is situated in the Pacific Rim between Japan and the Philippines. Taiwan is southeast of the Chinese mainland and is separated from the mainland by the Taiwan Strait. Because of the lack of natural resources and a limited domestic market, Taiwan's economy is mostly dependent on foreign trade. The USA and Japan have been Taiwan's biggest trading partners since the Second World War. As Mainland China's market became more open in the 1990s, more Taiwanese large enterprises invested in the mainland. Coping with the increasing competition in the international arena, Taiwanese business people are in need of being able to work effectively with people from a diversity of countries and cultures.\nTheoretical background: Intercultural training\nResearch methods: Instrumentation\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: This study found that the expatriates generally perceived the overall items as needed. Study results revealed that the training needs were significantly higher than the training provided by their companies. Expatriates particularly perceived items related to acquiring knowledge and skills of doing business in the host country as highly needed. The current study provides evidence of the importance of understanding business protocol for expatriates. Items in this area are learning needs related to work. This indicated that adjustment to work is an important dimension of expatriate adjustment.The differences between these two groups of participants can be explained perhaps by the fact that, since the group of business expatriates are people who currently work and live overseas, naturally they experience a strong need to acquire intercultural knowledge and skills. This study found that both groups rated items of knowledge and skills of doing business in the host county as the highest. Since the majority (61.1 percent) of the expatriates participated in the study had less than one year of international work experience they are in need of developing intercultural competencies, and they particularly have high expectations of getting training in how to conduct business in foreign countries. Despite the fact that this item is also rated the highest by the HR managers, the need of training in this area is significantly higher than the training provided by their companies.Both groups of participants rated items in the area of learning the history, geography, economy, and politics of the host country as the lowest. However, there is a difference in training methods. The expatriates rated the need for video training in this area as the lowest, while the HR managers rated providing reading materials in this area as the lowest.Study results revealed that both groups of participants rated participatory learning higher than symbolic learning. The training needs of expatriates in these two categories are significantly higher than the training provided by their companies. This is in consistent with findings of the overall items of the questionnaire.\nConclusions and implications: This study assessed the gap between the intercultural training needs perceived by Taiwanese expatriates and what is provided by their companies. The study surveyed Taiwanese expatriates and HR managers of their companies. A questionnaire was developed and 16 items questions of intercultural training were listed. Item questions were divided into two categories based on training methods: symbolic learning and participatory learning. It is found that the needs of intercultural training perceived by expatriates are generally higher than the training provided by their companies. In the categories of symbolic and participatory learning, findings are consistent with the overall items. The perceived intercultural training needs of both categories are significantly higher than the training provided by their companies. Items of participatory learning are rated higher than those of symbolic learning by both groups.In order to increase business expatriates' success on their foreign assignments and help their adjustment overseas, companies need to provide effective intercultural training. Intercultural training can help expatriates adjust to the host culture and enhance job performance. Taiwanese companies should pay more attention to intercultural training for their expatriates. The following suggestions are drawn from the results of this study:* The training should include the general knowledge or facts about the host country. Business expatriates need to know the history, geography, and politics of the host country.* The training should include the knowledge and skills in interpersonal communication.* The training should include business protocol and legal issues related to doing business in the host country.* The training should provide expatriates with information about living in the host country. This includes the life styles of people in the host country, the food and dining conditions, the commuting conditions, and the housing conditions in the host country.* In addition to symbolic learning, more training should be provided through participatory learning methods such as case study, role play, simulation, and filed trips.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to focus on intercultural training for Taiwanese expatriates and assess the gap between intercultural training needs perceived by Taiwanese expatriates and the training provided by their companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study surveyed both Taiwanese expatriates and HR managers of their companies. It developed a questionnaire based on the research of Black and Mendenhall to assess contents and methods of intercultural training. There were 16 questions for assessing intercultural training and they were divided into two categories: symbolic learning and participatory learning.\nFindings: - It is found that the needs of intercultural training perceived by expatriates are generally higher than the training provided by their companies. In the categories of symbolic and participatory learning, findings are consistent with the overall items. Results indicate that the perceived intercultural training needs of both categories are significantly higher than the training provided by their companies. Items of participatory learning are rated higher than those of symbolic learning by both groups.\nOriginality/value: - Coping with the increasing competition in the international arena, Taiwanese business people are in need of being able to work effectively with people from a diversity of countries and cultures. It is necessary to study issues related to intercultural training for business expatriates. Findings in this area can be helpful for human resource practitioners in developing training programs for their business expatriates.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Electrodermal activity measurement within a qualitative methodology: Exploring emotion in leisure experiences	[ "Emotion", "Mixed methods", "EDA", "Group socialization", "Memory creation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It has been widely documented that tourism and planned events hold the potential to create a variety of social and cultural impacts for tourists, attendees and local communities. Social impacts thereby include socialisation, bonding and meeting new people (Crompton and McKay, 1997; Uysal and Li, 2008; Chang and Yuan, 2011), as well as the creation of memories and experiences with friends or family (Jepson and Stadler, 2017; Stadler and Jepson, 2017; Wood and Kenyon, 2018) which trigger a range of emotional responses. Understanding the experienced memories and emotions created through travel, tourism and events has been highlighted as an important aspect in determining loyalty, re-visitation and post-consumption satisfaction (Tung and Ritchie, 2011; Kim and Fesenmaier, 2015) and can bring about changes in one's overall quality of life. There is, therefore, a need for studies within tourism to better understand the level of engagement with touristic activity and its individual and social benefits.\nEmotions and memory: It is not new to recognise that emotion-rich experiences are at the core of tourism and event products (Robinson, 2012). However, despite work within consumer psychology exploring the link between emotion, memory and consumer experience, there is still a relatively limited research base within tourism academia. The research that exists tends to have focused on individual emotional arousal (Hosany, 2012; Shoval et al., 2018) and ignores three important factors:\nProposed methodology: We situate our work as interpretivist and take an inductive approach. In doing so we actively integrate human interests and assume that reality is socially constructed through language, consciousness, shared meanings and instruments (Phillimore and Goodson, 2004). Our approach is guided by social constructivism with its foundational belief that reality is constructed not discovered through human activity and that societies together invent the properties of the world (Kukla, 2000). Social constructivism acknowledges that multiple realities exist in regard to the same phenomena (Crotty, 1998; Schunk, 2012). It places emphasis upon all cognitive functions, including learning to be dependent on sharing individual perspectives or collaborative narratives (Van Meter and Stevens, 2000). In other words, group members are constructing understanding together in a way which would not be possible alone (Greeno et al., 1996). This advocates that learning is critically dependent on the qualities of a collaborative process within a community, is situation-specific and is context-bound (Eggen and Kauchak, 1999; McInerney and McInerney, 2002; Schunk, 2012).\nMethods used in our studies: Like many studies before ours (Richards et al., 2010; Sedgley et al., 2011; Pritchard et al., 2011), we had a need to develop a methodology which empowered people, gave them independence and allowed them to share in the co-creation of knowledge. We have embedded the principles of humanistic inquiry within our research methods, a vital consideration for the particular context of our studies (i.e. art events participated in by rural living women over the age of 70). Through the creation of artworks, and through socialising with ourselves and others, participants were empowered to learn about their EDA complex data, the individually and group-created memories and the importance of these to their lives and the lives of others.\nFindings and discussion: This paper focuses on explaining and critiquing our unique mixed-methods approach to understand shared emotional memory in relation to events. Through our study discussed here, we present an example of how the use of EDA tracking can enhance qualitative research methodologies in three main ways:\nConclusions and future research: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Reflecting, reliving and reforming experiences enhance longer-term effects of travel and tourism, and have been highlighted as an important aspect in determining loyalty, re-visitation and post-consumption satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to develop new methodological approaches to investigate emotion, memory creation and the resulting psychosocial effects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper proposes a unique combination of physiological measures and photoelicitation-based discussions within a longitudinal design. A physiological measuring instrument (electrodermal activity [EDA] tracking technology through Empatica E4 wristbands) is utilised to capture the \"unadulterated\" emotional response both during the experience and in reliving or remembering it. This is combined with post-experience narrative discussion groups using photos and other artefacts to give further understanding of the process of collective memory creation.\nFindings: EDA tracking can enhance qualitative research methodologies in three ways: through use as an \"artefact\" to prompt reflection on feelings, through identifying peaks of emotional response and through highlighting changes in emotional response over time. Empirical evidence from studies into participatory arts events and the potential well-being effects upon women over the age of 70 is presented to illustrate the method.\nOriginality/value: The artificial environment created using experimental approaches to measure emotions and memory (common in many fields of psychology) has serious limitations. This paper proposes new and more \"natural\" methods for use in tourism, hospitality and events research, which have the potential to better capture participants' feelings, behaviours and the meanings they place upon them.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Capacity utilization analysis through time-driven ABC in a small-sized manufacturing company	[ "Time-driven activity based costing", "Small-sized enterprises", "Capacity utilization analysis", "Time equations", "M41", "M11", "M49" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Managers of profit-seeking firms are tending toward cost reduction rather than cost control because of global competition, decentralization and decreased labor intensity. Cost reductions require maximum capacity utilization, so management of capacity and elimination of non-value-added activities are the most essential points. Traditional costing systems are not enough to meet the need for conducting capacity utilization analyses because they allocate overhead costs to products based on a volume-based cost driver, which leads to misinterpretation of results about product profitability.\n2. Company background: This study analyzes the activities taking place in a small-size manufacturing company producing bakery products in Greece[1]. The main objective of the company is to create unique products with high nutrition value for the consumers. The company produces and distributes in its own retail shops products with short life cycles that are produced daily, such as bread, cookies, sweets, ice cream and others. The company also sells packaged products through its wholesale partnerships in order to be distribute them to retail shops in Greece or other countries.\n3. Application of TDABC: 3.1 Application in small-sized companies\n4. Capacity utilization analysis: Perhaps the most beneficial tool of TDABC is the capacity utilization analysis conducted through the model (Oker and Adiguzel, 2010; Stouthuysen et al., 2010). When applying the model, the practical capacities of resources like machines, equipment and employees are determined and compared with the actual usage of the capacities at the end of the measurement period. The last two columns of Table VI show the unused or excess capacities of the supporting and operating departments. Table VI compares the total capacity used with the practical capacity of the departments. Capacity is generally measured thorough the employee time available for the supporting and operating departments apart from the storage capacity of the \"Warehouse\" Department and the driver and vehicle capacity of the \"Sales & Logistics\" Department. These are measured as \"minute*m3.\" The findings indicate that all the employees of the supporting and operating departments are working under capacity except for the \"Maintenance\" and \"Quality Control & HR\" Departments. These findings can be used by management when making performance evaluations.\n5. Conclusion: This study has offered a comprehensive application of TDABC in a small-sized manufacturing company. Siguenza Guzman et al. (2013) suggest that it is important that TDABC is implemented by independent researchers rather than its creators to provide unbiased evaluations of the system. Previous studies have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of TDABC. One of the most important advantages is its simplicity because it only requires two parameters: CCR and time consumptions. The second advantage mentioned in previous studies is the ability of the time equations to reflect complex operations. Third, TDABC allows for a capacity utilization analysis. However, there are also many criticisms. One is that TDABC can be subjective and requires a considerable amount of data. Having conducted our own implementation, we agree with most of the advantages. Especially for small-sized companies, determining time consumption through estimations or direct observations is easier than for larger firms, which decreases the subjectivity of employees. On the other hand, in contrast to previous studies, we argue that simple excel sheets are not enough to build and maintain a TDABC model even in small firms. Rather, business intelligence software and programming coding is required to capture the complexity of the time equations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study about the capacity utilization analysis in a small-sized manufacturing company through the application of time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC). After a brief overview of development of the TDABC system, a detailed application of TDABC and capacity utilization analysis in a bakery is given.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper is based on a case study about the application of TDABC in a small-sized Greek manufacturing firm. In the case study, time equations were developed for the supporting, operating and manufacturing departments and product costs determined based on the model. Capacity utilization analysis made through the application of TDABC system.\nFindings: The study shows that TDABC is more applicable in small-sized manufacturing companies because of their labor-intensive nature. In contrast to previous studies, authors argue that even in small firms simple excel sheets are not enough to capture the complexity of the time equations and business intelligence software and programming coding is required.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although the fundamental structure of TDABC is the same for all companies there is no strict form of application.\nPractical implications: The practical implication of this paper is that each firm has unique characteristics that need to be reflected in the application of the TDABC model.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes by providing insights into cost accounting in SMEs. More specifically, this paper contributes to the TDABC literature regarding the application of the system in small and medium sized manufacturing firms.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Bridging the digital divide gap in BIM technology adoption	[ "Organization", "Technology", "Innovation", "Building information modelling" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The overarching benefits of Building information modelling (BIM) have been well documented but the pace and extent of BIM adoption by businesses within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector varies. It is generally slower than what a lot of governments across the globe want the sector to progress in their digital economy strategy. For instance, the UK Government has mandated BIM to Level 2 (i.e. the use of fully collaborative 3D BIM as a minimum requirement in simple terms) based on a scale between BIM Level 0-3 for all public sector construction by 2016 but a recent large-scale survey suggests that its enforcement is failed as a third of the sector is still unclear about how to comply with BIM Level 2 (NBS, 2017). AEC organisations face different kinds of organisational and financial constraints that affect the speed at which they adopt new innovations. BIM is one such innovation being embraced in many countries because of its overarching benefits, requiring different forms of strategies for its diffusion across the construction supply chain. However, although large firms and small firms (SMEs) operate in the same AEC ecosystem, they are very different in their socio-economic categories and live in separate business habitats. This makes them behave in relatively different ways in order to adapt and succeed, and they require different types of technology and knowledge to sustain themselves and perform well (Sexton et al., 2006). The constraints faced by these organisations make a singular approach to adoption of BIM at the same pace unrealistic and therefore some categories of firms are left behind while others proceed swiftly in exploiting new innovations and opportunities.\n2. Conceptual BIM technology adoption model development: This research builds the theory of technology adoption in relation to BIM adoption and diffusion in the AEC industry. It is fundamentally based on two key concepts that are central to BIM adoption which are: Rogers' technology adoption model (Rogers, 1983) and Bew-Richards' BIM maturity model. Both models are abstractions of the layers and levels of technology utilisation from both a general standpoint (Roger's model) and at the AEC industry perspective via BIM (Bew-Richards model). This section deconstructs the aforementioned models by showing their connection in relation to technology and BIM adoption in the AEC industry.\n3. Research methods and data collection: The research methodology for the study was designed to investigate the theoretical concepts represented in the conceptual model developed earlier. The main aim of using a model is to generate a research focus in order to specify who and what to be studied and predict relationships between variables (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The composite model proposed (Figure 5) was developed through critical thinking and exploitation of knowledge gaps in literature but it is still in principle, a reflection of the Bew-Richards and Rogers models. A mixed research method was considered suitable for this study and so the research methodology consists of a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The data collection process was carried out in two phases: an online questionnaire survey was administered in the first phase aimed at construction professionals who use BIM around the world while in the second phase; a semi-structured telephone interview was carried out with systematically selected experts from the survey. The interview phase also involved validation of the conceptual model ensuring that the final model retained its theoretical underpinnings as well as having a practical reflection of the phenomenon under investigation.\n4. Results and observations: 4.1 Classification of AEC organisations based on Rogers' model of technology adoption\n5. Discussion: Bridging the digital divide in BIM technology adoption: With respect to Roger's (1983) classical model, organisations in the construction industry are displaying unexpected characteristics in technology adoption. Unexpectedly, among the \"opinion leaders\" (i.e. large firms) who might be thought of as \"Innovators\", there are many that are lagging behind in BIM technology adoption, while among the supposed late majorities/laggards (i.e. small firms) many are catching up with state-of-the-art technologies. As advised by Rogers (1983), change agents hoping to diffuse a technology through a social system should make an attempt to identify the innovators and laggards in their audience so as to determine the appropriate strategies to use for these critical and extreme categories. Based on this, data were collected about organisations in the construction industry in order to understand their needs and attitude towards BIM technology diffusion in accordance with the peculiarities of their presumed categories.\n6. Conclusion: This study looked into BIM technology adoption using the Rogers theoretical model of technology adopters and the Bew-Richards model for BIM maturity levels. AEC organisations represented in the study were classified into layers (Rogers' model) and levels (Bew-Richards' model) with explanations about why they belong to their respective categories. The digital divide which exists as a result of some constraints was found to be increasingly wider and more complicated as an organisation seeks to adopt new or more sophisticated technologies. The requirements for ensuring a change in status for BIM adopters were also identified.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, a \"digital divide\" exists in technology adoption because SMEs (who often form the bulk of AEC organisations in most countries) are thought to be \"Late Majority\" and \"Laggards\" in the adoption of Building information modelling (BIM) technology. Larger organisations not saddled with financial and socio-technical constraints might be considered as being among the \"Early Majority\" or \"Innovators\". It is crucial to understand how these organisations differ in their speed of BIM technology adoption and the rationale for this difference. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential causes of the digital divide and suggest solutions for bridging the gap.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using mixed research method, data were collected through online questionnaire survey of over 240 global respondents as well as a semi-structured interview with nine experts for which statistical and thematic analyses were used, respectively.\nFindings: Organisations can be zoned into \"layers\" and \"levels\" of BIM technology adoption and their size is not always significant in terms of the speed at which they adopt BIM. The digital divide is unequal across layers/levels and large organisations utilise technologies across the BIM maturity levels depending on project circumstances. A conceptual model for BIM technology was developed to aid identification of the \"Laggards\" and \"Late Majority\" from the \"Innovators\" through which change agents can customise adoption strategies for each group.\nOriginality/value: The developed model could serve as a tool for engagement and policy making and it contributes to the body of knowledge in the field of BIM technology adoption.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The logic of Chinese business strategy: East versus West: part II	[ "Business development", "China", "Management strategy", "International business", "Multinational companies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This two-part report presents the results of extensive research and in-depth analysis into the strategic assumptions and goals of 29 of the most successful Chinese and foreign companies operating in China. In this first part, which appeared in the last issue of the Journal of Business Strategy, we summarized some of the differences in Chinese and Western strategic decision-making styles. For strategic success in China, we argued for a model of managerial convergence that blends the best of Chinese and Western managerial styles. We also illustrated successful convergence through the strategic style of Victor Fung, chairman of Li & Fung. In the second part of this report, we describe our methodology and sample. We also present the new convergence model for success in China that successful companies are following. Finally, we offer recommendations for managerial practice and future research.Our research indicates that companies that succeeded in China emphasized eight characteristics: knowledge, speed, action, results, relationships, quality, passion and legacy. These eight characteristics appeared to blend best practices from both Eastern and Western management practice. The next sections describe these characteristics in more detail.\nMethodology: The CEOs and senior managers of companies generally provide strategic direction and impetus, yet most researchers on strategic planning do not have ongoing access to CEOs to undertake these studies. For this study, we had such access to 29 senior managers of the most successful foreign and local companies operating in China. Many of the managers we interviewed were at the level of CEO or chairman of the board. Most were at the level of director of strategic operations or higher. All had responsibility for deciding on which markets to enter in China, how to enter them, and in what fashion.Table I lists the individuals we interviewed, including their titles at the time. Most of these companies had been operating in China for over five years, and all were making a profit. On average, we spent a week talking in-depth to these senior managers on issues including the quality of the data they relied on, the strategic issues they considered, how their strategic planning and projections differed from those they employed in other countries, their relations with the Chinese government, the stakeholders they considered important, their evolving relations with stakeholders, how their assessment of issues had changed over time, and their choosing of key personnel. We employed structured observation and open-ended questions, as we were looking for creative ways in which these companies had surmounted obstacles or perceived opportunities in their business environments. In addition, we supplemented our interviews with observation and secondary research sources, including data used in strategic planning that the companies provided to us.The senior managers in our study included those of large, foreign multinationals (such as Bayer and 3M), Chinese/overseas Chinese multinationals (such as Li & Fung and Kuok Enterprises), as well as domestic highly successful Chinese companies such as SOHO Development (the largest developer in Beijing, China, and responsible for much of the construction attending Beijing's World Trade Center as well as the forthcoming Olympics). Additionally, we included several hundred shorter interviews with mid-level managers in China from a range of US-based, Asian and Overseas Chinese companies such as Motorola, Microsoft, etc.\nDrivers for strategic success in China: This section elaborates on the key characteristics that Eastern and Western managers perceived as leading to strategic success in China.Knowledge\nImplications and future research: This study of senior managers of successful companies in China contradicted several of our prior assumptions on business models for success. Indeed, none of the managers appeared to believe that business as usual succeeded in China - all had attempted to modify their strategic assumptions, incorporating both Western and Eastern strategic assumptions and practices, without compromising their values and ideals.The nature of the participants and the questions of study necessitated a convenience sample of senior managers to whom we had close access. However, future research will extend the principles expounded to other companies, profitable and unprofitable, in China as well as to Chinese companies that are currently operating in the USA and Europe.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Despite close to two decades of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, and the country's enormous market potential, most US and European multinational corporations (multinationals) have never made a profit in that country. The distribution of profits among multinationals also seems highly skewed. The latest survey on profitability showed that five US companies accounted for one-third of equity profits among US-based multinationals in China. This research presented in two parts proposes explanations for why multinationals fail in China and strategic solutions for profitable operations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Through in-depth interviews with 29 CEOs and directors of major, profitable US and European multinationals, Overseas Chinese companies and PRC Chinese companies, this paper proposes a model of strategic convergence for successful operations in China. The first part discusses cultural and cognitive differences between Westerners and Chinese that affect the strategies they choose. The second part proposes a strategic model of convergence, fusing the best of both Western and Chinese business practices, for strategic success in China.\nFindings: - The research found that profitable foreign multinationals in China appeared to modify their management practices on eight dimensions, often adopting traditional Chinese methods of strategic planning and evaluations of effectiveness, as well as relations with key stakeholders, especially the government. Yet, these multinationals continued to retain their Western norms and values in business dealings. Conversely, profitable Chinese companies that competed with these multinationals also modified their management practices in line with Western norms\nOriginality/value: - The study has implications for the management of foreign subsidiaries in China as well as the successful management of Chinese FDI in the USA and Europe.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Prescribing behavior on a clinical department leadership level in public hospitals	[ "Department head", "Drug", "Prescribing behavior", "Public health care system", "Greece" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Formulating and monitoring drug policy components create a necessity to collect reliable and valid data on procedures followed and results obtained. Particularly important is the quantitative and qualitative data on prescribing and the consumption of pharmaceuticals. These data combined with qualitative data on the health status of the population and data on the overall financing of the health sector are the key to designing effective drug policies. Monitoring the evolution of pharmaceutical expenditure in the long run contributes to understanding the effects of applied policies on the size and growth of spending. This allows a comparison of drug markets at an international level, highlighting the differences in the adopted choices both in structure and function. The exploration of the prescribing behavior on a department leadership level and the evaluation of all the factors influencing prescribing choices can be extremely useful tools in creating such policies.\nConceptual background: During the last 20 years literature thrives on research studies exploring factors that shape doctors' prescribing behavior.\nHypothesis formation: Evaluating the impact of managers' age on their practices and decisions in different working environments (Li et al., 2007; Ryan, 2009), it appears it's a factor that shapes their conduct and choices.\nMaterials/method: The sample consists of 123 clinical department heads in 15 general hospitals. The views of University hospitals department heads were excluded, due to the educational processes involved in the decision-making processes of such institutions.\nResults: Exploring the scientific selection criteria as presented in Table I, indications, active substance efficacy and contraindications are crucial in drug selection process (mean values> 6). Also, both side effects and interactions are considered by clinicians as key factors influencing the drug therapy choice (mean values > 5). On the other hand, drug administration ease and recommended daily dosage were found not to affect significantly their selection (mean values <4).\nDiscussion: The results of this research confirm the major importance of the clinical efficacy criterion in the selection of drug therapy aligning with findings of similar studies revealed by the literature review confirming that clinicians' evaluation of purely scientific criteria regarding an active pharmaceutical substance selection is timeless.\nFuture research/limitations: The findings of this research, though extracted through modern scientific methods, are based on a self-reported prescribing behavior, thus the data collected inevitably include some inherent biases of the respondents. The lack of a central system gathering, monitoring, and processing, both quantitative and qualitative data on prescribing, is an important limitation in understanding the context in which doctors' prescribing behavior is developed. At the same time Public Health Systems in all EC countries face similar challenges to incorporate a set of best practices and procedures proposed by researchers and academics, while governmental policies focus primary on cost reduction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to investigate the prescribing behavior and applied practices of doctors who are the heads of clinical departments in the National Health System in Greece. Moreover, this paper aims to evaluate a set of factors influencing them in this conduct through both their scientific and managerial status.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sample consisted of 123 clinical department-heads in 15 hospitals and a questionnaire specifically designed for the purposes of this research effort was used. Prescribing criteria were divided into three categories: scientific, functional and behavioral. Demographic data were also included. The data were processed using SPSS17 statistical package. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) of the mean of the parameters identified was applied.\nFindings: The survey assessed, revealed and evaluated the most important factors affecting the selection process of selecting pharmaceuticals on a department head level. Existing gaps in scientific information and rational management of procedure implementation were detected. Different perceptions of doctors-department heads towards prescribing criteria emanating from their previous experience on decision-making positions, age and hospital spatial characteristics (urban-provincial) were also highlighted.\nOriginality/value: The results of this survey provide both researchers and health policy makers with a better insight of the factors influencing prescribing behavior, and decision-making processes of doctors-department heads in the context of a Public Health Care System.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Ascertaining the impact of contractors pre-qualification criteria on project success criteria	[ "Project success", "Contractors", "Criteria", "Pre-qualification and relationship" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The success of a construction project largely depends on the capabilities of the selected contractor for the project (Jafari, 2013). The selection of an unsuitable contractor increases the chance of construction delays, cost overruns, poor workmanship, disputes and even bankruptcy (Hatush and Skitmore, 1997; Doloi, 2009). Therefore, contractor selection is a very crucial decision taken by the client as it influences the final outcome of the project. In practice, the selection of a contractor can be done in two stages. The first stage involves inviting contractors to submit information required by the client and the second stage involves the final selection of a contractor mainly based on price (Sonmez et al., 2002; PPA Ghana, 2016). In these stages, contractors are shortlisted based on multiple selection criteria. Thus, contractor pre-qualification is based on selecting a pool of competitive, competent and capable contractors to buy and submit tenders (Lam et al., 2005). Singh and Tiong (2006) argued that, the choices of criteria in selecting contractors during pre-qualification are mostly subjective and difficult to measure. Similarly, Lam et al. (2001) opined that pre-qualification is more of an art than scientific evaluation as it is characterized by non-linearity, uncertainty and subjectivity. Over the years, several research works have been conducted in an attempt to reduce the subjectivity and uncertainty involved in the process of contractors' pre-qualification (Hatush and Skitmore, 1997; Lam et al., 2001; Edyta, 2009; Mohammad et al., 2017). As a result, models and techniques have been developed including program evaluation review technique by Hatush and Skitmore (1997), the artificial neural network model by Lam et al. (2001), the principal component analysis method by Lam et al. (2005), the fuzzy sets type-2 technique by Mohammad et al. (2017) among others. However, for pre-qualification proceedings to be useful, it is vital to know how the different criteria impact on the main project objectives like time, cost, quality, among others (Hatush and Skitmore, 1997; Doloi, 2009; Edyta, 2009). Most of the models developed did not consider the impact of the pre-qualification criteria on clients' objectives. The few models that considered clients' objectives only considered the cost, time and quality criteria. However, recent research works have shown that project scope, health and safety and environmental issues are also important projects objectives which clients now takes as a serious measure in achieving project success (Muhammad et al., 2013; Tabish and Jha, 2012). Therefore, conducting a study in establishing the relationship between contractors' pre-qualification and project success criteria will serve as a basis for considering all possible clients' objectives. Pre-qualification criteria and project success criteria identified from literature and preliminary interviews conducted with industry practitioners were validated through a structured questionnaire distributed to quantity surveyors (QSs) in Ghana. The data collected were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).\nHypothesis development: There are numerous success criteria discussed in literature, however, the \"iron triangle\" is the fundamental measure of project success (Agarwal and Rathod, 2006; Fortune and White, 2006). Kerzner (2006) described the \"iron triangle\" criteria as a mere measure of contributions to profit and fails to give an indication of how the project was implemented hence, inadequate for measuring project success. Furthermore, these criteria can only be assessed at the end of a project. The criteria for measuring project success must incorporate stakeholder satisfaction, environmental impact and fulfillment of the scope of the project (Smallwood and Venter, 2001; Jha and Iyer, 2007; Muhammad et al., 2013). Lim and Mohamed (1999) broadly categorized project success into macro and micro viewpoints. These viewpoints further depict the limitation of the \"iron triangle\" in measuring project success. This study adopted 7 criteria for measuring project success with 25 sub-criteria based on research works conducted concerning project success (Lim and Mohamed, 1999; Kerzner, 2006; Agarwal and Rathod, 2006; Cserhati and Szabo, 2014). A summary of the success criteria is shown in Table I.\nResearch methodology: The study adopted a mix research method where pre-qualification and project success variables were identified from literature and interviews were conducted with five experts to validate the variables identified from the literature. These experts have long-standing experience in the field of quantity surveying and have undertaken several pre-qualification activities. These experts were to ascertain the reasonableness and completeness of the identified variables (Kissi et al., 2017). On this basis, a variable can be deleted or added to the list. Similar studies have shown that questionnaire survey is the most efficient tool for research of this nature (Kumaraswamy and Matthews, 2000; Doloi, 2009). Therefore, a structured questionnaire was further developed and administered purposively to 141 registered practicing QSs working as consultants in various institutions and quantity surveying firms in Ghana. These respondents were targeted because they are mostly involved in pre-qualification proceedings in the construction industry (Aje, 2012). The questionnaires were distributed online supplemented by self-administration. The respondents were asked to indicate the significance based on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 (where 1: extremely low to 5: extremely significance) of the identified success criteria (Doloi, 2009). Furthermore, they were asked to indicate the pre-qualification criteria which are frequently used in pre-qualification proceedings based on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 (where 1: very rarely to 5: very significance). Out of the 141 questionnaires distributed, 129 were retrieved. However, upon further checks, 8 were deemed invalid therefore 121 questionnaires were used for the analysis representing a high response rate of 85 percent. The high sample response rate can be attributed to the use of online survey (Hoonakker and Carayon, 2009). Furthermore, this was due constant reminders and follow-ups. The questionnaire administration and collection lasted for a six-month period aided by five assistants. The sample size was deemed adequate as it satisfies the recommendations of many researchers that a sample of 30 for any group could be deemed representative (Ott and Longnecker, 2001). The respondents had a good educational background as 3.30 percent had PhD qualification; 43 percent had MSc/MPhil qualification and 53.70 percent had BSc qualification. In terms of their professional experience, 14 percent had 1-5 years of experience, 43.80 percent had 6-10 years of experience, 18.20 percent had 11-15 years of experience, 17.40 percent had 16-20 years of experience and 6.60 percent had over 20 years of experience.\nConclusions: By researching into the quantitative effects of contractor pre-qualification criteria and project success criteria, a clear relationship between the two concepts have being established. Therefore, it is evident that, the practice of lowest evaluate bidder is not adequate for providing a satisfactory project outcome. Rather, more emphasis should be placed on contractor's technical abilities, HS and management capabilities as they have proven to have significant correlation with project success. In view of this, pre-qualification proceedings should not be undertaken in isolation of project success. Thus, the criteria for pre-qualification proceedings should be selected with project success in mind. The successful completion of a construction project is affected by the pre-qualification criteria selected for pre-qualification proceedings. Theoretically, this study provided a clear quantification of the relationship between contractor pre-qualification criteria and project success criteria. These relationships will aid in the prediction of the outcome a construction based on the capabilities of contractors. Furthermore, the outcome of the research will be useful to managers (client organizations) as it will serve as a guide in the selection of a contractor that can adequately meet their objectives. Notwithstanding, the value contribution this study makes to both practice and knowledge, it is limited in the data collection geographically to Ghana. But it is worth noting that the results of the study can be adequately implemented in other countries with similar construction industry characteristics. Also, the sample frame of the study was limited to QSs working as consultants in the Ghanaian construction industry. It is suggested that further studies should consider a comparative study between consulting QSs and contractor base QSs. It is further suggested that the sample frame should be expanded to other stakeholders in the construction industry. The future agenda for the authors are to develop an intelligent model for executing contractor pre-qualification proceedings for developing countries.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The selection of a suitable contractor for a project has a significant impact on project success. In order to avoid the selection of an incapable contractor, the capabilities of contractors must be assessed prior to tendering through pre-qualification. However, the pre-qualification process is characterized by partiality and ambiguity. In view of this, numerous models have been developed to solve the pre-qualification problems. Prior to the development of such models, it is very important to assess how the pre-qualification criteria impact project success criteria so as to aid in the selection of pre-qualification criteria while considering the project and client's objectives. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the relationship between contractors' pre-qualification criteria and project success criteria.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study utilized explanatory research design in testing 35 hypotheses. The views of 121 practising quantity surveyors were solicited using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling to validate the hypothesis.\nFindings: In all, 13 of the 35 hypotheses were not supported. The findings indicated a clear relationship between contractors' pre-qualification and project success.\nPractical implications: Therefore, it is evident that the practice of lowest evaluate bidder is not adequate for providing a satisfactory project outcome. It is, therefore, suggested that more emphasis should be placed on contractor's technical abilities, health and safety and management capabilities as they have proven to have a significant correlation with the project success.\nOriginality/value: This study provides insights to the how various pre-qualification criteria can impact the project success criteria and further contributes to the symbiotic that exist in the literature on pre-qualification and project success.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring the relationship between macroeconomic indicators and sovereign credit default swap in Pakistan	[ "Interest rates", "Inflation", "Exchange rates", "Exports and imports", "Foreign reserves", "Sovereign credit default swap", "F31", "G13", "C13", "E44", "G12" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Credit default swap (CDS) introduced by JP Morgan (an American financier, banker and philanthropist) in 1994 is a contract between two parties, where one party transfers its risk to another party by paying risk premium[1]. Liu and Morley (2012) categorize CDS into two types:\n2. Data and methodology: We examine the long- and short-run relationship between macroeconomic indicators and SCDS spreads for Pakistan. We use monthly data covering the period January 2001-February 2015. The variables included in the analysis are SCDS spreads, which is defined as the difference between government bond yield and money market rate (Beirne and Fratzscher, 2013), the exchange rate, which is defined as the price of one unit of foreign currency (US dollar) in domestic currency (Pak Rupee), the interest rate, foreign exchange reserves, exports, imports and the rate of inflation, which is defined based on consumer price index. The data on all the variables are taken from International Financial Statistics (IFS), Statistical Bulletin SBP and Federal Bureau of Statistic (FBS).\n3. Results and interpretation: We start by testing the order of integration of each macroeconomic variable and SCDS spreads. The results of the ADF unit root test for levels and first differences are presented in Table I.\n4. Conclusions: In this paper, we examine the macroeconomic determinants of SCDS spreads in Pakistan using monthly date for the period January 2001 to February 2015. We estimate the ARDL model to examine the short- and long-run effects of the macroeconomic variables. We find that there is a significant level (long-run) relationship between the underlying macroeconomic variables and SCDS spreads over the examined period. The long-run estimates suggest that both foreign reserves and interest rates have a significant and negative impact on SCDS spreads, whereas both the rate of inflation and imports are negatively and significantly related to SCDS spreads. Yet, we show that both the exchange rate and exports are statistically insignificantly related to SCDS spreads in the long run.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to empirically examine the long- and short-run relationship between macroeconomic indicators (exchange rates, interest rates, exports, imports, foreign reserves and the rate of inflation) and sovereign credit default swap (SCDS) spreads for Pakistan.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors apply the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to explore the level relationship between the macroeconomic variables and SCDS spreads. The error correction model is estimated to examine the short-run effects of the underlying macroeconomic variables on SCDS spreads. Finally, the long-run estimates are obtained in the ARDL framework. The study uses monthly data covering the period January 2001-February 2015.\nFindings: The results indicate that there is a significant long-run relationship between the macroeconomic indicators and SCDS spreads. The estimated long-run coefficients reveal that both the interest rate and foreign exchange reserves are significantly and negatively, whereas imports and the rate of inflation are positively related to SCDS spreads. Yet, the results suggest that the exchange rate and exports do not have any significant long-run impact on SCDS spreads. The findings regarding the short-run relationship indicate that the exchange rate, imports and the rate of inflation are positively, whereas the interest rate and exports are negatively related to SCDS spreads.\nPractical implications: The results suggest that State Bank of Pakistan should design monetary and foreign exchange rate polices to minimize unwanted variations in the exchange rate to reduce SCDS spreads. The results also suggest that it is incumbent to Pakistan Government to improve the balance of payments to reduce SCDS spreads. The findings also suggest that the inflation targeting policy can also help in reducing SCDS spreads.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to examine the empirical determinants of SCDS spreads for Pakistan. Second, it estimates the short- and long-run effects in the ARDL framework. Third, it considers both internal and external empirical determinants of SCDS spreads.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Digital Rovaniemi: contemporary and future arctic tourist experiences	[ "Instagram", "Social media", "Tourist experiences", "Arctic tourism", "Future tourist experiences" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent decades, a significant number of publications have acknowledged the various changes the Arctic is facing regarding social, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions (Gerhardt et al., 2010; Hall and Saarinen, 2010a; Hjort et al., 2018; Hovelsrud et al., 2011; Keskitalo, 2008). This includes tourism that has seen a tremendous growth in the region in terms of visitor numbers, as well as public visibility and interests (Maher, 2017). In parallel, the Arctic has also entered a digital revolution, especially in tourism, with the development of social media and photo-sharing social networks such as Instagram, which are seen as having notable influences on tourists' experiences and on how tourists consume and picture the Arctic as a destination. Nevertheless, the Arctic is a vast region, composed of various climates, societies and landscapes (Johnston, 2011). The region also distinguished itself by a strong seasonality that offers a wide range of experiences that cannot be completed in a single trip. For example, northern lights and the midnight sun are phenomena that can only be seen in winter and summer, respectively. Therefore, several trips in various locations are necessary to fully experience the Arctic (Saarinen and Varnajot, 2019; Viken, 2013). As Viken (2013, p. 41) notes, \"there is no doubt that tourism in the Arctic is different from tourism in other areas.\" The reason for such a statement finds its origins in a form of exceptionalism as \"very few other geographical regions are labeled as a concept in tourism\" (Saarinen and Varnajot, 2019, p. 3). However, little is known regarding the relations between the Arctic as a unique region, social media and tourists' experiences. However, because the Arctic offers a variety of experiences due to its diverse geography, this study cannot deal with the whole region. Instead, it will focus primarily on Rovaniemi, Finland, a major tourist destination in the circumpolar North. Within Rovaniemi, particular focus is on the tourist experience of crossing the Arctic Circle, which is seen as an inescapable ritual when visiting the city for the first time (Grenier, 2007). The Arctic Circle is the only Arctic border that is celebrated by landmarks and these painted lines, globes or road signs have become tourist attractions (Varnajot, 2019), where tourists stop, take photos and sometimes shop. It is also often treated as the common border to delineate the Arctic region (Viken, 2013), although Arctic tourism can be experienced far south of the Circle, as discussed Varnajot (2019) and Grenier (2011), with icebreaker tours in Kemi, Finland or polar bears safaris in Churchill, Canada.\n2. Social media, photography and Arctic tourism: Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p. 61) define social media as \"internet based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content\" (see also Kietzmann et al., 2011). They include blogs (Blogger), business networks (LinkedIn), collaborative projects (Wikipedia), enterprise social networks (Yammer), microblogs (Twitter, Tumblr), photo-sharing (Instagram, Flickr), products and services review (TripAdvisor), social bookmarking (Pinterest), social gaming (World of Warcraft), social networks (Facebook), video-sharing (Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo), virtual worlds (Twinity) and other forums (Gaia Online) (Aichner and Jacob, 2015). Although there is a wide diversity of social media, they all present three common characteristics (Zeng and Gerritsen, 2014). First, they are online-based services that allow users to construct a public profile, to connect with other users and to interact with them (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). Second, they started as peer-to-peer communications and interactions between users (Patel, 2013), whereas now some of them have evolved to become tools to communicate destination images and promote travel products and services by the tourism industry (Huang, 2011; Thelander and Cassinger, 2017). Third, they create virtual communities (Li and Wang, 2011). As of October 2018, the most popular social media in terms of active users were Facebook (2.2bn), YouTube (1.9bn) and WhatsApp (1.5bn) (Statista, 2018). Nevertheless, the distinction between types of social media has become intricate as applications add new functions transcending the above-mentioned categories. For example, Facebook, a social network, allows the sharing of photos and videos; Instagram, a photo- and video-sharing mobile application, allows private chats between users, etc. Furthermore, in contrast to the static Web 1.0 where users have minimal interactions, in Web 2.0, also known as the social web (Tavakoli and Mura, 2018; Weber and Rech, 2010), contents are \"produced by consumers to be shared among themselves\" (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010, p. 180). According to Tavakoli and Wijesinghe (2019, p. 49), \"this characteristic has proved to be a valuable tool for both customers and providers in the tourism industry,\" to such an extent that Leung et al. (2013) considered social media as a \"mega-trend\" that has significantly affected the tourism industry. In line with this, users have become the \"media\" themselves via collaborations and sharing, and thus social media has empowered consumers as they can create, post, comment and form online communities (Li and Wang, 2011; Pan et al., 2007).\n3. The research method: To examine tourists' experiences through the lens of Instagram, I conducted netnography, a \"qualitative method designed specifically to investigate the consumer behavior of cultures and communities present on the internet\" (Kozinets, 1998, p. 366; see also Tavakoli and Wijesinghe, 2019). Designed by Robert Kozinets in the late 1990s, netnography is the use of adapted ethnographic techniques to study virtual communities on online platforms (Whalen, 2018). In this study, netnography was conducted on the mobile phone photo- and video-sharing social network Instagram. Created in 2010 (Hu et al., 2014), it is today the fastest growing network site (Gretzel, 2017; Sheldon and Bryant, 2016), as showed a video posted on June 20, 2018 on the official Instagram account, celebrating 1bn active users (Instagram, 2018). The application \"provides users an instantaneous way to capture and share their life moments\" (Hu et al., 2014) with other members through pictures (and videos since 2013). More recently in 2016, new functions were added allowing users to share their contents differently with \"stories\" and live videos. Stories are pictures or videos that can be modified with effects and layers, and added to user profiles, whereas live videos allow users to broadcast themselves live. Contrary to classic photos or videos posted in a user's gallery, stories and live videos are not permanent. Live broadcasts and stories disappear immediately after ending and 24 h after posting, respectively. The methodology was partly inspired by Gretzel's study of travel selfies (2017), where the observational part of the study was \"lurking\" at specific hashtags and locations (see Sheldon and Bryant, 2016). Data were gathered in December 2018, following these specific hashtags: #arcticcircle (200,000 posts), #santaclausvillage (45,000 posts), and #rovaniemi (380,000 posts), as well as specific locations: \"Rovaniemi,\" \"Santa Claus Village\" and \"Arctic Circle - Lapland.\" Nevertheless, the selection still represented around 600,000 posts to analyze. In order to scale down the selection, for each hashtag and location, I did not consider the numerous posts that were not directly connected to the study, including videos. For example, when \"lurking\" at #arcticcircle, posts were not only referring to the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi but to all locations around the circumpolar North where the Arctic Circle is marked on the ground, or to places located far north or far south of the actual landmarks. In addition, Arctic Circle landmarks had to be seen on the studied posts. Following Gretzel's methodology, \"interactions with Instagram users were not initiated and the data collected was therefore comprised of photographs\" (Gretzel, 2017, p. 119), including their descriptions, when available. I also limited the analysis to the posts concerning the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi posted from June 1, 2018 to December 31, 2018. This timeframe is beneficial for covering both summer and winter seasons and examining potential seasonal differences. During this period, Lapland experienced warm temperatures during the summer, sometimes reaching +30degC, while the beginning of the winter particularly suffered from the lack of snow, to such an extent that British tabloids renamed Lapland as \"Crapland.\" In the end, up to a hundred posts were analyzed and the most relevant were captured via screenshots.\n4. Crossing the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi reported on Instagram: Traditionally, the tourist experience has been defined as a linear and temporal process (Craig-Smith and French, 1994; Jennings, 2006) divided into three phases, namely the pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip phases (Gretzel et al., 2006; Kim and Fesenmaier, 2017; Leung et al., 2013), and each of these phases is characterized by their own functions. During the pre-trip or anticipatory phase, tourists are preparing, planning, making decisions, expecting, anticipating, looking at Instagram posts regarding the up-coming journey or excursion (Huang et al., 2010; Tussyadiah et al., 2011). The during-trip or experiential phase naturally refers to the time spent at the site of the vacation, during which tourists take part in activities, taste new food, visit sights, take photographs, shop, or cross the Arctic Circle when visiting the Santa Claus Village, etc. (Cohen, 1979; Wang et al., 2012). In the post-trip or reflective phase, tourists are documenting, reminiscing and sharing their trip with relatives or on social media (Pan et al., 2007), which will potentially be used by other tourists planning a trip to the same destination (Kim and Fesenmaier, 2017). Nevertheless, some scholars (Botterill and Crompton, 1996; Jennings and Weiler, 2006; Uriely, 2005; Urry, 1990) have argued that the tourist experience is more complex due to the inherently personal and reflective character of the experience, but the linear process still represents the basic structure of the tourist experience. Although \"sharing\" has been traditionally associated with the post-trip phase of the tourist experience, the growing use of smartphones, as well as the development of technologies and available Wi-Fi services, allows users to post their photographs while still on-site (Wang et al., 2012). New technologies and new functions of social media applications tend to modify and reshape the basic structure of the tourist experience, and now one can share his or her own experience in both the during-phase and the post-phase of the trip (Gretzel, 2010). Therefore, whether the different analyzed Instagram posts were published during or after the trip cannot be determined.\n5. Discussion: the future of Arctic tourism experiences: Although the relatively new functions of social media, including allowing live sharing, are still expanding among users, it is rather possible to predict the near future of social media in tourists' practices and how it will look in the years ahead. The population with disposable income to travel will continue to increase, as will the number of tourists visiting the Arctic (Maher, 2017), and they will potentially keep sharing their experiences via social media. However, drawing on assumptions about the further future becomes more intricate without falling into science fiction. In parallel, technologies like AR and VR are expected to develop in tourism and open new opportunities to enhance and reshape tourist experiences (Han et al., 2019). While AR already exists at some Arctic Circle landmarks, VR has not yet reached its full potential. Indeed, when one crosses the Arctic Circle at SantaPark, a Christmas-related theme park located in Rovaniemi, cold wind and sound effects are triggered to emphasize the entrance to the Arctic (Varnajot, 2019). In that context, AR \"uses fixed installations at certain locations such as theme parks and retail outlets, enabling virtual augmentations for on-site users\" (Han et al., 2019). Conversely, VR produces virtual environments that can be reproduced anywhere and being on-site is not necessary. According to Kim and Hall (2019, p. 237), \"VR can be defined as an interactive digital-generated medium that enables participants to experience simulated environments.\" Then, what could happen to Arctic tourist experiences when social media and VR merge? According to Kaku (2011), by 2100 we will be able to use brain sensors or internet-connected eye lenses; artificial intelligence and telekinesis will be part of our environment and daily life (see Yeoman, 2012). Nevertheless, this remains hypothetical.\n6. Conclusion: Social media is evolving rapidly and has greatly influenced the tourist experience in terms of preparation and anticipation, behaviors on-site, but also when sharing with relatives and followers. Social media, combined with the development of new technologies, now allows tourists to share and instantly document their experiences. Functions of the during-trip and the post-trip phases have merged under the umbrella of photo- and video-sharing networks such as Instagram, creating online communities. Although these communities are virtual, they exist as they share information, ideas or prejudices and participate in the building of individuals' representations. The study of Instagram posts revealed that, at the moment of crossing the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi, three main trends were revealed in tourists' representations of the Arctic region. First, the Arctic is perceived as magical; second, entering the Arctic is seen as an achievement allowing the realization of the self; third, the region in summer does not fit with the popular social construction of a cold and frozen Arctic. These three main representations are not illustrative of the whole Arctic, but instead aim at understanding what makes Rovaniemi \"Arctic\" from the tourists' perspectives.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate tourists' representations of the Arctic through the lens of the photo-sharing social network Instagram. The study focuses on the particular tourist experience of crossing the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi, Finland, as in tourism, it represents the \"official\" entry to the Arctic. The study also aims at drawing assumptions about the future experiences of crossing the Arctic Circle, with the development of new technologies such as augmented and virtual realities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were gathered with netnography methodologies on the Instagram social network. The first stage was the observational part and consisted of \"lurking\" at specific hashtags and locations, both referring to the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi. Data were gathered in December 2018 and consisted of images and descriptions of Instagram posts published by users between June 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018, so data collection encompassed both summer and winter seasons. The second stage was the analysis part and involved interpretive understanding, and especially phenomenological sociology.\nFindings: Results show that three dominant representations of the Arctic emerge when tourists cross the Arctic Circle. The region is either seen as a frozen fairytale wonderland due to the close proximity of the Christmas industry, as a far and northern destination participating in the realization of the self, and as a territory where summer weather conditions are not necessarily synonymous with the Arctic. In addition, the study acknowledges the future challenges of conceptualizing \"Arctic tourism\" due to the development of virtual reality technologies that could provide immersive Arctic experiences outside the region.\nOriginality/value: The paper investigates connections between social media studies and tourist experiences in the Arctic context. It also questions the future of Arctic tourist experiences with the development of new technologies enhancing experiences and, thus, potentially threatening the exceptionalism of the Arctic and what makes the region a unique tourism destination.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Brand prominence in cause-related marketing: luxury versus non-luxury	[ "Brand prominence", "Luxury branding", "Cause-related marketing", "Co-branding" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Currently, more companies worldwide consider it necessary to define their roles in society and apply social, ethical and responsible standards to their brand management strategy (Wymer and Sargeant, 2006). Cause-related marketing (CRM) represents a brand ethics orientation, and it is an important tool for activating relationships among non-profit organizations, companies and consumers (Kotler and Lee, 2005).\nCause-related marketing as co-branding: Hoeffler and Keller (2002) suggest that a co-branding strategy is the most appropriate way to develop CRM activity that is effective for both brand partners (Lafferty et al., 2016; Michel and Rieunier, 2012): the for-profit brand responsible for the product and the charity brand responsible for the social cause. This branding strategy seems to be the most effective for complementing brand image with the specific association leveraged by the cause and its brand (Hoeffler and Keller, 2002). Aaker (1996) asserts that co-branding is particularly effective when a firm wants to enter another field. It might be the case of charities that are quite far from the core profit business of companies, so even in the case of CRM, a co-branding strategy could be a good opportunity for them.\nTheoretical background and hypothesis: Brand prominence is the extent to which a product has visible markings that help consumers recognize the brand - \"the conspicuousness of a brand's mark or logo on a product\" (Han et al., 2010, p. 15). Manufacturers can produce a product with \"loud\" or conspicuous branding, or tone it down to \"quiet\" or discreet branding. Consistent with the brand signalling perspective (Rao and Rueckert, 1994; Rao, 1997) is that consumers' evaluations of a product could be enhanced by the presence of a brand perceived as vulnerable to consumers' sanctions (Rao et al., 1999). Consumers use brand presence as an informational cue to legitimise product characteristics and decrease their informational asymmetry (Akerlof, 1970; Nayyar, 1990; Nilssen, 2000). In this sense, it is sufficient that consumers see and recognize the brand's existence because they know that the brand is vulnerable to punishment if it does not fulfil their expectations (Montgomery and Wernerfelt, 1992; Wernerfelt, 1988).\nStudy 1: Participants\nStudy 2: Participants\nManagerial implications, originality and further research: These findings suggest important managerial implications in terms of an appropriate co-branding strategy for a CRM product. In fact, the brand management literature distinguishes different kinds of branding activities (Aaker, 2009): an equal branding strategy in which each master brand has the same importance in shaping the co-branded product, or a branding strategy with a dominant master brand (for-profit or non-profit one) and another brand added to stress a concrete functional characteristic of the product (differentiating co-brand) or to highlight an imagery mental association (energizer co-brand). The visual prominence of two brands involved in a CRM product might be considered an empirical vehicle to test the role played by each brand, and thus an element by which consumers inferred the underlying co-branding strategy. Equal brand prominence implies considering the for-profit brand (manufacturer) and the non-profit one (charity) as two equally relevant master brands, whereas unequal visual prominence implies one master brand is mainly responsible for the product and the other one is an optional partner (energizer).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Past research on cause-related marketing (CRM) suggests that these socially beneficial initiatives can be implemented as co-branding strategies. Little is known, however, about the role of brand prominence, in terms of visual conspicuousness of the two brands that are partner-involved (for-profit and non-profit brands). This study aims to advance a model of moderated mediation that explains how and under what circumstances brand prominence disparity enhances consumers' attitudes toward CRM co-branded products and increases purchase intention\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors test a model of moderated mediation in two studies. Study 1 shows that the effectiveness of brand prominence disparity is explained by the mediating role of attitude toward a CRM co-branded product. Study 2 demonstrates that this mediation is moderated by the positioning of the for-profit brand partner (luxury vs non-luxury positioning).\nFindings: Results show that brand prominence disparity has a role in defining consumers' purchase intention toward a CRM co-branded product through mediation of attitude. Moreover, positioning of the for-profit brand partner moderates the cognitive processes activated by the visual brand prominence. In luxury positioning, a loud visual prominence of the for-profit brand significantly improves consumers' attitudes and intentions to buy the CRM co-branded product.\nOriginality/value: The study extends our understanding of how visual brand presence can promote the effectiveness of co-branded CRM initiatives, and it offers practical guidelines for marketers wishing to partner with social causes, while promoting products with luxury or non-luxury features.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collaborative Governance 2.0	[ "Social responsibility", "Governance", "Stakeholders", "Regulation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Supported by a high public interest in corporate responsibility, a plethora of standards have emerged in recent years which promote voluntary governance solutions in the context of social and environmental problems (Fransen and Kolk, 2002; Rasche and Esser, 2006). Initiatives such as the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, the Ethical Trading Initiative or the Fair Labor Association have grown significantly in terms of their participants (for an overview see Leipziger, 2003). While these standards differ in detail, they all share one common feature: they bring together a variety of, sometimes competing or even conflicting, interests by multiple stakeholders. Put differently, such standards represent collaborative attempts to define and/or implement rules governing the social and environmental consequences of economic activities.Whereas the logic, rationale and operating procedures of multi-stakeholder standards are well understood (Albareda, 2008; Utting, 2002; Waddock, 2008; Zadek, 2008), we concurrently miss reflections on how these initiatives can be linked to jointly address the governance problems that underpin the corporate responsibility agenda. In this paper I argue that we need to move from a mere acknowledgement that multi-stakeholder standards can potentially fill the omnipresent governance voids (a notion which I label \"collaborative governance 1.0\"), to an understanding that, in the long run, social and environmental problems can only be effectively addressed when these initiatives start collaborating themselves (a notion which I label \"collaborative governance 2.0\"). In other words, we need to move from multi-stakeholder collaboration within these standards to collective action among them.The arguments presented in this paper are both, descriptive and normative. First, I uncover and explain already existing collaborative efforts among multi-stakeholder standards. My aim is to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these interactions. Following on from this, I also demonstrate where further possibilities for collaborations exist and why these make sense. My arguments contribute to and extend the existing literature on collaborative governance in the context of corporate responsibility in two ways: First, in order to explore interaction effects, I introduce a categorization scheme to better differentiate available standards. Such a categorization seems necessary and timely as it structures future discussions and allows the development of a common language around multi-stakeholder standards. Second, I move the discussion from a focus on multi-stakeholder standards themselves (Deva, 2006; O'Rourke, 2003) to an acknowledgment of the (missing) linkages among them. This second point also has an important practical dimension. In the crowded market of standards covering corporate responsibility issues there is need for collaboration and, in some cases, convergence.My analysis is structured into four sections. In the first section I revisit the logic of collaborative governance and also discuss its benefits and problems. The second section characterizes multi-stakeholder standards as one way to exercise collaborative governance in practice. This section also identifies five categories of multi-stakeholder standards. The third section outlines and specifies ways for collaboration among standards from the different categories, while the last section discusses implications of my arguments for researchers and practitioners.\nCollaborative governance 1.0: The underlying logic of collaborative governance\nCollaborative governance and multi-stakeholder standards: The nature of multi-stakeholder standards\nCollaborative governance 2.0: Collaboration between multi-stakeholder standards can occur on different levels. First, there can be collaboration among initiatives within one of the standard categories discussed in the preceding section. Second, there can be collaboration among standards from different categories. Third, there can be collaboration among multi-stakeholder standards and initiatives that are not based on multi-stakeholder collaboration.Collaboration among standards within categories\nImplications and conclusions: This article outlined the idea of collaborative governance 2.0, highlighting potential and already existing linkages among multi-stakeholder standards. The notion of collaborative governance 2.0 acknowledges that corporations have limited resources to participate in multi-stakeholder standards. Practically speaking, this restricts their ability to seriously contribute to several initiatives at the same time. Hence, the existence of numerous multi-stakeholder initiatives in the corporate responsibility context reflects an opportunity and a problem. It is an opportunity because the existence of a variety of initiatives raises the level of attention for corporate responsibility issues. However, it is also a problem because in a world of multiple (partly competing) initiatives, we risk that at the end of the day no initiative will gain a critical mass to have a lasting impact on the underlying social and environmental problems. All of this is not to suggest that we need fewer multi-stakeholder initiatives. Rather, there is need to more clearly explore and develop linkages between existing standards and foster convergence and harmonization where this is feasible.Without more focus on collaborative governance 2.0, there is increased risk that the emerging institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility will not be sustainable. Too many unconnected standards are likely to confuse global brand companies and their local suppliers. In the long run, the global marketplace will not be able to support a variety of isolated initiatives. If businesses have the choice among standards (which they do as long as corporate responsibility remains a largely voluntary activity), firms will try to identify a small set of supplementary standards they are willing to support.These observations entail two key implications. First, collaboration among multi-stakeholder standards requires thorough reflections about the design of standard interfaces. Exploring linkages among initiatives cannot be put into the hands of standard adopters, but needs to be addressed by coordinated efforts among standard developers. Second, governments need to more clearly articulate which standards they support. So far, few initiatives have received explicit government support (e.g. the Global Compact was acknowledged by the G8 in their Heiligendamm and L'Aquila Declarations). Government support would send a strong signal to corporations that multi-stakeholder standards are not fully separated from what governments are trying to achieve through national legislation. However, governmental backing needs to be carefully balanced with the voluntary nature of corporate responsibility - standards should in no case be understood as a substitute for evolving national and supranational legislation.Many of the multi-stakeholder standards discussed throughout this article are part and parcel of the changing relationship between companies and their stakeholders. Efforts in support of collaborative governance 2.0 reflect a vital part of this changing relationship because they create novel forms of cooperation widely accepted by a range of parties. Without doubt, collaborative governance 2.0 takes up some, albeit not all, of the resulting governance challenges. Collaboration between existing standards can help to build a more robust institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. However, it will not ipso facto improve the impact of voluntary initiatives. What is required is a more fundamental shift in our thinking about corporate responsibility standards; a shift acknowledging that these standards are not an add-on to business activity, but that business' core operational practices and strategic positioning need to be aligned with basic principles governing the global marketplace.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to explore how existing collaborative governance arrangements in the context of corporate responsibility (e.g. the Global Reporting Initiative and Social Accountability 8000) need to collaborate more directly in order to enhance their impact. The objective of this paper is twofold: primarily, to explore existing and potential linkages between multi-stakeholder standards; but, at the same time, to explore the potential for standard convergence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper follows a conceptual approach that is supported by a variety of case examples. First, the nature and benefits as well as shortcomings of multi-stakeholder standards are explored. Second, a categorization scheme for the availability of such standards is developed. Third, linkages between the different standard categories are explored and discussed. Last but not least, the paper outlines practical implications.\nFindings: - A variety of linkages between existing multi-stakeholder standards exist. These linkages need to be strengthened, as the market for corporate responsibility is unlikely to support a great variety of partly competing and overlapping initiatives.\nOriginality/value: - The paper offers a structured discussion of potential linkages between multi-stakeholder standards and thus complements the literature where such initiatives are discussed (usually without much mention of linkages). Practitioners will find the discussion useful to explore how their participation in a variety of initiatives can be better coordinated.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Digital skin of the construction site: Smart sensor technologies towards the future smart construction site	[ "Information systems", "Innovation", "Technology", "Construction", "Information and communication technology (ICT) applications", "Novel method" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 The context-aware pervasive construction site of the future\n2. Research methodology: 2.1 Data collection\n3. \"Digital skin\" of future pervasive construction site: The digital skin of the future pervasive construction site is composed of a system of seamlessly networked sensors, actuators, displays and computational elements, with embedded intelligence and advanced digital applications, attached to various objects. These objects compose the digital skin and form connections to a network of other devices and, ultimately, to the internet. The digital skin is context aware, using various context parameters to provide relevant information and/or services to the user's tasks. This can include sensing various aspects of the physical environment (context parameters) and the construction site, allowing it to adapt its behaviours to changing dynamics through embedded intelligence. The digital skin is composed of three layers:\n4. Review of context-aware digital skin research: This section presents a classification and review of the research studies on the digital skin of the future pervasive construction site. The studies illustrate diverse approaches within the scope of this paper.\n5. Future construction sites: 5.1 The future construction worker\n6. Discussion: Reviewed studies symbolise the ambition for the emerging vision of the \"construction site of the future\". The findings from the review and analysis suggest that there are gaps due to: lack of technology feasibility validation, technology application on site and technology readiness; limitations in user acceptance tests and adoption of mature technologies for wider adoption; promoting and supporting the innovation in emerging technologies. These challenges are discussed below.\n7. Conclusions: While a clear definition of the new vision of the construction site known as the \"construction site of the future\" has been lacking, various research projects and promising technologies have emerged to contribute to it in recent years. This paper contributes to the field by providing a coherent, high-level view and a definition of the use of technology on the future construction site referred to as the context-aware digital skin. Key aspects of the digital skin, such as hardware, communication technologies and middleware/software, have been discussed. The systematic classification and critical review of the existing research has revealed that there are open research challenges and gaps to be filled in the body of knowledge. These include the limitations of hardware and software, the lack of standardisation efforts, the absence of a coherent process in technology design, development and implementation and the lack of effort on studying technology acceptance and human transformation in technology adoption. As the challenges of technological limitations are gradually being addressed by other disciplines, this paper recommends that researchers and regulatory bodies in the construction domain make an effort to bring these promising technologies to the construction industry through a systematic process of standardisation, validation and acceptance of technology. The paper also imagines the future construction site, using scenarios to consider the future construction worker, smart plant operation, smart supply chain and smart real-time safety management systems. The holistic and cohesive view on the gaps between the research and practice provides the first comprehensive source of checklist for the researchers in the field. It also provides useful insights for stakeholders for achieving the future smart construction site. It is anticipated that this paper will aid in achieving the vision of the future smart construction site.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The future construction site will be pervasive, context aware and embedded with intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define the concept of the digital skin of the future smart construction site.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper provides a systematic and hierarchical classification of 114 articles from both industry and academia on the digital skin concept and evaluates them. The hierarchical classification is based on application areas relevant to construction, such as augmented reality, building information model-based visualisation, labour tracking, supply chain tracking, safety management, mobile equipment tracking and schedule and progress monitoring. Evaluations of the research papers were conducted based on three pillars: validation of technological feasibility, onsite application and user acceptance testing.\nFindings: Technologies learned about in the literature review enabled the envisaging of the pervasive construction site of the future. The paper presents scenarios for the future context-aware construction site, including the construction worker, construction procurement management and future real-time safety management systems.\nOriginality/value: Based on the gaps identified by the review in the body of knowledge and on a broader analysis of technology diffusion, the paper highlights the research challenges to be overcome in the advent of digital skin. The paper recommends that researchers follow a coherent process for smart technology design, development and implementation in order to achieve this vision for the construction industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using Twitter data to predict the performance of Bollywood movies	[ "Prediction", "Sentiment analysis", "Twitter", "Social media", "Social network", "Fuzzy inference system" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The emergence of the web and online social media has represented a fundamental shift as it has added new dimensions to the production and dissemination of news and information. Social media is defined as media designed to disseminate information through social interaction which has been created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Users usually generate content, access information to reach a large audience. Social media has replaced the traditional one-way mass media to consumer communication channel with an interactive dialogue, which helps in creation and exchange of user-generated content. Companies analyze social media data to perform analytics and sentiment analysis. The massive growth of online social networks like Twitter, Facebook and other social networking portals have created a need to determine people's opinion and moods. Users can browse information and opinions from diverse sources that help them tap into the crowds while making more informed decisions (Asur and Huberman, 2010).\n2. Literature review: With the growth of blogs and social networks, opinion mining, sentiment analysis became a field of interest for many researches. The topic of using social media to predict the product future of movies is one of the most popular topics among the masses. Experts are able to come out with substantially accurate predictions about the movie with help of readily available information about the movie and its related revenues. The different authors own research is also based on the field of cinematography. The reason for this is the popularity of movies in society and the many publicly available metrics for success, such as box-office performance.\n3. Methodology: The major work done in this paper was to predict the box office movie performance and opening weekend box office collection of any Bollywood movie. We had considered movie-related tweets as an input factor for the experimental purpose, which was to extract information from Twitter. For movie performance, we had used two components, first component was a set of movie tweets from Twitter web sites and second component corresponding to movie actor/actress rating.\n4. Results: In the current study a total of 10,269 tweets and retweets were extracted for 14 different movies a week before its release as this is a critical period as major promotional campaigns for Bollywood movies begin a week before release. Tweets were extracted for 14 different movies released over a period of six months. The time period for data acquisition was preset in the data extraction application a priori. Movies are normally showcased on Fridays, with some rare exception of movie which are showcased on Wednesday. Since an average of two new movies is released each week, we collected data over a time period of six months from June to December to have sufficient data to measure predictive behavior for consistency. Data about the actual box office collection were obtained from Koimoi a popular web site. Table I gives the list of movie names and date of release that have been used in the study.\n5. Conclusion: In earlier research historical data had been often used to predict the results of movie performance. In this research the box office collection was predicted prior to the release of the movie with help of social media data. In this study sentiment information mined from current movie tweets from Twitter was used for predicting movie performance. In this study, prediction result is calculated on the basis of FIS model that is applied on Bollywood movies which are released in the year 2014. FIS output had been compared with actual category of the movie using movie-based web sites. A set of experiments conducted on movie data sets confirmed the accuracy and effectiveness of the model. It was found that the predicted results are approximately same as the actual results. In this research tweets were also used for calculating hype factor for predicting opening weekend box office collection of movie before its release. The prediction accuracy is measured by using MSE method.\n6. Limitations of the study and scope for further work: Our study has some limitations. The current study suffers from the limitation of not having enough computing resources to collect the data. For predicting box office collection, there is no correct availability of ticket price information, total number of seats per screen and total number of shows per day on all screens. In this study only input factors are used for movie prediction but other factors like box office revenue, actor, actress, director, banner and producer also determine success of a movie. In the future researchers can enhance the current system can by considering few more inputs like budget of the movie (production budget and promotional budget), movie genre, Central Board of Film Certification rating, targeted audience of the movie as other independent variables to get a more accurate prediction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the shortcomings of limited research in forecasting the power of social media in India.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses sentiment analysis and prediction algorithms to analyze the performance of Indian movies based on data obtained from social media sites. The authors used Twitter4j Java API for extracting the tweets through authenticating connection with Twitter web sites and stored the extracted data in MySQL database and used the data for sentiment analysis. To perform sentiment analysis of Twitter data, the Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis classification model is used to find the sentiment score in the form of positive, negative and neutral. The data mining algorithm Fuzzy Inference System is used to implement sentiment analysis and predict movie performance that is classified into three categories: hit, flop and average.\nFindings: In this study the authors found results of movie performance at the box office, which had been based on fuzzy interface system algorithm for prediction. The fuzzy interface system contains two factors, namely, sentiment score and actor rating to get the accurate result. By calculation of opening weekend collection, the authors found that that the predicted values were approximately same as the actual values. For the movie Singham Returns over method of prediction gave a box office collection as 84 crores and the actual collection turned out to be 88 crores.\nResearch limitations/implications: The current study suffers from the limitation of not having enough computing resources to crawl the data. For predicting box office collection, there is no correct availability of ticket price information, total number of seats per screen and total number of shows per day on all screens. In the future work the authors can add several other inputs like budget of movie, Central Board of Film Certification rating, movie genre, target audience that will improve the accuracy and quality of the prediction.\nOriginality/value: The authors used different factors for predicting box office movie performance which had not been used in previous literature. This work is valuable for promoting of product and services of the firms.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowing and actional information in web based weight maintenance services	[ "Knowing", "Health information", "Weight maintenance", "Health behaviour change", "Web-based services" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The phenomena related to health behaviour change have been investigated extensively in the field of psychology (e.g. Prochaska et al., 1992; Bandura, 1997; Teixera et al., 2012). In the field of medicine, research on web-based weight maintenance is rare in relation to the volume of research on weight loss (Wadden et al., 2004). Weight loss refers to a phase in which an individual actively and intentionally loses weight. Weight maintenance, in turn, refers to the process of maintaining an achieved weight and an adopted behaviour change after a weight loss period. Weight maintenance is an issue of great importance, for usually the pace of weight loss decelerates and the lost weight is regained. This is partly due to physiological changes and partly to the individual's inadequate ability to sustain lifestyle modification in dietary, exercise and self-regulatory behaviour over a long period with a constant commitment. It is acknowledged, however, that some individuals succeed unaided in weight gain prevention (Wadden et al., 2004, 2007; Bar-Ilan et al., 2006; Winett et al., 2005).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Web-based weight maintenance information\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 The proposed approach\n4. Findings: 4.1 Web-based weight maintenance information typology\n5. Discussion: This study sought to increase theoretical understanding of the role of information and knowledge in weight maintenance. The purpose of the study was to propose and test a novel theoretical approach to examining the information environment of web-based weight management services. The empirical study consisted of content analysis of two readily available Finnish web-based weight management services. The services were selected due to the high percentage of internet use in Finland and according to set criteria. The three typologies used were found to be applicable in exploring information content in a web-based weight management service and they were incorporated into the proposed approach on which the research instrument was based. According to the analysis conducted using this research instrument, the services' information profiles were outlined by utilising the dimensions in the information and knowledge types relevant to successful weight maintenance.\n6. Conclusion: This study proposes and empirically tests a novel approach to examining the potential of web-based weight management services to support lifestyle changes after weight loss. The approach sheds light on the role of information and knowledge in weight maintenance by integrating the actional phase of the HAPA model with the typology of knowing, which refers to turning information into action within a community. The findings indicate that there are differences in the information environments of web-based weight management services, though both services have the potential to support long-term weight maintenance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the role of information and knowledge in the context of health behaviour change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: As internet use in Finland is among the highest in Europe, two Finnish web-based weight management services were analysed regarding their weight maintenance information by using a theoretical approach constructed for the purpose. The approach combines the elements of web-based weight maintenance information and the typologies of knowing and actional information. The approach was tested by examining the services deductively with theory-based content analysis.\nFindings: The approach indicated differences between the profiles of the two analysed information environments, which focus on factual and tailored information and their relation to pragmatic, provisional and contested knowing and the initiation, maintenance and recovery of actional information. Both services support weight maintenance; the other slightly more due to its rich social features.\nResearch limitations/implications: The examination was focused on the free content of two Finnish weight management services. Further research should include the role of socially interactive information and further testing of the approach with more services.\nPractical implications: The proposed approach sheds light on the relationship between the types of weight maintenance information and the dimensions of the typologies of knowing and actional information. The approach has the potential to be applied when designing the information environment of new web-based weight management services.\nSocial implications: The approach has potential to be applied when designing the information content of new web-based weight management services to support health behaviour change. The approach could be elaborated further by focusing on enabling social support required in long-term weight maintenance.\nOriginality/value: The study adopted a novel approach to studying typologies of knowing and actional information, thus providing new viewpoints in both information behaviour and organisational knowledge. The study enables further research on weight maintenance information use by proposing a theoretical background.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Ranking maintenance strategies for sustainable maintenance plan in manufacturing systems using fuzzy axiomatic design principle and fuzzy-TOPSIS	[ "Manufacturing", "Managers", "Maintenance", "Manufacturing operations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Despite the fact that maintenance was at the outset conceived as a purely technical subject with main concerns for effectiveness, definition of roles and responsibilities and a huge focus on techniques such as vibration monitoring, thermography, ultrasonics, visual inspections (e.g. Gross, 2002; Mobley, 2002, 2004), the idea that maintenance should be sustainable oriented is gradually gaining prominence (Pires et al., 2016; Hennequin and Restrepo, 2016; Zhang et al., 2017). However, maintenance is the integration of technical and non-technical efforts in the restoration or retention of equipment by a competent workforce, considering the least life cycle cost of the equipment (Zhang et al., 2017). So, at disparity with the solitary intellect that maintenance initially aimed to make, a growing body of knowledge and experts have begun to see maintenance differently (Liyanage, 2007; Iung and Levrat, 2014; Hennequin and Restrepo, 2016; Nyemba et al., 2016; Wickramasinghe and Perera, 2016). For instance, Iung and Levrat (2014) asserted that ecology (sustainability) is closely related to industry and they influence each other. Hennequin and Restrepo (2016) claimed that the twin relationship between economics of maintenance and sustainability would aid progress for the manufacturing enterprises. The gap in sustainability and maintenance remains wide and needs research to bridge it (Liyanage, 2007). Thus, our argument is that sustainability is not separable from maintenance (Liyanage, 2007; Iung and Levrat, 2014; Nyemba et al., 2016). Furthermore, progress in tangible measures could only be guaranteed if more rigorous research and more commitment to the course of sustainability in the industry could be achieved about the maintenance function (Nyemba et al., 2016). In addition, research has proposed that associations of sustainability with the various functional units of manufacturing such as production, safety and maintenance are necessary to advance sustainability. A tremendous growing number of authors such as Kumar et al. (2012), Lee and Lam (2012), Orji and Wei (2015), Baldassare and Campo (2016), Quoquab and Mohammed (2016), Winroth et al. (2016), Soosay et al. (2016), Yazan et al. (2017), Dias et al. (2017) and Abdullah et al. (2017) share this perception.\n2. Literature review: In the past few years, scholars have curiously investigated the interactions of maintenance unit with, for instance, production, quality, life cycle cost, competence and environment (Olorunniwo, 1992; Narayan, 2012; Ruin et al., 2014; Waghmode and Patil, 2016). The following subsections contain literature as it pertains to these interactions.\n3. Research methodology: A structure for deliberating on maintenance planning under sustainability requirements assures to help resolve the black spots about how sustainability affects maintenance planning. Sparse information in literature about this pursuit creates some complications in quantifying the influence of sustainability on maintenance planning, particularly about some measures not fully explored numerically in literature. For example, it is not clear how indices about waste performance of maintenance department, in terms of solid and liquid wastes, could be measured (Lemieux et al., 2004; Aiello et al., 2009). Although the noise pollution literature saturates with indices of noise control measures, there is missing information in the maintenance literature about the impact of effective services of maintenance on noise control (Yongbing and Martin, 2013; Ismaila and Odusote, 2014). So, the literature is ignorant about this and interactions with other factors such as waste disposal (solid and liquid). These expositions are a bit of the pool of factors that maintenance planning influences in its associations with sustainability issues. Thus, devoid of clearly reflecting on these many factors in its complete form, it is tough to appreciate the factors that chamfer how to accomplish sustainability in maintenance practices in the voyage to make an environmentally conscious and effective manufacturing.\n4. Case study: 4.1 Case description and analysis\n5. Conclusions: The current investigation has shown how an FAD principle, which is an uncertainty tracking method that potentially serves as a tool for imprecise and uncertainty event, can be employed in maintenance system sustainability strategy ranking, involving a blend of questionnaire and qualitative evaluations. The problem solved consists of many criteria with conflicting nature. FAD is a novel method that has exhibited an outstanding history of real-world success in applications. In this study, an approach for processing the fuzziness of the system by considering fuzzy-TOPSIS with FAD has been advanced. The advanced method for decision making on maintenance system sustainability strategy appears flexible and applicable in related areas of manufacturing with adjustments in the framework. The results from FAD principle and fuzzy-TOPSIS method were different. The best-ranked maintenance strategy for the cement plant using fuzzy-TOPSIS method was maintenance consumables optimisation. The FAD principle identified workforce training as the best-ranked maintenance sustainability strategy for the cement plant. By focusing attention on workforce training and maintenance consumables optimisation, the possibility of improving the case study maintenance system sustainability is high.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Maintenance plans are programmes, which follow maintenance appraisals, contain information of what to do and the time approximates for accomplishments. They also deal with how to carry out maintenance jobs. In contemporary period, curiosity has proliferated about how sustainability affects manufacturing plans. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive notion of maintenance sustainability in maintenance planning. The literature has downplayed maintenance sustainability but may support in understanding how to crack the present company-community conflicts about the negative influence of manufacturing on the environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study develops the idea of selecting the proper maintenance strategy based on integrated fuzzy axiomatic design (FAD) principle and fuzzy-TOPSIS. This work suggests that the maintenance function is an uncertain, activity-oriented system. To fully appreciate the proposed framework, the work employs data from a cement manufacturing plant to test the structure. This study offers 20 influential factors on which it build the fundamental structure of maintenance system sustainability for manufacturing concerns. A novel literature contribution that departs from existing conceptions is the classical determination of weights of each sustainability factor, employing fuzzy entropy weighting approach. Furthermore, work innovatively determines the ranking of some important tenets of sustainability in maintenance and optimises the maintenance consumables employing the FAD principle.\nFindings: Interestingly, the output of the investigation revealed differences as the work adopts fuzzy-TOPSIS in comparison with FAD principle.\nOriginality/value: Case examination of a real-life manufacturing venture validated the claims, showing maintenance workforce training as a top-echelon strategy for maintenance system sustainability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
It is not always bad news: Illustrating the potential of integrated reporting using a case study in the eco-tourism industry	[ "Integrated reporting", "Sustainability reporting", "Organisational change", "Internal process", "Logics of resistance", "Reporting systems" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The last three decades have seen an exponential increase in the extent of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information being reported to stakeholders under the broad heading of \"sustainability reporting\" (KPMG, 2011; Stubbs and Higgins, 2014). The release of the International Integrated Reporting Council's (IIRC, 2013) framework on integrated reporting is the most recent development in this area.\n2. Integrated reporting: According to the IIRC (2013, para. 1.7), \"the primary purpose of an integrated report is to explain to providers of financial capital how an organization creates value over time\". Some critical theorists have argued that this has resulted in a loss of focus on a genuine sustainability in favour of preserving a finance-centric reporting system (see Brown and Dillard, 2014; Adams, 2015; Flower, 2015). The influence of large accounting firms and corporations means that \"value\" remains a financial consideration rather than something relevant for a broad group of stakeholders. The resulting business case framing of integrated reporting limits its change potential and may, paradoxically, promote unsustainable business practices (Brown and Dillard, 2014; Cheng et al., 2014; Stubbs and Higgins, 2014). This position is supported by reviews of internal reporting practices at early adopters of the IIRC's framework (mainly from Australia and South Africa) and the disclosures included in their integrated reports.\n3. Theoretical framework: accounting for organisational change: According to Laughlin (1991), the core processes of the firm, its culture, mission and operating ethos can be viewed as interpretive schemes which represent fundamental assumptions about or views of the organisation and define how it reacts to different situations. Core operating policies, decision-making processes, lines of communication and the organisation of the firm represent its design archetype (Ouchi, 1979). Physical processes, infrastructure and the organisation's human capital are examples of underlying sub-systems (Laughlin, 1991).\n4. The case organisation: Safari's goal is to share the wild areas of Africa with guests from all over the world while at the same time helping to ensure the future protection of Africa's spectacular wildlife heritage and to improve the lives of local communities living in the areas in which it operates.\n5. Method: The research uses a case study method. The case organisation has its head office in South Africa and complies with that country's corporate reporting requirements. This was useful for the purpose of this research because South Africa was the first country to adopt an integrated reporting framework and has a well-established stakeholder-centric corporate governance model, providing an established reporting environment which is suitable for exploring the change potential of integrated reporting (de Villiers et al., 2014; Atkins and Maroun, 2015).\n6. Results and discussion: All of the respondents agreed that Safari and the board of directors were genuinely committed to integrated reporting and viewed it as a useful method for engaging with stakeholders by providing material information about how the business is being managed. Minutes from the sustainability workshops and the company's integrated reports reiterated the position on the new type of reporting. This does not, however, amount to unanimous support for the decision to adopt the IIRC's framework.\n7. Discussion, conclusion and recommendation: We find evidence of a logic of resistance at the case organisation which, as explained by Laughlin (1991), contributes to a sense of organisational inertia and limits the possibility of morphogenetic change. A lack of understanding of the potential of integrated reporting and business management; over-reliance on rules or guidelines and a compliance-based approach to reporting are the most common examples of resistance to the introduction of integrated reporting and thinking. Investors disregarding the integrated report compounded the limited sense of epistemic commitment to the integrated reporting project and undermine its change potential. Nevertheless, the researchers also encountered behaviour pointing to the possibility of change \"beyond morphostasis\" (Gray et al., 1995, p. 226). The main points are summarised in Figure 1.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to challenge the notion that non-financial reporting is mainly about impression management or is only a superficial response to the hegemonic challenges posed by the sustainability movement. It focuses on the most recent development in sustainability reporting (integrated reporting) as an example of how accounting for financial and non-financial information has the potential to expand the scope of accounting systems, promote meaningful changes to reporting processes and provide a broader perspective on value creation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research focuses on an African eco-tourism company which has its head office in South Africa. A case study method is used to highlight differences in the presentation of an integrated business model according to the case entity's integrated reports and how individual preparers interpret the requirement to prepare those reports. Data are collected using detailed interviews with all staff members involved in the preparation process. These are complemented by a review of the minutes of the company's sustainability workshops and integrated reports.\nFindings: A decision by the case organisation to prepare an integrated report gives rise to different forms of resistance which limits the change potential of the integrated reporting initiative. Resistance does not, however, preclude reform. Even when individual preparers are critical of the changes to the corporate reporting environment, accounting for financial and non-financial information expands the scope of the conventional accounting system which facilitates broader management control and promotes a more integrated conception of \"value\".\nResearch limitations/implications: Integrated reporting should not be dismissed as only an exercise in corporate reporting and disclosure; it has a transformative potential which, given time, can enable new ways of managing business processes and articulating value creation.\nOriginality/value: This study answers the calls for primary evidence on how the requirement or recommendation to prepare an integrated report is being interpreted and applied by individual preparers. The findings add to the limited body of interpretive research on the change potential of new reporting frameworks. In doing so, the research provides theoretical support for developing arguments which challenge the conventional position that integrated reporting is little more than an exercise in impression management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Resource-based approach to IT shared services in a manufacturing firm	[ "Information technology‐led strategy", "Resource management", "Case studies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An information technology (IT) governance model reflects the pattern of authority and responsibility for organizing the key IT functions in a firm. In multi-unit manufacturing firms, this responsibility is typically shared among corporate and regional IT teams, and teams based at the business units. Such models are classified, based on the alignment of authority and responsibility, as centralized, decentralized or federal types. Currently, there is a trend towards a federal mode of IT organization in large division-based firms (Brown, 1997). However, within the federal type of governance model, there are variations in practice given the changing nature of IT applications and the sourcing criteria adopted for IT resources (Agarwal and Sambamurthy, 2002). One variation is that of a shared services model.The shared services model structures staff functions such as IT into a special form of federal organization, retaining the positive aspects of both centralized and decentralized models. It adopts management practices such as teams, TQM, and outsourcing, and best practices from the professional services firms (Greco, 1998). Globalization, business consolidation, competition, and cost pressures are some drivers of this model (Montgomery, 1999). In use since the early 1990s for various routine staff functions, this model has evolved to meet the requirements of higher level staff functions (Quinn et al., 2000). Indeed, the model, enabled by technology, eliminates duplication while executing the necessary parts more efficiently and economically at improved service levels. Each model is unique, and success depends on the planning, timing and implementation approach (Schulman et al., 1999).This paper presents a case analysis of an IT unit of a large multi-national manufacturing firm, which was in the process of implementing a shared services model. Conceptual models developed through the soft systems methodology (SSM), based on a proposed RBV approach for shared services, are presented to extend the analysis, thus enabling a richer appreciation of how shared services are linked to the overall business strategy of the parent firm. The following research questions are addressed in this paper:RQ1.Why is a shared services model attractive for organizing IT resources in a multinational manufacturing firm?\nCompany background: EMS Corp. was a leading company in the electronics manufacturing services sector, with manufacturing units distributed globally in more than 40 major country locations. It had been providing services to major players in the electronics industry for over 25 years, offering services in pre-manufacturing, contract manufacturing, materials management, integrated supply chain solutions, and post-manufacturing support. As part of the restructuring of its operations, EMS began shifting from a business unit structure to a functionally aligned organizational one. It had also initiated action to divest operations, which were not synergistic to its new strategy. EMS was in the process of introducing six sigma lean manufacturing principles and common operating procedures organization-wide. A shared services model for staff functions including IT had already been initiated.Indeed, the IT unit in EMS had undergone tremendous change. Previously, due to the business unit type of structure, the IT function did not assume a common identity. This in turn led to a portfolio of different IT applications and business processes residing in the different business units of EMS. There were nearly 40 different IT applications, and more than 1,000 application support staff and teams located in different parts of the world. To meet growing user demands and implement common processes, EMS decided to enter into a major outsourcing agreement with a leading IT firm and initiated a governance structure to mould the firm's IT unit into a matrix of corporate, regional and business unit IT teams. The outsourcing agreement had included support services to support the maintenance of hardware, networks, communication equipment, IT applications, and implementation services for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution in EMS. The proposed matrix style IT unit had two key functions: maintaining relations with EMS's business operations, and managing relationship with the outsourcing partner. For various reasons, such as the improper management of service level agreements by both parties, the outsourcing partnership failed after a year, resulting in not implementing the ERP solution. The IT unit of EMS was thus under strong pressure to reduce cost.As a result, EMS proceeded to engage the services of a leading consultancy company to restructure the organization. The shared services initiative for the IT unit became part of the restructuring effort to build a global IT unit. The new unit was to be formed on the three principles of global governance to improve processes, shared services to leverage resources across the regions, and cost reduction through the best use of resources. The global governance model of the IT organization had specified a complex balance of global and local responsibilities, and authority.The IT shared services unit in EMS was set up shortly after, led by the chief information officer (CIO) of EMS, together with the global leaders for IT infrastructure, IT applications, business processes, IT projects, and other regional shared services leaders as part of the overall management team for the new entity. EMS then formed the core IT team from the existing staff of its corporate office and various business units, based on their past performance. In addition to the global leaders in the specified areas, the governance model also specified global IT officers assigned to each business function. This was in line with the restructuring of EMS into a functionally aligned firm. The major functions identified for this purpose were worldwide operations, engineering services, sales and accounts management, finance, and human resources. Some global IT leaders were assigned dual responsibilities to include functional roles. In implementing the global IT organization and the IT shared services unit in a phased manner, EMS then set some short-term goals, related to cost and work force reduction. The IT management team first gathered the necessary resource and skills inventory from the different regions. Next, the IT team embarked on business process reengineering (BPR) and a common ERP implementation.\nResearch methodology: We proposed a shared services model based on the IT functional attributes as characterized by RBV. The proposed RBV approach was developed from the SSM root definitions and conceptual models. Activities from the SSM models were compared with the observed situation in the IT unit. Data were collected through:* face-to-face interviews with several key personnel;* analyzing documents related to IT governance; and* surveying recent annual reports of the company.For the sake of anonymity, the actual names of the interviewees have been withheld in the following discussion. Hence, the interviewees were coded as A1, A2, B1, B2, and C. Data for the SSM models were collected from the literature. Given the nature of the approach adopted, the case analysis can be categorized as configurative-idiographic (Luarn et al., 2005).Of the five key people interviewed, A1 and A2, were global IT application leaders located in the corporate office in the US, and were responsible for major decisions in IT. Another two interviewees, B1 and B2, were regional IT leaders; B1 was in charge of the IT shared services unit in Asia, while B2 was a regional IT leader in the IT infrastructure organization. Interviewee C, a lead consultant from a major management consultancy firm, was a member of the team responsible for the EMS restructuring assignment that included proposing a strategy for the shared services organization. A structured questionnaire with some open-ended questions was used to guide the interviews (Law et al., 2006). The questions were formulated from the relevant literature. Table I shows the perception of the interviewees.The qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis, which involved classifying the categories of issues raised in the interviews. Objectivity was exercised as we sieved the relevant issues for each category. Consistency was thoroughly vetted through the matching of codes and repeat analyses (Holsti, 1969). This process involved the development of coding schemes with some of the codes developed from our prior understanding of shared services and RBV. The codes were largely derived from the interview texts according to repeat mentions (Tesch, 1995). The codes were then assigned to categories of statements made in the interviews (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996). The final step involved the identification of patterns that could be interpreted in theoretically meaningful ways (Geertz, 1973).\nResults: The interview data had shed light on the expectations, usefulness and outcomes of the shared services model adopted by EMS. Three key themes emerged from the data: purpose, process and people. Having a clear strategic direction from the corporate office was seen as a critical factor in influencing the success of a shared services model. One strategic purpose of adopting this model was aimed at cost reduction and process simplification. These two concerns, according to the interviewees, could be achieved through an optimal communication system and clearly-defined processes including performance measures. Strong leadership was regarded as an important people factor in implementing the shared services model. For instance, it was anticipated that people-related issues could be a deterrent to achieving the specific objectives of the shared services model. Hence, it was essential for the team leaders to manage consensus among the various parties in EMS to bring about positive change and swift restructuring.Migration tasks and strategies\nDiscussion: We now return to research questions raised at the start of our paper. In addressing the first research question on why a shared services model was attractive for organizing IT resources in a multinational manufacturing firm, this case study has determined that cost and quality of the service were major reasons for considering shared services in IT. In fact, our findings suggest that EMS had additional reasons for adopting a shared services model. These reasons included first restructuring EMS from a business unit model to a functionally aligned one, divesting businesses that were unrelated to the core business of EMS, and the recent failure of EMS's global IT outsourcing agreement. Second, the IT users in all the business units of EMS were dissatisfied with the service levels of the in-house IT team, and too many procedures were implemented by the outsourced party. They preferred to have a flexible, customer-oriented and simple process for the delivery of IT services within EMS. Third, the business processes and IT applications were different across the business units of EMS. The ratio of the IT expenses to the sales revenue of the firm exceeded the industry norm. Even within the different business units, variations existed.On the next research question of why certain IT capabilities were better managed under a shared services model, this case study has identified that better IT resource management, solution delivery, and operational excellence were deemed as capabilities whereby the IT team would expect definite advantages under a shared services model. Indeed, optimum resource utilization would be the primary goal of a shared services organization, involving multiple levels of communication and around-the-clock IT support. In addition, the concepts of TQM, performance metrics, and charge back processes used in a shared services organization would improve the quality of service and provide sharper user focus. Shared services under a global IT organization could also lead to common standardized business processes and IT applications. Those interviewees connected with strategy formulation had mentioned that alliance management including the flexibility to manage outsourcing partners and extending the value chain of business processes would have better organized under a shared services model. Next, the competency centers containing the unique skills in the key IT applications would provide the IT shared services organization with the required capabilities to support any new development work in IT for EMS.Finally, we address the third research question, namely, how the transition from a tradition mode of organizing IT resources to a shared services model could be better managed. As all interviewees mentioned that the issues related to process, human and communication were important in the transition to a shared services model, it was imperative that consensus, within the IT management team from the different regions and sites, on all the major issues related to IT was crucial in sustaining support for a shared services model. All personnel involved in the transitioning process ought to understand the concept of shared services, the new communication and service delivery processes. The major challenge of working with the shared services organization was then to clearly articulate the roles and responsibilities of the new IT unit, and the service level agreements between the new IT unit and the other business units within EMS. A major task in transitioning to a shared services model would be to identify the common IT activities and skills available within the shared services organization. Another task would be to identify suitable performance metrics. As the transition was intended to be a phased process, it would be essential to specify expected achievements at the end of each phase. The transition plan would need to depend on the business process, IT applications, organizational structure, and IT infrastructure existing before the change. Refining the business processes and implementing common IT applications were necessary for the success of a shared services model. In the present case, there was a plan to resort to outsourcing to better manage the transition to a shared services model for the common IT applications. That plan considered the use of external resources during the transition period to meet the normal support requirements of the business users (Burn and Ash, 2005).Knowing the issues confronting the implementation of a shared services model and the approaches needed to resolve those issues would certainly help to improve our understanding of the shared services concept particularly in the context of the highly competitive electronic manufacturing services sector. Granted that it would be difficult to generalize such an understanding, an approach similar to that presented in the SSM model thus far would be helpful to allow the reader to generalize the process in terms of the known attributes of IT resources and capabilities. These attributes presumably can offer a common language to those decision makers interested in platforming to a shared services mode of operations. The SSM analysis has shown the use of RBV in differentiating the required IT capabilities and in integrating IT resources to meet organizational goals. This lends well to the concept of the hierarchy of resources and capabilities, and multilevel analysis in understanding and managing the result of any IT resource application. From the SSM analysis, we note that for a shared services model to be effective, it was important to review the process of value addition to the core business of the parent firm (in our case, EMS), the service-orientation needed to deliver the IT capabilities, and to monitor the performance of such services. A shared services model could indeed offer more than just cost savings.Contributions and managerial implications\nConclusions: In summary, this paper has presented an approach for a shared services model based on the attributes of the IT function as characterized by the RBV approach. The case analysis and SSM models provide some insights into the key issues to be considered when transitioning to a shared services model. The IT organization of a multinational manufacturing firm, moving to a shared services model, was the focus of our case analysis. The shared services model had become attractive to the IT organization, given the potential economies of scale, optimum resource utilization, customer oriented internal services, and flexible structure for alliance management. The governance model and the structure of IT shared services in this case have reflected the history of the IT organization, the firm's business model and restructuring strategy adopted by the parent firm. The insights provided in the current study would be useful for practicing managers, when seeking to adopt a similar shared services model.The current study has focused on a single unit of EMS. The IT shared services organization in EMS was still being formed during the data collection period. Not all the key positions under the IT shared services organization had been filled. Hence, the data collection for the present study had been limited to the five key people in the organization involved in the planning and establishing of the IT shared services teams in Asia. Thus, the results of the analysis would need to be interpreted within these limitations (Hsu, 2005). Moving forward, we intend to extend our research to understand the evaluation and control techniques needed for the different types of IT capabilities operating under a shared services model.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Driven by cost reduction and improved quality of service, some firms have adopted shared services as a governance model to manage their staff functions. This paper seeks to explore this behavior using the resource-based view.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The case of an information technology (IT) unit of a multinational manufacturing firm is presented to provide insight into the issues involved when adopting and migrating an IT resource system to a shared services model. The analysis is extended using conceptual models of the relevant sub-systems developed through the soft systems methodology (SSM), using a set of root level definitions that are intended to express the transformation to a shared services model.\nFindings: - The results suggest that the major changes involved when transitioning to shared services are process and communication related. Aligning the team members and gaining their commitment are necessary for success.\nPractical implications: - The case analysis and SSM models provide some insight into the important issues to be considered when moving to a shared services model.\nOriginality/value: - With the growing practice of shared services, it is important to understand how a shared services model fits successfully into the overall business strategy of the firm. This study will spawn further research into the evaluation and control techniques for the different types of IT capabilities under a shared services model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Distributing flood shelters for disaster risk reduction: Exploring the practices in Bangladesh from a political economy perspective	[ "Bangladesh", "Department of Disaster Management (DDM)", "Disaster risk reduction (DRR)", "Political economy", "Public fund distribution" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The world is facing severe losses and increased challenges due to several types of disasters, particularly flooding. In response, researchers and practitioners are working for disaster risk reduction (DRR). DRR is the process and practice of reducing disaster risk through effective planning and timely efforts to reduce the causal factors of disasters, considering vulnerability of place and local context (UNISDR, 2005). Effective implementation of DRR is, therefore, challenging for resource-scarce low-income and middle-income countries (LMIC), such as Bangladesh, which is particularly vulnerable to disaster and climate change (IPCC, 2014). The LMICs face a dilemma in terms of how to achieve a balance between development allocation for rapid economic growth (including poverty reduction) and DRR investments with better governance. In this context, a political economy (PE) angle, specifically the questions around the resource-allocations for DRR, becomes crucial. As such, Bangladesh is an appropriate and interesting case study in this context.\n2. Conceptual approach: DRR and political economy: DRR involves multifaceted efforts, including prevention, preparation, response, recovery, rehabilitations and reconstruction (Choudhury et al., 2019). These efforts connect several actors, government institutions, funding mechanisms and development agendas (UNISDR, 2015). Globally, UNISDR and DRR-related guidelines, such as the Hyogo Framework-2005 and the Sendai Framework-2015 outlined ways to reduce vulnerability, to increase resilience and to decrease loss and damages. However, despite the DRR efforts in many countries, a diverse range of challenges rise for each country and context, including lack of capacity among actors and institutions, lack of coordination, inappropriate funding mechanisms and governance failures (Schipper, 2009; Sovacool, 2017, Mallick, 2014). Some specific contextul examples are struggles in involving multi-level stakeholders in decision making in the Caribean (Davis et al., 2011), challenges in public sector collaboration and partnership for DRR in the UK (Hemingway and Gunawan, 2018), barriers in disaster risk governance in Africa (Van Niekerk, 2015), and hardship in mainstreaming DRR in various sector of Indonesia (Djalante and Thomalla, 2012). Prior studies have also been concerned with factors affecting the government funding allocation process in different regions and sectors. Among early studies, Cox and McCubbins (1986) argue that politicians generally give priority in distributing public funds to their supporter groups that vote mainly for them. However, Dixit and Londregan (1996) notes that politicians tend to distribute funds to those who are ideologically indifferent to candidates in order to attract swing voters.\n3. Case selection and research methodology: 3.1 Bangladesh\n4. Results: This section has two subsections. Based on secondary data (collected official documents and other statistical reports), Section 4.1 demonstrates the amount of DRR funding distribution to the districts of Bangladesh with a comparison of district's population size, area, poverty rate and number of disaster-affected households. Section 4.2 based on IDIs illustrates the explored reasons for observed DRR fund distribution.\n5. Discussion: This paper aimed to explore the challenges confronting DRR from a PE perspective, using a case of DRR-related public fund distribution, particularly the construction of flood shelters in Bangladesh. National DRR-related policies and guidelines regarding the \"construction of flood shelters\" clearly state that more funds should have allocated to locations with higher populations, larger area, the highest number of disaster-affected people (low-land areas and riverine areas) and the highest poverty rate. However, the distribution of flood shelters often has not conformed with these criteria (Table II and Figure 3). IDIs with relevant stakeholders suggest it is likely that PE factors have often affected the distribution of funding and selection of location and beneficiaries. These findings suggest how the interest and incentives of influential decision makers, formal and informal institutions, and values and ideas manifest at multiple sites across various stakeholders of DRR in Bangladesh have caused funding allocations to deviate from stated policy.\n6. Conclusion: The PE perspective adopted by this study has revealed key issues, which likely underlie many of the practical challenges encountered in effective DRR implementation. Plans which appear sound on paper can be tremendously challenging to implement in field level contexts, as found in the distribution of DRR-related public funds, and selection of location and beneficiaries. IDIs suggest that PE factors influence DRR in Bangladesh, and they need to be recognised as doing so.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to inspect disaster risk reduction (DRR) challenges from a political economy (PE) perspective and to explore how PE determinants facilitate or hinder effective DRR in Bangladesh.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study, using semi-structured in-depth interviews, official documents and literature review has been conducted to explore the current process and practices of DRR in Bangladesh. The specific focus is on the distribution of public spending on flood shelters implemented by the Department of Disaster Management.\nFindings: The study revealed a number of findings, including that the interest and incentives of influencing decision makers matter; formal and informal institutions have influence; and the values and ideas of dominating stakeholders' impact on decisions regarding public spending of DRR in Bangladesh. These PE factors often hinder efficiency by leading to overlapping efforts and inefficient use of scarce resources. DRR planners and practitioners need to take steps to mitigate potential risks from PE processes in the allocations of DRR funding by implementing improved distribution arrangements.\nOriginality/value: Despite many successes in dealing with disasters, Bangladesh faces several challenges, including better governance of funds. DRR challenges can be considered as a problem of PE, which concerns the distribution of resources, and includes how powerful decision makers affect economic choices. Prior research examining the challenges in DRR-related funding distribution from a PE perspective is limited. Therefore, this study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on the situation in Bangladesh from this perspective. The authors elaborate how PE determinants can function as both barrier and opportunities on the ground in DRR-related fund distribution and in the selection of project locations and beneficiaries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Improving operating room productivity via parallel anesthesia processing	[ "Modelling", "Capacity management", "Process efficiency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Operating rooms (ORs) and their associated staffing are expensive (DeRiso et al., 1995; Farnworth et al., 2001). Performing patient care tasks in parallel with concurrent operative care reduces non-operative time and improves OR efficiency (Cima et al., 2011; Friedman et al., 2006; Hanss et al., 2005; Sandberg et al., 2005; Torkki et al., 2005). Short duration surgical procedures are ideal for parallel processing as improved efficiency can result in significant financial gains owing to increased surgical capacity and/or reduced personnel expense (Dexter et al., 2004; Stahl et al., 2006).\nData and methods: Study population\nResults: Table III reports the results for Scenario 1, where cases that could be fit into each 555 minutes per day were determined for all surgeons. Parallel anesthesia resulted in significantly more surgeries for all individual surgeons. The average increase was 0.42 surgeries per day (maximum 0.58 and minimum was 0.31) with parallel processing. The average EoD time was also evaluated and the results show that the additional volume achieved via parallel block would not practically extend the work day (although for two surgeons the difference is statistically significant).\nDiscussion: This is the first study comparing parallel processing for regional anesthesia of which we are aware. Using a computer simulation model based on a large practice data set, we show that with a standard 555 minutes operating day, surgeons could increase average surgical case capacity when utilizing parallel processing. This result was shown for nine surgeons, each with their own case mix and operating style, suggesting a robust performance improvement potential. Further, if a standard three cases per day case load is assumed, most surgeon completion times are within the standard work day with parallel processing. Also, the proportion of days that go to overtime is reduced by 43 percent and overtime is reduced by 40 minutes per surgeon with parallel processing. The drivers for these performance improvements with parallel processing are the improved time distribution between OR entry and incision and room turnover times associated with parallel processing.\nConclusion: Our simulation modeling study indicates that parallel processing improves OR capacity and surgical case throughput for upper extremity surgical procedures performed under regional anesthesia. The results appear to be robust because this effect is true for nine surgeons in this study, all having different patient mix and practices. Overall, this study supports implementing parallel processing for other surgical services that have generally short and not highly variable case lengths, and are amenable to regional anesthesia.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Parallel processing of regional anesthesia may improve operating room (OR) efficiency in patients undergoes upper extremity surgical procedures. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether performing regional anesthesia outside the OR in parallel increases total cases per day, improve efficiency and productivity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data from all adult patients who underwent regional anesthesia as their primary anesthetic for upper extremity surgery over a one-year period were used to develop a simulation model. The model evaluated pure operating modes of regional anesthesia performed within and outside the OR in a parallel manner. The scenarios were used to evaluate how many surgeries could be completed in a standard work day (555 minutes) and assuming a standard three cases per day, what was the predicted end-of-day time overtime.\nFindings: Modeling results show that parallel processing of regional anesthesia increases the average cases per day for all surgeons included in the study. The average increase was 0.42 surgeries per day. Where it was assumed that three cases per day would be performed by all surgeons, the days going to overtime was reduced by 43 percent with parallel block. The overtime with parallel anesthesia was also projected to be 40 minutes less per day per surgeon.\nResearch limitations/implications: Key limitations include the assumption that all cases used regional anesthesia in the comparisons. Many days may have both regional and general anesthesia. Also, as a case study, single-center research may limit generalizability.\nPractical implications: Perioperative care providers should consider parallel administration of regional anesthesia where there is a desire to increase daily upper extremity surgical case capacity. Where there are sufficient resources to do parallel anesthesia processing, efficiency and productivity can be significantly improved.\nOriginality/value: Simulation modeling can be an effective tool to show practice change effects at a system-wide level.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Operations social practices in safety and health at work: Scale validation and reliability through the Q-sort method	[ "Sustainability", "Scale development", "Social practice", "Health and safety at work", "Q-sort" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In conducting studies on the implantation of best operational practices, it was noted that the main of these works is primarily related to the pursuit of increased production volume and the complexity of operational controls. Thus, it is noted that there is a direct analogy with the analysis of the index of labor risks arising from these new environments of work, or, simply, organizations fail to associate the culture created for improving the products and processes with the adopted social practices (Brown, 1996; Power et al., 2015).\n2. Bibliographic review: In order to support the empirical study, this study show the concepts related at social practices, the survey criteria and respective questions applied to the research method regarding the scale validity and reliability.\n3. The research and analysis tool: This step was divided into the following topics: describe how was the data collection method, expose the procedures performed to contact the respondents; expose judge's qualifications, presenting the area of activity and time of experience of each one; exhibit the convergence percentage, which indicates the convergent validity and the reliability of the data; and, finally, data analysis.\n4. The theoretical model: This topic addresses the theoretical model and the relationships among variables through the assumptions of the theory about sustainability, health and safety at work, and the following steps were performed.\n5. Discussion: The present paper presented a discussion about a scale of social practices for the manufacturing sector with emphasis on occupational health and safety. The following aspects stand out: the original of the study and the discussion of the constructs and indicators for a wide evaluation. Therefore, the main indicators that reflect the social practices related to the area of safety, health and well-being of the worker in the manufacturing sector were presented, besides proposing a model with a variable of second order.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Studying the gap between improvements in operational performance of a manufacturing organization does not necessarily represent the existent of safe and healthy work. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap validating a scale about social practices.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The literature was studied; data analysis instrument and the scale validated by Q-sort. The reliability and validity of research instrument indicators were drawing from the analysis of judges. The data were assessed by convergence matrix.\nFindings: It was validated five social practices factors. It was enabled the adequacy of the name of the constructs and establishment which indicators better convergence to the constructs.\nResearch limitations/implications: The judge's number that answered the research was low. The level of convergence related of two factors was above 50 percent.\nPractical implications: It is possible to achieve better levels of performance through social practices. Organizations must rethink the management and the routine of the workers to implement the operational practices.\nSocial implications: The practices need to have with well-defined rules, as well as action to drive compliance. This vision also needs to be expanded to suppliers, customers and society.\nOriginality/value: Highlight five points: technology is the main factor for analyzes and decisions; the search for quality leads organizations to seek practices that improve workers' well-being, health and safety; the activities of the worker are carried out on the factory, or in the work environment; Should not to belittle the local community; culture is an essential factor to continuous improvement.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cross-border e-commerce: consumers' intention to shop on foreign websites	[ "Consumer perceived value", "Signalling", "Attachment style", "Consumer perceived trustworthiness", "Cross-border e-commerce" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Cross-border e-commerce refers to the practice of buying online from merchants located in other countries and jurisdictions (CBEC, 2015). Global business-to-consumer (B2C) cross-border e-commerce generates transactions totaling $230bn per year, a value which is expected to increase to $1 trillion in the near future (Erickson, 2015). As the need to purchase overseas products increases, overseas purchasing services emerge. For instance, MyDay (myday.com.tw) and Grabr (grabr.io) help users discover and buy products from overseas suppliers. However, little research has been done to understand the factors that lead consumers to shop across national borders. This study investigates those factors from the perspectives of perceived trustworthiness and value. The research findings can help e-commerce companies attract foreign consumers to shop on their websites and help the mediation channels (e.g. overseas purchasing service providers) understand users' needs in order to provide better services.\n2. Literature review: Few studies have been done to understand cross-border e-commerce. Hsu et al. (2008) proposed a theoretical model to examine the perceived benefits of internet-based international marketing for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in terms of the firms' global mindset, electronic commerce (EC) capabilities, organizational marketing context and IT capabilities. They found two major factors that impact SMEs' perceived benefits of adopting international marketing on the internet: the firm's global mindset and level of EC capability. The global mindset is determined by customer orientation. EC capability is determined by information acquisition capabilities, memory orientation (the explicit and persistent representation of knowledge and information in the organization) and barriers to using EC.\n3. Research model and hypotheses: Our research model is based on three theories: signaling theory, attachment theory and the consumer perceived value-based model (see Figure 1). Signaling theory suggests that in the absence of other information about a vendor, consumers will draw inferences about the vendor based on the cues from available information (Koh et al., 2012). Information about a foreign vendor (vs a domestic vendor) may be less complete because of the separation in time and space between the consumer and the vendor (Koh et al., 2012). Vendors can provide information to reduce the risks associated with information asymmetry. In addition to the vendor's country of origin, the vendor's website quality, policy and reputation are available information about the vendor. Moreover, a consumer's attachment styles may affect that individual's willingness to depend on others. Attachment theory postulates that the \"internal working models\" of relationships that guide expectations and perceptions in close relationships are determined by the quality of interactions with close relationship partners (so-called \"attachment figures\" such as mother, father, partner, etc.) (Ainsworth and Bowlby, 1991). Consumers perceive a larger psychological distance with a foreign vendor than with a domestic vendor (Shi et al., 2013). Their attachment styles may determine their willingness to build close relationships with a foreign vendor. Perceived value is the consumer's overall assessment of the utility of a product or service based on perceptions of what is received and what is given (Zeithaml, 1988). Consumers choose the alternative that delivers the most perceived value (Kotler and Keller, 2015). The value consumers can gain from cross-border shopping may determine their choices between foreign and domestic vendors.\n4. Research methodology: 4.1 Measures\n5. Data analysis and results: The sample was comprised of 743 participants. After checking the answers to the reverse-coded items and questions about qualifications, we eliminated unqualified participants, resulting in an effective sample size of 678. The demographic data are displayed in Table II. Table III shows the countries where the foreign websites were based. In order to ensure that the perceived level of legal structure was correctly measured, we compared the average legal structure ratings with the 2016 corruption perception index (CPI), administered by transparency international. These two measures correlate at 0.58 (p<0.01), which supports the validity of our survey measure of legal structure perceptions.\n6. Discussion: Consumers' perceived level of legal structure and national integrity in the vendor's country increases the perceived trustworthiness of the vendor. However, the effects of the information indices do not decline with the accumulation of past transactions. Koh et al. (2012) found that only the effect of legal structure declines with increased experience in the B2B context. Our study, in the B2C context, neither legal structure nor national integrity has an interaction effect with past transactions. Buyers' perceptions of legal structure and national integrity still matter even when they have considerable past experience with a vendor. In B2B commerce, the respective lead persons in each organization contact each other often across a number of media. Buying is a job for a business customer. Contrastingly, in B2C commerce, customers and vendors do not have frequent contact, and the product design, branding and advertising directly affect the customer (Hollyoake, 2009). Moreover, purchase decisions are more professional and rational in the B2B context than in the B2C context. As such, individual buyers perceive the same risks even as past transactions accumulate; thus, they continue to rely on the information indices, i.e., legal structure and national integrity.\n7. Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine the factors driving consumers to shop on a foreign website. Our findings can help e-commerce companies attract foreign consumers to shop on their websites.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Little research has been done to investigate how consumers decide to shop across national borders. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that impact consumers' intention to shop on foreign websites.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A conceptual model is developed from the perspectives of consumer perceived trustworthiness and value. The authors also examine how vendor signaling and consumers' attachment styles affect perceived trustworthiness, as well as how benefits and costs affect perceived value. This study conducts an online survey to test the research model.\nFindings: Perceptions of the vendor's trustworthiness can increase or decrease depending on consumers' perceptions of the level of legal structure and national integrity in the vendor's country, as well as the vendor's website policy and reputation. Consumers with low levels of attachment avoidance or anxiety also perceive a foreign vendor as being more trustworthy. Price competitiveness, product uniqueness, communication cost and waiting cost determine the perceived value of shopping on a foreign vendor's website.\nOriginality/value: This study advances our understanding of cross-border e-commerce in the business-to-consumer context. The findings can help researchers and practitioners understand the barriers to cross-border e-commerce, and devise strategies to overcome these barriers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Flexibility, collaboration and relationship quality in the logistics service industry: An empirical study	[ "Flexibility", "Collaboration", "Logistics service provider", "Relationship quality" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Owing to the proliferation of the lean philosophy in industries and the emergence of many professional logistics service providers (LSPs), the outsourcing of logistics operations in recent years has grown rapidly in the business environment, making the logistics service industry increasingly competitive (Wallenburg, 2009; Yu et al., 2017). To differentiate themselves and survive among competition, LSPs need to implement effective competitive strategies to outperform their competitors (i.e. competitive capabilities) and obtain sustainable competitive advantages (Davis et al., 2008; Huemer, 2012).\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: 2.1 The RBV\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4. Results: 4.1 Reliability and validity\n5. Discussion and managerial implications: The findings proffer an integrated model to understand the influence of flexibility and collaboration on relationship quality in the context of logistics service industry. The support of the influences of communication on collaboration and flexibility asserts that enhancing communication capability is an important beginning step to implementing a successful RM strategy for LSPs. The influence of collaboration on flexibility was also supported, suggesting that, in addition to communication capability, collaboration capability would also lead to flexibility capability in logistics service industry. In our analysis, the direct effect of communication capability on flexibility is 0.650, and the indirect effect through collaboration capability is 0.144 (t=2.63, statistically significant at a=0.05), indicating that collaboration is a critical mediator between communication capability and flexibility capability.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between competitive capabilities, including flexibility and collaboration between logistics service providers (LSPs) and their customers, and relationship quality, as measured by trust, dependence and commitment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 309 logistics managers were invited to participate in this study and structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the measurement and structural models.\nFindings: The results show that both flexibility and collaboration positively influence trust and dependence. Moreover, dependence does not appear to influence commitment. Finally, the authors hypothesize and find that trust plays an important role in the research model and positively increase commitment.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study is that this study used a cross-sectional survey approach to collect data on all research variables. Compared with longitudinal data, cross-sectional data might not be able to demonstrate completely the temporal sequence of the antecedents and consequences, which might result in spurious cause-effect inferences.\nPractical implications: The findings offer several important implications for LSPs. First, the findings imply that LSPs need to make their customers want to share useful information related to operations and logistics. Second, flexibility plays an important role in forming customers' trust in logistics service industry.\nOriginality/value: Little research has been done on combining a resource-based view (RBV) and relationship marketing (RM) together in logistics service context. Therefore, this study advances the RBV and RM and adds value to the literature by demonstrating the applicability of the observed relationships among LSPs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The importance of key supplier relationship management in supply chains	[ "Relationship management", "Partial least squares", "Supply chain management", "Key supplier", "Supplier management relations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Interorganizational relationships play a major role in marketing channels (e.g. Juttner and Peck, 1998). Thus, Krapfel et al. (1991) suggested, quite early on, a strategic approach for managing this type of partnership. Taking fashion retailing as one example, supplier management is seen as a means to achieve supply chain responsiveness (Doyle et al., 2006). Taking into account that the number of suppliers of such companies ranges from a few hundred to many thousands (Statista, 2015), the focus on those suppliers that are very important to the overall success of a retailer, is essential (e.g. Lindgreen et al., 2013).\nConceptual model: Due to the limited amount of empirical research on the relationship between KSRM and the execution of SCM and due to the absences of a measurement scale for KSRM, we focus here on the core element of supplier-related relationship management, which is the fundamental capability of supply chain partners to set up relationships with their core strategic partners. This refers to the planning and implementation element of the KSRM process (Choi and Hartley, 1996; Liker and Choi, 2004) and is labelled the \"capability to do KSRM\".\nMethodology: Empirical research design\nResults: Model estimation\nDiscussion and conclusions: In this research, we have specifically discussed and empirically evaluated the link between resources in vertical network partnerships related to supply chain partnering, and the capability to manage upstream relationships with important stakeholders or key suppliers and subsequently increase the level of SCM execution within the organization. The paper thus makes several contributions to theory and practice.\nLimitations and future research: As with all research, there are some limitations in this study. Despite the fact that the context-specific characteristics of the Central European supply chain setting in which our empirical study was embedded can be regarded as typical of those in developed economies, the context does need to be taken into account when interpreting the data. Future studies in other settings - for example, developing countries - could help to confirm our findings. Future research in other industries, and focusing on smaller organizations than the ones represented by our respondents, might also stimulate more specific results.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of key supplier relationship management (KSRM) - understood as an aggregated supply chain management (SCM) process in the upstream direction - on the overall level of the execution of SCM within organizations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A conceptual model is developed from a theoretical framework and proposes the capability to do KSRM as a mediator between internal and external SCM resources and SCM execution. A survey of 174 managers representing different supply chain stages is used to test the model through variance-based structural equation modelling.\nFindings: The findings reveal that external SCM resources directly affect the capability to do KSRM. Nevertheless, internal resources show a considerable indirect impact through external resources and can thus be considered an indirect determinant. The capability to do KSRM in turn impacts upon the level of SCM execution, measured in terms of the integration of business processes, directly and substantially, as well as mediating the effect between SCM resources and the level of SCM execution.\nOriginality/value: The main contribution of this paper is to empirically demonstrate the potential of KSRM for enhancing the level of SCM execution within organizations and consequently the level of integration in supply chains, leading to higher customer and shareholder value.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An investigation of the digital literacy skills and knowledge-based competencies among librarians working in university libraries in Nigeria	[ "Librarians", "Nigeria", "Competencies", "University libraries", "Digital literacy skills", "Digital competencies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The influx of information, globalization and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has made the world a global village where access and use of digital technology has become common place. The changing landscape of information and information technology and services requires a certain level of digital skills from library professionals to handle the challenging work they face in academic libraries. Chinien and Boutin (2011) defined 'digital skills' as the ability to use digital tools and work in computerized environments. There are cases when because of inadequate skilled manpower in libraries, some libraries that had their libraries automated and acquired digital resources were unable to manage their resources. According to Bell and Shank (2008), digital literacy is the ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information. It is the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers. It is also a person's ability to effectively perform tasks in a digital environment. Digital literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media, to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments.\nResearch questions: RQ1. What is the level of digital literacy skills possessed by librarians working in University libraries in Nigeria?\nLiterature review: Librarian and digital literacy skills possessed\nMethodology: The study adopted a quantitative survey method. The study covered all librarians practicing in university libraries in Nigeria. An online questionnaire was designed to collect data using SurveyMonkey. The link to the questionnaire on SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com/r/2BCG6M9) was forwarded to e-mail addresses of librarians working in various universities in Nigeria. Their e-mail addresses were collected from the various university websites. As of when the study was conducted, there were about 170 NUC (National Universities Commission) approved universities in Nigeria. Among them, 43 are Federal, 48 are State owned, and 79 are privately owned universities (National Universities Commission (NUC), 2019).\nResults: Gender distribution\nDiscussion of findings: Level of digital literacy skills possessed by librarians\nConclusion: Based on the analysis, the study concludes that a majority of the librarians rated their database searching skills, sending and receiving e-mails, uploading documents to online platforms and skills in using different social media as very high. A majority of the librarians rated their digitization skills; digital library development skills; applying new technologies into library services; library website development skills and ability to create different file formats (Pdf, gif, bitmap and jpg) as moderate and low.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the digital literacy skills possessed by librarians working in university libraries in Nigeria.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online questionnaire was developed using SurveyMonkey to collect data from 111 librarians working in both public and private universities in Nigeria.\nFindings: The study revealed the digital literacy skills that the librarians rated as very high and high, and those that they rated as moderate and low. The study also revealed the knowledge and competencies that they rated to be highly competent and competent, as well as also those that they rated to be neutral and not good. The librarians rated their knowledge of network and system security; ability to apply security software firewalls, filtering routers and ability to protect access to digital content by providing password or IP base access as neutral and not good. Overall, the study revealed that almost half of the librarians rated their level of digital literacy skills possessed to be moderate. Only few librarians rated their digital literacy skills to be excellent.\nPractical implications: The findings will be helpful to librarians, information professionals, libraries and library schools. The results will inform librarians on the skills and digital competencies that are essential for developing and managing digital resources and protecting digital contents.\nOriginality/value: Findings will be helpful to explore the skills and competencies needed by information professionals and to act as a guideline for competency development and curriculum update in library schools in developing countries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of local accounting standard setters in institutional complexity: "Explosion" of local standards in Japan	[ "IFRS", "Translation", "Institutional perspective", "Local standard setter" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has been adopted in many countries (Cascino and Gassen, 2015). However, the degree of adoption has varied to a great extent (Nobes, 2015; Nobes and Zeff, 2016; Tsunogaya et al., 2015; van Mourik and Katsuo, 2014; Walker, 2010). That is, some major economies including the USA, China, Japan and Switzerland have not required mandatory adoption. Furthermore, many countries have carved out specific elements of IFRS. Yet, such variation concerning the status of accounting standards across the countries has not been fully examined in relation to the role of local accounting standard setters.\nTheoretical background: \"Adoption\" of IFRS\nMethod: Overview\nAnalysis: \"explosion\" of accounting standards: Competing pressures\nConclusion: To recap, the key research gap that this paper aimed to address was that the existing research had not provided insights into the role of standard setters under institutional complexity that result in divergent outcomes. That is, the existing research assumes a single interpretation, out of competing and often conflicting ones, concerning accounting standards prevailing (Archel et al., 2011; Murphy and O'Connell, 2013; Pelger, 2016; Young, 2014). In order to address this shortcoming, the paper has identified two distinctive issues of unpicking competing pressures (RQ1) and local standard setters' efforts to reconcile such pressure by translation (i.e. elaborating the relationship between name and practice of accounting standards) (RQ2). Competing pressures are addressed by leveraging the insights from those studies focusing upon discursive processes (Archel et al., 2011; Bamber and McMeeking, 2016; Ezzamel et al., 2007). On the other hand, the role of local accounting standards is addressed by drawing upon the concept of translation (Czarniawska and Sevon, 1996, 2005; Erlingsdottfr and Lindberg, 2005; Rovik, 2016; Sahlin and Wedlin, 2008).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to locate the role of local standard setters in institutional complexity, where multiple sources of pressure for change and continuity coexist. The existing research does not fully explore this since it tends to illustrate the way in which a particular interpretation concerning certain accounting standards prevails over time (Archel et al., 2011; Murphy and O'Connell, 2013; Pelger, 2016; Young, 2014).\nDesign/methodology/approach: It empirically examines and critiques the Japanese experience through the concepts of institutional complexity and translation that specify the relationship between the name and types of practice of accounting standards in the local context (Czarniawska and Sevon, 1996, 2005; Erlingsdottfr and Lindberg, 2005; Rovik, 2016; Sahlin and Wedlin, 2008). Data sources are texts produced (between 2001 and 2015) by the local accounting standard setter and relevant organisations that represent firms, the certified public accountants and regulatory agency, respectively.\nFindings: The local accounting standard setter in Japan was exposed to competing pressures between change and maintenance, which was translated by the standard setter in Japan. Consequently, the translation led to an \"explosion\" of local accounting standards (\"pure\" International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Japanese Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), modified IFRS and US GAAP).\nOriginality/value: This paper is the first attempt to systematically examine the role of a local standard setter under institutional complexity. It illustrates how institutional complexity is turned into divergent outcomes against the assumption of previous research that indicates multiple interpretations of particular accounting standards finally merging into a specific one.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Understanding knowledge outcome improvement at the post-adoption stage in a virtual community	[ "Behaviour", "Virtual community", "Continuance", "Identity", "Knowledge-based community" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Virtual communities (or e-communities), referring to members (strangers) who communicate and interact, build relationships, and collectively and individually seek to achieve some goals in an information technology (IT)-supported virtual space, have posed a good question: how to improve members' knowledge outcome at the post-adoption stage (e.g. continuance) (Kim and Son, 2009; Kim et al., 2012; Ma and Agarwal, 2007; Zhou et al., 2012). Examples of knowledge outcomes include knowledge contribution and knowledge exploration. E-communities attract members because of leveraging resources (e.g. knowledge) contributed by other members for product development, learning, advertising, training, innovation, and goal achievement (Wasko and Faraj, 2005; Wan et al., 2012; Wei et al., 2011). Examples include Facebook or expert specific locations like Quora. However, retaining members and motivating their knowledge contribution and exploration face challenges due to ineffective social interactions (lack of social cues such as body language), natural human tendencies to prevent knowledge contribution to and knowledge exploration from strangers, and insignificant influence of social norms on these tendencies (e.g. uncertainty engendered by lack of synchronicity and immediacy) (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006; Ren et al., 2007; Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014). Post-adoption phenomena play a key role in avoiding members' switch to a new e-community, motivating their knowledge contribution and knowledge exploration (e.g. innovation), and maintaining a long-term relationship with the e-community. However, studies on e-communities show that members have weak loyalty and low innovation, and make limited knowledge contributions, and the formation of a knowledge outcome is inconclusive, hindering the progress of e-communities (Ma and Agarwal, 2007; Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014). This present study focuses on the drivers of knowledge outcomes at the post-adoption phase, because they enrich understanding on how to increase e-community sustainability, facilitate knowledge initiatives (e.g. knowledge creation), and achieve both members' goal and e-community success (Bock et al., 2005; Kim and Son, 2009).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 E-communities, knowledge exploration, and knowledge contribution\n3. Research hypotheses: 3.1 Hypotheses between commitment and knowledge outcomes at the post-adoption phase\n4. Method: This study aims to understand the formation of post-adoption knowledge outcomes in the context of e-communities. Building on the dedication-constraint framework and self-presentation theory, we develop a research framework to explain the relationship between online self-presentation quality, commitment, and post-adoption knowledge outcomes. The proposed hypotheses were tested through a survey method. We designed the questionnaire by selecting the variables that have been validated by prior studies.\n5. Discussion: The goal of this study is to understand how e-community members' knowledge outcomes are affected by relationship development with the e-community (or similar others), which in turn is influenced by members' perceived quality of online self-presentation. This study uses a dynamic perspective to analyze how members' evaluation of stimuli from an e-community (e.g. image quality) affects their motivation for establishing online relationships and subsequent post-adoption outcomes. We integrate self-presentation theory into the dedication-constraint framework to explain members' continuance intention for knowledge outcome improvement. Our findings confirm that members' perceived self-presentation quality (conceptualized as personal control and social influence) serves as a major stimulus for motivating their relationship development with the e-community (i.e. commitment), which in turn affects their knowledge outcomes. Our results are consistent with prior studies on contribution behavior in virtual settings that members' continuance of knowledge outcomes (e.g. knowledge contribution to and knowledge acquisition from acquaintances) relies on both members' relationship development with similar others and their perceived image quality that help the members solve challenges associated with knowledge outcome improvement (Ma and Agarwal, 2007; Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014). Our model extends current theorization that has focused in isolation on the influence of perceived image quality and relationship development on knowledge contribution behavior. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical research to consider how knowledge outcomes are motivated by members' relationship development with an e-community, which in turn is affected by their evaluation of stimuli from the e-community (i.e. perceived self-presentation quality).\n6. Conclusions: The study aims to explain knowledge outcome improvement at the post-adoption stage in e-communities by integrating self-presentation theory into the dedication-constraint framework. Our results show that members' continuance intention for knowledge outcome improvement is determined by two types of commitment-based mechanisms - affective commitment and calculative commitment that reflect dedication mechanisms and constraint mechanisms, respectively. Besides, the study reports that members' perceived online self-presentation quality, in terms of personal control and social influence, is critical to motivate e-community members to develop the relationship with the e-community. We believe that the conceptual model proposed in this study is not necessarily limited to e-communities but is largely applicable to other contexts in which IT application of interest both helps users reap benefits and results in nontransferable investments (e.g. personalization, online retailing, and online service). We hope that our model provides new insights on the conversion from \"reasons for relationship development\" to \"reasons for continued intention on knowledge outcome.\" These results serve as a starting point for more in-depth understanding on post-adoption phenomena in e-communities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to solve the challenges in knowledge outcome (e.g. knowledge contribution, knowledge exploration) improvement at the post-adoption phase in the context of e-communities. This study develops a model by integrating dedication-constraint framework and self-presentation theory. The model proposes that knowledge outcomes at the post-adoption phase rely on relationship development between community members, conceptualized as commitment. The authors also hypothesize that members' perceived online self-presentation quality, theorized as personal control and social influence, serves as the key means to motivate members' commitment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study used survey instrument to collect data and adopted partial least squares to test the proposed hypotheses.\nFindings: The results show that perceived online self-presentation quality positively affects relationship development, which in turn affects continuance intention for knowledge outcomes.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study expands the dedication-constraint framework by integrating the self-presentation theory. This study contributes new knowledge by proposing a model that delineates the relationship between online self-presentation quality, relationship development, and knowledge outcomes at the post-adoption stage.\nPractical implications: This study shows that members' perceived online self-presentation quality affects both affective commitment and calculative commitment, which in turn affect knowledge outcomes, suggesting the important role of the perceived quality in stimulating a member's post-adoption reactions.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the research on post-adoption behavior in an e-community context by accounting for the influence of e-community features in self-presentation quality and dedication-constraint mechanisms on post-adoption phenomena.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
FCCSP IMC growth under reliability stress follows automotive criteria	[ "Automotive", "IMC", "Cu pillar", "Kirkendall void", "Solder bump" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nAbbreviation: KV\n1. Introduction: The automotive integrated circuit (IC) market will outgrow by two or even three times of the existing IC market. Market researchers predict that automotive semiconductors will occupy more than 15 per cent of the total semiconductor market by 2025, especially for those analog IC of intelligence vehicle. It is noteworthy that flip chip package becomes the automotive devices solution gradually because of the higher efficiency and complexities of the pin design. More and more design houses are moving toward flip chip or wafer-level fan-out package design for automotive infotainment, radar and GPS application. These changes will enable automobiles to become reliable and intelligent, so as let the packaging industry prioritize the development of advanced package for the next generation of automotive market requirements.\n2. Experimental works: The FCCSP daisy chain test vehicle applied for the current investigation was 6.64 x 4.98 mm die packaged in 9.60 x 9.60 mm with 211 I/O. The RDL daisy chain was designed not only at substrate side but also at die side, so the open/short test could detect the entire signal net. The test vehicle's bonding diagram is shown in Figure 1.\n3. Experimental plan: Three kinds of bump structure were selected and allocated with two passivation types which are well known as PI and polybenzoxazole (PBO). All the DOE legs are listed down in the Table II below.\n4. Testing procedures: The dies after grinding and sawing were assembled into daisy chained ETS test substrate which pad finish is bare Cu pads, and do molding process to protect the whole package. Then, the solder paste will be printed at substrate lead side. Before the long-term reliability testing, all the samples need to do final open short testing to ensure the signal is transmitted. Reliability testing was carried out according to JEDEC specifications and follow automotive AEC Grade 0 as shown in Table III shows.\n5. Results and analysis: There are three kinds of bump structure such as Cu pillar with Ni barrier layer, Ni-free Cu pillar and plated solder bump, and the SEM of bumped structure is shown in Figure 3. The process flow is all the same but only different in plating sequence.\n6. Conclusions: The FCCSP package can pass through automotive reliability criteria that follow AEC Q100 Grade 0 condition, with solder bump or Cu pillar structure, and the molding underfill only can protect fragile dies from the environmental stress.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The Kirkendall void had been a well-known issue for long-term reliability of semiconductor interconnects; while even the KVs exist at the interfaces of Cu and Sn, it may still be able to pass the condition of unbias long-term reliability testing, especially for 2,000 cycles of temperature cycling test and 2,000 h of high temperature storage. A large number of KVs were observed after 200 cycles of temperature cycling test at the intermetallic Cu3Sn layer which locate between the intermetallic Cu6Sn5 and Cu layers. These kinds of voids will grow proportional with the aging time at the initial stage. This paper aims to compare various IMC thickness as a function of stress test, the Cu3Sn and Cu6Sn5 do affected seriously by heat, but Ni3Sn4 is not affected by heat or moisture.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The package is the design in the flip chip-chip scale package with bumping process and assembly. The package was put in reliability stress test that followed AEC-Q100 automotive criteria and recorded the IMC growing morphology.\nFindings: The Cu6Sn5 intermetallic compound is the most sensitive to continuous heat which grows from 3 to 10 um at high temperature storage 2,000 h testing, and the second is Cu3Sn IMC. Cu6Sn5 IMC will convert to Cu3Sn IMC at initial stage, and then Kirkendall void will be found at the interface of Cu and Cu3Sn IMC, which has quality concerning issue if the void's density grows up. The first phase to form and grow into observable thickness for Ni and lead-free interface is Ni3Sn4 IMC, and the thickness has little relationship to the environmental stress, as no IMC thickness variation between TCT, uHAST and HTSL stress test. The more the Sn exists, the thicker Ni3Sn4 IMC will be derived from this experimental finding compare the Cu/Ni/SnAg cell and Ni/SnAg cell.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research found that FCCSP can pass automotive criteria that follow AEC-Q100, which give the confidence for upgrading the package type with higher efficiency and complexities of the pin design.\nPractical implications: This result will impact to the future automotive package, how to choose the best package methodology and what is the way to do the package. The authors can understand the tolerance for the kind of flip chip package, and the bump structure is then applied for high-end technology.\nOriginality/value: The overall three kinds of bump structures, Cu/Ni/SnAg, Cu/SnAg and Ni/SnAg, were taken into consideration, and the IMC growing morphology had been recorded. Also, the IMC had changed during the environmental stress, and KV formation was reserved.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Optimization of concrete placing operation based on competing carbon footprint, cost and production rate objectives	[ "Optimization", "Productivity", "Simulation", "Construction planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Nomenclature\n1. Introduction: Minimizing the carbon emissions associated with construction operations has been investigated widely in the past decade as one of the avenues toward reducing the carbon footprint of the construction industry (Guggemos and Horvath, 2005; Moussavi Nadoushani and Akbarnezhad, 2015; Yan et al., 2010; Mao et al., 2013; Wong et al., 2013; Akbarnezhad and Jianzhuang, 2017). Together with earthmoving and lifting operations, concrete placing operation has been highlighted as one of the main contributors to construction carbon emissions (Guggemos and Horvath, 2006). However, while a great deal of effort has been made in the previous studies to minimize the construction carbon emissions through optimization of earthmoving and lifting operations, there is currently a lack of literature on potential approaches to account for carbon emission implications of concrete placing during operation planning and optimization.\n2. Proposed framework: The framework proposed to predict the carbon emissions, cost and production rate of the concrete placing operation is shown in Figure 1. The framework aims to provide managers with a decision support tool to identify the optimal truck mixer inter-arrival times and number of pumps to achieve the project objectives with respect to carbon emissions, cost and production rate. As shown in Figure 1, the initial step involves developing the DES model of concrete placing operation which requires a broad range of data including costs, production rates, carbon emissions, resource availability and construction site constraints. This is then followed by defining different what-if scenarios to be tested using the DES model. In the case where no dominant scenario exists, a multi-objective optimization module is used in conjunction with the DES model to facilitate identifying the optimum setting. Finally, the decision maker is provided with the option to select one of the non-dominated Pareto-optimal solutions based on the available information on project budget, timeframe and relevant regulations. The above steps are described in more details in the following sections.\n3. Case study: A case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework, as well as the impact that planning decisions may have on the trade-off between carbon emissions, cost, and production rate of the project. The selected project is a 16-storey residential building with a total area of 22,000 m2 and a reinforced concrete shear wall structural system. The 3D model and the first-floor plan of this building are shown in Figure 3. The concrete placing for columns and walls of each level is done in a single pour. Similarly, the casting of beams and floors of each level is done simultaneously. In this study, the concrete placing for the beams and slab of the first storey with a total required concrete volume of 346.5 m3 is modeled using DES. A decision is to be made on the number of pumps and the inter-arrival time of truck mixers when ordering the RMC concrete. The number of pumps should be limited to five due to the limitation in operation space for pumps on the construction site.\n4. Results and discussions: In this section, initially, the DES results of the concrete placing operation are presented to illustrate the variations in carbon emissions, costs and production rate of the concrete placing operation with changes in inter-arrival time of truck mixers and number of pumps. In the second part, the DES is integrated with multi-objective optimization to facilitate the selection of the optimum combination of number of pumps and inter-arrival time of truck mixers among various combinations tested by the DES in the first section. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the sensitivity of the optimum combination selected to the uncertainties involved in the concrete placing operation, and the results are discussed.\n5. Conclusion: The methodology presented in this paper provides construction and site managers with a decision-maker tool to assist planning of the concrete placing operation while accounting not only for costs and production rate of the operation, but also the resulting carbon emissions. The proposed methodology relies on integrating the DES model with multi-objective optimization to provide a set of Pareto-optimal solutions for decision makers to choose from, hence ensuring that effective solutions are retained and offering a diversity of promising alternatives. A case study was used to demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology. The results of the case study highlighted that variations in the number of pumps and inter-arrival time of truck mixers significantly affect the carbon emissions, cost and production rate of the concrete placing operation. Simulation results showed that a setting with a lower number of pumps and larger inter-arrival time of truck mixers decreases the carbon emissions and cost of the project by reducing the long waiting queue of truck mixers and the idle time of pumps. However, in this situation, the production rate of the operation was estimated to be low and higher production rate was shown to be achievable with a greater number of pumps and smaller inter-arrival time of truck mixers. This conflicting trend highlights the importance of using multi-objective optimization in practice to identify Pareto-optimal solutions for a better-informed decision-making process.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Due to considerable contributions of the construction industry to the global carbon emissions, a great deal of attention is placed on possible incorporation of carbon footprint minimization as an important objective in the planning of construction operations. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework to estimate and minimize the carbon emissions of the concrete placing operation through identifying the optimal number of pumps and the inter-arrival time of truck mixers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The proposed framework integrates discrete event simulation and multi-objective optimization to estimate and minimize the carbon emission, costs and production rate of the concrete placing operation. An actual construction project is used to demonstrate the application of the proposed framework. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the sensitivity of the results to variations in modeling parameters including the ratio of idle to non-idle emission rates of equipment and the activity duration distributions.\nFindings: The results of the case study highlight that variations in the number of pumps and inter-arrival time of truck mixers significantly affect the carbon emissions, cost and production rate of the concrete placing operation. Furthermore, the results of the sensitivity analysis show that variations in the ratio of idle to non-idle emission rates for pumps and truck mixers have little effects on the selected setting for the project. This is contrary to the effect of uncertainty in the activity duration distributions, which was found to be significant.\nOriginality/value: Results of this study provide an insight into the trade-off between carbon emissions, cost and production rate of the concrete placing operation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Improving the performance profile of energy conservation measures at the Penn State University Park Campus	[ "Benchmarking", "Costs", "Building", "Greenhouse gas emissions", "Cost savings", "Energy efficiency measures" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The rate and extent of both regional and global environmental impacts of fast growing energy use have been increasing over the past decades. According to a report published by the International Energy Agency in 2013, buildings consume over one-third of the total worldwide energy use, exceeding that of the other major sectors, industrial and transportation, and are also an equally significant source of CO2 emissions (Dulac et al., 2013). In the USA in 2013, 40 percent of the total energy was used in buildings, or about 40 quadrillion British thermal units (EIA, 2015). As upward trends in energy demand are expected to continue across building sectors and markets, energy efficiency in buildings is becoming a chief objective of energy policy at regional, national and international levels.\n2. Background: There are limited studies showing the significant returns and GHG emissions reduction offered by low risk retrofitting activities in buildings (Ma et al., 2012; urge-Vorsatza et al., 2007). The Rockefeller Foundation (Bornstein, 2015) found that \"retrofitting buildings for energy conservation in the USA could save $1 trillion over a decade, reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent and spur employment across the country\" (Bornstein, 2015). A significant amount of research has been conducted to identify and analyze different energy efficiency opportunities in existing buildings (Asadi et al., 2012; Flourentzou and Roulet, 2002; Ma and Wang, 2009). Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has investigated recent state and utility assessments of the energy efficiency potential in existing commercial buildings (Belzer, 2009). A comprehensive database was developed to estimate the total energy efficiency potential. It was found that a reasonable range of economic savings potential in existing commercial buildings is between 10 and 20 percent (Belzer, 2009). In another study conducted by Mills et al. (2004), the cost-effectiveness of commercial-buildings commissioning was investigated. Their results indicated that for existing buildings, median commissioning costs were about $0.27/ft2 which resulted in 15 percent energy savings and the payback times would be 0.7 years. For new construction, median commissioning costs were $1.00/ft2 (0.6 percent of total construction costs), resulting in a median payback time of 4.8 years. Later, Roth et al. (2005) took a four-pronged approach including evaluating the energy impact of faults, assessing the energy saving potential of control and diagnostic approaches, analyzing barriers to control and diagnostics, and analyzing drivers for control and diagnostics to understand the energy saving potentials of commercial building control. In another study by Itron and KEMA (2008), various strategies were identified to reduce commercial building energy consumption by 50 percent. They found that a 50 percent site energy savings is feasible in all studied climate zones. Five-year total lifecycle costs were included in the results for baseline and low-energy building designs to allow cost comparisons.\n3. Case study of environmental stewardship - PSU: The leadership of the PSU established an environmental stewardship initiative largely focused on the reduction of energy use by means of increased efficiency, conservation and awareness. Since 1995, Penn State has supported investments in enhancing energy efficiency. Since 2005, despite adding over 1 million square feet of new facility space, Penn State's campus GHG emissions have reduced by 18 percent. In 2014 Penn State set a new GHG reduction goal of 35 percent by 2020 and is planning for a $60 million investment over the next five years in energy efficiency and conservation initiatives (PSU, 2013a, b, c).\n4. Methodology: Analyses of longitudinal data were conducted in three sections: the effect of building types on cost saving and GHG emissions reduction measures are assessed, the contribution of different types of ECM projects on these measures are characterized, and Penn State's GHG emissions are projected through back-casting and then forward-casting the emissions based on the data at hand. Finally, a calculator is presented that has been created to help assess the costs saving and emissions reduction performance of different investment profiles among ECMs, and thus, make more informed investment decisions.\n5. Results and discussions: The following results are derived from the three sections of the study conducted and explained in methodology.\n6. Conclusions: This research aims to characterizing the economic and environmental productivity of existing practices in conducting ECMs in various building types, as well as running a test model of their performance in the future. The analysis of ECM implementation using a scientific approach that attempts to reconcile multiple related variables is performed to help characterize cost and GHG savings in a manner that can be used to inform future decisions about ECM investment portfolios. The results led to a methodology intended to support investors and decision makers identify the best practices in allocating investments in ECMs to achieve the optimum costs saving and GHG emissions reduction outcome. The following results have been observed:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine significant steps taken by the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) to account for both energy cost savings and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals through strategic investments in energy conservation measures (ECMs) in campus buildings. Through an analysis of multiple years of investment in facility upgrades across the university, the impacts of ECMs of various types are characterized by building type. The standards and criteria for ECMs investments are also evaluated with the goal to develop a predictive tool to support decision making pertaining to an annual investment in a portfolio of ECMs that will maintain a trajectory to achieve both financial return on investment as well as GHG reduction goals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study is comprised of three main parts: analyzing the energy costs saving and GHG emissions reduction contribution of various building types in which ECMs were conducted, analyzing costs saving and GHG emissions reduction contribution of each ECM while considering the average annual investments made in them and estimating the impact of upgrading Penn State's steam plants from firing a mixture of coal and natural gas to natural gas only on the GHG emissions.\nFindings: These analyses help identify which types of buildings and ECMs would have larger savings and emissions reduction contributions. A calculator is also created to enable forecasting of costs saving and GHG emissions reduction of investment distribution strategy among ECMs. This study demonstrates that the calculator based on data from previous years will benefit decision makers in more wisely configuring the investment portfolio.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfills an identical need to couple energy efficiency strategies coupled with the environmental impacts associated with different fossil fuel energy sources.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The strategic national infrastructure assessment of digital communications	[ "Policy", "Digital communication systems", "Telecommunication" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The global economy is enabled by national and international infrastructure systems that move goods, people and information. A swathe of reports stating the importance of infrastructure, and the under-investment relative to need, is commonly cited in support of this topic (see World Economic Forum, 2016). Historically, the approach to infrastructure planning and delivery has been relatively piecemeal and fragmented, particularly when it comes to digital. Indeed, infrastructure has been as much the proverbial political football as other areas of government expenditure. Notable examples include Australia's National Broadband Network and the UK's High Speed 2 rail project.\n2. Methodology: Collaboratively defining key policy issues is frequently used to help bridge the divide between academia and industry on the one hand and government policy priorities on the other hand (Parker et al., 2014). To collaboratively gather information on key challenges facing digital communication, a workshop was firstly held in Cambridge, UK, to collect structured evidence from 47 authoritative professionals from industry (23 participants), government (7 participants) and academia (17 participants). The workshop took place in February 2017, thereby providing up-to-date information for use in the strategic assessment of digital infrastructure, with a focus on identifying a mixture of UK-specific and global issues. The approach used was to split participants into six groups that comprised a mixture of professionals from all the aforementioned groups. This was to maximise the interaction and discussion between those from different backgrounds, based on there being considerable value in the interaction that takes place among those traditionally pigeon-holed into either the fixed, mobile, wireless or satellite sectors. Two sessions were held where participants were asked to highlight and describe the future issues pertinent to fixed networks and mobile and wireless communications.\n3. Fixed networks: Firstly, an overview of the existing fixed market is provided for context. The market share of the main internet service providers in the UK consists of BT (32 per cent), Sky (23 per cent), Virgin Media (19 per cent), Talk Talk (13 per cent) and EE (4 per cent) (Ofcom, 2016b). These providers deliver services using xDSL and FTTx infrastructure, except for the cable provider Virgin Media which currently uses DOCSIS3 technology and coaxial cable. The remaining share comprised smaller operators, such as the new entrant fibre providers CityFibre or Hyperoptic. Since 2010, BT and Sky have seen a 4 per cent and 8 per cent increase in their market shares, respectively, whereas Virgin Media and Talk Talk have seen a decrease of 3 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively.\n4. Mobile and wireless networks: Firstly, an overview of the existing mobile and wireless market is provided for context. In terms of revenue and subscribers, the UK mobile sector is one of the largest in Europe. Mobile Network Operators with major market shares include EE (29 per cent), O2 (including GiffGaff) (27 per cent), Vodafone (including Talkmobile) (19 per cent) and Hutchinson Three (11 per cent) (Ofcom, 2016b). Other Mobile Virtual Network Operators comprise the remaining 15 per cent, mainly offering alternative low-cost offers. Currently 2G, 3G and 4G technologies are in operation across the UK by most major operators, although 4G rollout is still taking place and is yet to cover many rural areas. While premises coverage of both 3G and 4G is over 70 per cent, geographic coverage lags behind with 4G at approximately 40 per cent of the UK landmass. With the increased proliferation of 4G, the average data consumption per user is growing rapidly, which is now over 1 GB per month.\n5. Shared issues across digital communications: Having reviewed and outlined individual digital communications sectors, we will now examine the technical, economic and governance issues that are shared across the whole industry.\n6. Discussion: The results which were obtained highlighted three key interrelated issues. Firstly, the demand for many of the technologies featured in the media limelight remains inconclusive (e.g. for 5G, gigabit fixed access, connected vehicles, etc.), highlighting issues associated with investment viability and risk exposure for those companies who bring them to market. Secondly, the business model currently used in telecommunications is predicated on extracting maximum returns from existing investments in coverage and capacity, for as long as possible, contrasting the political desire to deliver new infrastructure. Thirdly, ongoing convergence between fixed and wireless technologies adds additional uncertainty to this issue. Hence, some operators are currently being relatively risk-averse and attempting to avoid long-term stranded assets by prudent incremental delivery. Opponents of this approach, however, believe this is deliberately sweating existing assets and, therefore, holding back new infrastructure delivery. Additional uncertainty is produced when we consider the over-the-top threat (where traditional telecom revenue is disrupted by new online services), as infrastructure operators may continue to fail at capturing the value created from their investments. This may detrimentally affect future infrastructure investment and delivery. Hitherto, fixed and wireless infrastructure have been largely complementary technologies; however, the degree to which wireless services will instead become substitutionary may increase in coming years, potentially affecting fixed revenue.\n7. Conclusion: This paper identified a set of key issues currently facing digital communications as a source of evidence for the strategic assessment of digital infrastructure, particularly as the UK's NIC moves towards the first NIA. An important finding is the uncertainty associated with future demand for new services and how this is compounded by the fact that the sector is experiencing declining revenue, increasing convergence in digital services, as well as growing fixed-mobile substitution. While evaluating those areas pertinent to the digital sector, we have covered a set of key engineering, economic and policy issues that will affect the future of the industry.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Public policy requires effective identification of the current and emerging issues being faced in industry and beyond. This paper aims to identify a set of key issues currently facing digital communications and reviews their relevance for the strategic provision of infrastructure, particularly within the UK context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology focusses on taking a horizon-scanning approach to obtaining current information from a range of authoritative decision makers across industry, government and academia. After structuring the issues identified, these areas are explored by a multi-disciplinary research team covering engineering, economics and computer science.\nFindings: Five key categories were identified including future demand; coverage and capacity; policy and regulation; economics and business models; and technology. The results are reported for both fixed and wireless networks. Shared issues affecting the wider digital ecosystem are also identified including Brexit, connecting remote areas and the degree to which the economics of infrastructure allows for building multiple overlapping infrastructures. The authors find that future demand uncertainty is one of the major issues affecting the digital communications sector driven by rigid willingness-to-pay, weak revenue and an increasing shift from fixed to wireless technologies. Policy must create the market conditions that encourage the entry of new competitors with innovative thinking and disruptive business models.\nResearch limitations/implications: A limitation of the analysis is that it is quite UK-focussed; hence, further research could broaden this analysis to assessing issues at a continental or global scale.\nOriginality/value: The value of this paper originates from the breadth of the expert elicitation exercise carried out to gather the initial set of issues, followed by the analysis of this data by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers. The results direct a future research agenda, as many issues are indicative of a lack of existing evidence to support effective decision-making.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Product versus region of origin: which wins in consumer persuasion?	[ "Geographical indications", "Purchase intention", "Brand attitude", "Print advertising", "Pictorial-textual cues" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A geographical area can create a unique identity for food products (van Ittersum et al., 2003) by leveraging the different meanings the area has for consumers. It can stand for authenticity and tradition (Ilbery and Kneafsey, 1998). It can be synonymous with health and safety (Kim, 2008; Morkbak et al., 2010). It can satisfy the sense of nostalgia for past times in post-modern society (Gilg and Battershill, 1998). In sum, displaying the origin of products contributes to reducing risk perception in food consumption, reassuring consumers about where the products come from and how they have been produced.\nLiterature review: This section reviews three streams of extant literature from which insights into GI-label communication can be derived. The first stream acknowledges the influence of the geographical provenance of a product on consumers' purchasing decision process; the second stream surveys the relevant research in the field of PDOs and PGIs; the third stream discusses published studies on pictorial and textual advertising strategy.\nMethod: A 2x3 between subjects factorial design was used to manipulate the type of GI (PDO vs PGI) and the region of origin presentation in the advertisement (absent vs pictorial vs pictorial-textual) while also measuring participant intention to buy the advertised product and brand attitude (dependent variables).\nResults: To test the hypotheses, a two-way independent factorial ANOVA was carried out with the type of GI and the region of origin presentation as factors, followed by planned contrasts to compare the effect of the ways in which the region of origin was presented.\nDiscussion: The food sector has a long tradition of linking place of production with quality of products. This perspective has been embraced by the EU with the GI schema for those products that are expression of the geographic individuality of places. Thus, place name and production become inseparable (Henchion and McIntyre, 2000) and GIs allow products from a region to be recognized as being of a particular quality and unique to that region (Moran, 1993). In this context, a variety of cues (e.g. specific landscapes, cultural traditions, historic monuments) can be used to communicate places and spaces as a source of differentiation for GI products. Nevertheless, the ability of the geographical area to increase consumers' purchase intention has not been systematically tested in an advertising context.\nLimitations and future research: This study is constrained by some limitations that point to areas for further future research on a topic that is of clear interest for both academics and practitioners.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of highlighting the geographical area in question - through either pictorial or pictorial-textual formats - in print-advertising messages for European Union geographical indication (GI) quality-labelled products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A 2x3 between subjects factorial design was used to manipulate the type of GI, namely, protected designation of origin vs protected geographical indication, and the region of origin presentation in the advertisement (absent vs pictorial vs pictorial-textual), while measuring participant brand attitude and intention to buy (dependent variables).\nFindings: Results show a significant main effect of the region of origin presentation on brand attitude and purchase intention. Communicating the region of origin through pictorial cues leads to more favourable responses than when there is no reference to it in the advertisement. The presentation of the region of origin through pictorial-textual cues leads to more positive responses than communication based just on pictorial cues. No interaction effect between the type of GI and the region of origin presentation is found.\nOriginality/value: The study makes a new contribution in the field of communication about typical food products, since the ability of the geographical area to increase consumers' purchase intention has not been systematically tested in an advertising context. To date, there is no strong evidence on how effective it is to convey the values of the geographical area through its picture and/or name. On a practical level, the study supports new communication strategies for typical food products in a context where messages tend to use intrinsic advertising cues that emphasize physical product attributes, rather than extrinsic advertising cues that leverage intangible product values.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Can managing employee diversity be a pathway to creativity for tour companies?	[ "Vietnam", "Employee creativity", "Diversity climate", "Diversity-oriented HR practices", "Group diversity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Creativity is defined as employee ability to generate novel and practical ideas or solutions (Amabile, 1988). Employee creativity not only can contribute to employees' self-actualization and professional growth (Li and Hsu, 2018; Mustafa and Ramos, 2018) but also can be of great value for tour organizations (Geng et al., 2014; Richards, 2011) as it is conducive to the ongoing improvement of tourism services, thereby contributing to their competitive advantage and sustainable growth (Hon and Lui, 2016). For instance, through creativity, tour designers can create new tour designs more attractive to tourists and ahead of the competitors, and tour guides can add new cultural or environmental elements to their implementation of activities in tour designs. Due to the salience of employee creativity with which team or organizational creativity and innovation commence (Pirola-Merlo and Mann, 2004). Hon and Lui (2016) in their review of employee creativity in the tourism literature have called for further investigations into contextual mechanisms underlying creative behaviors among tourism employees.\nHypothesis development: Diversity-oriented human resource practices and employee creativity via knowledge sharing\nResearch methods: Sampling\nResults: Measurement models\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: When effectively synergized, uniqueness from employee diversity can be conducive to original ideas and solutions in the tourism services. The purpose of this study is to unfold how and when diversity-oriented human resource (HR) practices impact creativity among employees working in tour companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Participants in this research project comprised employees and their direct managers working in tour companies in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.\nFindings: The results provided evidence for the positive influence of diversity-oriented HR practices on employee creativity through the mediation channel of knowledge sharing. Diversity climate fortified the effects of diversity-oriented HR practices on knowledge sharing among employees. Besides, the findings lent support for the moderating role of group diversity regarding age, expertise, openness and extroversion in the current research model.\nOriginality/value: This study advances both diversity management and organizational research streams and marks the convergence between them.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Media coverage of climate change information in Tanzania	[ "Developing countries", "Climate change frames", "Climate change online sources", "Climate information coverage", "Media editorial policy", "Tanzania journalists" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Climate change is one of the notable challenges societies in the world have recently been facing (Han et al.2017). It is a phenomenon which explains earth global warming as resulting from increased human activity-related greenhouse gases of over 30 years (Schafer and Schlichting, 2014). Climate change, as menace, is a relatively new phenomenon compared to other social issues which have been reported in the mass media. Its novelty, complexity and unobtrusive characteristics (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007) raise new challenges to information practitioners such as journalists, who ought to learn on the subject to report effectively in the media.\nLiterature review media and climate change information coverage: Media coverage is crucial in providing education on coping and adapting to climate change. It largely contributes in public understanding and setting the climate change agenda (McCombs, 2011). The coverage of climate change information and shaping of the climate agenda tends to hinge on on-going climate change discourse, events, conferences, experts opinions and discussions (Boykoff and Roberts, 2007). Although a number of channels have been used to communicate science such as media portrayals, news narratives, poetry, debate, events, themes from reports, mass media have continue to play an important role in translating scientific information such as climate change to the public (Boykoff, 2008).\nMethods: The study applied a descriptive design in data collection. Quantitative approaches were used in collecting data. Schafer and Schlichting (2014) observe that the majority (47.8 per cent) media coverage of climate change globally was quantitative. Data were collected from March to May 2018.\nResearch findings and discussion: Journalists' training on climate change\nInstitutions training journalists and disseminating climate change information: Training of journalists who cover climate change is crucial in promoting coverage. The study therefore sought to find out institutions involved in training journalists who cover climate change. Journalists indicated the organisations behind their training on climate change. They named Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystem Services and Food Security in Eastern Africa (CHIESA), the United Nations Environment Programme, Climate Change Media Partnership, Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organisations (PINGOs) Forum, Radio Nederland Training Centre (RNTC), Africa Institute and Climate Action Network (CAN). Other training avenues they identified were the Journalist Environment of Tanzania (JET), the University of Dar es Salaam's Geography department, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (2006), Thomson Reuters Foundation and the Division of Environment in the Vice President's office. Other training organisations involved in the training of journalists include Gender Links with Gender and Media in Southern Africa (GEMSAT), World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), Forum Climate Change, Norwegian government, Fojo Media Institute, University of Sweden, the Association of Journalists and Media workers (AJM) and the Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN). Others are the Knight Centre of Environment Journalism, National Environment Management Council (NEMC), the Tanzania Seed Trade Association (TASTA) and Agriculture Non-State Actors Forum (ANSAF).\nClimate change information coverage in Tanzania: The study sought to compare the climate change information content covered in training and the information being covered by journalists' in media. Results from trained journalists show the themes covered were largely on climate change impacts (14); agriculture (13); renewable energy (6); and rainfall and weather (5). The respondents reported having received less training on climate financing, forestry and food security as Figure 1 illustrates.\nGeographical coverage of climate change information in Tanzania: Journalists were asked to indicate the areas they cover information on climate change. Rating the geographical coverage of climate change information, the majority (34) of journalists carried more national than international climate change information (Figure 2).\nEditorial policy: The study sought to determine whether media houses have editorial policies guiding climate change information coverage. Respondents were asked whether their media houses had editorial policies. The majority (67; 79.8 per cent) of the respondents indicated that their news media lacked specific editorial policies on climate change coverage, whereas only a few (16; 19 per cent) there being one in their respective media houses. Lack of such an editorial policy can affect climate change information covered on media. A number of studies (Rioba, 2012; Gkiouzepas and Botetzagias, 2017; Elia, 2018) have underscored the necessity of clear editorial policies towards improving the media coverage of climate change. The editorial policy, modus operandi and set guidelines have an effect on the frequency and content of information covered on media (Rioba, 2012). Editorial policies are, therefore, crucial in setting the public climate change agenda.\nJournalists' internet usage: The study was further asked to indicate whether they use the internet to prepare and cover climate change information. The majority of the journalists (73; 90.1 per cent) reported using the internet in preparing and covering climate change news or feature articles. Only a few (8; 9.9 per cent) respondents did not utilise the internet for such purposes. These findings confirm the results by Elia (2018) to the effect that journalists in Tanzania make use of the internet in composing and covering climate change. Indeed, the internet has become an important information source for journalists seeking climate change data. In fact, the internet has expanded the journalists' networks which are crucial learning platforms for new climate change trends (Science Africa, 2011).\nOnline resources used: Journalists were requested to indicate online resources used by respondents to seek climate change information to be covered in media. Findings from the content analysis indicated Google as the main online resource journalists use to seek information. The majority (29) of the journalists cited Google as their mostly used search engine to seek information on climate change. Journalists use Google as they trust the search engine, which retrieves a large body of information and offers reliable information to meet user needs. Second, the predominance of Google made journalists search for climate change resources serendipitously as they probably lacked adequate specific information on respective websites and institutions with climate change information. Overall, the use of search engine tends to generate high value climate change information for adequate synthesis, packaging and coverage of complex information content. Attfield and Dowell (2002) support the role internet online information retrieval tools play in strengthening the immediacy between journalists' tasks and coverage.\nConclusion and recommendations: Media play an important role in communicating climate change information and setting the public agenda. The study presents climate change themes reported by media and factors influencing climate change coverage in Tanzania media. The findings provide an important insight on information journalists' access and what they disseminate to the audience. It identifies organisations which train journalists on climate change. Despite its crucial role, journalists' training on climate change is still low and media houses lack editorial policies. The study further explains on internet usage and identifies relevant online information resources used by journalists to fetch climate information.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate on themes covered by media and factors affecting coverage of climate change information in Tanzania.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In all, 85 journalists from five local media were identified using snowballing and purposive methods where quantitative methods were applied.\nFindings: The results show nearly a half (49 per cent) of the journalists yet to receive training on climate change, with the majority (77 per cent) of organisations providing such training being non-local. The majority (79.8 per cent) of media houses lack editorial policies. Findings show journalists mostly cover information on climate impact and adaptation (49.3 per cent) followed by weather and climate trends (33.8 per cent), while the least covered topics are on renewable energy and climate and poverty (1.4 per cent).\nPractical implications: The results imply journalists lack training on climate change. This may result into low and poor quality coverage of climate change information and inadequate public awareness and understanding. The study concludes that challenges in verifying information from a source, media lack of editorial policy and little exposure and access to specific internet climate change information sources may affect public agenda setting, coverage and adaptation to climate change. It is suggested that a policy be established to foster on access to climate information through frequent short training which expose journalists to new knowledge and networking.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to literature and knowledge on climate themes reported in developing countries and factors influencing coverage of climate change.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Competitiveness of Greek virgin olive oil in the main destination markets	[ "Competitiveness", "Greece", "Trade", "Olive oil", "AIDS model", "Balassa index" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Traditionally, olive oil is produced in the Mediterranean basin and traded by Mediterranean countries. According to International Olive Council (International Olive Council (IOC), 2016), more than 92 percent of the world olive oil production is concentrated in these countries with 85 percent being produced by the EU Mediterranean member states. In 2016, 98.9 percent in terms of cultivated area for olive oil production, in the EU-28, was concentrated in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal (Eurostat, 2016) As it was expected, the European Union's olive oil production leads the world market (around two million tons of olive oil). However, there are also some other major producers around the Mediterranean Sea, such as Tunisia, Turkey, Syria and Morocco.\nAnalysis of Greek virgin olive oil exports: The most proper way, to examine the main olive oil export destination markets, is to estimate separately the Greek bulk and the branded olive oil exports. As it happens with most databases, Eurostat records the value and quantity of total exported virgin olive oil and thus it is essential to provide further information on this issue which is of major importance for the olive oil sector.\nEmpirical results: The data used in this study consist of quarterly importation volumes to each market (Italian, German, UK and US market) of virgin olive oil with the country of origin to be different in each market but Greece. Apart from the main suppliers for each market, the rest of the supply countries have been grouped under a single category, \"Rest of the World\" (ROW). Export quantities and values have been collected from the External Trade Analytical Tables by Eurostat database for the European markets and US International Trade Commission database for the US market. Exported quantity is reported in 100 kg and value in euros for European countries and in dollars for the US market. Since in the above-mentioned data sets the exported prices of Greek olive oil are not reported, the unit value obtained by dividing the value by the quantity was employed as a proxy for exported price. However, the unit price is not what consumers actually pay.\nSummary and conclusions: This paper analyzed the import demand for virgin olive oil in several markets, which are considered as main destinations of Greek virgin olive oil. The objective was to determine the relative position and the competitiveness of Greek exports of olive oil and the degree of substitutability with virgin olive oils coming from other countries. The AIDS model was employed as a vehicle in this study. The aim of this study was twofold. First objective is to examine if Greece has a \"revealed\" comparative advantage using the RCA2 index proposed by Balassa. According to the results, the comparative advantage of the Greek virgin olive oil is stronger than the two main competitors (Italy and Spain) in all main export destinations that were examined in this study. The second objective is to estimate the impacts of economic factors (virgin olive oil prices and imports' expenditures) as well non-price factors such as seasonality on the demand for source olive oils in the main destinations markets of the Greek olive oil.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the competitiveness of the Greek virgin olive oil in the main destination markets (German, Italian, UK and US market).\nDesign/methodology/approach: In order to achieve the aim, in the first stage the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA2) Index was employed showing that Greek virgin olive oil has a comparative advantage over the other suppliers (mainly Italy and Spain) in the markets under examination. In the second stage, the estimations of an import demand system for each market were estimated.\nFindings: Results demonstrate clearly the competitive advantage of Greek virgin olive oil in the German market but not so clear in the rest of the markets. A strategic shift to export high-quality branded virgin olive oil instead of bulk seems necessity, in order the Greek virgin olive oil to dominate to the international markets.\nOriginality/value: Though there are similar works, especially for Spanish olive oil, there is no analogous research work for the Greek olive oil.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Development and validation of an instrument to measure online retailing ethics: Consumers' perspective	[ "Developing countries", "Surveys", "E-commerce" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Purchasing via the internet is one of the most rapidly growing forms of shopping, with over three billion users worldwide in 2014, up from 420 million in 2000 and one billion in 2005 (Internet World Stats, 2014). The internet has created tremendous opportunities for both businesses and customers. Distribution channel members can extend their reach and visibility to partners beyond geographical boundaries. In this regard, the internet is a widely used medium that acquires and delivers information and services to customers and business. It is incessantly transforming the way people and businesses interact with each other. With such transformation, impressions of expressed ethical conduct by both parties are now at the forefront.\n2. Background: To create a valid measurement instrument, one must consider the dimensionality of the relevant constructs. One of several steps in this process is a literature review (Churchill, 1979). We summarize the results of the empirical studies that specifically address ethical issues related to e-commerce ethics. Then we focus on specifying the domain of e-retailing ethics.\n3. Scale development: 3.1 Study 1: item generation\n4. Discussion: The internet is fundamentally transforming the nature of the relationship that businesses have with consumers and the public. While e-commerce has witnessed extensive growth in recent years, consumers concerns regarding ethical issues surrounding online shopping also continue to increase. The vast majority of earlier research on this area is conceptual in nature and limited in scope by focusing on consumers' privacy issues. One objective in this study was to begin to fill this gap in the literature. To this end, based on accepted methods of scale development in marketing research, this study has developed a scale to measure e-retailing ethics from the consumer's perspective. The psychometric properties, assessed on two samples of real consumers referring to their last purchase online, indicate that the e-retailing ethics scale can be useful for academic research and managerial activities.\n5. Future research and limitations: \n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the dimensions of e-retailing ethics from the consumers' perspective and to develop a reliable and valid measurement instrument.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a quantitative survey conducted among Egyptian consumers aged 18 and above. These were measured on a five-point Likert scale. The reliability and validity of this six-factor scale are verified using empirical data collected randomly from Egyptians' online consumers. Structure equation modelling used to test the suggested model.\nFindings: The results showed that buyer perceptions about seller ethics (BPSE) is a second order construct composed of six factors (e.g. privacy, security, reliability, non-deception, service recover, and shared value). The results also showed that the BPSE has strong predictive capability in relation to online customer satisfaction and repurchase intention.\nOriginality/value: This project is one of the first empirical studies that develop a reliable and valid measurement instrument of BPSE. The findings provide several important theoretical and practical implications for online retailing and academic researchers as well as making a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in the online retailing context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Restructuring a higher education institution: A case study from a developing country	[ "Organizational restructuring", "Business process re‐engineering", "Higher education", "Malaysia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Business process re-engineering (BPR) is the redesigning and reorganizing of business activities as a consequence of questioning the status quo (Sethi and King, 1998). BPR seeks to fulfill specific objectives and can lead to breakthrough improvements. It is often associated with significant cultural and technological changes. Organizational re-engineering is based upon two interacting factors: total customer satisfaction and effective and efficient internal processes. An organization succeeds from an inside out approach- the commitment and dedication of employees to fulfill customer needs. The inside-out approach calls for managing employees, not merely making them comfortable within a company, but managing them in a manner, which ensures that the firm can compete in the marketplace.Re-engineering efforts usually have four major components: a greater focus on the customers of the organization; a fundamental rethinking of the process in the organization that leads to improvements in productivity and cycle time; a structural reorganization, typically breaking functional hierarchies into cross-functional teams and new information and measurement systems using the latest technology to drive improved data distribution and decision making. Alavi and Yoo (1995) found that BPR involves redesigning key business processes in an attempt to improve performance in areas such as quality, speed and cost. The concept seeks to provide managers with a business model, which will reinvent their organization, creating one that has the potential to be flexible and competitive to the challenges of the environment.Grint and Wilcocks (1995), Devenport (1998) and Tang and Zairi (1998) defined the key elements of BPR as customer focus; an emphasis on designing and improving key organizational processes; fundamental change and critical success factors. McAdam and Bickerstaff (2001), found that colleges need to be much more customer focused, flexible and able to meet the individual needs of learners if they want to survive. BPR is considered to be a suitable vehicle to achieve these changes. The study suggested that colleges need to become more customer and business process focused.Leatt et al. (1997) identified the consequences of cost reduction strategies for an organization's performance in terms of costs, quality of services and consumers and employees satisfaction. In 1994, Gales found that drastic organizational change is driven by technological opportunity, but BPR represents not only improvement in education but also a total paradigm shift.\nThe present study: In the light of the above, this paper undertakes a case study of the restructuring process at a private college in Malaysia, which provides higher education and training. In an effort to fully meet its objectives of providing high quality education and training; total customer satisfaction; continuous improvement in all aspects of services, the HEI embarked on a restructuring program.The case study first examines the management system of the organization prior to restructuring. The second part of the case reports on the framework employed by the HEI during the restructuring process. The third part of the case analyzes the benefits of this to the organization. The paper concludes with a discussion the restructuring process.As for the methodology employed, various reports and statistical data obtained from the HEI were used to develop the first and second part of the case. For analyzing the restructuring process, interviews were conducted with top and middle level managers of the HEI from various departments. A total of 30 managers were interviewed.In developing questions for the interview, the main basis was a study undertaken by Davis and Mehta (1997). These authors proposed a mission/vision model and general steps for implementing BPR within business faculty, This model includes creating an organizational culture that incorporates teamwork in designing re-engineering; setting up a steering committee; completing feasibility studies; writing the mission; identifying and training the work design; creating awareness in the organization; analyzing the work; selecting and training the employees and training leaders in their new leadership roles.Based on the objectives of this study, information was sought from the respondent managers on issues relating to barriers during the implementation stage. Managers' were asked for their views on the system prior to restructuring; vision, mission and strategic direction; mapping of core business processes; financial performance; corporate structure; organizational structure of the HEI; reorganization of learning centers; courses offered; human resource policies and customers feedback.\nManagement system prior to restructuring: Prior to restructuring, there were 13 departments in existence, with the academic department being just one of them. Each department operated independently with little co-ordination. Within the academic department itself, various program courses operated independently of the other course programs. Lack of co-ordination and co-operation between various programs was clearly evident. Each course program claimed that their system was the best although they had no documented procedures as guidelines. In addition, the modus operandi of each program coordinator differed from the others. As a result, some course programs were seen to be efficient and some lacked such initiatives.Even within a course program, each lecturer had a different approach to the delivery and the use of lecture material depended on the individual lecturer. There was no coordination of courses. The approach towards teaching was very arbitrary and differed in style and learning outcomes from one lecturer to another. Clearly, there was a lack consistency and teaching objective even within course programs.Another shortcoming was the absence of defined job responsibilities. As a result, tasks overlapped without clear task objectives and without measures of achievements. There were instances where two members of staff were carrying duties similar in nature in a single department. In addition to this, there were also members of staff executing various duties not specific to their department. Staff secondment and redundancy of workforce were rampant and this created confusion among members of staff with respect to their objectives and direction.Many other shortcomings were also in evidence. For example, there were no standard methods of record maintenance and filing systems in most departments. As a result of this, traceability of the records was difficult, especially when the records were required by other departments for cross-referencing. Second, the performance targets set for lecturers were inconsistent and did not follow any guidelines. A staff that performed well was set with very high targets, and under-performers were given low targets. This clearly led to resentment. Third, there were no formal methods of evaluating lecturers. Evaluation was based on a verbal inquiry from students.\nThe restructuring process: Realizing the above shortcomings, the HEI embarked on a restructuring process. In an effort to reengineer the key processes, a framework for the restructuring process was developed. The framework included the following:* All senior managers must be committed to the re-engineering effort. The commitment must be sustained throughout the project. The project sponsor must be a senior level manager, preferably the President or the manager responsible for the process to be reengineered.* The managers must understand the problem and opportunities and set realistic BPR goals and objectives.* The HEI must empower employees with a collaborative working style both, during and after a BPR project.* The company's vision must be shared and communicated at all times.* The HEI must focus on re-engineering operational processes that are the core business processes of the HEI instead of management processes. Management processes such as strategic planning; capital budgeting; financing; investing in IT; employee evaluation and reward process.* The employees selected to represent each functional areas must be dedicated to the re-engineering effort on a full-time basis. Team members' regular job and responsibilities must be assigned for the duration of the project. A team redesigning a business process must include members that are internal as well as external to that process. While the internal member helps to define the current steps and identify the value added activities, the external members especially customers and suppliers to the process bring creativity and a fresh perspective to the redesigning effort.* The HEI must have adequate budget in order to implement the re-engineering project especially if new information technologies are needed to support the project.Communicating the vision, mission and strategic direction\nAnalysis: As a result of the restructuring exercise, the HEI underwent numerous changes. This section analyses the changes in the HEI.Corporate structure of the foundation holdings\nDiscussion and recommendation: BPR theory suggests that companies will achieve the greatest success if they are customer-focused and market-driven in their external relations and process-focused and team-oriented in their internal operations. The initial activities of the HEI focused on four major components: a greater focus on the customers of the organization (both internal and external); a fundamental rethinking of the processes in the organization that led to improvements in productivity; a structural organization, typically breaking functional hierarchies into cross functional teams and new information and measurements systems.The HEI under this study could be categorized as improvement-driven organization where:* Improvement=change in the right direction.* Driven=compelled to improve.* Organization=the HEI and its employees; suppliers; customers and stakeholders.Figure 3 shows the dynamics of an improvement-driven organization with three drivers, mainly the leader; the processes and improvement that are the basis for establishing the corporate objective of such an organization.The leader drives the organization by assigning the necessary resources to assess the current environment. At the same time the leader communicates the vision plan for the future both short- and long-term. The processes need to be continuously improved either through quick-fix track or re-engineering track or gradual improvement track. Quick-fix track means simplifying the existing procedures before implementing it. While re-engineering track involves innovation and creativity either by creating new procedures or by referring to the external best practices as a guideline while gradual improvement track means identifying root causes and proposing some improvement procedures. All of these tracks definitely need to be continuously monitored.When the HEI practised cross-functional teams, it was indirectly increasing the communication across each of the function that was involved in the process. The experience curve in Figure 4 shows how internal process improvement was effectively combined with external benchmarking, where the number of defects and cost involved was reduced. The internal process improvement teams accelerated the movement of the HEI down the curve. The external benchmarking helped the HEI to adopt an entirely new process technology and shift the experience curve downward. The operational cost of the HEI was reduced tremendously when it adopted this strategy.Besides reducing operational cost, the HEI also practised empowerment in the organization by identifying catalysts or change agents at all levels in the organization and involved them in the exercise or created structures that gave them the authority to make decisions; implement changes; question the sacred cows and innovate.The analysis of the case shows that the HEI concentrated on means to increase productivity, provide higher level of services and responsiveness and at the same time reduce costs. The strategy chosen are improved cycle time; efficiency; cost; quality; service; flexibility and capability of the HEI. At the same time, it also helped to enhance customer loyalty and increase company profitability.However, there appears to be still a flaw in the corporate structure of the group. Two of the Foundation's subsidiaries still carry out activities relating to education. It is recommended that the Foundation integrate both these subsidiaries. Another recommendation relates to the composition of the Board of Directors. It is suggested that that the Board comprise of a member each from the academia; corporate world; a certified public accountant and a representative from the Foundation Holdings. Taking into account that the HEI develops most of the courses on its own, input from a diverse group will be invaluable in developing the course content. This would enable the HEI to produce graduates who would be marketable; meet industry demands and cope in an increasingly challenging and volatile environment.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The competitive environment facing all organizations has forced many of them to choose strategies that enhance organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Re-engineering is one of the tools used in administering productivity improvements, cost control and asset management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper examines the re-engineering process of a higher education institution (HEI) in Malaysia. The impact of cost reduction strategies linked to the overall performance of the organization is discussed in comparison to management system prior to restructuring; vision, mission and strategic direction; core business processes; financial performance analysis; corporate and organizational structure; reorganization of learning centers; courses offered; human resource policies and customers feedback.\nFindings: - The study found that generally the HEI focused on the cost-cutting strategy especially on cost of sales and operational expenses. Consequently, there were increases in the utilization of the learning; occupancy of the learning centers; number of home courses offered increased and a decrease in employment of part-time teaching staff. There were also marked improvements in academic networks and partnerships that provide for knowledge exchange and transfer.\nOriginality/value: - Although a number of studies have been carried out in Malaysia, very few have concentrated on restructuring process of higher educational institutions. This study critically examines the restructuring process and the major gains of a higher educational institution that embarked on a restructuring program to fully meet its objectives of high quality education and training.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Valero's "Enterprise Politics": a model of humanistic management and corporate governance	[ "Corporate governance", "Business education", "General management", "Enterprise Politics", "Practical wisdom", "Purpose of the firm" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the last third of the twentieth century, neoclassical economic theories were dominant in many business schools, among them is the agency theory (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). This theory assumes a view of the human being as a self-interested individual with instrumental rationality focused on maximizing preferences. The company is seen as a mere nexus of contracts (Williamson and Winter, 1991) and the understanding of business in society as an autonomous economic institution with the sole responsibility of increasing profits (Friedman, 1970) or maximizing shareholder value - popularized in the 1980s and adopted by agency theory practitioners. The approach has been severely criticized by a number of well-known scholars of management (Pfeffer and Fong, 2002; Mintzberg, 2004; Aktouf, 2005; Bennis and O'Toole, 2005; Ghoshal, 2005; Khurana and Nohria, 2008). This criticism has been swelling since the last financial crisis, not only within academia but also in the circles of broader social concern about capitalism and global business (Mayer, 2013).\n2. Antonio Valero and his vision of business education: Valero was a Spanish Engineer, Businessman and Business Consultant with close ties to the Catalonian[1] family-based industrial world. In the mid-1950s, the authorities of the University of Navarra entrusted Valero with an exploration of international experiences in business education with a vision to establishing a new center focused on business people and with a philosophy based on Christian humanism. Valero was taking the first steps toward launching a new business school in Barcelona, IESE - the first such center in Spain and one with few precedents in Europe, which became a reality in 1958[2]. Valero was appointed the first dean of the school - a position he held for nine years (1958-1967). Valero himself became professor of business policy and developed an original way of understanding the business firm. He continued teaching the subject at IESE up to his retirement. In addition, he went on to occupy different positions in business firms and in public administration (see Torres, 2015).\n3. Meaning, origin and nature of EPM: Politica de Empresa - the Spanish title of Valero's main work and the name of his department - is at first sight the direct translation of \"business policy\" into Spanish, and could also be interpreted as \"general management\"[4]. Nevertheless, Valero remarked that Politica de Empresa meant something other than \"business policy\" in the Anglo-Saxon sense. In his book Politica de Empresa, authored with Lucas, he notes that:The expression Politica de Empresa, which could be translated as \"business wisdom\" or experience for making business, does not seem to consider business as a matter of knowledge and practice in a political sense (what in English is understood as \"politics\"). However, this notion includes the aim of pointing out business as the central feature of the general management of the firm(Valero and Lucas, 1991, p. 28, footnote 3).\n4. The business firm and top management as political: Valero's philosophy of the firm and of top management can be summarized in the following four points.\n5. Political skills, information and procedures: As suggested above, Valero (1962) affirmed that the exercise of command and direction activities requires specific and higher qualifications, where the \"superior values which shape human personality\" play a central role: \"intelligence, will, memory, and the natural and supernatural values of spirit\" (pp. 362-363). This is not chiefly a matter of scientific or technical training: \"for enhancing his leadership capacities, the person in positions of government must be an expert in humanities\" (Valero et al., 2000, p. 13).\n6. The four areas of governance of the firm: The main development of Valero's basic ideas around the political nature of management and a unique contribution of his model is the division of the global (or political) analysis of the firm in four big perspectives or areas of governance: the business activity; the management structure; the institutional configuration; and the professional community. Distinguishing these four aspects is useful in preserving a global approach. Valero regarded the management literature of his time - especially the strategic analysis approach - as partial and thus not able to provide that global perspective. This division contributed with innovative tools for governing the matter of \"institutional configuration\" (Palacios, 2005). By explaining each of the areas in general terms we will see how the elements of the philosophy of the firm are present in the shaping of the political perspective, and also consider examples of \"political procedures\" that correspond to each area, thus showing the interrelation of the three epistemological levels of the EPM model that we have identified.\n7. Discussion on the relevance of Valero's thought: EPM may contribute to making humanistic management more practical and applicable, as some have called for (Mele, 2013). In this sense, it might be a good alternative to the strategic management approach, to recover a field of knowledge able to get the global picture of the firm. This model has the virtue of connecting the basic and permanent assumptions of a humanistic vision of business management and the role of business in society with detailed though variable procedures to be applied in practice. EPM is not a handbook or toolkit, but a way of thinking about action in business which is at the same time both practical and principled, as a way to foster practical wisdom. In particular, EPM seems to be consistent with the humanistic management in the CST (Mele and Dierksmeier, 2012; Mele and Schlag, 2015). This is a significant difference with classical business policy literature.\n8. Conclusion: We hope that this paper might make Valero's thought available to a wider audience, particularly among English-speaking scholars and suggest further research. Actually, although Valero's \"EPM\" is an innovative humanistic approach to management and corporate governance, it is still in a seminal form. Many of Valero's ideas are exposed in seemingly intuitive terms and need further conceptual development as well as empirical research on the relationship between this model and performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present and interpret the \"Enterprise Politics Model (EPM)\" developed by Professor Antonio Valero, Founder and first Dean of IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing from a careful reading of Valero's writings in their original context and some developments of these by his followers, this paper systematically presents and discusses the key ideas of Valero's model for management and corporate governance.\nFindings: The main features of Valero's philosophy of the firm and of senior management can be summarized in four points: the firm as a community of persons; the firm as an intermediate social institution serving the common good of society; the different nature of political and technical practice, which leads senior management to exercise practical reason - not only science or technique, and at the same time a kind of political art, or wisdom; and the role and responsibility of entrepreneurs and top management. Valero emphasizes the political nature of management and, from a practical perspective, suggests a global analysis based on four big areas of governance: business activity, managing structure, institutional configuration, and professional community. He makes his model applicable by developing \"political procedures\".\nResearch limitations/implications: Valero's \"EPM\" is an original humanistic approach to management and corporate governance, with implications to business education. Valero's contributions were based on his business and teaching experience and in a deep humanistic background, but adopted an intuitive outlook and need further conceptual development, actualization to contemporary business context and empirical research on the relationship between this model and performance.\nPractical implications: Valero's \"EPM\" is a practically oriented humanistic approach to management and corporate governance which can be a realistic alternative to conventional, and often criticized, approaches to management and corporate governance. In fact, it has already been successfully applied in several companies.\nSocial implications: In a context of growing discontent toward capitalism and the role of business in society, the \"EPM\" - discussed in this paper - shows how business might be run and organized to be socially responsible, contributing to the common good and respecting individual rights and flourishing.\nOriginality/value: The paper discusses, systematizes and interprets an innovative way of understanding management and corporate governance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Corporate entrepreneurship of emerging market firms: current research and future directions	[ "Corporate entrepreneurship", "Emerging economies", "Review", "Organizational characteristics", "Emerging market firms", "Governments" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: By the turn of the century, a developed economy such as the USA had attained a seemingly unimpeachable position as the world's foremost economic powerhouse. It is only recently that an emerging market such as China has rapidly ascended to the position of the world's second-largest economy in nominal gross domestic product terms. Emerging market firms (EMFs) have experienced economic growth and become important players in global business. According to the Emerging Market Multinational Report, E20[1] firms represent 30 percent of the Global Fortune 500 companies and are advancing to the top of many industry sectors (Casanova and Miroux, 2018). For instance, the remarkable performance of Chinese technology firms, three frontrunners of which are famously known as BAT (standing for Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), epitomizes the rapid transformation of the Chinese technology sector from mere imitator to innovator and has become the object of envy. Hence, the need to further explore the activities of EMFs and how they create and sustain competitive advantages has become prevalent.\n2. The macro context of corporate entrepreneurship of emerging market firms: The macro context of research of CE in emerging countries includes how institutional environment affects CE of EMFs. There is a big research gap between the institutional environment and CE in emerging markets, especially when we specifically consider government involvement and how it affects CE differently. Based on Shleifer and Vishny's (2002) model, we summarized government involvement in CE as the invisible hand, the helping hand and the grabbing hand. Under the invisible hand model, governments tend to restrict themselves to providing basic contract enforcement, law and order and regulations. Under the helping hand model, governments are actively involved in promoting economic activities, establishing industry policies and developing close ties to firms. Under the grabbing hand model, governments tend to be interventionists and are more likely to impose lots of regulations on firms.\n3. The micro context of corporate entrepreneurship in emerging market firms: The micro context of research of CE constitutes the bulk of research conducted specifically in developed market contexts. Although we recognize that there is no single best way to summarize various topics, they are arranged as follows. First, we summarized research about market entry decisions of CE in emerging markets. Second, research works related to the impact of organizational resources and capabilities on CE are examined. Third, the literature on the impact of organizational culture and leadership on CE is summarized. Fourth, team characteristic is covered. Finally, CE's effect on firm performance is examined.\n4. Future directions: 4.1 Focus on the concept of CE in emerging markets\n5. Conclusion and contributions: We conclude by emphasizing two main contributions of our review. First, our literature review of CE in EMFs reveals that, despite an abundance of research on CE looking into the three prongs of CE (innovation, strategic renewal and new venturing) in developed market contexts, there is a scarcity of literature focusing on CE in emerging markets from a holistic perspective. The research on EMFs that focus on CE mainly looks at the concepts of CE individually. We contribute to both the CE and EMF literature by showing that a holistic perspective on CE, where studies look into the role of innovation, strategic renewal and venturing simultaneously, is a huge potential for further studies. Scholars focusing on these areas can research the concept of CE per se in EMFs.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) of emerging market firms (EMFs) and provide direction for future research on the topic.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors specifically review the recent literature between the years 2000 and 2019 on CE with the keywords \"corporate entrepreneurship,\" \"emerging economies\" and \"emerging countries\" published in the Australian Business Deans Council list journals. The authors review the existing literature about CE in emerging markets, summarize current achievements and present an agenda for future research.\nFindings: Based on the review, the authors categorized the macro and micro contexts of CE and summarized the current articles on CE in emerging markets within each macro and micro context. The authors conclude that despite the abundance of research on CE that investigates the three prongs of CE in terms of innovation, strategic renewal and new venturing in developed market contexts, there is a scarcity of literature that focuses on CE in emerging markets from a holistic perspective.\nOriginality/value: While there is an abundance of literature review on CE in general in terms of the drivers of the construct, the contexts contributing to it and the outcomes, the reviews are lacking about CE specifically within the context of emerging markets. Emerging markets vary from developed markets institutionally, economically, culturally, socially and technologically. However, the questions of how these differences impact the CE activities, as it relates to innovation, venturing and strategic renewal in EMFs, and how these differences provide incentives or hinder the activities that contribute to CE remain mostly unanswered. This paper reviewed the research on CE and emerging market contexts from 2000 to present. It targets to provide a better understanding of the current achievement on this topic and what to be done in the future.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A study of e-Research and its relation with research data life cycle: a literature perspective	[ "Literature review", "Collaborative research", "Data lifecycle model", "E-Research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Development in the domain of academic and industrial research is changing the paradigm of research processes undertaken to achieve the desired objectives. The traditional means of pursuing research by having all the parameters and processes under one roof has given way to collaborative mechanisms of performing the same task (Jirotka et al., 2006; Butcher and Jeffrey, 2007). Anandarajan and Anandarajan (2010) in their book have suggested that collaborative efforts can lead to better outcome if there is synergy between the various stakeholders of a research team. e-Research (Electronic Research) as a domain encompasses the developments made in all the possible facets of human life (Schroeder, 2007). It comprises of collaborative research undertaken in the field of life sciences, health sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences and humanities and these fields cover every aspect of academic and scientific research. According to Sonnenwald (2007), collaborative scientific work has a better scope to provide an answer to solve the complex and time consuming scientific issues. Wray (2002) has mentioned that collaborative work increases the quality of research and it is a big contributing factor to augment the growth of the scientific knowledge. This process leads to training of new and well-informed academicians and scientists (Wray, 2002). This aspect is showcased by the fact that co-authored papers are cited more frequently as compared to single authored papers (Persson et al., 2004). Collaborative work can also offer economies of scale advantages wherein the work can be completed in a cost-effective way and even in shorter time-frame. Bozeman and Corley (2004) have outlined that collaboration plays a significant role for individual researchers to enhance their technical, scientific and social knowledge, skills and resources. According to Jirotka et al. (2013), \"A key feature of scientific collaborations is that they are seen to require access to very large data collections, very large scale computing resources and high performance visualisations made available to individual scientists and institutions.\" It has been illustrated in the works of Atkins et al. (2003) and Hey and Trefethen (2005) that data are \"life-blood\" of the academic and scientific institutions. Jirotka et al. (2013) have clearly mentioned that accessibility to data will lead to conditions where new forms of science and knowledge can emerge. In today's collaborative environment; due to the features of Web 2.0; there has been a significant increase in the amount of processing and sharing of data (Anandarajan and Anandarajan, 2010). This processing of data can lead to creation of new data that can be an outcome of the existing data and it can fuel further scientific research. These digital tools dissolve the geographical boundaries by allowing the people to coordinate their tasks and manage their research output (Anandarajan and Anandarajan, 2010). This has led to a growth in the amount of scientific research that is based on collaboration as a means of pooling expertise and resources; in many cases, cooperation between research groups is required to undertake increasingly complex investigations and analyses (Dutton and Jeffreys, 2010). Collaborative research is pivotal in the creation of data and these data can be processed by the respective stage of the research data lifecycle for enhanced output. The academic and scientific research collaboration with companies can augment the output of these companies (Pecas and Henriques, 2006). The findings from the case study brought out by Yam et al. (2007) shows that the collaborative efforts between the various entities of an organization is possible by creating an information hub. This information hub will be critical for new product design and also for the business process management activities within the organization (Yam et al., 2007). Detailed analysis of academic literature from 1998 to 2009 has demonstrated that knowledge transfer is the most critical component in designing a new product for an organization (Kalluri and Kodali, 2014). Integration of technology for collaborative research increases the channels for knowledge transfer and this also increases the research output (Iorio et al., 2017).Thus, it can be deciphered that the domain of e-Research is highly important for the collaborative research to be undertaken in the most effective and efficient manner.\n2. Current state of e-Research: Academic research is becoming increasingly collaborative and this is evident from the pattern of co-authored papers over time (Adams, 2012). According to NSF Report (2002), there has been a steady increase in the international collaboration between academic researchers from 7 to 17 percent from 1986 to 1999. In 2003, the worldwide R&D performance that can be measured by monetary expenses incurred during the year was $836bn and this rose to $1.671tn by 2013 (NSF Report, 2016). This highlights an average annual growth rate of 7.2 percent spread over this ten-year period. The period of 2003-2013 was deeply affected by some of the worst financial crisis worldwide. This is a very promising growth rate as the gross domestic product (GDP) of most of the countries is below this figure. USA is by far the biggest contributor with 27 percent ($456.1bn of R&D in 2013) share in this global R&D domain. China has surpassed Japan to be the second largest country and is now close to USA with regards to their R&D spending (NSF Report, 2016). China has a 20 percent contribution ($336.5bn of R&D in 2013) compared to their Asian counterpart Japan which has close to 10 percent share ($160.3bn of R&D in 2013) in the worldwide R&D expenses. Asia as a region has shown the best growth rate and there has been a sharp increase in the R&D expenses from 27 to 40 percent in this ten-year period of 2003-2013. The contribution of Europe has been on a decline and from a formidable share of 25 percent in 2003, it has now fallen to 20 percent in 2013. The European Research Council (ERC) that was founded in 2007 has been at the forefront for promoting collaborative research and this is evident in their Horizon 2020 program. This program is aimed at promoting research and innovation and they have a budget of $14.5bn for the time span of 2014-2020. Each project granted by ERC has six team members on an average that come from various educational backgrounds and geographic locations (Horizon 2020 Report, 2014). In Horizon 2020 program, it has been projected that approximately 7,000 projects will be allocated and thereby employing 42,000 people including doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. As of 2016, 70 percent of the completed projects funded by ERC have made scientific breakthroughs or major advances (ERC Report, 2016). The outcome of the rest of the 30 percent projects can be termed as incremental (ERC Report, 2016). A major portion of the projects implemented by ERC were executed by using interdisciplinary research. It is estimated that three-quarters of the outcome of research will have a positive effect on the economy and society in the short- and long-term time frame. Within Europe, Germany has the largest R&D budget and in 2015 the German Research Foundation (DFG) had funded 817 projects of collaborative research that comprises of 42 percent ($1.3bn) of the total financial outlay ($3.1bn) (DFG Report, 2015). In the 2014 report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to the United States Congress highlights that interconnected team members is a critical component to achieve a high quality research system (NAS Report, 2014). In 2016 in the UK, seven national academies have officially joined hands to collaborate on research and innovation. They are the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Irish Academy and the Learned Society of Wales. In UK, 60 percent of the co-authored research papers are of international collaboration with their EU partners (RAE Report, 2016). The pioneering works of Olson et al. (2008), Dutton and Jeffreys (2010) and Meyer and Schroeder (2015) have shown various examples of multidisciplinary e-Research applications in their book. In these books, the research area showcased comprises of contrasting and varied domains of academic and scientific collaborative research.\n3. Research methodology: The systematic literature review undertaken in this study was based on the guidelines laid out by Tranfield et al. (2003) and Kitchenham and Charters (2007). These two studies outline three stages for performing a systematic literature review. These stages are planning the review, conducting the review and reporting the review. Also, the works of Malviya and Kant (2015) and Dubey et al. (2017) have been instrumental in shaping the research methodology for this study. These stages are discussed in a more detailed manner in the following section:\n4. Research data lifecycle: RDLC models represent the flow of information, the relationships of various stakeholders involved and the various transitions that takes place with regards to data or physical components of complex systems (Humphrey, 2006; Pennock, 2007). According to the online version of the Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the term \"life cycle\" is defined as \"a series of stages through which something passes during its lifetime.\" This definition truly captures the essence of the various RDLC models that have been considered for this study. Two of the studies (Ball, 2012; CEOS Report, 2012) illustrates the various RDLC models that exist and are extensively used to understand the progress of data under the various research processes. In this study, RDLC models from the various perspective of R&D have been considered and this variation can be seen in the intended scope of these models (Table IV).\n5. Conclusion, limitations and future scope of research: As the world is becoming a global village, scientific collaboration is increasing by leaps and bounds. The technological development works as a catalyst in bringing the researchers from different field on a common platform so that they can collaborate to achieve the common desired research objective. This paper is focused on analyzing the work that has been conducted in the field of e-Research. Scopus, which is a leading digital database, was employed to extract the information of academic papers that have been published till the end of July 2016. Data of 199 papers was extracted and this included 66 journal papers and 133 conference papers. Journal papers were considered for this study as they truly represent the characteristics shown by the conference papers. It can be seen in this study that majority of the work was published between 2009 and 2014 (51 papers out of the 66 journal papers). There was no fixed pattern in the journals in which these papers were published. Various RDLC models were considered in this study and their gaps were identified. An RDLC model has been proposed in this paper from the perspective of e-Research and mapping of the 66 journal papers has been done based on this new proposed model. It has been observed that the focus of these papers was on concept and design, data collection, data processing, sharing and distribution of data and data analysis. This study focusses on journal papers only and this acts as a limitation to the analysis of the work that has been undertaken in the domain of e-Research. As the field of e-Research is steadily evolving, it paves the path for future research work that can be undertaken. Privacy of data and access rights given to any individual are critical in the adoption and implementation of collaborative research. Future studies can lay emphasis on this aspect and to further enrich the understanding on how data privacy can be ensured and violation of access rights by researchers for activities that are prohibited.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The traditional means of pursuing research by having all the parameters and processes under one roof has given way to collaborative mechanisms of performing the same task. Collaborative work increases the quality of research and it is a big contributing factor to augment the growth of the scientific knowledge. This process leads to training of new and well-informed academicians and scientists. e-Research (Electronic Research) has gained significant amount of traction as technology serves as the backbone for undertaking collaborative research. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synoptic view of existing research surrounding e-Research and suggest a data lifecycle model that can improve the outcome of collaborative research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Systematic literature review methodology has been employed to undertake this study. Using the outcome of the literature review and the analysis of the existing data lifecycle models, an improvised version of the data lifecycle model has been suggested.\nFindings: This study has brought a conceptual model for data lifecycle for collaborative research. The literature review in the domain of e-Research has shown that the focus of these papers was on the following stages of data lifecycle model: concept and design, data collection, data processing, sharing and distribution of data and data analysis.\nResearch limitations/implications: In this paper, only journal papers have been considered and conference proceedings have not been included for literature review.\nOriginality/value: This paper suggests a conceptual model for the data lifecycle for collaborative research. This study can be useful for academic and research institutions to design their data lifecycle model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using online self-assessment tool to improve conjoint analysis: Application in choices of wildlife excursions	[ "Dolphin excursion", "Choice model", "Conjoint experiment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since Luce and Tukey (1964) published the first paper in 1964 on conjoint analysis in the first volume of the Journal of Mathematical Psychology, the technique has become increasingly popular among researchers studying human choice and decision making. First applications of conjoint analysis include studies on transportation (McFadden, 1974) and marketing (Green and Rao, 1971). Since conjoint analysis reveals how individuals may trade-off among various characteristics of the item under study, economists have found it useful in demand analysis. Early works using conjoint analysis focussed on marketing new products, while the use of this method in environmental and resource economics often related to non-market goods, such as public goods (Adamowicz et al., 1994). Thus, conjoint analysis may be described differently, depending on its use. A common descriptor, choice experiment, ties conjoint analysis to the literature on discrete choice or stated preference. In recent years, a wider application of conjoint analysis in fields including food, medicine, information system management, and finance has occurred and this trend is expected to continue, particularly given the convenience of computer-aided internet surveys (Hu et al., 2006; Netzer et al., 2008; Bateman et al., 2010; Batte et al., 2010; Murray et al., 2010; Farley et al., 2013; Yoo and Doiron, 2013; Richards et al., 2014).\n2. Previous research: Baseline conjoint analysis involves analyzing how individuals make trade-offs among attributes associated with a marketable or non-marketable product using some type of choice model (Srinivasan, 1988). A major research effort to improve the analysis therefore is to create models that potentially can best capture or approximate the unknown factors in the process. The individuals who made the choices may know the unknown factors, or the researchers examining the choices may not know them (Ben Akiva et al., 1999). The basic choice models such as the logit model can reflect the discrete nature of choices and have been widely applied in the literature.\n3. Research objective and methods: The empirical application presented in this paper is set in an economic evaluation of dolphin excursions in Hawaii. Aggregated data suggest that dolphin and other cetacean excursions have made a significant economic contribution to tourism, the number one industry in Hawaii (Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, 2004). Little research, however, on the economic values and parameters associated with dolphin excursions has been done. Past studies have demonstrated the usefulness of conjoint methods in understanding economic issues related to tourism (e.g. Hearne and Salinas, 2002). Dolphin excursions are a unique type of activity that feature various types of services and excursion trips have been offered in Hawaii for a range of prices for more than a decade.\n4. Results: Discussion in this section summarizes the preference reversal by survey respondents, presents the parameter estimates and highlights the welfare implications.\n5. Conclusion: Given the popularity of recreational wildlife excursions, little work has been conducted to understand their economic values. For most existing work, even conjoint analysis is generally regarded as a realistic preference elicitation method (Sattler and Hensel-Borner, 2000), usually highly hypothetical scenarios are used in survey questions, which may cause choices made by respondents not representing their true preferences. Based on consumers' self-explicated excursion attributes, this research introduces a simple approach to enhance conjoint analysis. This relatively low-cost approach involves asking survey participants to specify their preferred alternatives using the same attributes and levels used in the conjoint analysis. The difference between these self-explicated preferred alternatives and those offered in conjoint experiment are then analyzed using various choice models. With the assist of an internet-based survey, the approach is straightforward to apply. Respondents are able to link the survey questions to their actual daily choices. The models used to analyze the data collected are also straightforward to apply on a modern computer.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Dolphin excursions have become increasingly popular worldwide. Many past studies assessing the value of dolphin excursions use choice-based methods such as the conjoint analysis. However, this method is often criticized as being hypothetical. The purpose of this paper is to describe a relatively low cost but effective approach to enhance understanding of consumer preference obtained by conjoint analysis. The method relies heavily on using internet-based survey tools.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Enabled by an online tool, individuals are asked to self-explicate their preferred alternatives using the same attributes as are found in the conjoint design. The difference between the self-constructed, preferred alternatives and those offered in conjoint experiment are incorporated into choice models. Unlike previous research where only rough estimates can be provided, the proposed method allows precise capture of respondents' preferred alternative through the automated online survey design.\nFindings: Results show that although the extra effort involved in data collection is small, the gain in model fit, choice interpretation, and the value (welfare) estimation is sizeable. Evidence indicates that consumers would be willing to pay up to $50 more for adventurous excursions and guarantees that they will interact with dolphins could worth up to $70 per trip. The approach presented in this paper can also serve as a method to test for preference consistency.\nOriginality/value: This study is the first using an online survey to assess values associated with dolphin excursion. It describes the benefit of involving online tools to enhance modeling and interpretation of consumer behavior. Applications of internet-based surveys on household consumer products are abundant (such as food and electronics) but this study offers a much less discussed application in environmental service.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managerial perceptions of workplace flexibility and firm performance	[ "Outsourcing", "Company performance", "Flexible labour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, there has been growing interest in outsourcing in the supply chain. Thus, in the UK, McCarthy and Anagnostou (2004) show that there has been a significant increase between 1984 and 1998 in the gross purchases that UK manufacturers make from non-manufacturing sectors. Similarly, the percentage of gross purchases over sales in Spanish industrial companies increased from 3.1 to 4.5 per cent in the period 1993-2004 (INE, 2004). But despite this trend toward outsourcing, evidence of its effects on firm performance is scarce and inconclusive. Besides, the literature on outsourcing offers a variety of internal and external antecedents of outsourcing, but most of the empirical research on outsourcing has focused on internal measures such as transaction costs.This study argues that it is possible to improve the ability to explain outsourcing within the larger context of firms' responses to their strategic environment. According to McIvor (2003), analysis and management of the supply chain can have a greater impact on the outsourcing process than attempting to unravel the complexities of the core competence and transaction cost approach. On the other hand, outsourcing is included among supply chain management practices (Li et al., 2006) and has become an important business approach, whereby a competitive advantage may be gained when products or services are produced more effectively and efficiently by outside suppliers.Several potential benefits may be achieved by outsourcing in-house activities (Harland et al., 2005; Kremic et al., 2006). One of these benefits is increasing the firm's flexibility capabilities. Because flexibility is viewed as a reaction to environmental uncertainty (Riley and Lockwood, 1997), it is important to extend the notion of flexibility beyond the factory floor linking it to market requirements (Olhager and West, 2002). Firms may outsource in order to obtain workplace flexibility to face environmental uncertainty and improve performance. However, the review of the literature indicates that the impact of outsourcing on firm performance is highly inconclusive. Besides, we have not found any study that has analysed the concurrent impact of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on firm performance. Workplace flexibility practices like multi-functional teams or temporary contracts are also aimed at reducing costs or increasing the flexibility capabilities of the firm. The literature (Grenier et al., 1997) usually classifies workplace flexibility into internal and external (Table I). Internal flexibility involves efforts to increase the firm's ability to adjust to changing circumstances through modifications of the internal labour market or work organisation (functional flexibility and internal numerical flexibility) whereas external flexibility uses changes in the external labour market (external numerical flexibility) and outsourcing. Functional flexibility makes the deployment of individual workers to particular tasks more adaptable by implementing workplace practices such as multi-skilling teams or job rotation. Internal numerical flexibility involves a search for adjustment through changes in the amount or distribution of working time by using practices like overtime, flexitime or part-time contracts. Finally, external numerical flexibility makes the volume of labour more flexible by externally changing the level of employment through layoffs or the use of temporary employees.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explain outsourcing decisions by antecedents based on several economic and organisational theories, and to analyse the concurrent impact of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on the managers' perceptions of firm performance. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In the second section, the framework and relevant research for the empirical analysis are discussed. The third section explains the methodology of the empirical study, followed by the results and their discussion. Finally, the paper concludes with limitations and future research.\nTheory and hypotheses: There are several studies that have examined the motivations for and benefits of outsourcing (Webster et al., 1997; McIvor, 2003; Beaumont and Sohal, 2004; Harland et al., 2005; Kremic et al., 2006) which may reduce costs and provide firms with greater capacity for flexibility (Stonebraker and Liao, 2004; McCarthy and Anagnostou, 2004). Researchers have used multiple theoretical perspectives for studying outsourcing activities but very few empirical studies have embraced a multi-theoretic approach. Our research model includes several hypotheses based on different theoretical perspectives. First, we propose four hypotheses that explain some antecedents of the firm's outsourcing intensity, and secondly we propose two hypotheses that analyse the impact of the intensity of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on the managers' perceptions of firm performance.We have introduced in the hypotheses a measure of outsourcing intensity, instead of using the decision to outsource (yes or no). The intensity of outsourcing measures the extent that the value of a firm's activities is being performed by outside suppliers (see methodology section for details). We have chosen to use a continuous measure of outsourcing over a yes/no variable because we can better link this measure of outsourcing with the extent of implementation of other workplace flexibility practices. Besides, all the surveyed firms in our sample have outsourced some level of in-house activities which makes a yes/no variable of little use in our empirical analysis. The following paragraphs develop the research hypotheses.Production cost advantages\nMethodology: Survey\nResults: Table II shows the descriptive statistics for both the independent and dependent variables. Table III indicates the results of the four tests of Spearman's r correlations to analyse the antecedents of outsourcing: one for the group of all outsourced activities, and three additional tests for each group of low-, medium- and high-strategic outsourcing. Results show that production cost advantages, transaction costs, environmental dynamism and cost-leadership strategy are significantly associated with the intensity of total outsourcing. Differentiation strategy and inter-organisational co-operation are not statistically significant. These results support H1 and H3a, and do not support H2, H3b and H4 (H2 is not supported because transaction costs are positively related to outsourcing but we had proposed a negative relationship). The control variable of environmental dynamism is positively associated with outsourcing intensity, whereas firm size is not significantly associated with outsourcing.Table III also indicates the significance of antecedents in each category of outsourcing. Production cost advantages are significantly associated with the three categories of outsourcing. Transaction costs are significantly associated with medium- and high-strategic outsourcing but not with low-strategic outsourcing. Cost-leadership strategy is positively associated with low- and high-strategic outsourcing. Differentiation strategy is positively related to low-strategic outsourcing and negatively related to high-strategic outsourcing. And finally, co-operation is not related to any category of outsourcing.Table IV shows the results of the Spearman's r correlations to analyse the impact of outsourcing and workplace flexibility on the three sub-factors of firm performance: internal flexibility (functional and numerical) is positively related to firm performance but total outsourcing and external numerical flexibility are not. These results support H6a and H6b, and do not support H5 and H6c. However, the analysis of these relationships according to the category of outsourcing indicates that the intensity of outsourcing of low-strategic activities (peripheral outsourcing) is positively associated with the dimensions of firm performance: financial (p=0.029), innovation (p=0.019) and relational (p=0.077). Medium-strategic outsourcing is also positively associated with innovation performance (p=0.079). However, high-strategic outsourcing is negatively associated with innovation performance (p=0.036) and relational performance (p=0.011).Table V shows the comparison of workplace flexibility according to the level of outsourcing intensity and the strategic importance of outsourced activities. The purpose of this analysis is to better understand the relationship between outsourcing, workplace flexibility and firm performance. Firms have been classified in four groups according to the quartiles of these two factors. Regarding outsourcing intensity, the significance of kh2 values shows that there are only statistically significant differences in the use of functional flexibility[3] (p<0.1): employees have more access to functional flexibility practices in high-outsourcing firms than in low-outsourcing firms. Finally, the strategic importance of outsourced activities only introduces significant differences in the use of external numerical flexibility (p<0.01): firms that outsource peripheral activities use more external numerical flexibility than firms that outsource near-core activities.\nDiscussion: Outsourcing antecedents\nConclusions, limitations and suggestions for future research: The research reported here indicates that it is important to take into account different theoretical perspectives in the study of outsourcing. A theory of the firm and outsourcing is likely to be complex, requiring integration of several theoretical perspectives. We have developed a model of outsourcing antecedents based on several theoretical perspectives: neoclassical economics, transaction cost economics, the resource-based view of the firm, and the relational view of the firm. Our results indicate that outsourcing intensity is negatively related to the production cost advantages of the firm's in-house activities, and positively related to the transaction costs of the outsourcing relationship, and the intensity of the firm's cost-leadership strategy. The results also indicate that overall there is not a relationship between the firm's outsourcing intensity and the three sub-factors of perceived firm performance: financial, innovation and relational. However, the analysis of the categories of outsourcing reveals that the outsourcing intensity of low-strategic activities is positively related to each sub-factor of firm performance whereas the outsourcing intensity of high-strategic activities is negatively related to firm performance. Finally, the impact of other workplace flexibility dimensions indicates that internal flexibility (functional and numerical) is positively related to each sub-factor of firm performance, whereas external numerical flexibility is not significantly associated with firm performance.This paper contributes to the literature on outsourcing by exploring the integration of theoretical perspectives to explain the firm's outsourcing intensity. We have only studied a few antecedents of outsourcing but the purpose of our research was to develop a model based on the theoretical perspectives that are relevant to outsourcing. There are more antecedents that could be included in this model in future studies like, for example, \"development opportunities\" or \"technology access\" (Kremic et al., 2006). The potential to develop something with suppliers, or getting access to technology are also drivers that could be proposed from the relational view of the firm. However, we have only included the variable of \"co-operation\" based on this theoretical perspective to keep the model simple. Future studies could include several outsourcing antecedents from each theoretical perspective. Nevertheless, our article makes a contribution to the literature of outsourcing because, for example, the variable of \"co-operation\" had never been tested as an outsourcing antecedent before, and because it offers new explanations to the reverse link between transaction costs and outsourcing proposed by the theoretical perspective of transaction cost economics. This research also shows the limits of analysing the impact of outsourcing on performance at the firm level. The results indicate the need to analyse the impact of outsourcing by different categories of activities and on several sub-factors of firm performance.Regarding the limitations of the study, the research reported here has only included one antecedent for each theoretical perspective. Future studies could include other antecedents like \"development opportunities\" or \"technology access\". Other limitations of the research are its cross-sectional design and the small sample size. On the one hand, the use of cross-sectional data limits the insight in the nature of causal links. Outsourcing intensity could influence the perceptions of production cost advantages (or other independent variables) as well as the opposite effect. Longitudinal data gathering should be considered to ensure direction of causality in future studies. On the other hand, the small sample size may have caused a lack of statistical power in some of the analyses and this may help to explain why some hypotheses were not supported. Still, there are reasons to believe that the return rate is good enough to have a significant representation of the analysed sectors. Future studies could be applied to extended samples to contrast validity to all industries.Other limitations include the use of managers' perceptions to measure both outsourcing and firm performance; the development of comprehensive objective measures for outsourcing could also extend the research reported here. The research has not included any moderator effects on the relationships between outsourcing antecedents, outsourcing intensity and firm performance; it could be important to test the moderator effect of contextual variables like how the firm manages its suppliers on the relationship between outsourcing and firm performance because poor management can offset the benefits inherent in outsourcing. Finally, the extent to which the potential functional-level performance effects from outsourcing are translated into firm-level effects should be examined to explain the differences found between types of outsourcing and firm performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the paper is to explain the impact of workplace flexibility on managers' perceptions of firm performance. The research focuses primarily on outsourcing, an increasingly common way of creating workplace flexibility, by studying its antecedents based on several economic and organisational theories.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The methodology is a postal survey to a sample of 156 Spanish firms and statistical analysis.\nFindings: - The findings suggest that it is important to take into account different theoretical perspectives to explain the intensity of outsourcing: all proposed antecedents of the intensity of outsourcing except differentiation strategy and cooperation are significantly associated to outsourcing. There is not any significant relationship between outsourcing and firm performance; workplace internal flexibility does impact on firm performance but external flexibility does not. However, the results change according to the category of core and peripheral outsourcing.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study's single country setting could limit the generalizability of the findings. Longitudinal as opposed to cross-sectional data are needed for studying the causal assumptions reported here. Future studies should also take a multiple-source as opposed to a single-source data collection approach. Finally, objective measures of outsourcing and firm performance, as well as moderated variables are needed to analyse differentiated impacts on firm performance.\nPractical implications: - This research makes two contributions to both practice and theory. First, the results show that the perceived impact of outsourcing on sub-factors of firm performance is positive for peripheral activities and negative for core activities. Second, the research provides a framework to analyse the antecedents of outsourcing and the concurrent impact of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on firm performance.\nOriginality/value: - The paper explains outsourcing decisions by antecedents based on several economic and organisational theories. It also analyses the concurrent impact of outsourcing and other workplace flexibility dimensions on firm performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Attaining legitimacy by employee information in annual reports	[ "Employee disclosures", "Corporate governance", "Adverse publicity", "Annual reports", "Australia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Social responsibility disclosures integrate disclosures relating to the relationship between a company and its physical and social environment, including disclosures about the environment, energy, human resources and community participation (Deegan et al., 1995). The first objective of this study is to focus on employee-related disclosures as a specific form of social disclosure. The second objective is to investigate the category (for example, health and safety), quantity and quality (for example, positive or negative disclosure) of the employee-related disclosures made by Australian companies within their annual reports. Research is required to determine the category, quantity and quality of employee-related information to ascertain whether employee-related disclosures in annual reports should continue to be voluntary. The final objective is to determine whether publicly listed companies choose to disclose employee-related information in annual reports to legitimise their place in society.\n2. Theoretical background and hypotheses: 2.1 Social responsibility disclosures\n3. Research design: 3.1 Annual report disclosure\n4. Results: Table II shows the industry classification of the sample companies as per the Global Industry Classification Standard. The largest representation of the sample is from the materials industry, with a total of 177 in the sample. The second largest representation is from the finance industry (173), while the smallest representation is the utility industry (13). It illustrates that 66.91 per cent (649 companies) of the total sample of companies are disclosing employee-related information in their 30 June 2004 annual report.\n5. Conclusion and limitations: The results show that companies report employee-related disclosures to legitimatise their companies' place in society. This is done by voluntarily reporting and adopting recommended corporate governance practices to gain and maintain legitimacy, and to restore damaged legitimacy following adverse media disclosures in Australia. Key areas covered include employee profiles, employee assistance or benefits, industrial relations, health and safety, employee training and development, employee remuneration, employee morale and employment of minorities or women. Most of the employee-related information provided in the companies' annual report is not specific or quantifiable and therefore this information cannot be independently verified. In addition, there is no consistency in the way that companies report employee-related information. Very few companies report any negative employee-related information, although many companies receive negative publicity, indicating that many of these companies have negative information to report.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to provide evidence on the category, quantity and quality of voluntary employee-related information Australian listed companies disclose in their annual report. An explanation is also sought to determine whether companies adopt employee-related disclosures to legitimise their relationship with society. Voluntary adoption of corporate governance best practice recommendations is used as a measure of companies' attempts to attain ex ante legitimacy. Media agenda setting theory is used as a measure of an attempt to gain legitimacy ex post following adverse publicity from the media.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The annual reports of all companies with at least one employee listed on the Australian Stock Exchange with a 30th June balance date of 2004 are examined to identify employee-related disclosures. This employee-related information is categorised and identified as positive, negative or a combination of positive and negative information by three independent coders. Ordinary least squares regression is used to explain the quantity of disclosure with a corporate governance score and number of adverse newspaper articles included as experimental variables.\nFindings: Adopting voluntary corporate governance mechanisms is associated with the quantity of voluntary annual report employee-related disclosures. Higher levels of adverse publicity are also significantly associated with higher quantities of employee-related disclosures. The quality of these disclosures is questioned because 124 companies had adverse publicity relating to employees and only two of these companies reported any negative employee-related disclosures. Few companies from the whole sample reported any negative information relating to their employees in their annual report, with 98 per cent of companies reporting positive news or no news.\nOriginality/value: Most previous social responsibility research has focused on environmental disclosures. This study is original because it focuses on employee-related disclosures. Honest, transparent employee disclosures are an international corporate governance recommendation by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and studies have not previously tested the relation between reporting recommended corporate governance mechanisms and employee-related disclosures in annual reports.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Innovative ability and entrepreneurial activity: two factors to enhance "quality of life"	[ "Quality of life", "Knowledge economy", "Happiness", "Global entrepreneurship index", "Innovative ability", "Long-term planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Akin to how an enhancement of primary demand tends to enhance all individual sector demands, an enhancement in \"quality of life\" in any country will trigger an improvement in all industrial sectors of that country (Nataraajan, 2012a). Further, given the interconnectedness in the global economy, this phenomenon will play a role in promoting global economy and the well-being of all players in it which could positively impact global happiness or what the ancient Greeks referred to as eudaimonia (Bagozzi and Nataraajan, 2000; Nataraajan, 2012b, 2012c). The foregoing provided the impetus for the research reported in this article.\nKnowledge economy and KEI: Studies show that knowledge is defined in several terms and is derived from information dissemination along with experience, interpretation and innovation. Knowledge society is defined as a structure that views knowledge as a core resource that creates economic growth, wealth and social equity by means of generating, diffusing and utilizing knowledge (UNESCO Report, 2008). The foundations of an information and knowledge society, however, can never amount to technological breakthroughs alone. Inequalities of access to information sources, contents and infrastructures impact the information societies and consequently hamper the growth of knowledge societies. While the idea of the information society is based on technological breakthroughs, knowledge societies encompass much broader social, ethical and political dimensions. Various forms of knowledge and culture always enter into the building of any society, including those strongly influenced by scientific progress and modern technology. The values and practices of creativity and innovation will play a major part in knowledge societies, if only through their ability to challenge existing models in meeting the society's new needs (UNESCO Report, 2008; Kim, 2002). It is, therefore, necessary to work toward connecting the forms of knowledge that societies already possess and the new forms of development, acquisition and spread of knowledge valued by the knowledge economy model. The knowledge-based economy is characterized by turbulent changes in business environment dominated by IT advances. Productivity and competitiveness depend on nations being ready for the knowledge-based economy. The bases of economic life and business have been extended to the basis of knowledge. Knowledge assets, knowledge workers and knowledge ventures have become the foci of attention, and with increasing emphasis with the advent of this millennium.\nGlobal entrepreneurial activity and GEI: Entrepreneurial activity has a significant impact on the country's economic development. Regardless of the level of development, entrepreneurial activity aids innovation and the growth of a country. Entrepreneurial activity is closely related to the conditions, culture and values of a specific country. The role of entrepreneurial activity in the economic development of a country involves stimulating the changes in business and society in addition to increasing the per capita output and income. From an economic perspective, an entrepreneur utilizes the resources - labor and capital - to create new greater value, and typically introduces innovations into the process (Acs, 2006; Acs and Szerb, 2008).\nQOL factors: The concept of QOL, as developed by Ferrans and Powers (1985), measured both satisfaction and importance to various aspects of life. Over the years, this concept has been studied from a variety of perspectives on aspects of health and functioning both at the individual and societal levels touching on psychological/spiritual, cultural, social and economic and family factors (Angur and Widgery, 2002; Diener et al., 1995; Easterlin, 2001, 2003; Ferrans, 1996; Ferrans and Powers, 1985; Layard, 2005; Warnecke et al., 1996). QOL has also gained importance in the business world. Recent research reveals that 70 per cent of the leading businesses and Fortune 500 companies also include QOL as a parameter in their vision and mission.\nEmpirical analysis: The data for the research were gathered for the three factors, namely, the KEI, GEI and QOL, for the year 2008. The GEI involved data for 43 countries, KEI involved 143 countries and the QOL involved data for 93 countries. Data were filtered for countries that had all the three components resulting in 13 country observations. The sub-factors were also used to understand the impact of the individual components. In short, regression analysis was performed to assess the impact of KEI and GEI on QOL.\nDiscussion: For successful innovation, the entrepreneurial activity uses knowledge as a valuable resource in addition to others, and such knowledge contribution is effectively measured by KEI for every country. The research results show that QOL in a country is influenced by both KEI and GEI. It is also observed that II in KEI and TEA in GEI significantly influence QOL in a country. These results basically indicate that for a society to be more effective economically, the contribution of the entrepreneur is of vital importance and that the global competitiveness of a country could be improved by enhancement in the overall QOL.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of aspects of knowledge economy covered by the Knowledge Economy Index [KEI] and aspects of entrepreneurial activity covered by the Global Entrepreneurship Index [GEI] on quality of life [QOL] in a country.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data pertaining to KEI, GEI and QOL for different countries were gathered and analyzed through correlation and regression analyses.\nFindings: The results of the analysis yielded two key findings: First, KEI and GEI have a significant effect on QOL. Second, the Innovation Index (a component of KEI) and the total early stage entrepreneurship (a component of GEI) emerge as key factors that improve QOL.\nOriginality/value: The value of this research lies in the fact that it unearths the two factors in KEI and GEI that actually impact QOL. By establishing and reinforcing the salience of innovative ability and entrepreneurial activity, this research helps long-term planners of an economy to fine-tune their focus.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The intersection of legitimacy needs, actions and reform policy: the case of private higher education	[ "Legitimacy", "Networks", "Institutionalized business environment", "Public–private sector role reversal" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Services such as transportation, health-care services, utilities and higher education have historically been a public responsibility. Overstretched government funds and demands for these services have, however, led to increasing privatization. Few sectors have matched higher education in the scope and drama of privatization (Levy and Zumeta, 2011) with active private sector participation. Private universities are now big businesses with extensive local and international networks (Naidoo and Wu, 2014; Yang and Su, 2014). At the centre of this debate is how relationships between university, industry and government can be developed; the types of internal transformation that need to take place within each of these spheres; and the resulting recursive effect of the inter-institutional networks they represent (Etzkowitz and Leyesdorff, 2000). Relationships, transformation and inter-institutional networks are complex and dynamic social constructions of legitimacy created by organizations and their audiences, and organizations depend on such social constructions for physical, human, investment or reputational capital. Legitimacy is a form of social acceptability and credibility that prevails when the actions of an entity are aligned with a socially constructed system of rules, norms, beliefs and values (Suchman, 1995). Understanding how legitimacies are created and sustained can help universities navigate environments in which multiple stakeholders determine the success or failure of their institutions. A grasp of the legitimacy process may provide universities with business and network strategies to explain the programmes offered to its board, navigate complex regulatory environments, review existing and/or form new educational partnership arrangements and enter new markets.\n2. Theoretical discussion: As originally conceived, legitimacy is underpinned by understanding what drives organizational change and performance in a sociological context, and it is particularly concerned with the ways in which institutions confer legitimacy on organizations or, alternatively, withhold it (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Oliver, 1991; Tolbert and Zucker, 1983). This approach draws attention to a diffuse set of social, political and cultural pressures, and considerations about an organization's survival, that are distinct from the organization's performance and economic success or the competitive pressures it faces (Fligstein and Freeland, 1995). To survive and grow, however, organizations generally strive for both economic fitness - which emphasizes the competition for scarce resources and underscores the importance of the task environment - and social fitness, which stresses the pursuit of legitimacy in the eyes of important stakeholders, thus accentuating the significance of the institutional environment (Baum and Rowley, 2008; Grewal and Dharwadkar, 2002; LaPlace and Hadjikhani, 2013).\n3. Legitimacy needs, actions and reform policies: This paper describes legitimacy as a network institutional space, with the government's reform policies taking centre stage. The challenge is to understand how the timing of policies impacts on this space, implying that if we are to understand organizational legitimacy, we need to first consider how and why policies change over time. As time is always related to space (Tidstrom and Andersson, 2012), both should, therefore, be considered simultaneously. Space comprises the actors' mental maps of their \"existence in the real world\" (Hedaa and Tornroos, 2002, p. 4); such maps are socially constructed and could be defined as individual managers' perceptions (Tidstrom and Andersson, 2012).\n4. Case study: Malaysia's private higher education sector: This empirical study is based on the private higher education sector in Malaysia. At the end of 2016, the country had 54 universities, 32 college-universities, 10 campus branches and 400 private colleges, or a total of 496 institutions of higher learning (Study Malaysia, 2016). Although most public universities have increased in size and number, the most significant growth has been in private universities (Tierney and Sirat, 2015). These are PHEIs with university status, including private university colleges and foreign branch campuses, as privately funded educational institutions conferring certificate, diploma and undergraduate and postgraduate degree qualifications.\n5. Research findings: 5.1 Stage 1: 1970s-1980s: SMEs, professional institutions and accredited programmes\n6. Conclusions and future research directions: This study looked at how PHEIs identify and manage their LNAs in an institutionalized business environment experiencing increasing public-private sector role reversal, from 1970 to post 2000. I first conducted historical analysis of the private higher education industry by analysing secondary documents (e.g. industry histories, press releases and biographies of PHEIs). Certain themes emerged that reflected the legitimation of these PHEIs, including illegitimacy. These themes were then combined with retrospective case studies about nine PHEIs' LNAs. Analysis of LNAs were next combined with insights from institutional (i.e. legitimacy-as-a-thing [an outcome at a point in time], i.e. legitimacy-as-a-process [over time] and legitimacy-as-perception [legitimacy targets]) and network literature (i.e. relationships among significant actors in the legitimation process). From the analysis, I identified the interactional dynamics of PHEIs' LNAs as they dovetail with four identifiable phases of the private higher education sector's evolution. These phases were distinguished based on an identification of institutional barriers over time, particularly their intersections and approximation with two significant policy reforms between 1996 and 2003. I found that various legitimacy needs each play a role in weaving legitimacy practices into the fabric of private universities' legitimacy. While universities can isolate and internalize some legitimacy needs attributable to reform policies towards accreditations of institutions and programmes, quality education, upgrade of universities, etc., many are able to deal with these disruptions. Those that survive and thrive usually adopt complex multidimensional legitimate practices (e.g. accredited programmes, alliances with reputable overseas universities, improved governance and structures, investments in infrastructure, transnational institutional branding, etc.) that are imbued with tensions of efficiency, responsiveness and innovation. Over time, the network of collective actors (e.g. government, foreign universities and organizations, including PHEIs) would render a judgement about the appropriateness of these practices. For example, government procedures in arriving at a legitimacy judgement with respect to PHEIs by upgrading the status of these institutions from a university college to a fully fledged university before disseminating their judgement as an official verdict. This assumes that the university college educational programmes are accredited by the MQA, a statutory body in Malaysia set up under the Malaysian Qualifications Act 2007. Unless accredited, the programmes will not be recognized by the government.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine how a combination of legitimacy needs and actions (LNAs) can shed light on the legitimacy behaviour of private higher education institutions (PHEIs) operating in an institutional business environment that is witnessing significant public-private sector role reversal. The legitimacy process is promoted as an exemplar to inform the increasing number of public-private sector role reversals in the utility, transportation, health and telecommunication sectors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on empirical evidence, this paper triangulates data from archival policy announcements, retrospective case studies and face-to-face interviews. A replication logic methodology was used to establish LNAs and categorized themes.\nFindings: The findings show that market, relational, investment, alliance and social legitimacy needs are crucial drivers for PHEIs when hybridizing their legitimacy practices, especially during critical phases of institutional reform. The proposed conceptual framework demonstrates how the legitimacy construction process is the result of internal development and external validation.\nResearch limitations/implications: In providing some empirical descriptions and generalizations, the model makes limited attempt to determine with any specificity how PHEIs interact with their institutional environment, beyond a process of data triangulation.\nPractical implications: The proposed LNA framework is especially relevant in industries where the government has historically been a major institutional stakeholder, but where market liberalization is leading to increasingly active participation by the private sector. Findings can help PHEIs deal with reform policies by establishing deep and varied expertise inside their organizations and through links with international universities, industries and government agencies enable knowledge exchange, transfer, partnerships and the development of alliance capitalism.\nOriginality/value: This study provides a more comprehensive approach for theorizing the interrelatedness and embeddedness of organizations with common business and institutional demand factors and linkages and their changing roles, particularly the multi-scale impacts of LNAs on legitimacy sustainability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modelling local autonomy and dependence through cooperative relations	[ "Governance", "Local government", "Decentralisation", "Local government reform", "Central government" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Multi-level governance as a non-static concept: In a multi-level governance scenario, central-local relations are increasingly important and politically relevant. In fact, this field is currently a key element of local development strategy, in part because it deeply affects the whole intergovernmental system. The cooperative and non-conflictual development of instruments between different levels of government offers an excellent departure point for studying the institutional design of legal ties and governance models at the local level. This is especially relevant in systems of the so-called Napoleonic model, where ties are usually legally determined and leave an administrative trace that is easy to reconstruct.\n2. Models of local government and models of relations: the impact of the intergovernmental framework: The search for comparative models for analysing local governments is not new and has evolved over time into an increasingly complex approach. As Stoker (2006) highlighted, the literature on comparative local governance began with a descriptive study of formally elected institutions of local government that lacked a certain depth and any capacity to examine more informal, underlying practices. The study of local governments has always tried to classify different systems by their main institutional characteristics. The classical approach of Page and Goldsmith (1987) created a typology based on a comparison of functions (competencies) assigned to local governments, their autonomous capacity to take decisions (self-government) and their capacity to access national policy makers. Hesse and Sharpe (1991) added the basic question of local democracy to the former classification, while Heinelt and Hlepas (2006) included the question of vertical and horizontal institutional relationships as characteristics relevant to understanding different models of local government.\n3. Exploring a new proposal and methodological challenges: As Wolman (2008) points out, there is a lack of common framework for conducting comparative studies of local/urban research, and questions relating to quantification and effective comparability are a relevant part of this dilemma. In this study, we want to situate and trace the strategic direction of any cooperative system, so we need a model that is able to analyse reality in a given moment and account for changes over time. To achieve this, the construction of our model follows the approach used for models of strategic orientation (Ramio and Salvador Serna, 1999; Ramio et al., 2007). Thus, the authors propose a two-variable axis model in which the object of study can be placed. The model is useful not only for analysing the object's position according to the selected variables, but also for identifying what could (or should) be its future direction. It is true that the model is primarily used for organisational strategic reform, but it could be useful, too, for institutional strategic planning. Consequently, two main axes of analysis emerge: the flexibility or rigidity of the cooperative system on the one hand, and its tendency to align either with local autonomy or a centralised system on the other.\n4. Testing the model in a concrete reality from Southern Europe: To numerically stimulate our model, we used data from Spain, and in particular the Catalonia region since it is considered a suitable test bed for such a theoretical model. Spain has evolved to a multi-level governance model over the last 20 years, mainly due to two intensive processes of dispersion of central government powers: regionalisation and Europeanisation. It is important to note that despite these intensive processes, they have not been followed up by devolution to local governments. The Spanish Constitution establishes up to three main levels of government - central, regional and local - and at the same time establishes political autonomy (or the right to self-government) for all of them; but for local governments, that right is not accompanied by sufficient economic independence to allow political autonomy to be expressed effectively. While regions have become strong centres in terms of political and economic capacity, local governments continue to have much less spending capacity compared with the other two.\n5. Conclusions: In this paper, a model of cooperative relations within a concrete reality is constructed and tested. The model establishes two main vectors of analysis (autonomy and dependence, flexibility and rigidity) to analyse the impact of non-conflicting, cooperative relationships in a whole system of local governments on their effective autonomy and capacity. These vectors are grounded in a policy instrument approach, multi-level governance theories and intergovernmental relations key features. The analysis of autonomy is one of the traditional fields of study in local government, and including this element in the model was almost unavoidable. It is definitely one of the core characteristics for evaluating an institutional system. The second aspect, flexibility and rigidity, is more debateable, but Hooghe and Marks (2003) identified it as a relevant component of intergovernmental relations in a multi-tiered system that is more closely associated with cooperation than conflict between governmental units. The current evolution of institutional settings implies the need for approaches that can incorporate changing conditions and a dynamic process. Working with the concepts of flexibility and rigidity implies including this feature in the map and making transformations visible.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Given the spread of multi-level governance tools, interaction between local and regional governments has become an important mechanism for service delivery and the implementation of public policies. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a model of cooperative relations affecting local governments and thus having impact on local autonomy and dependence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper takes previous typologies as a starting point to theoretically build and empirically test a model of cooperative relations based on two selected indicators: the degree of autonomy-dependence and the degree of rigidity-flexibility of the cooperative system. In a second step, the authors stimulate the model numerically to match real data on it coming from South European local governments to assess the functioning of the theory in a concrete space and time.\nFindings: The combination of the aforementioned concepts, creates a four-option theoretical model that describes four possible situations where cooperative intergovernmental relations can be empirically placed.\nOriginality/value: This paper points out the need to incorporate empirical studies to trace the characteristics and evolution of the cooperative relations between local governments and upper tiers. This is particularly relevant if the authors are referring to mechanisms that can vary through time. In the current big and open data era, this empirical process will become easier and more affordable. In this context, local government studies benefit from particular features that improve the operation of this kind of analysis: large \"N\" configuration (a large number of units to be included) and a reasonable equivalence in concepts and bodies that allows comparability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Intention of college students to receive the human papillomavirus vaccine	[ "Health education", "Communication", "Sexual health promotion", "Human papillomavirus" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Each year thousands of young people leave their homes to attend colleges and universities across the country. This new environment provides them with opportunities to make a variety of health decisions for themselves. One such decision is whether to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV). They may consider receiving a vaccine in order to protect themselves against the high-risk HPV strains that cause most cases of cervical cancer and the low-risk strains responsible for almost all of the genital warts cases (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010a). The most common sexually transmitted infection in the USA is HPV which both males and females can contract through contact with the genitals (most often genital to genital contact; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). Each year an estimated six million people in the USA will become infected with some type of HPV and at least 50 percent of all sexually active individuals will contract HPV during their lifetime (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). The infection rate of HPV is alarmingly high. Between 2003 and 2005 in six different cities in the USA over 5,800 women between the ages of 14 and 29 had a routine cervical screening and 35 percent of those 14-19 years old were infected and 29 percent of those 20-29 years old had some form of HPV (Datta et al., 2008). Another study found high rates of HPV infection in a college sample of 263 couples, where 64 percent of the couples had at least one partner infected with HPV (Burchell et al., 2010). The current study set out to better understand what influences the intention of college students to receive the HPV vaccine.\nMethods: The study was a 2x2 experimental design which means that there are a total of four different messages and each participant will view only one of these messages. The messages were created by using one severity message (high/low) and one vulnerability message (high/low) (Table I). A total of four conditions were created using all possible message combinations. The research was approved by the university's Institutional Review Board. In total, 800 undergraduate students in a large public university in the USA were sent e-mails that detailed the study in the autumn of 2013. These students were in general education classes and were chosen because they came from a variety of different subjects and their instructors were willing to announce the study. Students received an e-mail directly from the principal investigator which provided students with information about the study and a link to the survey. Students had the option to participate and if they wanted to be part of the study they clicked on a link, contained in the e-mail, which directed them to a secure website where they were placed in one of four conditions. Each condition had a different message related to HPV that the students would read and once they had read the message they would then complete the questionnaire. Students could stop at any time without repercussions as participation was voluntary.\nResults: A pilot test of the measures was conducted through an anonymous online survey where 40 participants answered the survey questions, and then scale reliabilities were run. All of the scales had strong alphas ranging from 0.83 to 0.96. After reviewing these results the full study moved forward.\nDiscussion: This research attempted to better understand what influences college students to receive the HPV vaccine. The study manipulated the messages viewed by participants in regards to the severity and vulnerability of contracting HPV. The messages were shown to play an important role in the intentions to receive the vaccine. The ability to alter someone's intentions through a brief message could prove to be valuable in a future campaign related to HPV or another vaccination. The messages provided important information about the transmission, danger, and consequences of contracting HPV as well as how to protect oneself. A high vulnerability message paired with a high severity message created the greatest increase in feelings of vulnerability and severity related to HPV which increased intentions to receive the vaccine. The initial sample had an HPV vaccine initiation rate of 41.8 percent which was similar to the rates found by Stokely et al. (2014) where 57 percent of females and 34.6 percent of males in their sample had started the vaccine. This was beneficial to the study as the sample had similar initiation rates as data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Stokely et al., 2014).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to better understand what influences the intentions of college students to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the USA and cancers related to HPV are on the rise.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A 2x2 experimental design was used to predict the intentions. Messages were created that manipulated the level of severity and vulnerability to determine which would increase intentions to receive the HPV vaccine. Each of the 278 participants viewed a message that contained one severity message (high or low) and one vulnerability message (high or low).\nFindings: Regression was used to determine that elements of the protection motivation theory such as vulnerability and fear, along with norms, and information seeking explained a significant portion of the variance in intent to be vaccinated (R2=0.40, F(4, 268)=44.47, p\nOriginality/value: The current college age population did not have the opportunity to be vaccinated early and the recent (2011) recommendation that males get vaccinated makes this research valuable to those designing vaccination messages. The current study shows that norms were the most influential variable in regards to increasing intent to get vaccinated. This means that if the participant believed their friends would support or endorse their intent to get vaccinated they were more likely to say they would follow through and get vaccinated. This finding should be highlighted in any future campaign.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of setting on wine tasting experiments: Do blind tastings reflect the real-life enjoyment of wine?	[ "Wine-tasting experiment", "Deception", "Price manipulation", "Social setting", "Wine quality", "Objective characteristics", "Knowledgeable wine tasters", "Willingness to pay" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Blind tasting of great wines is always disappointing.Emile Peynaud, 1987\nIntroduction: In a letter to the editors of the Journal of Wine Economics, commenting on the work of Plassmann et al. (2008), Postman (2010) observed that the experience of wine tasting in social settings is much more nuanced than in experimental settings. Our wine-tasting experiments were motivated by this observation. The Plassmann et al. (2008) experiments were conducted in a clinical setting with wine delivered to participants via a computerised pump while they were in a functional MRI machine. A novel aspect of the Plassmann et al. experiments was that they manipulated prices to see the impact of price (an objective characteristic) on wine appreciation as measured by the participants' responses and neural activity in the pleasure centres of the brain. The price manipulation involved telling participants they would be tasting five wines at different price points, when in fact only three wines were involved, two of them being presented twice (at different prices).\nLiterature review: In 2008, a group of researchers at Stanford and Caltech (Plassmann et al., 2008) challenged the basic assumption in economics that a person's experienced pleasantness (EP) from consuming a product depends on its intrinsic properties, such as taste. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans on a group of non-expert wine drinkers in a blind experiment involving price manipulation[1], the researchers established that changes in the price of wine influence neural computations associated with EP. An increase in the presented price of the wine led to increased activity in the part of the brain that experiences pleasure (the medial orbitofrontal cortex). The participants in the experiment reported that the wines identified as more expensive tasted better. The practical implication of the study is that marketing actions such as a change in product prices can affect neural representations of EP. Overall, this study demonstrates that price-based expectancies change not only reported measures of the consumption experience (e.g. self-reporting using a Likert-type scale) but also neural measures of consumption enjoyment (as measured by brain activity) (Plassmann and Weber, 2015).\nWine appreciation in a formal, wine-tasting setting: This research is an extension of earlier work done in Melbourne (Lewis and Zalan, 2014) and in Dijon (Lewis et al., 2015) where we demonstrated that 'objective characteristics' (brand, label and price) overwhelm subjective appreciation of a wine. These experiments, following earlier work by Plassmann et al. (2008), involved deception - the tasters were presented with five wines, but in fact only three wines were involved, two of the wines being presented twice. The Melbourne study (Lewis and Zalan, 2014) demonstrated that for non-expert wine consumers a complex interaction exists between price and wine appreciation and willingness to pay (WTP). The key conclusions from the study are those for non-expert wine consumers: there is no relationship between intrinsic wine character and enjoyment (individuals rated the same wines - presented as different wines in the experiment - quite differently); price influences both appreciation of wine and WTP (self-reported measures), but the latter more strongly.\nResearch methods: The study was conducted at the Burgundy School of Wine and Spirits Business with two groups:\nThe same experiment repeated in a social wine consumption setting: The 2014 Dijon experiment was conducted in the typical, formal, wine-tasting setting that the students were familiar with because of their WSET training during the programs. Based on Postman's challenge, we hypothesized that we would obtain different results if we replicated the experiments in a 'social setting' where the tasters had the opportunity to enjoy and discuss the wines over a meal with friends. To that end we repeated the 2014 experiment with a similar group of tasters - the class of 2016 instead of the 2014 cohort - using exactly the same experimental structure (Table III), but under the guise of a \"French Food and Wine Experience\" to celebrate the completion of their course. The experiment was conducted at a well-respected Dijon restaurant, Dame d'Aquitaine. The students tasted the wines while enjoying a meal and considering the question of how the wines matched with the food. They were encouraged to discuss the wines as they enjoyed them with the meal.\nConclusions, implications, limitations and future research: This study essentially followed the price deception research (Plassmann et al., 2008; Lewis and Zalan, 2014) but applied the experimental design to a social wine consumption setting. Based on the results of our experiments we reach a number of conclusions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Tasting experiments involving willingness to pay (WTP) have grown over the past few years; however, most of them occur in formal wine-tasting conditions, removed from real-world experience. This study aims to conduct experiments on wine appreciation and willingness to pay in both settings, to allow a comparison of how tasters reached conclusions in different situations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors conducted two sets of experiments in Dijon, France, with knowledgeable wine drinkers, in 2014 and in 2016, to explore the relationship between wine ratings, WTP and objective characteristics (appellation, labelling and price). The first was in a formal wine-tasting setting (n = 58), and the second in the social setting of a restaurant (n = 52). The experiments involved deception: the tasters were presented with five wines, but in fact only three wines were involved, two of the wines being presented twice.\nFindings: The results from the 2014 study showed that even with a group of experienced tasters, objective characteristics overwhelmed subjective assessment (taste, sensory perception) of the wine. Ratings and WTP were driven by the appellation or brand, labelling and price of the wines. The authors replicated the experiment in a social setting in 2016 which, contrary to their expectations, produced very similar results. In neither experiment did the experienced tasters detect the deception.\nResearch limitations/implications: The social setting was a lunch in a restaurant with a group of students who were graduating together. The tasting was conducted by some of their professors, which may have influenced the results and raises questions about whether the setting was truly 'social'. The sample size for the experiments was comparatively small and further research, including novice and expert tasters, might contradict these findings, or at least add nuances to them.\nOriginality/value: The study finds that, contrary to expectations, in the social wine consumption setting of a restaurant meal enjoyed with colleagues, objective wine characteristics over-rode subjective appreciation of the wine.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Hospital menu interventions: a systematic review of research	[ "Hospitals", "Systematic review", "Patient satisfaction", "Menu planning", "Outcome assessment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Most inpatients depend on the hospital menu to meet their nutritional needs in developed countries (Allison, 2003). The menu is usually constructed by the dietetic and foodservice departments and is comprised of a range of therapeutic diets catering for the varied nutritional needs of patients. The menu informs patients of the meal choices available each day. It provides the \"first impression\" of foodservices (Alkire, 1995) and therefore has a role in creating expectations and eliciting interest in consuming hospital food. Adequate nutrition is especially important in the acute care hospital setting where 20-50 per cent of patients are malnourished (Watterson et al., 2009). Traditionally hospital menus have been implemented using a paper-based system where printed menus are manually distributed and meal orders collected and processed by foodservice staff. Advances in technology have seen the introduction of newer computerised systems where patients can view and order their meals using a bedside ordering system (Mibey and Williams, 2002).\nMethods: This review was registered with PROSPERO advisory group: international prospective register of systematic reviews (registration number CRD42014010606, www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/).\nResults: Six studies out of 2,201 retrieved publications met the inclusion criteria for the present review (Figure 1). No additional studies were identified through hand searching reference lists of the included studies and no review articles were identified. The most common reasons for excluding records after full-text review were because they were not experimental or observational research, or they tested an intervention which was outside the scope of this review, for example therapeutic diets (Larsen and Toubro, 2007), selective menus (Leacy and Cane, 2012; Pulfer, 1994; Wakefield and Potgieter, 1958) or meal distribution systems including room-service (Houlston et al., 2009; McLymont et al., 2003; Sheehan-Smith, 2006; Wadden et al., 2006).\nDiscussion: For such a basic but integral component of the foodservice system and the hospital admission itself, it was unexpected to identify such limited scope and magnitude of research on hospital menus. Menus are the fundamental connection between the patient and the kitchen and largely dictate which foods are delivered to patients. One possible explanation for the apparent lack of research on hospital menus is the difficulty in conducting foodservice research that is of high quality in the clinical setting. Randomised controlled trials can be labour-intensive and present logistical issues for testing foodservice interventions. For this reason, researchers may be more inclined to conduct foodservice research as quality improvement activities or audits and therefore important findings may not be published in peer-reviewed journals. Another factor that may inhibit publication of foodservice research is the disincentive to share negative findings or those that provide researchers with a competitive edge in service delivery.\nConclusions: The major finding from this review is that there are few studies exploring the effect of menu interventions on outcomes in hospitals. The effect of menu strategies on clinical and non-clinical outcomes is unknown. The studies included in this review generally lacked methodological strength and the small number of studies conducted on any one menu concept or intervention and the quality of the evidence has made it difficult to establish a solid evidence base around the provision of menu choices to patients. Further research is needed on meal ordering systems, including spoken and visual menus, to determine whether these systems can improve clinical and non-clinical outcomes. These systems should be investigated without concurrent foodservice system changes in order to ascertain the impact of the meal ordering system itself. Future research on meal ordering systems should be of high quality and use validated and reliable data collection tools. Studies involving larger sample sizes would add strength to the evidence. Rigorous qualitative studies may also provide insight into the patient experience of menu design concepts and meal ordering systems, thus supporting evaluative research. Only with more research will best practice with regards to menus in the hospital setting be defined.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Most patients in developed countries solely depend on the hospital menu to order their food. The provision of menu choices to patients differs between facilities. The purpose of this paper is to determine which strategies that provide menu choices to patients are effective in improving clinical and non-clinical outcomes in hospital.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Five databases were searched to identify relevant publications. Prospective research published in English with the menu as the primary intervention was included. Study eligibility was determined and risk of bias assessed. Outcome data were combined narratively due to absence of homogeneous study design and outcomes.\nFindings: Of the 2,201 records screened, six studies met inclusion criteria. Standardised menu formatting and the spoken menu system were found to improve meal tray accuracy. The spoken menu and computerised interactive menu selector system enhanced aspects of patient satisfaction without cost increases. Descriptive menus may increase food consumption. Branding food items was not well supported by patients. One study rated positively for study quality with the remaining five studies receiving neutral quality ratings.\nResearch limitations/implications: The small number of studies conducted on each intervention and the quality of the evidence made it difficult to establish a solid evidence base around providing menu choices to patients. Further research is needed on menu ordering systems, including spoken and visual menus, to determine their impact on outcomes in hospital.\nOriginality/value: This review is first to examine the effectiveness of menu interventions in hospital. Hospital foodservice departments should consider these findings when reviewing local systems.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How two-tier boards can be more effective	[ "The Netherlands", "Board of directors", "Boardroom effectiveness", "Boardroom challenges", "Boardroom independence", "Non-executive directors", "Boardroom dynamics", "Boardroom interventions", "Two-tier boards" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Boards of directors play an important role in the governance of companies. By having the authority to remove executive directors, set CEO compensation and ratify major strategic decisions and financial statements, the board is a key internal mechanism to monitor and discipline management (Baysinger and Hoskisson, 1990; Johnson et al., 1996; Neville, 2011; Oba et al., 2010). The board of directors is deemed necessary as the separation of corporate control from corporate ownership potentially gives executive directors leeway to pursue their own interests at the expense of the owners of public corporations (Eisenhardt, 1989; Lan and Heracleous, 2010; Muth and Donaldson, 1998).\nOne-tier and two-tier boards: Boards of directors operate in a variety of systems to monitor management. Whereas non-executive directors in the US, the UK and Japan operate in one-tier boards, non-executive directors in Germany, The Netherlands, China and Indonesia supervise executive directors in two-tier boards (Adams and Ferreira, 2007). Other countries such as Russia provide non-executive directors the opportunity to monitor management using hybrid board models, combining key characteristics of one-tier and two-tier boards. While one-tier boards integrate decision-management and decision-control in one organisational body, two-tier boards provide for a formal separation of both roles. In two-tier boards, executive directors (i.e. the management board) are responsible for the daily operations of the company and non-executive directors (i.e. the supervisory board) are responsible for the supervision of executive directors (Jungmann, 2006; Maassen, 1999; Millet-Reyes and Zhao, 2010).\nMethodology: Research context\nResults: The eleven self-assessment reports and the 2010-questionnaire indicated that non-executive directors on Dutch supervisory boards are confronted with significant boardroom challenges. Whereas most challenges scored high on either importance (e.g. issues regarding integrity and the chair's functioning) or frequency of occurrence (e.g. issues regarding meeting effectiveness and board composition), three boardroom challenges scored relatively high on both dimensions: issues regarding the ability of non-executive directors to ask management critical questions (importance: 4.6 out of 5.0; occurrence: 82 per cent of the non-executive directors experienced this); issues regarding information asymmetries in the boardroom (importance: 4.4; occurrence: 47 per cent) and issues regarding the interpersonal working relationship between executive and non-executive directors (importance: 4.3; occurrence: 68 per cent)1.\nDiscussion: This study explores three main challenges of non-executive directors on Dutch supervisory boards: the ability of non-executive directors to ask management critical questions, information asymmetries between executive and non-executive directors and their boards and interpersonal tensions in the relationship between the management and supervisory boards. Semi-structured interviews, surveys and non-executive directors' narratives indicate a diversity of problems in and around the boardroom as well as remedies adopted by non-executive directors to address these problems. The results of the study highlight that structural and behavioural factors contribute to problems in all three areas. Moreover, the empirical findings suggest that the formal separation of decision-management from decision-control in the two-tier model may create additional challenges related to the working relationships of the management and supervisory boards.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study seeks to explore how non-executive directors address governance problems on Dutch two-tier boards. Within this board model, challenges might be particularly difficult to address due to the formal separation of management boards' decision-management from supervisory boards' decision-control roles.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire among non-executive directors provide unique insights into three major challenges in the boardrooms of two-tier boards in The Netherlands.\nFindings: The study indicates that non-executive directors mainly experience challenges in three areas: the ability to ask management critical questions, information asymmetries between the management and supervisory boards and the management of the relationship between individual executive and non-executive directors. The qualitative in-depth analysis reveals the complexity of the contributing factors to problems in the boardroom and the range of process and social interventions non-executive directors use to address boardroom issues with management and the organization of the board.\nPractical implications: While policy makers have been largely occupied with the \"right\" board composition, the results highlight the importance of adequately addressing operational challenges in the boardroom. The results emphasize the importance of a better understanding of board processes and the need of non-executive directors to carefully manage relationships in and around the boardroom.\nOriginality/value: Whereas most studies have focussed on regulatory initiatives to improve the functioning of boards (e.g. the independence of the board), this study explores how non-executive directors attempt to enhance the effectiveness of boards on which they serve.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Investigating the effects of procedural justice on workplace deviance: Do employees' perceptions of conflicting guidance call the tune?	[ "Justice", "Conflict", "Harassment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Deviant employee behavior has become a prevalent and costly problem for organizations. One study (McGurn, 1988) indicated that 75 per cent of employees have taken property from their employers at least once. Other studies have documented not only its financial impact, but also the social and psychological effects of negative workplace behavior on organizations (Hollinger and Clark, 1982, 1983; Murphy, 1993; Robinson and Greenberg, 1998). One such survey found that 42 per cent of women reported being harassed at work (Gruber, 1990).\nHypotheses: When the formal rules of an organization are perceived to be congruent with the preferences and interests of the employees, the relationship between formal and informal norms is close (Ellickson, 1991). They are mutually reinforced, and it is often difficult to delimit their boundaries (Nee and Ingram, 1998).In an ongoing social exchange relationship, the organization and employees use judgments of fairness as proxies for trust when determining whether they should behave in a cooperative manner (Lind, 2001). In contrast, studies of organizational justice have shown that judgments of unfairness increase organizational conflict and inhibit cooperation (Lind, 1995; Tyler and Smith, 1997). On that respect, Deutsch (2000), p. 41) notes that \"That's not fair\" expresses a feeling that frequently leads to conflict. Thus, unfavorable PJ could lead the employees not to cooperate with organizational procedures, and consequently to a dilemma of compliance with formal rules. Underlying such a dilemma, there is an employees' taking of position, since it is argued that processes of self-definition and social identification affect the way in which employees cope with a normative compliance dilemma (De Cremer and Van Vugt, 1999; Kramer and Brewer, 1984; Schopler and Insko, 1992; Tyler and Smith, 1999; Turner and Haslam, 2001; Wenzel, 2000). In effect, classical socio-psychological mechanisms of pressure may lead employees to feel compelled to side either with the organization or with their work group, and the more they opt to side with their group, the more an upsetting twofold guidance may result in the employee.Perceived normative conflict (PNC) aims to measure such an expected tense situation. The construct tries to capture the extent to which the employees perceive a normative conflict between their work group rules and their organization's ones. Moreover, normative conflict is perceived as more intense insofar as employees comparatively more invoke work group guidance: to abandon official normative implies, sooner or later, to have to face with the organization's coercive control. Hence, our first hypothesis is:H1. Employees' perceptions of procedural justice from their organization will be negatively associated with their sense of a normative conflict.In an examination of the processes involved in the relationship between PJ and DWBO, researchers have been trying to describe why people care about justice in the first place. An explanation is provided by the group value model (Lind and Tyler, 1988; Tyler et al., 1996; Tyler and Lind, 1992), which emphasizes identity relevant motivations behind the concern with fair procedures. That model suggests that procedural justice matters because it communicates information to group members about the quality of their relationship with authority and with other group members (Tyler et al., 1996). In particular, Moorman et al. (1998) found that fair procedures promote citizenship behavior by eliciting feelings of respect and pride.Lind and Tyler (1988) considered that PJ exist when procedures embody certain types of normatively accepted principles. Leventhal (1980) states six normative principles that, if not followed, may shape the picture sensed by people when facing with unfair procedures:1. A normative inconsistency, or a sense that the allocation procedures are not consistent across persons and over time.2. A biased normative, or perceptions that personal self-interests of decision-makers are operating during the allocation process.3. An inaccurate normative, referring to the employee's sense of a lack of goodness of the information used in the allocation process.4. A perceived lack of a correctability rule, dealing with the no apparent existence of opportunities to change an unfair decision.5. A lack of representative normative, stating the sense that the needs, values, and outlooks of all the parties affected by the allocation process are not represented in the process.6. A perceived unethical normative, according to which the allocation process is not compatible with fundamental moral and ethical values of the perceiver.Accordingly, another explanation of what people concern with unfair procedures may be derived from their perceptions about the organizational normative. In effect, before unfair procedurals, employees may express concern about the appropriateness of the formal rules that employers put into practice within the workplace. As a result, that skeptical situation may lead the employee to a sense of normative disequilibria. As Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), p. 18) note, \"lack of adjustment echoes Durkheim's anomic reactions\" related to disrupted social equilibrium.While the restoration of justice does not occur, the formal rules should remain at variance with the preferences and interests of employees in the organization, and a favorable atmosphere for a normative conflict is created. The informal norms, which until now have been perceived as linked to the formal rules, evolve into \"opposition norms\". On that line, Nee and Ingram (1998)) state: \"Opposition norms have the most negative implication for performance. They give rise to organizational conflict and factionalism and often result in low morale\". In that respect, Schein (1980) recognizes role conflict as a powerful determinant of behavior in organizations that increases tension and frustration. Using the above arguments as a guide, we think is reasonable to predict that when an employee faced with unjust procedures the direct cause whereby employees perform DWB, to retaliate against their organization (DWBO), may not be mainly the unethical context created, but their discontent with the organizational normative. Indeed, this general feeling of discomfort with formal rules, or this annoying compliance dilemma, may be the cause that really triggers employee deviance, in other words, the context that really leads employee to reciprocate against their unjust organization.Based on the above reasoning, PJ may predict DWBO because unjust perceptions elicit employees' feelings of a perceived normative conflict (PNC). In turn, this PNC prompts the employees to retaliate by performing DWBO. Thus, our last hypothesis is:H2. Perceived normative conflict (PNC) will mediate the relationship between the employee's perceptions of procedural justice (PJ) and his/her deviant workplace behavior against the organization (DWBO).\nMethod: Procedure and sample characteristics\nResults: Table II shows the scale means, standard deviations, reliabilities and correlations (r) between all the variables. Results suggest that they are significantly correlated in the expected directions. In effect, the correlation between PJ with PNC (r=-0.292; p < 0.001) seems to support H1. Since PJ weakly predicts DWBO (r=-0.100; p < 0.07) it also seems reasonable to test this relationship when it is indirectly stated. The correlation of PJ with PNC (r=-0.292; p < 0.001) and, in turn, the PNC with DWBO (r=0.287; p < 0.001) may be a good sign of indirect effects of PJ on DWBO through PNC.To test the relationships between variables in our study we also used SEM, since it is a powerful tool to analyze causal relationships in non-experimental studies. Figure 2 is a path diagram that shows the relationships between the observed variables (survey answers, in rectangles) and the unobserved latent variables (circles). Items provided in Table I define the variables of the model observed by means of the survey questions and their response options. The various indexes used show an acceptable fit of the model (kh2 [102, 270]=185.426). Support for H1 is shown (Figure 2) by the significant path between PJ and PNC (B=-0.294; p < 0.001).To test H2, we conducted a nested models comparison using the sequential chi-square difference test (SCDT). In line with Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) recommendations, our hypothesized model (more constrained) was compared with the saturated alternative model (less constrained) in which was added a direct path from PJ to DWBO. This latter model only represents a partially mediated model of the effects of PJ on DWBO.A comparison of both models is shown in Table III. The fully mediated model of the effects of PJ on DWBO showed a better fit, especially with respect to parsimony fit indices, because no direct path between those constructs was placed. Additionally, although the saturated model includes a direct path so that PJ can show direct influences on DWBO, the SEM did not find significant effects in that direct path from PJ to DWBO (B=-0.006; p=0.901). In other words, when PNC is added the initial partially supported link between PJ to DWBO (r=-0.100; p < 0.07) now loses any significance (B=-0.006; p=0.901). Taken together, these patterns provide additional support to H2.Finally, the estimated parameters for the best-fitting model are reported in Figure 2. In addition to the significant path between PJ and PNC, the path from PNC to DWBO (B=0.238; p < 0.001) is also supported. The confirmation of indirect effects of PJ on DWBO (-0.094) provided by SEM outputs, is consistent with our mediation thesis; namely, PJ decreases DWBO through PNC.\nDiscussion: The aim of this research was to test the usefulness of PNC to further explain the thought process of the employee who perceives unfavorable PJ, and consequently encourages her DWBO. The results support that procedural unfairness can provoke a perceived normative conflict (B=-0.294; p < 0.001) that in turn triggers DWBO (B=0.238; p < 0.001). Moreover, the results suggest PNC as a full mediator of the relationship between PJ and DWBO. In effect, the fit of the accepted model was better than the less constrained saturated model, which included the direct path PJ-DWBO but did not show significance. Indeed, SEM supported better parsimony adjustment for the model comparatively more difficult to fit (more constrained), given that in this model a direct path was not offered. Moreover, even though the saturated model was less constrained since one additional path \"was available\", SEM fitted it worse and did not find the initial tendency of this path (r=-0.100; p < 0.07) that now disappears. Even though the direct link to mediate is weak, the whole of the results add support to our model, and thus offer an understanding of the way PJ is able to affect deviant behaviors.Theoretical and practical implications and future research\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to test an explanation of how procedural justice (PJ) - a specific type of organizational justice that reflects how fairly organizational procedures are designed - may influence deviant workplace behavior targeting at the organization (DWB-O). The model proposes that PJ affects DWB-O through its influence on perceived normative conflict (PNC) with the organization. This influence, in turn, would prompt employees to reciprocate with DWB-O.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In the paper, data were collected from 270 (17.46 per cent) of the 1,547 teachers at a Spanish university by intranet.\nFindings: - The paper finds that the structural equation modeling (SEM) results suggest that PJ is an antecedent to PNC, which fully mediates a confirmed direct - but weak - PJ relationship with DWBO.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper shows that the researched teachers' job conditions are inherent to the peculiarities of the public sector that may limit the ability to extrapolate the findings in the private sector. The findings offer a better understanding of the way PJ is able to affect deviant behaviors. The findings also provide a more easily understood mechanism of the influence of procedural justice on DWB-O.\nPractical implications: - Results in this paper suggest that actions designed to promote PJ may be useful in communicating how companies are trying to introduce normative harmony in the workplace. Future lines of research are also offered.\nOriginality/value: - The paper sees that the study of the mediating role that perceived normative conflict (PNC) may play in linking perceptions of PJ to DWBO is unprecedented in organizations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Terroir in the media: the poetry of people, place and palate	[ "Brand management", "France", "Regression", "Wines", "Marketing mix", "Psychometric/qualitative" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Other than tourism, perhaps no other product uses place to define itself as much as wine. Today, the origin of a wine remains an important evaluative feature for consumers, and wine marketers are using origin designations, such as terroir, to qualitatively describe their products. Yet, there is still no consensus over the true market definition of terroir (Spielmann and Gelinas-Chebat, 2012). Recent research suggests that terroir is a form of perceived authenticity (Spielmann and Charters, 2013), and other research claims that it is a quality signal (Aurier et al., 2005; Gabriel and Urien, 2006; Lapoule, 2007). But questions still linger: how have consumers come to adopt terroir as a concept? What frames these perceptions of quality regarding terroir products? The growing literature on terroir sheds light on its meaning, but does not review the antecedents of this meaning and how it was constructed.\nLiterature review: Defining terroir\nMethodology: We used a multi-method approach, combining quantitative analysis using bivariate analyses in SPSS for reliability and strength and a qualitative analysis using inter-judge observation for validity and depth (Hair et al., 2009). Five wine and food magazines were selected in France. These included three highly specialized magazines:\nResults: Sample\nDiscussion: The results presented in this paper highlight some important points regarding how the media frame the concept of terroir. One of the clearest findings is that terroir remains a relatively underused term. Over a period of 1 year, it is used in only 5 per cent of all tasting notes. This is rather surprising, considering the controversy that the concept of terroir has created in both professional and academic realms (McGee and Patterson, 2007; Spielmann and Gelinas-Chebat, 2012; Spielmann and Charters, 2013). Perhaps the limited use of the word in tasting notes is explained by the fact that tasting notes tend to be short in length - journalist may avoid using terroir to circumvent repetitive content, especially if they mean terroir to relate to place (e.g. it is shorter to say Corton-Charlemagne than to say the terroir of Corton-Charlemagne). However, the minimal use of terroir in tasting notes remains a paradox because terroir is nonetheless used in much wine writing and also on front covers of wine magazines to capture the audience's attention (see Figure 3).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this article is to review the use of the word terroir by print media in France using a multi-method approach. The objective is to uncover whether and how the media frames terroir-marketed products as being qualitatively superior to non-terroir products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Every issue of five print magazines in France was analyzed over the period of one year. All references to terroir were coded as well as all tasting notes with and without terroir references. > 6,500 tasting notes and 800 uses of terroir in wine and food-related text from > 3,800 pages in 30 issues were identified and analyzed.\nFindings: The results show that although it is not a frequently used word, terroir in tasting notes leads to significantly higher scores and prices for wines than when terroir is not included in the note. A further analysis reveals that terroir is most often related to subjective experiences of taste.\nPractical implications: Wine managers should often use the word terroir in their press releases and communication pieces. However, the dimension of terroir that brand managers put forward in their communication pieces will influence the way in which the media frame their product.\nOriginality/value: Prior to this research there were no empirical results regarding how the media uses terroir. This research contributes to the growing body of research that seeks to understand the value of terroir as a marketing attribute.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identification, uniqueness and art consumption among bicultural consumers	[ "Cross‐culutural management", "Ethnic groups", "Identification" ]	[ { "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: Multicultural consumers comprise an important, yet neglected, market segment (Nwankwo et al., 1997). While businesses are increasingly embracing people with mixed identities and adapting their marketing strategies accordingly, the academic research on multicultural consumers is limited to a scanty stream in the information processing tradition (Hong et al., 2000; LaFromboise et al., 1993; Lau-Gesk, 2003). This paper draws on an interdisciplinary body of knowledge to understand how biculturals differ from other consumers in terms of personality traits and identity negotiation. Specifically, it examines biculturals relative to monoculturals on two counts:1. social acceptability, group identification, and uniqueness needs; and2. identity negotiation through consumption of market-mediated objects.In line with past research (e.g. Bowles, 1993; Fields, 1996), this paper focuses on consumers whose biculturalism is due to their mixed ethnic identities, and defines a bicultural consumer as an individual who perceives to have a mixed ethnic identity. The study of ethnic identity is an effective way to understand cultural minorities (e.g. Lindridge and Dibb, 2002; Williams and Qualls, 1989). In fact, the terms ethnic marketing and multicultural marketing are often used interchangeably (Nwankwo et al., 1997). Among the plethora of market-mediated objects, the focus will be on works of art, which qualify as a prime means of consumer identity negotiation (Zolfagharian and Jordan, 2007).The paper first reviews the interdisciplinary research on biculturals, their personality traits and artwork consumption to derive substantive hypotheses. It then reports on an empirical study undertaken to examine these hypotheses. The findings are discussed and research limitations and implications are explicated.\nConceptual framework: Mixed identity\nMethod: The instrument\nAnalysis and results: The scale items measuring NSA, NGI and NU were subjected to varimax-rotated principal component analysis. The structure of loadings was satisfactory with explained variances of 0.71 for the two dimensions of identification (i.e. NSA and NGI) and 0.77 for the three dimensions of CNFU (i.e. NU). Table I presents the scales developed in this study and their underlying structures. An inter-item correlation matrix was designed using NSA, NGI, NU, and AE items (see Table II). A close inspection of this matrix (not shown here) shows higher within-factor correlations compared to cross-factor correlation. Cronbach's a for NSA, NGI and AE were 0.76, 0.81, and 0.78, respectively. Cronbach's a for the three dimensions of CNFU including creative, unpopular and minority choices were 0.82, 0.78, 0.80, respectively. These results suggest that measurement scales have adequate levels of convergence and discriminant validities. Among inter-factor correlations, the only significant correlates of NU were AE and AC. The correlations of AE with EI and with NSA were not significant. All other correlations were significant at p<0.01.Group mean differences\nDiscussion and implications: As partial manifestations of globalization, businesses are challenged today in several ways by the rise and proliferation of the bicultural neotribe (Maffesoli, 1996). Businesses do not have to fall victim to these challenges; they can turn them around and strategically leverage them as marketplace opportunities. A key requisite, however, is to develop an understanding of the heterogeneous distribution of meanings and multiplicity of overlapping cultural groupings evident in consumer markets (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). As an attempt in that direction, the present paper draws on an interdisciplinary body of knowledge and an empirical study to shed light on the personality traits and identity negotiation in the neglected segment of bicultural consumers. Overall, the findings indicate that biculturals, relative to monoculturals, are characterized by higher levels of needs for social acceptability and group identification; have almost equal levels of need for uniqueness and art enthusiasm; and tend to consume more artwork as a means and in the process of the routine negotiation of their (ethnic) identities. Three areas deserve further illumination.First, previous research indicates that biculturals are more concerned than monoculturals about their social acceptance in general and their acceptance within pertinent reference groups (Gibbs, 1997; Herring, 1992; Omi and Winant, 1994). The survey results confirm this point by revealing higher levels of need for social acceptability and group identification among biculturals, relative to monoculturals. This finding is consistent with both identity formation and symbolic interactionism theories. Identity formation theory suggests that bicultural identity can result in the development of a contingent self-concept malleable to sociocultural peculiarities of the environment (Bowles, 1993). The relatively high levels of anxiety observed among biculturals is directly associated with the strength of their urge to conform to the values and norms in their social surroundings (Herring, 1992). The relatively higher levels of needs for social acceptability and group identification, therefore, help alleviate identity problems and desirability anxiety and stress (Gibbs, 1997). Symbolic interactionism theory suggests that bicultural identity can complicate and intensify the individual's inevitable task of symbolically asserting and negotiating his or her self-identity (Gordon, 1964). The increased complexity and intensity in the symbolic realm of bicultural identity propel the individual to feel greater needs for conformity and identification (Piskacek and Golub, 1973).Second, the literature on bicultural identity is not clear whether biculturals and monoculturals differ in terms of need for uniqueness; and if they do, which population shows a higher level of this need (Rockquemore and Brunsma, 2002). Some researchers provide evidence for the high levels of creativity, inventiveness, originality, adaptability, resiliency, competence and leadership among biculturals (Cauce et al., 1992; Fields, 1996), which might lead to intensive pursuit of uniqueness in general and within the consumption sphere. Other researchers argue that urge for uniqueness is lower in consumers who experience confusion regarding their ethnicities and whose multiple identity anchors can result in confusion and dilemma (Gibbs, 1973; Piskacek and Golub, 1973). Although the current research does not entirely settle the controversy, the empirical results provide support that biculturals and monoculturals are comparable in terms of need for uniqueness.Third, the association between ethnic identity and artwork consumption has not been directly examined in the past. The survey detected a marked difference between biculturals and monoculturals in terms of their artwork consumption and, by implication, market-mediated (ethnic) identity negotiation. Specifically, biculturals appear to consume more artwork than monoculturals. Works of art constitute the prime examples of material culture, on which consumers can draw to negotiate symbolic meanings about themselves and others (Belk, 1988; Bourdieu, 1984). Since biculturals face a more complex and intensive task of symbolic identity communication (Gordon, 1964), they might exhibit greater reliance on the material culture to successfully carry out the task. In fact, biculturals are more likely to exaggerate in their conspicuous adoption and consumption of the symbolic attitudes, behaviors, and objects of one or more of their ethnicities (Gibbs, 1973). They, therefore, are more likely than monoculturals to consume artwork.Fourth, ethnicity, need for social acceptability, need for group identification, and art enthusiasm, taken together, can predict artwork consumption. Ethnicity, in particular, is a key precursor of artwork consumption. Ethnicity as a market-segmentation criterion has not received deserved attention.Biculturals satisfy the various tests of market segment viability: measurability, accessibility, substantiality, differentiability, and actionability (Kotler and Armstrong, 2003). Since positional advantage in the market is dependent on effective market segmentation and informed resource allocation (Day and Wensley, 1988), isolating biculturals is becoming a business imperative, especially for art-related businesses. Differentiation, branding, advertising, and corporate sponsorship are only a few strategies that need to be guided by an understanding of the peculiarities of (multi)ethnic identity.\nLimitations and future research: The representation of monocultural and bicultural populations through Caucasian Americans and Mexican Americans and inclusion of only three personality traits are two limitations of this research. Future research can extend this work in two ways. First, it can extend the analysis to other monocultural and multicultural groups. As a corollary of this extension, other sources of consumer identities such as religion and gender can be added. Second, a wider or different set of personality traits might be considered.This paper held the interrelationships among the focal variables constant. The findings, however, point to the possibility that ethnic identity serves as an antecedent to needs for social acceptability and group identification. Consumers who identify with more than one ethnicity were found to have greater levels of such needs. To this end, future research can focus exclusively on these interrelationships, while employing better controlled methods of measurement such as experiments. Another limitation was the types of artwork included in this study. It is interesting to observe whether biculturals and monoculturals also differ in the consumption of more mundane products such as casual apparel, personal accessories, and stationery.Use of symbolic interactionism in marketing research has been sparse. An exception is Leigh and Gabel (1992) work, which uses this theory and concludes that consumers with high desire to gain membership in a particular social group can be regarded as a segment. Marketing researchers interested in symbolic interactionism should, however, be aware of the inconsistent conclusions it has entailed. One such inconsistency was that of need for uniqueness in the present study. After its original notions are revisited and its contentions substantiated, symbolic interactionism can be especially useful in cross-cultural studies of consumer behavior.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore how bicultural consumers differ from monocultural consumers in terms of personality traits and identity negotiation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Through a multidisciplinary literature review, some anecdotally and qualitatively supported differences between biculturals and monoculturals are reviewed and formulated as hypotheses, and a survey is used to collect quantitative data from a mixed random-purposeful sample.\nFindings: - Relative to monoculturals, biculturals exhibit greater concern about their acceptability within pertinent reference groups and society at large; have comparable levels of need for uniqueness and art enthusiasm; and consume more artwork as a means and in the process of their routine negotiation of (ethnic) identity. Ethnicity, need for social acceptability, need for group identification, and art enthusiasm are predictors of artwork consumption. Ethnicity, in particular, is a key precursor of artwork consumption.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As a starting-point for understanding the bicultural consumer, the study is subject to exploratory research limitations.\nOriginality/value: - As partial manifestations of globalization, businesses are challenged today in several ways by the rise and proliferation of the bicultural neotribe. Businesses do not have to fall victim to these challenges; they can turn them around and strategically leverage them as marketplace opportunities. The study provides some early insights that can help businesses to leverage such opportunities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Personal and organizational determinants of well-being at work: The case of Swedish physicians	[ "Doctors", "Medical personnel", "Stress", "Hospitals", "Sweden" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For the past 50 years we have witnessed an almost exponential rate of growth in interest among scholars and practitioners concerning the concept of quality of work life in general and wellness promotion in particular. Although, the concept of stress plays a major role within this construct, the knowledge accumulated provides only a poor understanding of how chronic stress affects the productivity and health of workers. By and large, the literature suggests that work stress is the principal cause of poor motivation, dissatisfaction, and high rates of absenteeism (Atance Martinez, 1995; de Valk and Werner, 2000; Dolan, 2006; Salmela-Aro and Nurmi, 2004). A European commission report suggests that almost 30 percent of all European employees have manifested physical symptoms derived from stress, and the annual economic costs connected with this problem are estimated at around EUR265 billion. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in examining mental health in the workplace and its impact on a given firm's success and competitiveness. The related literature suggests that \"healthy employees\" can be a source of sustained competitive advantage insofar as organizations then avoid the increasing costs associated with stressed employees (Briner and Reynolds, 1999; Appels and Mulder, 1988, 1989; Shirom et al., 1997; Burke et al., 2006).In the present study, both burnout and vigor will be examined in respect to physicians. Epidemiological studies in numerous countries and organizations have revealed that burnout is on the rise among physicians, particularly for those who work in the public sector (Dolan et al., 2003a, b). Burnout among young doctors has captured the attention of many scholars, and a recent series of four articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2002) explored the causes and consequences of medical resident burnout. The results indicate that 35 percent of the residents studied reported four or five symptoms of depression, a figure that is higher than estimates for the US adult population as a whole. In addition, 61 percent reported that they have become more cynical as they have progressed through residency. The Canadian Medical Association has also sponsored a study in which 46 percent of Canadian doctors reported advanced stages of burnout (Meier, 2003).While burnout has been investigated in many work settings and for many occupational categories, vigor has been studied primarily in sports psychology and medicine, only rarely being explored in organizational or management contexts (Shirom, 2005). Nevertheless, support appears to be growing for the construct and predictive validity of vigor. For example, a 2002 study of breast-cancer patients conducted at the University of Kansas instructed one group to write down their deepest feelings about their illness, another to record only their positive thoughts, and a third to simply write down the facts. After three months, the groups that recorded their feelings not only had significantly fewer medical appointments for cancer-related problems, but they also reported enhanced vigor and decreased distress. The few existing studies that have simultaneously examined exposure to stress, burnout, and their effects on health imply that measuring burnout may help identify individuals at risk (Melamed et al., 2006). In light of the evidence which indicates that the burnout syndrome is chronic in nature, it is very likely that burned-out individuals run a significant risk to their health (Shirom et al., 2005). In this sense, the present study comprises an attempt to better understand the profile of the \"burned-out\" doctor and identify the profile of physicians who tend to not suffer from this condition.\nPurpose: In this study, we propose to use the concept of vigor as the opposite of burnout. Hybrid vigor in biology is defined as a renewed enthusiasm or excitement for what may yet be possible that has been acquired from diverse sources. Shirom (2003) defines vigor as the feeling on the part of an individual that s/he possesses physical strength, emotional energy, and cognitive liveliness, which together comprise a set of interconnected affective experiences. Consequently, vigor as an extension of the \"positive organizational psychology\" school of thought may be characterized by \"positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace\" (Luthans, 2002). Fredrickson (1998) and Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) are other scholars who have also investigated vigor from this perspective.Conceptual models in the literature on burnout\nMethods and procedures: The sample\nFindings: The aim of the subsequent series of analyses was to identify a configuration or profile for predicting behavior correlating with burnout or vigor at work in a multivariate fashion. Similar to the logic used by I/O psychology scholars in other contexts, such as Delery (1998), Meyer et al. (1993) and Dolan et al. (2005a), an attempt was made to arrive at burnout and vigor configurations by identifying \"tree branches.\" The tree analysis technique was used to observe the personal, professional and organizational configurations with a lesser and greater risk of burnout. The scores were standardized in order to be able to compare the results obtained in the different trees (or configurations).Partial results of these analyses are shown in Figure 2. The implicit assumption is that a higher mean in the configuration indicates a higher level of emotional exhaustion or burnout, and the different profiles for each individual and organizational factor show how different configurations yield different results in respect to burnout and vigor. That is to say that different configurations lead to more or less significant levels of organizational and individual vigor.In Figure 2, we are able to identify the relative order of importance in this regard by examining the final two branches:1. The extreme left configuration (Profile A) indicates high levels of burnout. This involves a combination of being a specialist with low-job satisfaction, a high perception of salary inequity, an overload of job demands, pressure on time, and gender inequity. The improved mean (prediction) obtained by using this configuration is 55.10 percent (mean = 14.3500).2. The extreme right configuration (Profile B) indicates vigor, or very low levels of burnout. This involves a combination of more than 15 years of practice as a specialist, high-job satisfaction, little pressure on time, and decreased time dedicated to family and family care. This set of variables decreases the mean of the total risk of burnout by 40 percent (mean = 5.5455).To summarize, we can see how configuration A (extreme left side of the tree) has the professional profile behavior with major risk of burnout; this is due to a major exposure to psychosocial risk factors in the workplace. By contrast, configuration B (extreme right side of the tree), it appears that the type of factors that offer a better explanation for low risk of burnout are connected with working conditions and the content of work. The low risk does not appear to be so closely related with personal factors or attitudes.Our study shows that, besides these factors, there are others that should be taken into account, such as the perception held by workers of the dominant culture/values in their organizations, and the congruence or incongruence observed between their personal values and those of the organization in which they work for. This leads us to propose that in order to reduce the risk of burnout or increase the incidences of vigor, initiatives can be undertaken by the hospital administration or its respective human resource management department. The latter can be instrumental in reengineering the organizational culture (Dolan et al., 2006) and instituting innovative policies and procedures which are aimed at fostering organizational work environments that are more conducive to the well-being of the workers (well-being in all its physical, psychological, work-related and social connotations) (Dolan, 2007).\nDiscussion and conclusion: Over the years, the scientific literature has demonstrated the relationship that exists between some of the psychosocial risks, such as stress or burnout, with aspects of personality, working conditions and the way in which work is organised. Our findings, focus on the links between organizational and professional variables and burnout/vigor. The results provide further evidence of what we considered to be some of the more classical risk factors, but in addition, some other newer factors emerged from the analysis. Similarly to findings previously reported concerning bivariate levels (Dolan et al., 2003a), the present study identifies variables that play an important role in predicting the aetiology of burnout/vigor in all configurations. The most important construct predicting both burnout and vigor has to do with job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. One more time we can see that a psychological construct such as job satisfaction is a predictor of mental well being. Already in the 1970, a research entitled: \"work in America\" (O'Toole et al., 1973) reported that based on the largest and most representative sample of American workers, job dissatisfaction was the best predictor of chronic heart disease, better predictor that smoking eating habits, sedentary life or even levels of cholesterol. Indeed, it is not surprising that it also plays a major role in predicting mental health. Our study shown clearly that higher levels of job dissatisfaction is a clear predictor of job burnout, and vice versa, professionals who are satisfied in their job also enjoy higher levels of vigor. Other factors who also predict the outcomes studies included time pressure, perception of pay inequity and/or poor working conditions.The present study reveals that these type of variables can play either a role as an amplifier, promoting burnout, or a buffer role, promoting vigor depending on the configurations. In addition, individual factors do not play a decisive role in explaining burnout/vigor since it is rather the organizational factors that are important (pay, schedule and workload equity, gender discrimination). These findings indirectly support the inequity theory of motivation (Adams, 1965), in which inequity and job satisfaction are linked to mental well-being at work (Burke et al., 2006). This appears to be the case when there is a greater risk of burnout (Configuration A), a situation in which extrinsic factors such as salary and working conditions appear to be of greater importance (Maslach and Leiter, 1997; Parker and Kulik, 1995 and others). The psychosocial dimensions that have a greater influence in respect to burnout are those which involve working conditions (mental pressure and time pressure) and such organizational aspects as role definitions, level of autonomy, and support for a balance between work and private life (Moumtzoglou, 2007). The fact that time is a critical factor for many employees has also been indicated by other authors (Freedman and Edwards, 1988; Perlow, 1999; Yoels and Clair, 1994; Koyuncu et al., 2006). Configuration B suggests that vigor (positive health) is associated with physicians who have been practicing medicine as specialists for a significant period of time and demonstrate a higher commitment to their profession than to their families. In contrast to studies reported elsewhere (Maslach and Jackson, 1981; Zajonc, 1980), we have observed that practicing medicine for a number of years helps in developing positive coping mechanisms. However, our findings do corroborate other reports that have identified pressure on time as an important element in the configuration that leads to increased risk of burnout.One of the most relevant differences between configurations A (increased risk of burnout) and B (increased vigor) is that there is a group of variables in the former that are not present in the latter. These refer to such organizational factors as equity in terms of policies that define responsibilities and the autonomy of job positions in respect to gender and salary. We find these results to be significant insofar as they reveal a new dimension in the study of burnout that concerns the policies and strategies of organizations (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) observe in a similar vein that \"in response to situations of stress, people attempt to cope by rebalancing their resources and demands.\" Hobfoll and Freedy (1993) also present their \"Conservation of resources\" theory as a way of applying new concepts to the study of burnout. Burnout has traditionally been considered to be a psychosocial risk intrinsic to certain activities, and this view has generated numerous studies that concentrate on the personal factors which are related to burnout. In contrast, the present study has identified organizational factors, such as working conditions, other aspects of organization directly related to management, and an incongruence between personal and organizational values, as the major influences upon burnout. Studies of burnout should thus focus on these types of factors in an effort to understand the causes of burnout (Saks, 2006; Cooper, 2001).In conclusion, the innovative element in the present study is the development of a model and a procedure for identifying those configurations of factors that indicate either an increased risk for burnout or protective mechanisms that promote vigor. It appears that both burnout and vigor are generated by the interaction of particular combinations of factors. More specifically, it appears that burnout is associated with extrinsic conditions at work. This discovery not only opens the field to further studies of a similar nature in the future, but it also makes it possible to search for intervention strategies that reduce the risk factors for burnout by altering the combination of conditions that lead to it. Further studies are also needed to determine whether professionals can be taught to increase the competencies and skills that will help them understand the work environment in a manner that leads to positive results (vigor) rather than burnout. Luthans (cited in Wright, 2003) has emphasized the need for an increased study of what he terms \"positive organizational behavior,\" which he defines as \"the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace.\"In this regard, we believe that organizations must work in the short-term to improve physical and mental health care for their employees. We are convinced that organizations which are able to create a \"positive\" or healthy work climate will attract and retain the best professionals and thereby achieve improved performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The traditional perspective in the occupational and organizational psychology literature aimed at understanding well-being, has focused almost exclusively on the \"disease\" pole. Recently, however, new concepts focusing on health are emerging in the so-called \"positive psychology\" literature. The purpose of this paper is to test multiple possible linkages (or profiles) between certain personal, organizational, and cultural variables that affect both burnout and vigor. Burnout (disease) and vigor (health) are assumed to represent two extreme poles of the well-being phenomenon.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An innovative statistical treatment borrowed from data mining methodology was used to explore the conceptual model that was utilized. A self-administered questionnaire from a sample of 1,022 physicians working in Swedish public hospitals was used. Standardized job/work demands with multiple items were employed in conjunction with the Uppsala Burnout scale, which was dichotomized into high (burnout) and low (vigor) score. A combination of ANOVAs and \"classification and regression tree analyses\" was utilized to test the relationships and identify profiles.\nFindings: - Results show an architecture that predicts 59 percent of the explained variance and also reveals four \"tree branches\" with distinct profiles. Two configurations indicate the determinants of high-burnout risk, while two others indicate the configurations for enhanced health or vigor.\nOriginality/value: - In addition to their innovative-added value, the results can also be most instrumental for individual doctors and hospitals in gaining a better understanding of the aetiology of burnout/vigor and in designing effective preventative measures for reducing risk factors for burnout, and enhancing well-being (vigor).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modeling China's agriculture support policy effects	[ "China", "Agriculture support policy", "Policy effects", "Policy simulation", "C51", "O53", "Q18" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Agriculture is an important sector of China's economy, but while its share in total employment is high at 39.5 percent, its contribution to GDP is much lower at 12.5 percent. With the rapid development in non-agriculture sectors, China has shifted its agricultural policy from tax agriculture to support it.\n2. China's agriculture support policy: In this section, the author discusses briefly some selected agricultural support policies in China and then quantitatively present the producer support in China based on the OECD PSE classification.\n3. The model methodology: The PEM, developed by the OECD, is designed to use policy information from the PSE database to determine the effects of policies and policy categories on economic outcomes such as production, trade and welfare. It is a partial equilibrium simulation model of the agricultural sector in six OECD regions and covers major crops (rice, wheat, grains, oilseeds) and livestock (milk and beef) products (OECD, 2000, 2001). The PEM applies standard economic assumptions to model output and factor markets and the interactions between them. OECD applies the PEM to evaluate recent agricultural policy reform in Japan (OECD, 2009e). The PEM is adapted into Development Policy Evaluation Model to capture four critical aspects of rural economies in developing countries (OECD, 2012).\n4. Data and results: The data used to model China's agricultural support policy are drawn from FAO database, OECD PSE database, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Service Database and National Agri-products Cost and Returns Collection by China National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The author models the effects of 5 percent increase in MPS, area payment and input subsidy with two crops: wheat and rice. The main purpose is to compare the effects of area payment and input subsidy. 2003 is set as the base year. This is because China's area payment and most input subsidies were initiated in 2004, which marked China's great shift in agricultural policy from tax it to support it.\n5. Conclusion: There have been fundamental changes in agriculture policies since early the century, switching from tax agriculture to support it. Two important policies are area payment and input subsidy, which are intended to increase farmer's income and food production. To examine the effects of these policies, the author modifies the PEM developed by OECD to estimate the effects of the area payment and input subsidy policies on the farmer's income and the production of rice and wheat. The effects of these support policies are measured in terms of impact ratio, which is compared with a comparison between the effects of these new policies and those of MPS.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: China has shifted its agricultural policy from tax agriculture to support it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the agricultural policy changes of China in recent years, focussing on the support policy. China supports its agriculture sector through tax elimination, area payment and input subsidy. In this paper, the author intends to evaluate China's agricultural support policy effect with a modified policy evaluation model (PEM).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author modifies PEM used by OECD to estimate the effects of these support policies on production and farmer's income.\nFindings: The main findings are input subsidy policy has more effect than area payment policy in general; input subsidy policy has more effects on production while area payment has more effects on farmer's income; and the sensitivity analysis further indicates that input subsidy policy has more influence than area payment as regarding production impact ratio, while area payment has more influence on income impact ratios.\nPractical implications: Based on these findings, when it comes to the support policy in terms of area payment and input subsidies only, the author puts forward the following policy implications: to increase input subsidy in budgets and expand the covering scope, and to continue implementing area payment policy with more budgets. However, support policies playing an important role in improving production efficiency and marketing support should be given priority.\nOriginality/value: The main contributions of this paper are modifying the OECD PEM to China's conditions; and quantifying China's agricultural policy effects.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How the Circle Model can purpose-orient entrepreneurial universities and business schools to truly serve society	[ "Business sustainability", "Purpose", "Business school", "Entrepreneurial university", "Inner outer world", "Personal responsibility" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The need for sustainable business with responsible leaders\nOrganizational development (OD) toward business sustainability: Current economic thinking poses some of the biggest obstacles to change\nIndividual development toward responsible leadership: Concern about the theory of leadership\nThe Circle Model: Connecting the two elements of organizational and personal development\nA developmental perspective to understand educational implications: Connecting individual, organizational and societal development\nImplications for business education and entrepreneurial business schools: Connecting leadership and OD with entrepreneurial institutions\nContribution, limitations and further research: The large picture: framing the challenge first\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to outline a path for entrepreneurial universities to embrace their purpose as custodians of society and to hardwire it institutionally.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is conceptual in its approach, drawing on practical and theoretical insights in the fields of responsible leadership, business sustainability and transformational change. The resulting Circle Model offers a developmental perspective connecting individual and organizational development in service of society.\nFindings: A key finding lies in expanding the current understanding of an entrepreneurial university beyond its organizational effectiveness to become a true custodian of society in the way it educate, researches and lives this intended purpose. The model offers a next conceptual step for the 50+20 vision (Muff et al., 2013) which had outlined a radical new role for business schools.\nResearch limitations/implications: More research is required to understand how not only the educational and research strategies but also the organizational structure can be transformed to serve a given purpose.\nPractical implications: Concrete insights and examples of the developmental perspective of the model illustrate the opportunities for educating responsible leaders, for consulting business organizations to serve the common good, and for walking the talk by hardwiring a purpose-driven organization.\nOriginality/value: The originality of the paper lies in the introduction of the idea of a common space of sustainability and responsibility as a foundation to reorient education and research of an entrepreneurial business school and hardwire its organizational structure truly around purpose.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Supporting strategic success through enterprise-wide reputation risk management	[ "Corporate reputation", "Reputation risk", "Reputation risk management", "Reputation risk response" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Reputation broadly is considered at the core of organizational value, with one study estimating that reputation\n2. Reputation definition and fundamental ERM framework: 2.1 Reputation definition, measurement and antecedents\n3. Integrating reputation risk management in a holistic ERM framework: 3.1 Risk strategy\n4. Summary and implications: Our purpose with this research is to present a coherent and effective ERM framework that includes necessary steps and processes for integrating reputation risk management into an organization's overall ERM approach, which is intended to support corporate strategic success. The framework takes into account current knowledge from the existing literature on the definition and measurement of reputation and reputation risk as well as reputation's determinants, antecedents and drivers, as well as effective methods to respond to reputation-damaging events. Our results suggest several important ideas which are of great relevance when integrating reputation risk management into an ERM framework. Among these are the importance of:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a coherent and effective enterprise risk management (ERM) framework that includes necessary steps and processes for integrating reputation risk management into an organization's overall ERM approach which is intended to support corporate strategic success. In particular, reputation creation, enhancement, and protection are critical to an organization's success, yet highly challenging given the wide ranging and somewhat opaque nature of the concept. These qualities call for a strong ERM approach to reputation that is holistic and integrative, yet existing knowledge of how to do so is limited.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper evaluates and synthesizes existing reputation literature in developing an enterprise-wide reputation risk management framework incorporating necessary steps, processes, and considerations. We address risk strategy, risk assessment, risk governance, and risk culture as key elements of ERM and conclude with suggestions for future research.\nFindings: The results suggest several important ideas which are of great relevance when integrating reputation risk management into an ERM framework. Among these are the importance of: identifying and understanding the purpose of key stakeholders, appreciating the multidimensional and layered effect of events on organizational reputation and monitoring the influence of technological advances.\nOriginality/value: The authors contribute to the literature by developing a framework for enterprise-wide reputation risk management that applies across industries. In contrast to previous work, the authors offer a broader perspective on the underlying causes and consequences of reputation damage based on empirical evidence and insight from the academic literature and provide additional detail in identification of reputation determinants, antecedents, and drivers. While much of this information exists in various places in the literature, it has not been organized into a cohesive framework nor used in developing an ERM strategy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluation of the marine economic development quality in Qingdao based on entropy and grey relational analysis	[ "GRA", "Entropy weight method", "Economic development quality", "Marine economies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, the total value of marine economic production has occupied an increasing proportion in the national economy, and the marine economy has become a new long-term point of economic development. However, there are a series of problems in the rapid development of the marine economy. In order to ensure the sustainable use of marine resources, the harmonious marine environment and the sustainable development of the marine economy, it is necessary to improve the quality of marine economic development. So, accurately judging the quality of marine economic development is the prerequisite for accurately grasping the level and status of marine economic development. The research related to the quality of marine economic development conducted by various scholars mainly includes the following aspects: first, research on the development of marine industry and the utilization of marine resources. Sheng et al. (2016) used 16 index data from 2006 to 2013 such as gross ocean product (GOP), output value of the three industries and so onto study the impact of three marine industries. Wang et al. (2017) introduced the VAR model to explore the relationship between marine resources development and marine economic growth. Cao and Ning (2019) adopted the entropy weigh and TOPSIS model to dynamically evaluate the carrying capacity of marine resources and environment in Zhanjiang from 2007 to 2016. Second, research on the structure and layout of the development of the marine industry. Ma et al. (2013) discussed the increase of Chinese researched on maritime industries structure and layout, offered suggestion on future research exploration in the frontline field and theoretical system building, and scientific guidance for building state-level maritime economy development model district. Based on map of Cite Space knowledge and Excel data statistics for 31 years in China, Han et al. (2016) summarized the overall characteristics of the marine industry research. Third, research on the comprehensive evaluation of the development of the marine economy. Jiang (2018) proposed the evaluation index in 11 coastal provinces and cities in China to comprehensively evaluate the marine economy overall development and regional differences. Guo (2014) analyzed the development status of the coastal regions with stronger development capacity. Fourth, research on the sustainable development of the marine economy. Yu et al. (2019) evaluated the sustainable developing ability of marine economy about Shanghai. Niu (2015) studied coordinative mechanism for marine economic sustainable development in Shandong province.\n2. Research methods: 2.1 The standardized method\n3. Evaluation of the marine economic development quality in Qingdao: 3.1 Construction of evaluation index system\n4. Result and analysis: 4.1 Evaluation results\n5. Conclusions: This paper constructs a regional marine economic development quality evaluation index system from the five dimensions, including total marine economy, marine storage capacity, marine ecological environment, marine resource utilization and integrated marine management. The entropy weight method is used to calculate the index weight, and the GRA method is used to evaluate the quality of marine economic development. Through the analysis of the research results, it can be concluded that the quality of marine economic development in Qingdao has experienced a process of decreasing first and then rising. Through the comparative analysis with the other two methods, the rationality of the evaluation research in this paper is proved.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Accurately judging the quality of marine economic development is the premise of grasping the level and status of marine economic development. In order to scientifically evaluate the development quality of regional marine economy, the purpose of this paper is to select the marine area of Qingdao as the research object, and construct a marine economic development quality evaluation index system with 16 indicators.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The raw data is normalized by the range conversion method, and the weight of the index is determined by the information entropy model. Further, the grey relational analysis (GRA) method is used to evaluate the quality of marine economic development of Qingdao from 2012 to 2017.\nFindings: The results show that the marine economic development capacity of Qingdao is with the generally increasing trend, the total marine economy is with on the rising trend, the marine storage and transportation capacity, and marine ecological environment are first decreased, and then increased. The utilization of marine resources is generally decreasing, and the comprehensive management of oceans varies with the changes of environment and economy. Therefore, in view of the development capacity of marine economy, the coordinated development of economy and environment should be carried out.\nOriginality/value: This paper uses the GRA to evaluate the quality of marine economic development and provides a reference for the development of marine economy in Qingdao.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Management coaching with performance templates to stimulate self-regulated learning	[ "Self-efficacy", "Self-regulated learning", "Coaching", "Problem-solving", "Performance templates", "Mind-sets" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the past two decades, much research has been conducted on self-regulated learning (SRL) (Dweck, 2006; Murphy and Dweck, 2016), but not much has found their way to the domains of training or human resource management. SRL is reflective of employees who tend to demonstrate a growth mind-set and are likely to value and engage in innovation, change and performance improvement.\nPerformance templates: theoretical foundations and literature review: Motivation\nConcluding remarks: Limitations\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Much has been written about self-regulated learning (SRL) (including mind-sets) in psychology and education, but little research is found in the HRD or training literature regarding the stimulation of this learning. This paper aims to present a practical training tool, performance templates (P-T), to demonstrate how a line manager may assist employees improve their problem-solving skills as well as stimulate SRL.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Presented are literature reviews and assessments of the areas of: line manager in coaching role, SRL theory and the phases of SRL in action. Following is a detailed explanation and demonstration of the P-T method. Finally, the efficacy of PT is examined and constraints are noted.\nFindings: Demonstrated in the paper is how a line manager may function as the key actor in assisting employees to become more effective self-regulating learners and problem-solvers. The method presented can stimulate employee motivation and help employees to internalize self-regulating learning processes. All of this should help employees become more growth-oriented, self-confident and goal-directed participants in organizational life.\nOriginality/value: Rather than simply discuss what SRL is about, this paper provides an effective tool, P-T, for use in the stimulation and direction of SLR. The use of the tool also helps organization participants to achieve progress on some current problems.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The influence of clothing on first impressions: Rapid and positive responses to minor changes in male attire	[ "Clothing", "Men", "Perceptions", "First impressions", "Bespoke", "Influence", "Communication" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In a world that is becoming dominated by multimedia, the likelihood of people being judged on snapshots of their appearance is increasing. Social networking, dating web sites and online profiles all feature people's photographs, and subsequently convey a visual message to an audience. Whilst the salience of facial features is well documented, other factors, such as clothing, will also play a role in impression formation. Clothing can communicate an extensive and complex array of information about a person, without the observer having to meet or talk to the wearer. A person's attire has been shown to convey qualities such as character, sociability, competence and intelligence (Damhorst, 1990), with first impressions being formed in a fraction of a second (Todorov et al., 2009). This study empirically investigates how the manipulation of small details in clothing gives rise to different first impressions, even those formed very quickly.\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Participants (N=274) rated four images on five dimensions (confidence, success, trustworthiness, salary and flexibility) on a scale from 1 to 7. There were no differences in ratings between the static and dynamic images for each suit so the two ratings were collapsed into one single rating. Therefore each rating presented is a mean of the static and dynamic scores. The main hypothesis was that people make global and rapid judgements of the qualities of others based on clothing alone, when facial features are obscured.We looked at the mean ratings given by participants for the male figure in a bespoke suit and an off-the-peg suit on each of the five dimensions (trustworthiness, confidence, success, salary and flexibility). The five dimensions were also aggregated into a composite impression score. Perceiver salary was also investigated to explore the role earnings could play on the perception of the different suits.Table I shows the mean ratings for the male figure by suit (bespoke suit and off-the-peg) and earnings (PS0-25,000/low, PS25-50,000/medium and over PS50,000/high). A higher score represents a more favourable rating. To test whether there were any differences in how respondents rated the suits a set of mixed analysis of variances were conducted, with suit type (bespoke and off-the-peg) as the within subjects factor and earnings (low, medium and high) as the between subjects factor for each rating.For the confidence rating analysis revealed a significant main effect of suit type, F(1, 271)=10.36, p<0.01, e2=0.04, power=0.89, and a significant main effect of earnings, F(2, 271)=6.42, p<0.01, e2=0.05, power=0.90. The interaction effect was not significant, F(2, 271)=0.42, p=0.66, e2=0.00, power=0.12. Post hoc tests using Bonferroni adjusted a level tests were carried out showing a significant difference in ratings between low and high earning respondents.For the success rating analysis revealed a main effect bordering on significant for suit type, F(1, 270)=3.49, p=0.06, e2=0.01, power=0.46, and a significant main effect of earnings, F(2, 270)=10.58, p<0.01, e2=0.07, power=0.99. The interaction effect was not significant, F(2, 270)=0.49, p=0.61, e2=0.00, power=0.13. Post hoc tests using Bonferroni adjusted a level tests were carried out showing a significant difference in ratings between low and medium earning respondents, and low and high earning respondents.For the trustworthiness rating analysis revealed no main effect of suit type, F(1, 270)=0.21, p=0.65, e2=0.00, power=0.07, but there was a significant main effect of earnings, F(2, 270)=4.34, p=0.01, e2=0.03, power=0.75. The interaction effect was not significant, F(2, 270)=1.93, p=0.15, e2=0.01, power=0.40. Post hoc tests using Bonferroni adjusted a level tests were carried out showing a significant difference in ratings between medium and high earning respondents.For the salary rating analysis revealed a significant main effect of suit type, F(1, 270)=14.00, p<0.01, e2=0.05, power=0.96, and a significant main effect of earnings, F(2, 271)=8.40, p<0.01, e2=0.06, power=0.96. The interaction effect was bordering on significant, F(2, 270)=2.85, p=0.06, e2=0.02, power=0.56. Post hoc tests using Bonferroni adjusted a level tests were carried out showing a significant difference in ratings between medium and high earning respondents.For the flexibility rating analysis revealed a main effect bordering on significant for suit type, F(1, 271)=3.00, p=0.09, e2=0.01, power=0.41, but no main effect of earnings, F(2, 271)=0.76, p=0.47, e2=0.00, power=0.18. The interaction effect was also not significant, F(2, 271)=0.59, p=0.55, e2=0.00, power=0.15.For the composite rating analysis revealed a significant main effect of suit type, F(1, 272)=11.49, p<0.01, e2=0.04, power=0.92, and a significant main effect of earnings, F(2, 272)=6.61, p<0.01, e2=0.05, power=0.91. The interaction effect was not significant, F(2, 272)=0.11, p=0.90, e2=0.00, power=0.07. Post hoc tests using Bonferroni adjusted a level tests were carried out showing a significant difference in ratings between low and high earning respondents, and medium and high earning respondents.In summary, the results showed a main effect of suit type for the confidence, salary and composite ratings, with a borderline effect for the success and flexible personality ratings. All effects of suit type were due to the bespoke suit being rated more favourably than the off-the-peg suit.A main effect of respondent earnings was also found for the confidence, success, trustworthiness, salary and composite ratings. All effects (apart from trustworthiness) were due to high earning individuals giving less favourable ratings of both suits.\nDiscussion: This study set out to investigate whether minor changes in attire would affect first impressions when facial features are absent and with limited exposure time. The tendency to make rapid judgements based on clothing alone was demonstrated by significantly different ratings being given to the same model in closely related styles of dress. In a controlled experiment we explored whether a minor manipulation of the man's clothing (the cut of a suit) would influence judgements and found that the bespoke suit consistently produced more positive impressions than a similar off-the-peg suit.The attributes used as measures in this study are those with social and occupational significance: confidence, success, salary, flexibility and trustworthiness. The ratings for the man were higher on all ratings when he was wearing the bespoke suit, reaching statistical significance for the first four dimensions and for an overall composite rating, but not for trustworthiness.In addition to suit type we also investigated how participants at different levels of earnings differed in their judgements. Respondents were divided into low, medium and high earners. It was found that earnings had a consistent effect on ratings, so that the higher the participant's earnings the lower the ratings, for both suits. An effect of earnings was found for the confidence, success, salary and composite ratings, suggesting that higher perceiver job status negatively affected overall perception for both suit types.Most previous research has manipulated experimentally the overall style of clothing, for example, comparing formal clothing with casual wear. The purpose of the current experiment was to address the methodological limitations of previous studies. We compared a man in two dark blue suits of herringbone cloth, where one was bespoke and the other an off-the-peg suit. Therefore this change was very subtle; both suits were formal, the same colour and the same fabric. Perceivers could not have been influenced by facial features and the short exposure time was carefully controlled, yet nonetheless the suit type had a significantly different impact upon perceivers. This effect is especially strong when it is considered that the ratings are of a heterogeneous nature, exploring very different perceptual variables.It is now well documented that people can form snap judgements, with an above chance level of accuracy, and can do so from a single static picture (Olivola and Todorov, 2010a). These inferences are based on visual cues such as facial features, facial expressions and posture, but clothing is also known to play a part (Naumann et al., 2009). A change in clothing style has been found to significantly affect inferences about the personality of that individual (Bell, 1991; Paek, 1986). In particular people pay attention to details such as the type of suit and the fit and colour of the garment being worn (Johnson et al., 2002), although to our knowledge this study is the first to do so without facial information and with limited exposure time.The earnings levels of the perceivers were considered when comparing the effects since it has been suggested that members of certain social groups or communities are more susceptible to the communication of clothing than others (McCracken and Roth, 1989), and that bespoke suit customers are more likely to have higher earnings (Oliver et al., 1993). Indeed, the results revealed that both suits were rated as less favourable by higher earning individuals as they may have been more familiar with this attire, therefore it had less impact on their perceptions.Previous studies have shown that clothing can be a vehicle by which personal attributes are communicated about a person (e.g. Damhorst, 1990) and can transfer cultural meaning from the world to the individual via product design and marketing (McCracken, 1988). Our findings show the positive impression that a bespoke suit creates, perhaps arising from the beliefs that individuals have regarding clothing of this type. For example, Kwon (1994) showed that men believe that well-chosen clothing can communicate that they are intelligent, competent, knowledgeable, honest and reliable. It appears that the finer details of the bespoke suit communicated other positive attributes, such as confidence and success, more so than the off-the-peg suit, even with brief exposure time. This finding has implications for men in western society where appearance can communicate personal attributes and first impressions have considerable personal and occupational consequences.Interest in fashion has long been seen as a female domain, although men are becoming increasingly fashion and appearance conscious. The burgeoning of fashion phenomena such as grooming, shaving and tanning products for men bear witness to this growth market. Men also use clothing to improve their appearance or create and maintain their identity, and it is still an accepted sartorial rule that \"every man should own at least one suit or equivalent garment according to his heritage\"[1]. In their 2004 study Frith and Gleeson (2004) revealed that males experience pressure for self-management and spend time planning outfits to emphasise qualities that fit into \"cultural ideals of masculinity\", such as height and athleticism. Yet men's scope for variety is less than women's. Professional men, in particular, have fewer clothing options than women and the suit forms the accepted dress code in many professional work settings. On the evidence of this study it appears men may be justified in such status-seeking purchases, for apparel that is well fitted and well tailored, it seems, can positively enhance the image they communicate to others. Given the power of prescribed dress codes to de-individualise (Schiermer, 2010), personal tailoring may offer the male the means to re-assert his self-identity within narrowly prescribed parameters. This is also pertinent to the internalising process of wearing individualised apparel and future research should aim to deepen our understanding of the increased confidence, comfort or sociability afforded to the male when wearing a suit that is tailored to his body shape. For, as well as expressing attributes, style of dress may also play a role in creating positive attributes and many fashion theorists draw attention to not just the reception but also the production of identity via clothing (Venkatesh et al., 2010). Recent research from the newly emerging field of enclothed cognition would endorse this assertion (Adam and Galinsky, 2012).Research into embodied cognition suggests that future studies need to explore how male clothing interacts with body posture to produce changes in cognition as well as in the perceptions of others. Adopting a powerful pose has been linked to advantageous thought, behaviour and physiological responses (Carney et al., 2010; Huang et al., 2011). This raises the question of whether a weak body posture undermines the positive impression created by a well-fitted garment or whether a powerful pose enhances the effect. With female attire there is more pressure to balance attractiveness and professionalism. Our current work is showing how minor changes in the provocativeness of female work attire creates negative perceptions, especially of a female in a senior position (Howlett et al., under review). This also raises the question of whether manipulating the job status of male models would affect the perceptions created by minor changes in clothing.Overall, we have shown that a man wearing a bespoke rather than an off-the-peg suit creates a more favourable impression, although this may be mediated by the salary level of the perceiver. This study is the first to empirically investigate these judgements using time-limited images with minor clothing manipulations on a model devoid of any facial features or expressions, enabling us to conclude with confidence that the impressions arose only from the apparel and were not confounded by the physical attractiveness of the model. We conclude that even apparently minor modifications to clothing style can have a major impact on the information conveyed to perceivers. People are judged on their overall head-to-toe appearance within seconds, and the fundamental role that choice of apparel plays in creating a positive first impression cannot be underestimated.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Clothing communicates information about the wearer and first impressions can be heavily influenced by the messages conveyed by attire. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of minor changes in clothing on the perception of a male model, in the absence of facial information with limited time exposure.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In an on-line study, 274 participants rated four images on five dimensions (confidence, success, trustworthiness, salary and flexibility). The man was depicted wearing a bespoke (made-to-measure) and a regular (off-the-peg) suit, which differed only in minor details. Participants saw the faceless images for a maximum five seconds.\nFindings: - The man was rated more positively on all attributes apart from trustworthiness when pictured in the bespoke suit. The earnings of participants also played a role in perception, with higher earners giving lower ratings to both suit types.\nPractical implications: - Minor clothing manipulations can give rise to significantly different inferences. Even small changes in clothing choice can communicate different information to a perceiver. On the evidence of this study it appears men may be advised to purchase clothing that is well-tailored, as it can positively enhance the image they communicate to others.\nOriginality/value: - This study is the first to empirically investigate first impressions using time-limited images with minor clothing manipulations on a faceless model. Impressions arose only from clothing and were not confounded by physical attractiveness or facial features.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
e-HRM in Mexico: adapting innovations for global competitiveness	[ "Communication technologies", "Human resource management", "Mexico" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Human resource management (HRM) departments using information and communication technologies (ICTs) is becoming an increasingly important phenomenon commonly referred to as e-HRM. Automating HR tasks and practices is transforming the traditional paper-and-pencil, labor-intensive HR tasks, into efficient, fast-response activities that enable companies to anticipate and profit from environmental shifts to create a much needed competitive advantage (Marler, 2006; Watson Wyatt, 2002). The expectation is that HR departments using ICTs may now \"be liberated from administrative shackles and able to focus more on developing intellectual capital, social capital, and managing knowledge to improve an organization's competitive advantage\" (Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003, p. 373).Some may argue that e-HRM practices will converge and become universalized under the dual impact of globalization and technology for firms willing to compete worldwide. Nonetheless, there is emerging evidence that, in spite of widespread availability of similar information technologies, even in relatively standard HR activities as recruiting, cultural influences in fact have a strong effect (Puck et al., 2006). Additionally, Strohmeier (2006) also has found that using technology for HR purposes may have different results, such as centralization or decentralization, increased or decreased headcount, efficiency and effectiveness. Concurrently, Elvira and Davila (2005a) have highlighted the lack of HRM research in Latin America, in spite of the growing number of significant multi-nationals based in this region (Debrah and Budhwar, 2001) and the intrinsic interest in people management for this large and increasingly important part of the world. More specifically, research on e-HRM in Latin American economies, like Mexico, where some national firms have started to compete worldwide, is sorely lacking (Florkowski and Olivas-Lujan, 2006; Olivas-Lujan et al., 2006). The main objective of this study is to present the prime findings of how four internationally competitive Mexican firms have implemented their e-HRM strategies, a description of their self-selected \"Best Practices\" in the use of ICTs for HR. Yet, our effort goes beyond a merely descriptive approach; our scholarly contribution consists of linking the emerging literature on e-HRM (Florkowski and Olivas-Lujan, 2006; Guetal and Stone, 2005; Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003; Lepak and Snell, 1998; Marler, 2006; Ruel et al., 2004; Strohmeier, 2007) with the most recent and noteworthy work on Latin American and Mexican HRM (Arias-Galicia, 2005; Diaz-Saenz and Witherspoon, 2000; Elvira and Davila, 2005a, b; Kras, 1989; Martinez, 2005).This paper is structured as follows. First, we present the definition and relevant theoretical background of e-HRM, an emerging research stream with enormous potential significance for personnel administrators and scholars. Second, we describe how studying e-HRM in Mexico needs adjusting the extant literature because of economic and cultural differences that are shared by many Latin American and other emerging economies. Third, we go over our findings on how e-HRM is being used by four Mexican firms that are competing in the global marketplace: \"Cold Drinks,\" \"Local Bank,\" \"Smart-Building\" and \"TEC-E\"[1]. Recommendations for future research and limitations of our paper are presented in the concluding section.\nDefinitions and background on e-HR: The terms e-HR[2] or e-HRM were first used in the late 1990s when \"e-commerce\" was sweeping the business world. Equivalent terms in the literature include B2E (business-to-employee) and \"Virtual HR.\" A Watson Wyatt (2002) survey of 649 US companies adopted the definition of B2E as:... the application of any technology enabling managers and employees to have direct access to HR and other workplace services for communication, performance, reporting, team management, knowledge management, and learning in addition to administrative applications.Numerous sources, of both practitioner and scholarly origin (Cedar, 2004; Cober et al., 2004; Jones, 1998; Kettley and Reilly, 2003; Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003; Mercer HR Consulting, 2002; Strohmeier, 2007; Watson Wyatt, 2002; Wright and Dyer, 2000) argue that technology developments have a potential to generate a more strategic role rather than an administrative one for the HR department. e-HRM also provides the HR function with the opportunity to create new avenues for contributing to organizational effectiveness through such means as knowledge management and the creation of intellectual and social capital (Lengnick-Hall and Moritz, 2003). Thus, the traditional notion of HRM changing towards a strategic management function may arguably be enabled by the use of ICTs. Instead of a centralized personnel team handling everyday tasks such as approving pay rises, sorting out training, and checking holiday entitlements, these can be handled by the company employees themselves - or by their supervisors - using technology-mediated processes. At the very least, the literature indicates that the cost of doing HR transactions is lowered (in most, but not all cases), and response times are improved, as well as quality and consistency of the HR information; in the best case scenario, this use of ICTs allows HR managers to become strategic members of the top management team (SHRM, 2005; Strohmeier, 2006; Watson Wyatt, 2002).e-HRM as a research stream is only recently emerging, partly as a consequence of the latest technological advancements. In the past, HR information systems were too expensive, unfriendly, and their capacity was insufficient to manage the large amounts of information that personnel activities require. It is not until a few years ago that ICTs have become powerful and accessible enough that, at least in the most advanced economies, even small and medium firms may make use of them (Olivas-Lujan and Florkowski, n.d.). These technologies include - but are not limited to - HR functional applications, integrated HR suites, and HR extranet applications; the latter interactive voice response systems, HR intranet applications, employee self-service applications, manager self-service applications, HR portals, and wireless or mobile HR applications (Olivas-Lujan, 2003). Advances in information technology have made it possible to automate just about any sub-function of HR: staffing, training and development, compensation, benefits, performance, career and compliance management (Olivas-Lujan, 2003; Guetal and Stone, 2005). But for certain companies, some of these sub-functions might be more important - strategically speaking - or more expensive not to automate than others (Olivas-Lujan et al., 2006). For example, training and development might be more important - comparatively speaking - for tourist firms that want to distinguish themselves by their levels of customer service, than for retailers focused on providing the lowest cost on their merchandise and their operations are not sophisticated.Several tentative models have recently emerged to study e-HRM. Strohmeier (2007) suggests examining the \"context - configuration - consequences\" of e-HRM as the theoretical umbrella, taking into consideration levels of analysis, actors, strategies, activities, and technologies. He laments the fact that the extant literature lacks theoretical sophistication. His review also shows that \"current research shows a strong national focus on the USA, with only scattered results from other countries\" (p. 39). Ruel et al. (2004) have conceptualized an e-HRM model based on the HR literature and their field work in industrialized economies. Their model has been used to describe the e-HRM strategy used by five multinational firms operating in the Benelux region (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg): DOW, ABN-AMRO, Ford Motor Company, IBM, and Belgacom. Most likely due to the nature of their sample, their e-HRM model described above does not consider the cultural, socio-demographic, political and economical factors that could affect the adoption and use of e-HRM. This model originated in a context where the contextual factors are well developed and stable, a fact that presents particular challenges for emerging economies like most Latin American countries, including Mexico. As Elvira and Davila (2005a, p. 241) state, an important, unanswered question for HR is \"the role of technology, which to date has played a limited role for HR in Latin America\". Besides, as Elvira and Davila suggest, technology may have a negative effect in personal relationships; therefore, \"its use will need to be carefully managed by HR\" (p. 241). The need to develop both descriptive and theoretically-grounded work that takes into consideration the idiosyncrasies of emerging economies is clearly warranted.Mexico's economic and cultural factors\nMethod and exploratory results on Mexican e-HRM: Sample\nDiscussion: The four cases above illustrate several of the unique characteristics of Mexico's economic development and culture and how they affect e-HRM implementation. The four companies visited are in the phase of strategically transforming the HR department, albeit at different levels, and all have adopted ICTs in recent years and seem poised to continue their automation of HRM services. The firms in this project cannot afford the disadvantages associated with traditional paper-and-pencil, labor-intensive HR tasks in a globally competitive marketplace. Their HR departments have adapted and integrated e-HRM innovations into their processes, thus becoming exemplars of HRM \"Best Practices\" in Mexico. Two of these firms, \"Smart Building\" and \"Cold Drinks\" are truly global players and have adopted and embraced their e-HRM strategies early. On the other hand, \"Local Bank\" and \"Tec-E\" are catching up very rapidly, but they already appear as the national leaders in their respective industries. The different stages of e-HRM adoption between the four cases presented illustrate distinctive influences stemming from Mexico's economic development and culture. Even though Mexico's is one of the largest and most robust economies in Latin America, it still is an emerging economy. This fact sharply contrasts stable economies such as European and from USA and Canada where most of the e-HRM research has been conducted to date.Additionally, our findings suggest that operational HR activities are being delivered through their company's self-service portals (e-compensation, e-training, e-recruitment and e-staffing, among other activities) with a large degree of expected savings and efficiencies, but also enabling the expected changes in HR's role. We have found that the firms in our research are working toward changing the employees' mindset in a way that is consistent with their e-HRM strategy. Changing employees' mindsets with respect to HR implies changing the way in which social relationships between employees have been constructed.Our first research question stated: how do the Mexican infrastructure and culture impact the implementation of the e-HRM strategy? Although the firms visited have more than enough resources to invest on IT for their HR departments, the country's geography, institutions, contextual and social contracts, employee educational levels, industry effects as in financial institutions, generational gaps, social relationships, and infrastructure disparities clearly shape the applicability and use of an e-HRM strategy. Even if the methodology does not allow us to generalize, these cases have allowed us to describe the increasing phenomenon of acceptance and adaptation of e-HRM in Mexico in a rich, qualitatively oriented manner for these very successful companies. The importance of social relationships, respect for authority, and a changing psychological contract is certainly evident in their implementation of e-HRM (Diaz-Saenz and Witherspoon, 2000; Elvira and Davila, 2005a, b).With regard to the second research question: to what extent is there convergence in the application of e-HRM in Mexico's globally competitive firms? Even if the companies investigated represent only a tiny number of the firms that could show homogeneity in terms of their e-HRM strategy, we cannot find much evidence for convergence. If our findings can be replicated at a larger scale, the question of convergence in technologies, applications, and practices that are being automated in Mexico seems to obtain a resounding negative. These conclusions of course, must be considered in light of our chosen qualitative methodology that selected firms across different industries and target markets. In the following, concluding section, we outline suggestions for future research.\nFuture research and final remarks: The four firms we have described in this paper have experienced radical changes in their HR functions due to the adoption of ICTs. We could argue that HR is now seen as a strategic player at the firm level. However, the HR departments' tasks have in fact tended to become less \"human\" in the sense that the employees have more contact with computers and technology than with the employees of the personnel department. The relevance of the HR department may have decreased in the eyes of the employees as they do not interact with it in person as much as before, due to the \"HR self-service\" platforms. In this respect, our research has not yet covered enough levels in the organization, for example, with the end-users of the self-service HR functions like Fisher and Howell (2004) have done. It will be important to integrate such a perspective into future research due to the fact that Mexican employees in some firms might not be ready yet to have some HR sub-functions delivered online.Additionally, cultural, contextual and social contracts; institutions, such as unions, education levels, and the country infrastructure, might provide varying degrees of difficulty in implementing e-HRM strategies in Mexico, as well as in the rest of Latin America and other emerging economies. To fully understand the ways e-HRM is deployed and adapted in such contexts, it is crucial that we also take into consideration any relevant local idiosyncrasies. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the application of ICTs for HR departments in a Latin American setting, and clearly the implication is that much remains to be done.Future research including tools for measuring e-HRM performance and consequences at the departmental and company levels are necessary, as Strohmeier (2007) suggests. More explicit examination of Elvira and Davila's (2005b, p. 249) contextual and social contract constructs should also aid our understanding of how e-HRM is more likely to be implemented in Latin America in a \"humanistic, person-centered\" manner. Thus, more detailed research that answers Strohmeier's (2007) call for more theoretically grounded research is needed. Replications of studies that document the diffusion and dissemination of ICTs for HR purposes in other areas of the world (e.g. Florkowsi and Olivas-Lujan, 2006) should also help our understanding of how this phenomenon is developing in other latitudes. Indeed, the very elaboration of a research agenda and the implications for practitioners new era for HR management should be an important contribution to enhance the competitiveness of firms from emerging countries. We hope this paper is a significant step in that direction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Using information and communication technologies to deliver human resource services (also known as e-HRM) has become an important strategy for firms seeking to achieve a competitive advantage. A case-based study was carried out with the purpose of investigating how four of the most competitive Mexican firms are implementing their e-HRM strategy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Literature from e-HRM and human resource management in Latin America is reviewed and integrated. Four case studies developed in Mexican firms are depicted.\nFindings: - Evidence suggests that, to fully understand the way e-HRM is used in firms from emerging economies, it is important to take into consideration local idiosyncrasies.\nOriginality/value: - This study integrates Latin American dimensions of HR management in the study of e-HRM, a budding research stream that is under-investigated in emerging countries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The structure of policy-induced innovation networks in Slovenia	[ "Innovation", "Universities", "R\n\t\t\t\t\t&\n\t\t\t\tD", "Slovenia", "Social networks" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and purpose: Since gaining independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, the Republic of Slovenia has made significant achievements in economic and social development. Slovenia became a member of the European Union in 2004 and a member of OECD in 2010. It has been recognized as an economic leader among the states of the former Yugoslavia and ranks favorably among its EU colleagues in many measures of economic performance and innovation. Ranked as an \"innovation follower\" in the 2013 Innovation Union Scoreboard (Hollanders and Es-Sadki, 2013), Slovenia continues to perform below Europe's innovation leaders but close to the EU 27 average. Its scientific base is considered strong and growing. For example, Eurostat-European Commission (2013a) reports Slovenia's research and development (R\nImportance of networks in NISs: Furman et al. (2002) have articulated a theory of national innovative capacity that draws from three theoretical threads in the innovation literature: the ideas-driven growth theory model articulated by Romer (1990); the cluster-based theory of competitive advantage developed by Porter (1990); and the NISs literature developed by Nelson (1993) and others.\nNetworking policy in the NIS of Slovenia: Understanding these potential benefits, the Slovenian government has focused several policy instruments on improving linkages among innovation actors. As the Slovenian government developed the Audacious Slovenia plan, policymakers considered the input and advice offered by stakeholders as well as experts, including the several recent reviews of the system, (Bucar, 2011; OECD, 2012; Meijenfeldt et al., 2010). The Audacious Slovenia plan reflects the common concerns expressed in these three reports that Slovenia's research sector was insufficiently connected to its business sector. Although the research sector was showing strong improvement with scientific outputs such as publications and citations, that knowledge was not finding its way into the market to create economic value. Some made a supply-side argument for this lack of uptake, noting the lack of incentives for public science to understand or respond to potential markets. In particular, the method for awarding research grants, it was argued, discourages partnerships both within and across institutions (OECD, 2012; Marinsek, 2013). Others pointed to a lack of demand due to limited absorptive capacity in companies, including the low level of human capital and R\nSNA methods for innovation policy: Given that one of the primary objectives of these three programs is to encourage linkage among innovation actors, we believe that SNA is an appropriate tool for exploring whether these programs have met some of their short-term objectives. As described by Vonortas (2013) the application of SNA to evaluation of R\nResults: Formal center network\nObservations and interpretations: To assist with the interpretations of these results, we reviewed them with actors from the network. These actors included directors of centers, academics participating in network projects, and business leaders also participating in the projects. We conducted semistructured interviews with seven of these individuals and also reviewed the results with policymakers. Our observations in this section are informed by the results, feedback from the network actors, and our reading of the literature describing similar networks in other countries.\nImplications for Slovenian national innovation policy: As the Slovenian government considers renewing these programs, it should consider how organizations have responded to partnership incentives. The current policies are generating an R\nLessons for other nations: The cultural transformation that must take place within Slovenia to encourage R\nLimitations, extensions and open questions: Our data sources and methodology present some limitations and implications. A key assumption of the database design is that the relevant organizational unit or \"member\" of the network is the company, faculty, or department, implying that a company, faculty, or department is a monolithic unit connected to other organizations. In reality, individuals within these organizations act on their own connections and experiences, and these may or may not encourage other individuals in the same organization to engage in partnerships. Thus, we may be overstating the extent to which one connection among organizations generates experience that will lead to future connection. This surely depends on the degree of communication among individuals within the organizational units.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The recent economic crisis has significantly slowed Slovenia's recent social and economic progress and exposed some important long-term problems such as a reliance on low value added industries and lagging labor productivity. The Slovenian government has taken steps to create research partnerships between public science and the private sector and among multiple private sector companies. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a social network analysis (SNA) of the research partnerships and examine whether public funding has created the desired partnerships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors employed a SNA in two stages. In the first stage, the authors treated the founding partners of government-funded 32 research centers as a single two-mode network and investigated how each of the members was bound to the network. In the second stage of the analysis the authors used project data from ten of the centers to characterize a project network based on collaborations on specific projects. Thus, the second stage overlaps the center network with the project network. The authors used information from interviews with network members to assist in interpreting the results.\nFindings: Networking policies are stimulating collaborations among different types of centers and partners, but to differing degrees. While the formal collaborative network showed strong participation from the private sector, public research organizations, and higher education institutions, some of the centers are not well connected to the rest of the network. Partnership in the development of a proposal in response to a tender does not always translate into project collaboration, and the networks have evolved as project workplans and staffing plans are developed. The innovation network is evolving into an international network within and across scientific areas. Networks are path dependent and require policy stability; experienced bridging institutions can fill gaps where partners lack experience.\nResearch limitations/implications: The definition of a network member is the company, faculty, or department. In reality, individuals within these organizations are acting on their own connections and experiences, and these may or may not encourage other individuals in the same organization to engage in partnerships. Thus, the authors may be overstating the extent to which one connection among organizations generates experience that will lead to future connection. Another important limitation of the data is that for the second stage of the analysis the authors received project information from only ten of the 32 formal center programs examined in the first stage.\nPractical implications: Partnership is a learned behavior and the development of trust among partners takes time. The Slovenian government should provide policy stability and allow niches of technical excellence to emerge through consortium proposals. They should monitor the project partnerships and adjust funding so that it is reaching applicants that are actually partnering on projects rather than working alone or within their own institutional types. Other nations should also monitor the impact of partnership programs to ensure that as they evolve the funding is continuing to support and demonstrate the benefits partnership behavior.\nSocial implications: Due to the path dependent nature of innovation partnerships, the authors expect participation in innovation networks to generate a change in the culture of research and development (R\nOriginality/value: Like many nations struggling to emerge from the recession, Slovenia has to examine its long-term strategy for upgrading its industries and improving productivity. This paper demonstrates how policies to enhance the innovation agenda might be more effective by examining how the networking resources are actually being used, whether participants are participating in networks that cross institutional types, whether policies are encouraging the exchange of information across stages of the innovation process, and therefore whether the policy will move the culture toward greater collaboration and R\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Business leaders' views on the importance of strategic and dynamic capabilities for successful financial and non-financial business performance	[ "Capabilities", "Business performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Firms need to understand both their external environment and their internal resources and capabilities in order to perform successfully (Collis and Montgomery, 1995). Much has been written, by authors of what has come to be known as the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, about the need for specific types of internal resources and capabilities over the past 30 years (Barney, 1991; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; Teece et al., 1997), but there has been little empirical research on the relationship between capabilities and success (Wu, 2010) and most of that research has been embedded in single case studies (Grant and Verona, 2014). Firms are believed to need dynamic capabilities \"to integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address rapidly changing environments\" (Teece et al., 1997, p. 516). Other, more static, strategic capabilities can be of benefit if they enable the firm to provide value to consumers in a unique way that cannot readily be imitated by competitors (Barney, 1991; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990).\n2. Background: 2.1. Strategic capabilities\n3. Method: The relative paucity of empirical research and the shortcomings of single case studies for studying strategy have been known for more than a decade. Teach and Schwartz (2000) observed that the strategies developed by executives are contingent upon firm size and type, and the degree of environmental turbulence, and proposed the use of methods that permit collection of data from multiple firms of different sizes and types across multiple industries and in different environments (Their call is echoed in the later works of Wu, 2010 and Grant and Verona, 2014, with which we opened this paper). Teach and Schwartz (2000) conducted content analysis of CEOs' letters in annual reports, thus using secondary data as a source of information about the strategy of listed companies. Using only primary data from a survey of the senior managers of Australian firms, Pecotich et al. (2003) found that strategy makers' activities mapped better to Porter's (1985) generic strategies than competing static models (but they did not attempt to map strategy with performance). Indeed, the difficulty of obtaining primary data directly from strategy makers in firms of multiple sizes and types still places severe limitations on empirical research, and perhaps particularly on studies on dynamic strategies in turbulent times.\n4. Findings: 4.1. Identified strategic capabilities\n5. Discussion and conclusion: This study identified a set of dynamic and strategic capabilities that senior managers believe an organisation should possess. Strategic capabilities of particular importance are good leadership and vision, and selection and retention of good staff. Innovation and creativity, and quality and differentiated products or services, are also important. Dynamic capabilities of particular importance are strategic thinking and flexible leadership and knowledge management, flexible organisational culture, strategic alliances and joint ventures. Technology flexibility, redeployment of assets and innovative response are also important.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on research that identifies the relationships that senior managers believe exist between capabilities and business success. In doing so, it addresses the need for more empirical research about the role of strategic and dynamic capabilities in organisational performance. It also highlights the critical strategic and dynamic capabilities that are most valuable for practising managers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A multi-method study was conducted. Eight types of strategic capability and ten types of dynamic capability commonly found in organisations were identified through consecutive literature review, web site content analysis and interviews with senior executives. A questionnaire survey was then used to ask senior officers of publicly listed Australian firms about the importance of each capability and financial and non-financial performance indicators. The relationship between capabilities and performance was measured by regression modelling.\nFindings: Good leadership with an innovative vision and selection and retention of good staff and developing their skills and capabilities were the stand out strategic capabilities. Strategic thinking about the big picture and the long-term and flexible leaders who can lead and manage adaptation to change were considered to be the most important dynamic capabilities. Strategic capabilities were more often associated with indicators of financial success, and dynamic capabilities were more often associated with non-financial measures of organisational performance.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to make a distinction between strategic and dynamic capabilities in examining the relationship between capabilities and business success. The results demonstrate that the distinction has both theoretical and practical value.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The intention to quit smoking: The impact of susceptibility, self-efficacy, social norms and emotional intelligence embedded model	[ "Behaviour", "Smoking", "Young adult" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite a worldwide decrease in tobacco consumption (World Health Organization, 2017), tobacco use among the population of developing countries is increasing (Goodchild et al., 2017). One of the major concerns for all parties involved in tobacco control is that tobacco consumption among the youth population is increasing at an alarming rate (The Tobacco Atlas, 2017). A considerable percentage of young people use cigarettes or some forms of tobacco-related products (Ahlgren et al., 1982; Curry et al., 1997; Delnevo et al., 2016; Myers and Kelly, 2006; Shang et al., 2017).\nLiterature review and creation of the conceptual model: The term social norms can be defined as the rules that reflect an acceptable behavior within a group. Previous studies suggest that the influence of social networks affects the behavior of young smokers (Byron et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2001; Christakis and Fowler, 2008; Giskes et al., 2006; Adams and Schaefer, 2016). Therefore, individuals in a society who are popular may influence the smoking cessation of others by setting a standard social norm that explains the boundaries of permissible or desirable behaviors by the members of a society (Ahern et al., 2009; Caetano and Clark, 1999; Curry et al., 1993; Chuang et al., 2005; Karasek et al., 2012; Lozano et al., 2016; Tseng et al., 2001).\nMethodology: This study is based on primary data analysis. Data were collected from individuals who were studying in different higher learning institutions in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Five experts (including academic experts) and five individuals who had already given up smoking were invited to review the questionnaire to assess the content and validity of the instrument. Based on their suggestions, items under each construct were amended. This research then applied a self-administered survey via the convenience sampling method with a representative sample size of 500. Only 400 responses were used in the final data analysis as some of the questionnaires were incomplete, while some of them showed little variance in responses.\nResults: Analysis\nDiscussion: This study found that both perceived EI and perceived social norms had a significant direct positive influence on intention to quit smoking among young smokers. Numerous studies have suggested that self-efficacy has a strong influence on smoking cessation programs in the progress of health behavior change and maintenance (Baer et al., 1986; Condiotte and Lichtenstein, 1981; Gwaltney et al., 2009), and this study focused on the role of self-efficacy in quitting tobacco consumption. Perceived susceptibility and perceived self-efficacy were also observed to have moderating effects on the intention to quit smoking through perceived EI and perceived social norms. However, a young smoker's self-efficacy did not appear to have any significant direct influence on the intention to quit smoking, rather it was found to play a moderating role between perceived social norms and the intention to quit smoking.\nLimitations and future directions: Although the model was developed to generalize findings in similar developing countries like Bangladesh, the applicability of the model in other developing countries apart from Bangladesh is yet to be tested. Future studies may wish to test the model in other developing countries to confirm its global acceptance. The sample size in future studies should also be increased for examination of the potential interaction effects among the variables in measuring an individual's intention to quit smoking. The current study is based on data from Dhaka city (capital of Bangladesh) only, so future studies might collect data from a statewide population-based survey focused on all the divisional parts of Bangladesh.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: From the perspective of developing countries, studies regarding the behavioral effects of quitting tobacco consumption on emerging psychological determinants are limited. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of emotional intelligence (EI), social norms, susceptibility and self-efficacy on the behavioral effects of quitting tobacco consumption among young smokers in developing countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: By reviewing existing literature, this study developed a conceptual model to test the influences of significant psychological determinants in regards to a young smoker's intention to quit smoking. Accordingly, a survey instrument was designed to collect data from young smokers in Bangladesh using the convenience sampling method. A total of 500 self-administered questionnaires were distributed, out of which only 400 questionnaires were used in final data analysis. This study applied partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed model.\nFindings: Perceived EI, perceived social norms and perceived susceptibility were found to have significant direct positive effects on intention to quit smoking. Perceived susceptibility and perceived self-efficacy were observed to have moderating effects on intention to quit smoking through perceived EI and perceived social norms respectively. However, perceived self-efficacy was not found to have any significant direct effect on intention to quit smoking.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study of its kind which combined EI, susceptibility, self-efficacy, and social norms in one theoretical framework to explain a young smoker's intention to quit smoking. Also, in the context of Bangladesh and similar developing countries, there are no such studies which used the psychological components investigated in this study to predict a young smoker's intention to quit smoking. Thus, the findings bring us closer to the goal of a tobacco-free society by allowing policy makers, NGOs, broader communities, and ultimately individual citizens to understand the psychological predictors of quitting tobacco consumption among young smokers in developing countries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Assessing sustainability reports of US universities	[ "University", "CSR reporting", "Voluntary disclosure", "Sustainability reporting", "Higher education institution" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Universities play a crucial role in the advancement of sustainable development. Through teaching and research, they have a significant influence when it comes to creating solutions to social problems and developing the skills of future decision makers (Adams, 2013; Lopatta and Jaeschke, 2014). Yet, internationalization and globalization as well as continuously increasing stakeholder requirements (e.g. state, politicians, students, academic staff, administrative staff and industry) have led to competitive pressure on universities (Lopatta and Jaeschke, 2014). Against this background, universities have begun using more and more reporting concepts previously associated with the entrepreneurial sector (Sassen et al., 2014). Despite playing a leading role in enhancing sustainable development in society, however, sustainability reporting by universities is still in its infancy compared with that of firms. This concerns both the depth of reporting and the content of what is reported (Lopatta and Jaeschke, 2014; Fonseca et al., 2011). Sustainability reporting satisfies the informational demands of university stakeholders and creates a sense of transparency by documenting information that is relevant to prior, current or future decisions.\n2. Literature review: Universities occupy a key position in supporting sustainable development because they help in identifying solutions to societal problems and conducting important research on this issue (Sassen et al., 2014). Furthermore, universities play a crucial role in training and educating future decision makers and thus have the opportunity to create new paradigms by building and expanding the skills of their students (Adams, 2013). Finally, universities have to deal with the effects of their own actions and operations, which might be mitigated by sustainability measures (Alonso-Almeida et al., 2015). Therefore, universities can have a significant influence on the environment - both on and off campus (Finlay and Massey, 2012).\n3. Research design: This investigation applied content analysis as its method to determine the relative importance of the topics that were disclosed. The research design is in line with existing studies (Lozano, 2011; Fonseca et al., 2011; Lopatta and Jaeschke, 2014; Sassen et al., 2014). In this context, the following two research questions were fundamental: Which universities report on their sustainability? And what exactly is reported? To ensure comparability, the information provided in the reports was evaluated using the GRI's environmental, economic and social performance indicators (GRI G4) along with a mix of specific indicators for universities that were developed by Sassen et al. (2014) and reflect the surveys conducted by Lozano (2011), Fonseca et al. (2011) and Lopatta and Jaeschke (2014).\n4. Results: 4.1 General content of the sustainability reports\n5. Discussion: This study performed a content analysis of 23 sustainability reports disclosed by US universities. Of the US universities sampled, 7 per cent (26 of 356) published a sustainability report with a title that suggested a comprehensive reference to all four dimensions of sustainability (i.e. environmental, social, economic and university). When selecting the sample, only those reports with the title \"(Campus) sustainability (annual) report\" and with a reporting period that covered the years 2012, 2013 or 2014 were chosen. Reports with titles such as \"Office of sustainability annual report\", \"(Sustainability) progress report\" or \"Dining and housing sustainability report\" were not taken into account. The level of reporting was generally low: 11 per cent for the economic dimension, 30 per cent for the environmental, 7 per cent for the social and 21 per cent for the educational dimension. Overall, these results show that sustainability reporting by US universities is still in its infancy. Yet, the low level of reporting does mirror the results of previous studies (Table I).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess sustainability reports of US universities to provide findings on the relative importance of disclosure topics.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors conducted content analysis by using a specific university-oriented catalogue of indicators to cover the specific sustainability-related aspects of this sector.\nFindings: Sustainability reporting by universities is still in its early stages. The findings show a clear focus on the environmental dimension, whereas the university and the economic dimensions see lower levels of reporting. The social dimension is rarely addressed.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research could use the results of this study as a basis for investigating stakeholder expectations towards universities' sustainability reporting and developing university-specific sustainability reporting standards.\nPractical implications: The results could be used to improve universities' sustainability reporting, as \"good\" practices are now readily available.\nSocial implications: The level of reporting on the social dimension is very low. Therefore, developing political incentives to improve universities' social performance might be of interest.\nOriginality/value: The investigated setting is unique and contributes several findings in a less-researched area along with several practical, social and research implications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
It is rotating leaders who build the swarm: social network determinants of growth for healthcare virtual communities of practice	[ "Virtual communities", "Healthcare", "Knowledge sharing", "Social networks", "Community building", "Semantic analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) in health care are becoming increasingly popular as technology enables and facilitates knowledge exchange among health professionals from all over the world, including areas that are geographically or professionally isolated (Dieleman and Duncan, 2013). In addition to websites that more generally target professionals of any industry (e.g. LinkedIn), an increasing number of social networking platforms that are dedicated to healthcare professionals exist. This offers healthcare professionals the possibility of collaborating with their peers, to manage information and to develop and spread knowledge (Jennings Mabery et al., 2013; Mairs et al., 2013).\n2. Virtual communities of practice: Advances in technology are deeply changing the way people communicate and exchange knowledge. The rise of the internet started many forms of online sociality, including e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, social networking and other online services (Heer and Boyd, 2005). In the past decades, social interaction has progressively become the most popular activity among internet users, and virtual communities (VCs) have emerged and rapidly increased in number and size (Zickuhr, 2010; Gross, 1999; Petersen, 1999). VCs can be described as \"social aggregations that emerge from the net when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling\" (Rheingold, 1993, p. 5). The main purposes of VCs are knowledge sharing and social interaction (Burnett, 2000; Ridings and Gefen, 2004). VCs are characterised by a persistent interaction among members (Smith, 1999; Ridings et al., 2002), which makes them feel part of a greater social group, establishes a notion of membership and contributes to the development of relationships among participants (Figallo, 1998; Sproull and Faraj, 1997). Compared to face-to-face communities, electronic means make participation independent from the physical location and allow a larger and a more heterogeneous composition of joiners (Sproull and Faraj, 1997), thus facilitating communication and enhancing diversity inside the learning network. Allen et al. (2016) proved the value of communication regardless of physical proximity: the quality of the exchanged knowledge and the communication behaviours have a much stronger impact than physical clustering. The characteristics provided by virtual interaction lead to the development of \"weak tie\" relationships (Granovetter, 1973), making VCs an ideal place to exchange knowledge and information also with people not known in person (Constant et al., 1996). Consistently, knowledge exchange is one of the main motivations leading people to participate in VCs (Wasko and Faraj, 2000).\n3. Research model and hypotheses: Our research model is presented in Figure 2, and the formulation of the study hypotheses is laid out in the subsequent sections.\n4. Methodology: To test the proposed research model and the relative hypothesis, we conduct an empirical research on a set of health professionals' online communities, namely, 16 VCoPs, all operating on the same web platform. Communication among members takes place in all of the 16 communities, each covering a specific topic of interest. The analysed platform includes contents and discussions on healthcare delivery and management. It connects over 19,000 members representing 185 countries, thus enabling the exchange and dissemination of knowledge and information among professionals having different roles in the healthcare system (e.g. policy decision makers, academics, physicians, etc.). The data set is composed of forum discussion records collected from April 2008 to April 2015, comprising more than 14,000 community members and about 20,000 community posts. Data collection for each community started from its creation. We analyse all the data available for the communities operating on the Web platform at the time of data collection - accordingly, our study includes the entire population and is not restricted to a random sample.\n5. Results: In our models, we study - longitudinally - the influence of content and network metrics on the number of new active members. The communities we analyse are homogeneous with respect to the target audience and the Web platform used, so we do not need to control for such differences. In addition, none of the analysed communities received external promotion through any marketing campaign. Attraction of new members was mainly based on word of mouth, with the additional possibility of finding the communities by crawling the web: contents are publicly available and indexed by the major search engines.\n6. Discussion and practical implications: According to the results presented in Section 5, the most important factors fostering the growth of VCoPs for healthcare professionals are the level of past activity, the use of a less complex language and the presence of a centralised leadership structure and of rotating leaders frequently changing their position over time.\n7. Limitations and conclusion: This study has identified factors leading to the growth of healthcare VCoPs using a new quantitative approach to the analysis of social interactions in this setting, taking into account simultaneously the content, the structure and the longitudinal dynamics of community communication.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors influencing the growth of healthcare virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) through a seven-year longitudinal study conducted using metrics from social-network and semantic analysis. By studying online communication along the three dimensions of social interactions (connectivity, interactivity and language use), the authors aim to provide VCoP managers with valuable insights to improve the success of their communities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Communications over a period of seven years (April 2008 to April 2015) and between 14,000 members of 16 different healthcare VCoPs coexisting on the same web platform were analysed. Multilevel regression models were used to reveal the main determinants of community growth over time. Independent variables were derived from social network and semantic analysis measures.\nFindings: Results show that structural and content-based variables predict the growth of the community. Progressively, more people will join a community if its structure is more centralised, leaders are more dynamic (they rotate more) and the language used in the posts is less complex.\nResearch limitations/implications: The available data set included one Web platform and a limited number of control variables. To consolidate the findings of the present study, the experiment should be replicated on other healthcare VCoPs.\nOriginality/value: The study provides useful recommendations for setting up and nurturing the growth of professional communities, considering, at the same time, the interaction patterns among the community members, the dynamic evolution of these interactions and the use of language. New analytical tools are presented, together with the use of innovative interaction metrics, that can significantly influence community growth, such as rotating leadership.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Personality characteristics and Six Sigma: a review	[ "Six Sigma", "Teams", "Personality characteristics", "Literature review" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In 1986, Six Sigma techniques were developed and implemented at Motorola to correct poor quality, saving Motorola $2.2 billion in four years (Banuelas Coronado and Antony, 2002). Since then, Six Sigma has spread around the globe and expanded in scope beyond process improvement to also address new product development, along with current applications in pure service industries, like health care. Antony (2007) suggests that Six Sigma will \"be around as long as it continues to yield bottom-line results.\" However, the persistence of Six Sigma projects that do not deliver benefits, Chakravorty (2010) suggests that there is more to be learned about the implementation of Six Sigma within organizations.\nDifferences between six sigma projects and general work team projects: One important question to readers is to identify the key differences between Six Sigma projects and general work team projects. We have identified three key differences (the use of certified Six Sigma experts, the structured DMAIC process, and one goal of Six Sigma in an organization is to change the company culture) that are outlined below.\nReview of the personality and team composition literature: Team composition has an important effect on team effectiveness, as has been shown in both quality improvement research (Kichuk and Wiesner, 1997) and in other team research (Gustavsson and Baccman, 2005; LePine, 2003; Mathieu et al., 2013; Schilpzand et al., 2011). Various team member characteristics have been studied using laboratory studies, field research, case studies, and meta-analyses of previous research.\nExtant conceptual model of drivers of six sigma project success: While personality is a key component to team composition that has not been studied in the context of Six Sigma, we now consider contextual variables that have already been proposed to be significant in the success of Six Sigma projects in order to identify other gaps in the literature.\nNew propositions for drivers of Six Sigma project success: We will now develop a series of propositions to augment the relations in Table III. These theories will be derived using a combination of the more fundamental extant theories from psychology, empirical results from the general project team performance literature, and an extensive interview with the president of an international Six Sigma consultancy (Bramwell, 2016). Following the literature review guidelines of Webster and Watson (2002), we will use a blend of these three sources to justify our propositions and, therefore, create new theory. So, new Six Sigma project success driver theory will be created, and as an offshoot a large amount of relevant psychology and general team project management literature will be presented as well.\nConclusions and directions for future research: We have developed new theory for success drivers of Six Sigma project success utilizing a blend of fundamental psychology, empirical results on general team project performance, and an extensive interview with the president of an international Six Sigma consultancy to draw out their experiences on projects undertaken over the last nine years (Bramwell, 2016). This blended theory development is in accordance with best practices for literature review guidelines (Webster and Watson, 2002).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: From two bodies of literature, the purpose of this paper is to generate theory for an updated conceptual model of drivers of Six Sigma project success by integrating extant psychology theory and empirical general team project results with a history of eight recent Six Sigma projects and extant Six Sigma literature. The new theory emphasizes the need for project leads to process information simultaneously, as well as develop prioritization abilities. Also, the new theory reverses the relations of three existing theories from general team composition theory. The new theory suggests that Six Sigma belt trainers should focus more on soft skill development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A literature review of the two bodies of literature previously mentioned.\nFindings: Eight new propositions related to the success of Six Sigma projects are developed. Further, two new constructs, \"project leader simultaneity of thought\" and \"prioritization ability\" are suggested for further investigation.\nOriginality/value: The authors suggest a few practical implications: first a greater emphasis on soft skill training would be beneficial in Six Sigma belt training. A second new point of emphasis in belt training is developing greater internal locus of control in belt candidates. Third, the authors suggest that during the team member selection process a diversity of backgrounds would be beneficial to Six Sigma project success.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Modeling students' problem solving performance in the computer-based mathematics learning environment	[ "Problem solving", "User modeling", "Educational Data Mining (EDM)", "Log file analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Recently, computer-based learning environments such as Massive Open Online Course and Intelligent Tutoring System become more prevalent. One important characteristic of these computer-based learning environments is that they can capture in their log files what students are doing while trying to learn new knowledge without interrupting their learning processes. Since log files allow for re-constructing how students used computer-based learning contents, analyzing the log files can enable us to quantitatively study the learning behaviors of students and the usefulness of computer-based learning contents. As a result, Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining (EDM) are emerging as new exciting research fields.\nData: Original data\nMethod: Univariate analysis\nResults: Figure 4 compares the two sets of receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves of the two regularized logistic regression and the standard BKT models plotted for the test set. While the first set of predictive models (RLR-L1, RLR-L2 and BKT) included KCs as predictor variables, the second set of predictive models (RLR-L1-No-KC, RLR-L2-No-KC, BKT-No-KC) did not, allowing for examining the importance of KCs as predictor variables in the model. Publicly available C++ codes (https://github.com/IEDMS/standard-bkt) were used in building the standard BKT model reported in this study. When applied to a binary classification problem like this study, an ROC curve is a plot of false positive (incorrectly predict that students will be able to solve a current problem solving step when they failed) vs true positive (correctly predict that students will be able to solve a current problem solving step) rates. Area under an ROC curve (AUC), which varies from 0.5 (predictive power no better than simple guessing) to 1.0 (perfect prediction), represents a quality of a binary classification model because a good classification model has a small false positive rate and a large true positive rate. AUC computed on the test set represents a probability that a binary classification model can correctly predict an outcome variable when it is provided with a new data set in the future (Fawcett, 2006). The ROC curves from four regularized logistic regression models (RLR-L1, RLR-L2, RLR-L1-No-KC, and RLR-L2-No-KC) are completely overlapping, and their AUC values (0.73) are about 20 percent larger than that of BKT with KCs (0.61), indicating that the regularized logistic regression models would be able to perform better than the standard BKT model in predicting future problem solving performance of students. When KCs are included in the predictive model, the standard BKT model's predictive power increased by approximately 9 percent. However, KCs seem to have no impact on the predictive power of the regularized logistic regression model, suggesting that predictor variables capturing past problem solving performance of students contain more information than KCs do. Since the AUC values of the four regularized logistic regression models are essentially same, only the regularized logistic regression model with KCs and L1 penalty (LRL-L1) is discussed in the subsequent sections.\nDiscussion: This study found that regularized logistic regression models with L1 and L2 penalties made better predictions on the problem solving performance of students than the standard BKT model, the most frequently used quantitative model of student learning in EDM. One possible explanation for this result is that regularized logistic regression models incorporated more information about how students solved relevant problems and what kinds of problems they were. While the standard BKT model had only one predictor, correctness of the most recent problem solving attempt, regularized logistic regression models developed in this study included predictor variables capturing various aspects of problems and problem solving performance of students. These additional predictors seem to have enabled regularized logistic regression models to have a better predictive power than the standard BKT model does. This interpretation is in line with what Pardos and Heffernan (2011) found in their study; they were able to improve the predictive power of their learning model by including problem difficulty as an additional parameter to the standard BKT model.\nLimitations of study: Learning is a complex phenomenon which can take many different forms. Since this study focuses on one specific form of learning, namely solving mathematics problems while using hints from a computer-based learning environment or other external resources, the findings from this study may not be generalized to other forms of learning. Also, although log files of computer-based learning environments provide rich information about learning behaviors of students, there are many things missing in the log files. For instance, the log files analyzed in this study do not provide information on student gender and affection, which may have an impact on how students used the computer-based learning environment. Similarly, these log files do not provide all learning activities students experienced; it is possible that students may have used an external source of information such as textbook or peer collaboration. It would be meaningful to examine whether such information can improve the predictive power when they are incorporated into the model.\nConclusion: The goal of this study was to develop a quantitative model that can predict whether middle school students can solve a mathematics problem without using any hints provided in the computer-based learning environment, based on how well they solved relevant problems in the past. Although providing instructional scaffolding is critical in facilitating student learning (Koedinger and Aleven, 2007), most computer-based learning environments are using simple heuristics or relying on students when they determine whether or not instructional scaffolding needs to be provided, which is unlikely to maximize the learning outcome of students. The findings from this study may suggest that the regularized logistic regression can be used in building a quantitative model of problem solving performance of students that can help determine when to provide instructional supports and guidance to students with different abilities in the computer-based learning environment.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a quantitative model of problem solving performance of students in the computer-based mathematics learning environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Regularized logistic regression was used to create a quantitative model of problem solving performance of students that predicts whether students can solve a mathematics problem correctly based on how well they solved other problems in the past. The usefulness of the model was evaluated by comparing the predicted probability of correct problem solving to the actual problem solving performance on the data set that was not used in the model building process.\nFindings: The regularized logistic regression model showed a better predictive power than the standard Bayesian Knowledge Tracing model, the most frequently used quantitative model of student learning in the Educational Data Mining research.\nOriginality/value: Providing instructional scaffolding is critical in order to facilitate student learning. However, most computer-based learning environments use heuristics or rely on the discretion of students when they determine whether instructional scaffolding needs be provided. The predictive model of problem solving performance of students can be used as a quantitative guideline that can help make a better decision on when to provide instructional supports and guidance in the computer-based learning environment, which can potentially maximize the learning outcome of students.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluating the competitive market efficiency of top listed companies in Egypt	[ "Production management", "Resource efficiency", "Competitive strategy", "Egypt" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The competitiveness of a country derives from the efficiency of its enterprises. While competitiveness at the national level is reflected in the performance of the country, it is reflected in the size of the market share at the company level (Porter, 1998). Both notions highlight the importance of efficiency and performance evaluation. Efficiency evaluation and benchmarking are widely used methods to identify the best practices as a means to improve the performance and increase productivity (Barros, 2004). Measuring efficiency levels has become an important issue for managers and investors alike (Galagedera and Silvapulle, 2002). Consumers also benefit from efficient resource usage and allocation because this may mean lower prices and more professional service (Anderson et al. 1998).Gandjour et al. (2002) concluded that many quality and efficiency indicators used by executives are lacking in general validity. Using a recognized and valid measure of efficiency is critical for managers seeking to increase the effectiveness of their organizations. Over the past two decades, PFA has become a popular methodology for evaluating the relative efficiencies of decision-making units (DMUs) within a relatively homogenous set (e.g. Sun and Lu, 2005). PFA is an approach to estimate the production function of organizations and organizational units and enables the assessment of their efficiency.Although widely employed to evaluate efficiency in the West (Rickards, 2003), PFA is less well known within the business sector in developing countries, and Egypt is no exception. In this research we fill this research gap through some initial analysis on listed companies in Egypt, an area where there has been virtually no previous research. We, going beyond the conventional methods, have attempted to measure the general efficiency emphasizing marketability, which is one of the important factors in measuring competitiveness of a company and its profitability. The paper also contributes methodologically through the use of various non-parametric PFA that provide considerable information for business analysis. More specifically, the purpose of this research is threefold:1. To assess the market performance of the top listed companies in Egypt using 2003 operating data.2. To examine the effects of companies operating characteristics on market efficiencies across these companies.3. To develop separate benchmarks for possible reductions in resources and possible increase in outputs used by top listed companies in Egypt.This paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly reviews relevant literature. The following section summarizes the methodology used to conduct the analysis. The subsequent section presents empirical results of the efficiency levels of Egyptian companies. After a brief preliminary data analysis, this section first sets out efficiency and super-efficiency scores derived from estimating the basic PFA models; it also presents sensitivity analysis of PFA-derived efficiency scores as a rough validity check on the results. Next, the paper sets out some managerial and policy implications of the analysis. The final section of the paper deals with the research limitations and explores avenues for future research.\nLiterature survey: PFA, pre-eminently data envelopment analysis (DEA), has been widely used as an efficiency measurement tool in a variety of fields. For instance, in the banking industry, Miller and Noulas (1996) examined the efficiency of large US banks. They found overall technical efficiency of around 97 per cent. However, the majority of banks were found to be too large and experiencing decreasing returns to scale. A second stage regression analysis showed that pure technical efficiency is positively related to bank size and bank profitability. Bhattacharya et al. (1997) used a two-stage DEA approach to examine the impact of liberalization on the efficiency of the Indian banking industry. In the first stage a technical efficiency score was calculated, whereas in the second stage a stochastic frontier analysis was used to attribute variation in efficiency scores to three sources: temporal, ownership and noise component. Using a bootstrapping DEA technique, Casu and Molyneux (2003) investigated efficiency across European banking systems. Results suggest that there has been a slight improvement in bank efficiency levels since the implementation of the EU's Single Market Programme. Krishnasamy (2003) used both DEA and Malmquist total factor productivity index (MPI) to evaluate bank efficiency and productivity changes in Malaysia over the period 2000-2001. The results from the analysis indicated that total MPI increased in all the bans studied. The growth of productivity in these banks was attributed to technological change rather than technical efficiency change. Lo and Lu (2006) employed a two-stage DEA approach including profitability and marketability to explore the efficiency of financial holding companies (FHCs) in Taiwan. Factor-specific measures and Banker-Charnes-Cooper (BCC) model were combined together to identify the inputs/outputs that are most important and to distinguish those FHCs which can be treated as benchmarks. Results show that big-sized FHCs are generally more efficient than small-sized ones. Wu et al. (2006) integrated DEA and neural networks (NNs) to examine the relative branch efficiency of a large Canadian bank. Findings suggest that the predicted efficiency using the DEA-NN model has good correlation with that calculated by DEA, which indicates that the predicted efficiency using the DEA-NN approach is a god proxy to classical DEA approach.Substantial research has been conducted on DEA applications to hospitals. For example, Sherman (1984) examined the efficiency of seven teaching hospitals in Massachusetts. The study found that two of the seven hospitals were inefficient and suggested specific input reductions for the inefficient hospitals. Using a sample of 3,000 urban hospitals, Ozcan and Luke (1993) looked at the relationship between four hospital characteristics (size, membership in a multi-hospital system, ownership and payer mix) and hospital efficiencies. O'Neill (1998) applied supper-efficiency to hospitals by calculating supper-efficiency scores for a DEA model using data from 27 large, urban hospitals. Hu and Huang (2004) applied DEA to compute hospital efficiencies in Taiwan, and then used both the Mann-Whitney test and Tobit regression to explore the effects of environmental variables on these efficiency scores. The study found that public ownership adversely affects hospitals' efficiency. Laine et al. (2005) analysed the association between quality of care and technical efficiency in hospitals' long-term care wards for the elderly in Finland. DEA was used to calculate technical efficiency while the Mann-Whitney test and correlation coefficients were used to explore the association between quality and efficiency. The results suggest that an association may exist between technical efficiency and some dimensions of quality.Numerous studies have also been done on DEA applications in farm production. For instance, Audibert et al. (2003) assessed the role of malaria and some social determinants on the cotton crop efficiency in Ivory Coast. The study found that high parasite density infection has a direct and indirect negative effect on efficiency in the cotton crop. Krasachat (2004) applied DEA to study efficiency of rice farms in Thailand. A Tobit regression was also used to explain the likelihood of change in efficiencies by farm-specific factors. Results indicated that the diversity of natural resources has an influence on Thai rice farms' technical efficiency. Lee (2005) compared stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and DEA methods on measuring production efficiency of forest companies. Although the study found slight differences in the efficiency scores obtained from the two methods, the highest and lowest relative efficiency ranking for forest companies remain the same. Chauhan et al. (2006) applied DEA to determine the efficiencies of farmers with regard to energy use in rice production activities in India. The results reveal that a possible about 12 per cent of the total input energy could be saved if the best practice farm was used as a benchmark.Other application areas include internet companies (e.g. Serrano-Cinca et al., 2005), audit services (e.g. Dopuch et al., 2003), football teams (e.g. Haas et al., 2004), retail stores (e.g. Barros and Alves, 2003), aquaculture (e.g. Cinemre et al., 2006), insurance industry (e.g. Cummins and Rubio-Misas, 2006), supplier evaluation (Narasimhan et al., 2001), seaports (e.g. Cullinane et al., 2006), airports (e.g. Sarkis, 2000), advertising agencies (e.g. Luo and Donthu, 2005), hotels (e.g. Sigala et al., 2005), schools (e.g. Mancebon and Mar-Molinero, 2000), universities (e.g. Flegg et al., 2004), local government (e.g. Hughes and Edwards, 2000) and nations (e.g. Ramanathan, 2006).From this brief review we find that although numerous studies have attempted to assess efficiency in the West and other parts of the world, virtually no studies have focused on measuring efficiency in Egypt. In this investigation we aim to fill this research gap by empirically evaluating efficiency of top listed companies in Egypt.\nMethodology: Production frontier methods\nResults: Preliminary data analysis\nImplications: Systematic benchmarking through efficiency measurement is one method managers can use to ensure the efficiency of their companies. In contrast with piecemeal examination of single performance indicators, global efficiency techniques used in this study can offer Egyptian managers a rounded assessment of their companies' performance. Unlike targets that are based on individual performance measures, global efficiency measures can offer local managers the freedom to set their own priorities, and to seek out improvements along dimensions of performance where they believe that gains are most readily secured. DEA results can also be used by Egyptian managers to support other objectives, such as allocating finance or identifying the priorities for inspection and improvement of performance.Several companies in our sample have been found to be operating at a decreasing return to scale, and it is better for the management of these companies to refrain from further investments in these companies, as their outputs do not seem to be proportional to the inputs invested in them. On the other hand, companies found to be operating under an increasing return to scale may prefer to expand their operations in the future. However, it should be noted that because of the different reduction mix, the return to scale relationships of the larger companies are likely to be non-linear (Ramanathan, 2005), and may warrant further research.One of the important implications of this study is that efficiency measures facilitate the publication of \"league tables\" or rankings of entire Egyptian companies. Some authors believe that such rankings nurture public interests in the performance of organizations, promote accountability and stimulate a search for improvement (Hibbard et al., 2003). Finally, it is hoped that Egyptian managers have the possibility to analyse organizational practices of the peer groups and that they are able to improve their future efficiency by adapting these practices for their inefficient companies.\nLimitations and future research: Like any other study, the present study has several limitations that warrant more research. First, it may not always be possible for a company to ever become efficient because several of the inputs may not be under the full control of management. Therefore, it must be clear that some DEA targets might be impossible to be achieved in practice. DEA results are obtained from the application of a mathematical algorithm, without considering specific conditions and restrictions of a company. It is in the hands of managers to skilfully use these results as a support for decision-making. Second, the selected variables in the present study might not be exhaustive, and the data set is short. Staat (2001) has showed formally how DEA efficiency scores are affected by sample size. Future studies may use larger sample size and panel data with different sets of inputs and outputs to test the robustness of the results. Third, This study used a cross-sectional data set to evaluate the efficiency of the top listed Egyptian companies. However, Sengupta (1995) suggests that competitiveness or efficiency can better be evaluated through analysis of average efficiencies across time. Future studies may use longitudinal designs to assess time-varying efficiency. Fourth, the two-stage approach used in this study, like all of the two-stage studies, may suffer from a serious problem that arises from the fact that DEA efficiency estimates are likely to be serially correlated. Simar and Wilson (2007) have recently proposed single and double bootstrap procedures that can overcome this problem. The application of the bootstrap to DEA estimators is, however, recent and under extensive development. It is worth noting that as yet there is no consensus on a single bootstrap method for the DEA estimators (Boame, 2004). For example, Balaguer-Coll et al. (2007) suggest the use of nonparametric smoothing techniques such as nonparametric kernel regression and nonparametric bivariate density estimation, as opposed to either OLS or Tobit models. Future research should empirically test the validity of the proposed techniques. Finally, as suggested by Bauer et al. (1998), for the frontier-based efficiency scores to be useful, the estimated scores should be positively correlated with traditional non-frontier based measures of performance. Future studies should test the existence of positive rank-order correlations between efficiency scores obtained from DEA analysis and traditional efficiency measures such as financial ratios. This test would give assurance that frontier measures are not simply artificial products of the assumptions made regarding the underlying optimisation techniques used.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the research presented in this paper is to measure the relative market efficiency of the top listed companies in Egypt.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Applying a two-stage approach, this study uses production frontier analysis (PFA) to measure the relative market efficiency of 62 listed companies in Egypt, and Tobit regression to examine the dependence of efficiency on the specific operating environment of these companies.\nFindings: - The results indicate that the performance of several companies is sub-optimal, suggesting the potential for significant improvements over both profitability and marketability dimensions. Separate benchmarks were derived for possible reductions in resources used, and the results indicate that several companies deploy a much larger number of employees than required by a best practice company, and significant savings are possible on this account.\nOriginality/value: - From a policy perspective, this study highlights the economic importance of encouraging increased market efficiency throughout the business sector in Egypt.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Women's working hours: The interplay between gender role attitudes, motherhood, and public childcare support in 23 European countries	[ "Women", "Labour market", "Family", "Social policy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground and research question: Key explanations of women's employment refer both to the individual characteristics of women and households, as well as to the influences of country-level determinants. Recently, the academic interest has turned toward answering the question how macro-level contexts of countries shape micro-level outcomes of individuals (Cooke and Baxter, 2010; Crompton and Lyonette, 2006; Pettit and Hook, 2005; Maldonado and Nieuwenhuis, 2015; Matysiak and Vignoli, 2008; Van der Lippe and Van Dijk, 2002; Nieuwenhuis et al., 2012). This study provides such a macro-micro analysis of how individual women's gender role attitudes and having young children at home are associated with their working hours, and how these associations vary across countries with different levels of expenditure on childcare services and across countries in which the population typically has either traditional or egalitarian gender role attitudes.\nTheory: In this theoretical paragraph, we combine three types of individual-level factors that are often found to be associated with women's employment and working hours: investments in human capital, household composition, and individual women's gender role attitudes. We argue that studying how the interplay between individual women's demographic background and their attitudes affects their employment decisions can contribute to our understanding of women's employment. First, we outline the economic household theories on the effects of human capital and household composition, then the theories on gender role attitudes. Finally, we hypothesize on how country-level gender egalitarianism and childcare service provision shape the micro-level outcomes.\nData and method: The hypotheses in this study are tested using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 2 2004/2005, edition 3.2[1]. The ESS uses biennial rounds of surveys consisting of a core module that is repeated at each round and two or three rotating modules. The core module provides continuity in the measurement of socio-economic, political and demographic variables, while the rotating modules provide more in depth information centered on a specific theme. We used the ESS because it contains a rotating module specifically focussed on the interrelations between work, family and well-being. All countries use probability sampling, sometimes single-stage but often multi-stage. The average response rate for all countries is 61.6 percent, varying from 43.6 percent in France to 79.1 percent in Estonia.\nResults: Our hypotheses are tested using the multilevel regression models presented in Table II. First, a baseline model is presented (indicated as Model 0) in which women's working hours are regressed on the two independent variables of key interest: having a young child at home and the level of traditionalism of women's gender role attitudes. In addition, a random intercept and random slopes for the independent variables were estimated. As was expected, having a young child at home and traditional gender role attitudes are negatively associated with women's working hours. In addition, substantial cross-national variation exists in the strength of these associations. This is indicated by the random slope variation.\nConclusion and discussion: An extensive literature exists on how women's employment and working hours are influenced by the context of the country they live in, both dealing with the outcomes of policy contexts (e.g. Jaumotte, 2003) and the (normative) context of a population's attitudes toward women's employment (e.g. Fuwa, 2004; Uunk et al., 2005). Following a call for integrating micro-level and macro-level explanations of women's employment in country-comparative studies (Van der Lippe and Van Dijk, 2002), an increasing interest in the literature is studying how macro-level contexts shape micro-level outcomes (e.g. Maldonado and Nieuwenhuis, 2015; Matysiak and Vignoli, 2008; Pettit and Hook, 2005; Nieuwenhuis et al., 2012). That is, to study how the associations of individual women's characteristics with her employment decisions are shaped by the context of the country she lives in (Fuwa, 2004). To this literature, the current study contributes answers to two research questions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show how the interplay between individual women's gender role attitudes, having young children at home, as well as the country-context characterized by gender egalitarianism and public childcare support, relates to women's working hours in 23 European countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study presents results of multilevel regression analyses of data from the European Social Survey (Round 2). These micro-level data on 23 European countries were combined with country-level measures on gender traditionalism and childcare expenditure.\nFindings: The authors found that the negative association between having young children at home and women's working hours is stronger for women with traditional gender role attitudes compared to women with egalitarian attitudes. The gap in working hours between women with and without young children at home was smaller in countries in which the population holds egalitarian gender role attitudes and in countries with extensive public childcare support. Furthermore, it was found that the gap in employment hours between mothers with traditional or egalitarian attitudes was largest in countries with limited public childcare support.\nSocial implications: Policy makers should take note that women's employment decisions are not dependent on human capital and household-composition factors alone, but that gender role attitudes matter as well. The authors could not find evidence of the inequality in employment between women with different gender role attitudes being exacerbated in association with childcare support.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this study lies in the combined (rather than separate) analysis of how countries' social policies (childcare services) and countries' attitudes (gender traditionalism) interact with individual gender role attitudes to shape cross-national variation in women's working hours.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Predictors of workplace deviant behaviour: HRD agenda for Malaysian support personnel	[ "Workplace deviance", "Job satisfaction", "Malaysia", "Public service organisation", "Support personnel", "Employees behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Workplace deviant behaviour is pervasive and brings harmful implications to individuals, groups and organisations. Given the enormous implication of resources and outputs lost due to deviant behaviours, determining predictors of workplace deviant behaviours is imperative for research and practices (Hastings and Finegan, 2011). Shim (2008) highlighted that workplace deviant behaviours have been largely overlooked by researchers in the HRD field, which contributes to the lack of understanding of workplace deviant issues and their relationships with HRD. Consequently, this leads to the incapability of recognizing the right solutions to eradicate deviant behaviours in organisations. Therefore, HRD has to come out with an agenda to reduce the prevalence of deviant behaviour in organisations.\nWorkplace deviant behaviour: Workplace deviant behaviour can be categorised into two groups; namely positive and negative deviances. According to Appelbaum et al. (2007), constructive or positive deviance includes behaviours that employers do not consent to, but assist in reaching the organisation\nTheorizing workplace deviant behaviour: In this study, Mount et al.\nPredictors of workplace deviant behaviour: The selection of key constructs and variables reflected the boundaries that this study places in limiting the scope. The constructs and the variables pertinent to this study were deduced from theoretical and empirical evidences. The framework was based on the three groups of variables, i.e. individual-related factors, organisational-related factors and work-related factors. The individual-related factors include conscientiousness, negative affectivity, agreeableness and emotional intelligence. The organisational-related factors comprise organisational ethical climate, organisational justice, perceived organisational support and trust in organisation. The work-related factors involve work stress and job autonomy.\nIndividual-related factors: A voluminous amount of empirical studies conjectured that individual differences are likely to have an important prediction on a general range of workplace deviant behaviours (e.g. Ng and Feldman, 2008; Scheuer, 2010). There are various individual-related factors that are relevant for predicting workplace deviant behaviour. However, this study limited its focus to four individual-related factors (i.e. negative affectivity, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional intelligence) as they are most likely to influence individuals\nOrganisational-related factors: Past researchers argued that certain organisational-related factors make organisations more vulnerable to employees\nWork-related factors: Over the past few years, researchers on workplace deviant behaviour have focused on determining the causes of workplace deviant behaviour and results indicated clearly that work-related factors are important predictors of workplace deviant behaviour (e.g. Abdul Rahman, 2008; Faridahwati, 2003). We rely on General strain theory to link the predictors to workplace deviant behaviour. We suggested two work-related variables, i.e. work stress and job autonomy. Ferguson (2007) highlighted that employee feelings of job autonomy and work stress are significant predictors of workplace deviant behaviour. Work stress and job autonomy affect employees\nJob satisfaction as a mediating variable: In this study, we propose job satisfaction as a mediating variable between the three potential groups of predictors and the criterion variable. Job satisfaction was reflected as an attitude that employees have towards their overall jobs as well as towards various aspects of the job (Spector, 2007a). Job satisfaction results from employees\nHRD agenda in managing deviant behaviour: In this section, we present some agenda for HRD professionals to manage deviant behaviour at workplace. HRD could employ various approaches such as enlighten employees on the pros and cons of engaging in that behaviour by providing simulation and training programmes. For example, Telecom Malaysia has conducted online interactive trainings on ethics which include a variety of subjects, including gift giving among government employees, receiving gifts from outside sources and misusing positions. It is very unethical practices for an employee to give and received gifts from customers. Hence, such training is useful in guiding employees to enhance their knowledge of workplace ethics and to comply with organisational norms and rules. Jacobs and Scott (2011) suggested that the management should often re-educate employees using planned courses, videos, role playing and online training. Of these efforts, it is claimed that training is the best method for workplace deviant behaviour prevention programs. The training should point out the impact of destructive behaviour to the individual, organisation, and others. Bartlett and Bartlett (2011) highlighted that HRD professionals should also take part during the workplace policy development to support the creation of a healthy working environment. They advocated that HRD professionals should take the initiative to make an initial assessment on employees and organisations which then provide the organisation\nConclusion: We began by reviewing the relevant studies pertaining to workplace deviant behaviour and its predictors. Researchers have identified that empirical evidences available in understanding the factors that influence this negative behaviour are limited (Abdul Rahman, 2008; Smithikrai, 2008) specifically in predicting support personnel deviant behaviour. We explored the three key factors (i.e. individual, organisational-and work-related factors) that predicted support personnel\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model of the determinants of workplace deviant behaviour among support personnel in Malaysian Public Service organisations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study is based on reviews of past studies on workplace deviant behaviour. To conduct the literature review, several keywords were identified. Several electronic databases available at the university\nFindings: In the reviews, the authors found three potential groups of workplace deviant behaviour determinants among support personnel. The determinants are individual-related factors, organisational-related factors, and work-related factors. The paper established job satisfaction as a mediating variable between the three potential groups of determinants and workplace deviant behaviour.\nPractical implications: Future research could provide a more definitive theoretical statement of workplace deviant behaviour and develop an additional proposition which may be derived from a more refined theory. Practical interventions for HRD professionals were suggested to assist individuals and organisations towards reducing the prevalence of workplace deviant behaviour.\nOriginality/value: The research yields a theoretical framework that outlines the predictive potential of the three key factors in explaining workplace deviant behaviour among support personnel. The factors can be considered in developing HRD practices.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Blended learning: overview and recommendations for successful implementation	[ "Learning", "Teaching", "Curriculum development", "Educational innovation", "Learning methods", "E‐learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Embedding e-learning approaches in higher education has been designated a key priority (Department of Education and Skills, 2003; HEFCE, 2005a) with recent implications for programmes and policy suggesting that a blended approach is the \"preferred approach\" (Childs et al., 2005, p. 30). In line with this:... the current focus on learning technology in traditional universities indicates the significance of blended learning research for both society and economy (Derntl and Motschnig-Pitrik, 2005, p. 112).Many of the advantages and disadvantages of blended learning are well established; its potential to support and enhance meaningful educational experiences (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004) as well as to provide a cost- and resource-effective methodology (Twigg, 2003) has made it particularly appealing to a variety of organisations and institutions.It remains to be seen which components of a blended learning approach are more appropriate and in what context. Blended learning design and implementation are heavily context-dependent, and generalization can be challenging. Consequently, it was deemed important to review the available literature with a view to adopting guidance and recommendations based on relevance to our organisation.1.1 Context: the case for blended learning\n2. Methodology: A literature search was conducted using several large databases (EBSCOhost; Emerald, ProQuest, ScienceDirect) to gather and review relevant articles. Two researchers conducted the same search to promote consistency of approach. Over 2,000 articles were retrieved (top level search terms \"blended\" and \"learning\") and this was subsequently reduced to 97 following the application of several limiters (English language; abstracts only; search from 1997-present; peer-reviewed journal articles). Abstracts were also assessed on the basis of:* academic relevance i.e. higher-level educational context;* evaluative studies i.e. objective evaluation and/or comparison of outcomes, interventions, approaches, models.Following a review of abstracts, 66 were selected for review of which 31 were available without purchase - there was insufficient project time and resources to purchase and review the remaining articles. The retrieved articles were divided between the researchers and reviewed using a data extraction and rating template. Following review and rating, the researchers discussed findings and analysed for common and key themes which then formed the structure of the \"Findings and recommendations\" section below.\n3. Findings and recommendations: Our findings highlight some serious limitations in the quality of the current evidence base. However, the literature is useful in facilitating a series of recommendations and quality assurance steps for organisations at the early stage of adopting a blended approach to learning. It is particularly useful in identifying and discussing:* The necessary circumstances for successful implementation.* The potential risks that may inhibit successful development and implementation.Rather than an exhaustive account of individual studies, this process identified several recurring themes within the literature. These key themes - Evaluation, Skills training, Support, Implementation, Technology, Pedagogy, and Human Factors - are discussed below.3.1 Evaluation\n4. Discussion: This article identified several key themes within the blended learning literature and highlighted a series of practical recommendations to facilitate the successful adaptation of a blended approach to learning delivery.What is clear from the literature is that prior to, and during the development and implementation phases of a blended learning approach, it is vital to consider a variety of stakeholder perspectives (organisation, instructor and most importantly, the end-user or learner). Failing to do so represents a significant risk. A consideration of the identified areas in this review from all relevant perspectives is necessary.Deciding on which specific courses and course elements to blend, and how best to deliver these elements and to what degree/extent, will most likely rest with the expert instructor and to some degree with the organisation. The technology itself may not be as important as accessibility, integration with the organisation, staff and learners, and the actual material content it delivers.Appropriateness in this regard is highly context specific and necessitates a consideration of pedagogy as a first step. Individual characteristics such as motivation, expectations and learning style as well as cultural considerations must be considered alongside learning processes, learning outcomes and environmental factors (technology; support; skills).In conclusion, many important questions need to be asked prior to shifting from traditional face-to-face methods to a blended approach involving electronic delivery and learning. A consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of available approaches may be useful (for example, Bleimann, 2004).It is clear that while blended learning has the potential to overcome several of the disadvantages of both traditional methods and e-learning it is important to recognize its limitations. Adequate time, resources and evaluation are critical.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to identify key themes within the blended learning literature and to develop a series of practical recommendations to facilitate the successful adaptation and implementation of a \"blended approach to learning delivery\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The literature was reviewed and informed a series of recommendations for organisations considering adopting or implementing blended approaches to teaching and training.\nFindings: - Several key themes centering on the importance of evaluation, skills training, pedagogy, human factors, technology and implementation were identified. The emerging themes informed a series of practical recommendations to assist organisations considering blended learning approaches. Findings highlight the current limitations in the evidence base.\nPractical implications: - The identified key themes and practical recommendations provide a useful assist to organisations considering adopting and implementing blended approaches to teaching and training.\nOriginality/value: - The paper highlights key areas for development in the blended learning literature and at the organisational level.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is the Mediterranean Diet for all? An analysis of socioeconomic inequalities and food consumption in Italy	[ "Socioeconomic status", "Food consumption", "Income", "Mediterranean Diet", "Adult population" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The Mediterranean Diet (MD) is widely acknowledged as an optimal diet for preserving good health due to its preventive power against several communicable and non-communicable diseases. This diet, which is characterized by both a low consumption of red meat and processed foods, and a high consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables with olive oil as a main source of fat, is indeed associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, overweight and obesity, neurodegenerative diseases and, more generally, all-cause mortality (Sofi et al., 2010; Bonaccio, Iacoviello and de Gaetano, 2012; Tektonidis et al., 2015; Schwingshackl and Hoffmann, 2016). The value of the MD is not only limited to its proven positive effects on health, but is also related to its traditional and cultural significance, to the point that in 2013 it has been listed by UNESCO in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. According to UNESCO, the MD is not just a specific dietary model, but also includes a set of traditional practices that have been passed on over different generations, so that it can be regarded as \"the foundation of the cultural identity and continuity of communities throughout the Mediterranean basin.\"\n2. Methods: 2.1 Study population\n3. Results and discussion: 3.1 Socioeconomic characteristics of the sample\n4. Conclusions: Taken together, these results confirm previous studies that provided evidence of the key role of SES in determining the degree of adherence to MD. In detail, indeed, more affluent and educated people show superior diet quality with respect to lower SES classes. These findings contribute to enrich this field of research at least in two main ways. First, being based on nationwide data the results provide evidence that are independent from any regional socioeconomic and cultural disparity. Second, by separately analyzing the relationship between SES, consumption frequencies of the main food categories and MD adherence they extend previous knowledge on Italians' food habits, thus contributing to a better understanding of how consumption patterns evolve over time. Unfortunately, given the nature of the available data, it was not possible to conduct a more detailed analysis of food consumption and MD adherence, for example including condiments or accounting for gender-specific differences. Furthermore, to consider culture and tradition as complementary to the dietary model would offer a broader understanding of the topic and of the main causes of the MD gradual abandonment. However, despite these limitations, these findings may have important implications for future policies geared at fostering the MD as a healthy dietary model, proven to prevent a number of communicable and non-communicable diseases. In this sense, policy makers should consider acting on socioeconomic disparities, rather than only on nutritional education. In other words, given that diet quality seems to follow a socio-economic gradient, future policy intervention should consider facilitating availability and affordability of healthy food items in order to make the MD appealing for all segments of the population.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the role of the main socioeconomic and demographic factors in affecting the consumption frequency of specific food categories with a view to highlighting differences across population segments. Second, to analyze whether socioeconomic status (SES) is ultimately related to the overall level of adherence to the Mediterranean Diet (MD) of the Italian population.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were obtained from the Italian Household Survey covering about 36.000 individuals (18 years old and older). The Household Survey includes questions aimed at eliciting the consumption frequency of the main food items of the MD pyramid. Moreover, to assess the degree of adherence to the MD, the authors constructed an index (MDI) aimed at reflecting how much individuals follow the MD pyramid recommendations.\nFindings: The results show that both socioeconomic and demographic factors play a relevant role in affecting the consumption frequency of the main food categories of the MD pyramid. More affluent people consume fish, fruit and vegeFis, wine and beer more frequently than their poorer counterparts. Moreover, higher income is associated with the lower consumption of meat and eggs, dairy products, cereals and starchy vegetables as well as legumes.\nOriginality/value: The results foster the debate on how to guarantee healthy food accessibility to all population segments, thus having relevant implications in terms of food and health policies. The issue of MD adherence in Italy and its relationship with SES has been previously investigated on the basis of regional data, which make it difficult to extend the results to larger contexts, particularly in a country like Italy with remarkable socioeconomic differences between northern and southern regions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Study on permanent housing production after 1999 earthquake in Kocaeli (Turkey)	[ "Housing", "Design", "Construction industry", "Disasters", "Project management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In many countries affected by earthquakes, the most significant problem following a major earthquake is providing permanent housing so that residents can normalize their lives. This process, which requires high levels of investment, is called post-disaster rehabilitation/reconstruction. This process might take years, depending on how developed a country is. The main goal is to solve problems as soon as possible. Housing supply practices make up a majority of this process.In terms of performance, permanent housing built after an earthquake should not be different from that built at other times. However, another side of the problem is that housing units to be built after an earthquake need to be produced within a certain time limit and in mass numbers (Sey and Tapan, 1987). A functional, high-quality, and well-managed construction environment has a motivating effect on society. Such an environment augments individuals' identification with the society and enhances each attempt of the society to improve itself (European Architects Council Politics Book, 2004, p. 11). It is necessary to manage construction projects in the best manner possible in both the design and construction phases while retaining the flexibility to address demands as they arise and to take restrictions into consideration. To create a high-quality environment, the production process for complex buildings must be well thought out, because these buildings will have a long-lasting effect.Production of a building is mainly carried out in a four-stage process consisting of initiative, planning, and scheduling; design; construction; and usage. The first stage (initiative, planning, and scheduling) includes the planning and scheduling that begins when the need for a building is ascertained. In this phase, general decisions involve such issues as determining space and performance requirements, choosing the site, and the setting up the financial program. In the second phase (designing), general decisions are made on the quality and size of the proposed building project. Adopting the most favourable design solution for a project lays the foundation for a functionally, economically, and socially successful implementation of it. The third phase (construction), is the stage when the designed project is realized. Construction defects that occur in this stage might cause problems in the fourth and last phase (usage).If optimum quality is not provided during one or several of the first three phases as a result of such factors as time, financing, by whom the project is to be built, how the project is to be supervised, and how construction will take place, a series of problems develops that will reflect poorly on the housing and its environment. Potential problems will affect especially the length of production period in the post-earthquake physical environment, families' ability to return to daily social life, and the quality of life. Investigations point out that the feedback score of the production stage in post-earthquake housing is directly related to the planning and preparation that related organizations make in advance of the earthquake (Sey and Tapan, 1987).In this context, the measures to be taken and statutory operations to be carried out should be prescribed before the earthquake and must be included in a country's disaster policies. With these measures in place, it will be possible to provide the people who experienced not only a loss in their physical environment, but also a loss of psychological, social, and economic integrity (the major problem after an earthquake), with a new settlement area at an even more highly developed level in a short time.In Turkey, the methods of providing earthquake survivors with housing give rise to problematic processes and outcomes. The 1999 Marmara earthquake was no different. Numerous processes were used for the provision of emergency shelter, and then temporary housing, and permanent housing. A direct transfer from the emergency shelter units to the permanent housings was not possible; thus, temporary housing came up to a large extend (Arslan and Cosgun, 2008; Johnson, 2007). When no prior preparations have been made, quite a long time is required for carrying out geological analyses, designating sites, making expropriations or allocations, preparing preliminary location plans, determining the rightful holders, deciding on housing types and groupings, defining the sources of investment, arranging for infrastructure, and determining the investment packages and bidding processes. The fact that such preliminary preparations are not available in Turkey, a country plagued by earthquakes, constitutes a significant problem (Balamir, 2001, p. 5). In spite of all deficiencies, a large amount of government-sponsored permanent housing was completed and came into use after the 1999 Marmara earthquake.This study examines the production of permanent housing in Turkey after the Marmara earthquake in 1999 in terms of planning, design, and construction, and it identifies problems that arose. The goal is to identify outcomes that point to solutions for problems that might arise in the production of permanent housing after a future earthquake. This information can be referenced when designing plans to meet the permanent housing needs that arise after earthquakes.\nStudy methodology: The goal of this study was addressed by conducting a survey (January-September 2007) among those who took part in the production of permanent housing in Kocaeli after the 1999 Marmara earthquake. The fact that nearly 40 per cent of the permanent housing after this earthquake was constructed in Kocaeli was a factor in choosing this region as the study area. The study involves a multi-dimensional inquiry in the context of site selection, area design, housing design, construction, and supervision criteria. The software program Microsoft Excel was used in the evaluation of the obtained data and to convey the results in a systematic way by using graphs and tables.\nPost-earthquake permanent housing production in Turkey: The Eastern Marmara Region in Turkey has a dense settlement pattern as a result of the presence of the Istanbul Metropolitan Area, which is associated with dense housing clusters and significant transport centrelines that developed around the metropolitan area and are concentrated in certain areas. This region has the highest population density in Turkey. It experienced serious losses in economic, social, and cultural terms. Most importantly, it experienced a serious number of casualties and capital as a result of the two earthquakes on August 17 and November 12, 1999. One of the most significant characteristics of 17 August Marmara earthquake is that it covered a very large area (64,000 square kilometres). The cities of Istanbul, Kocaeli, Sakarya, Bolu, Bursa, Zonguldak, Eskisehir, and Yalova were seriously affected by the earthquake. Loss of life and property were highest in Kocaeli, Sakarya, and Yalova. A total of 17.840 people were killed, and an additional 43.953 were injured. The 17 August Marmara earthquake is among the biggest earthquakes in the world in terms of the number of casualties caused. According to the 17 August 1999 Marmara earthquake loss adjustment, the total number of housing units that collapsed or that experienced serious, medium, or slight damage was 213.843, and the number of workplaces likewise damaged was 30.540. The combined number of housing units and workplaces that collapsed or experienced serious to medium damage was 154.511. And the number of people directly affected by this was declared to be around 1.5 million (Tas et al., 2007).In Turkey, sites that are liable to disasters are determined, and the measures to be taken in these areas are adjusted, according to law 7269, known as the \"Disaster Act\". This act, which took effect on 25 May 1959, is still in effect, although some amendments have been made. Article 15 of the act elaborates on development plans. According to this article, the Ministry of Public Works and Settlement has authority in earthquake-damaged areas.The law gives the responsibility for relocating some or all of the residents of an area before or after a natural disaster, and the accountability for the effect on the public life in other settlement areas, when necessary, is given to the Ministry of Public Works and Settlement. Those responsibilities are explained in detail in the act. Building standards are defined in the publication \"Regulation on The Buildings to be Constructed in Earthquake Areas\", which is issued by the Ministry of Public Works and Settlement, to construct earthquake-resistant buildings. Development plans and alterations for settlement areas are carried out in accordance with Building Law 3194. The Ministry of Public Works and Settlement is the appointed and authorised foundation in issues of post-earthquake building and planning.Meeting requirements for shelter in Turkey after the 1999 Marmara earthquake\nEvaluation and conclusion: As a result of examining permanent housing production in Turkey after the 1999 earthquake, using Kocaeli as a case study, the most important problem in the production process was found to be the limited time allocated for design and construction, and the restrictions in construction materials and elements imposed by the administration. Serious losses in the disaster made the ground state the factor of greatest priority in choosing the settlement area. This factor was crucial to the design of the settlement area, and plans were developed to provide safety for those to be evacuated in case of a future earthquake and to increase the perception of safety by the residents.Existing city centres lack social areas because of dense construction. In permanent housing design, building settlement criteria given high importance are space organisation, social area, and fittings. These priorities stem from an effort to increase user satisfaction and to create quality living areas, however far they are from the city centre. The limited time available after the 1999 earthquake resulted in a search for simple planning solutions, and the destruction that was experienced caused the strength and safety of building construction to be emphasized.Some factors were not considered in the planning phase, which led to decreased satisfaction. Social factors (such as being away from business and trade centre, being far from the previous settlement) were not considered when choosing the site, possible fire/smoke emission was not considered in the area design process, and issues such as local life, culture, and aesthetics were not considered while designing the housing. The limited time for construction caused some deficiencies in supervision. For this reason, user complaints that were encountered arose because of faults in construction quality (Tas et al., 2007).The main problem encountered in the production of permanent housing in the Kocaeli case study was the lack of time, which highlights the necessity of making plans before a disaster occurs and the importance of being prepared. In regions/countries where disaster/earthquake risk is high, it is necessary to address such factors as defining reserve residential areas and their topographic and ecologic structure, identifying their possible connections to the existing city, conducting temporary/permanent housing design studies, developing building and settlement unit designs, and identifying opportunities for providing tools, materials, and finance, etc.In Turkey, especially in cities with a first-degree earthquake hazard, alternative projects and building systems must be formulated using different physical and social data for various materials and bearing systems, and an information pool needs to be available to organizing agencies. The most important criterion affecting success is the ability to make efficient use of all the resources and sectors within the country. In this context, the measures to be taken before an earthquake, and the processes put into motion following an earthquake, must be included in the disaster policies of existing and proposed settlements. The experience gained from past earthquakes should not be disregarded. This experience, and the knowledge obtained thereby, must be used as primary data in preparation for future earthquakes. Having knowledge beforehand is important to overcome, as rapidly as possible, the chaos that takes place after an earthquake.Users were not satisfied with construction quality, although it was stated that kite-mark materials were used. This shows that the work force must be chosen and supervised more carefully. Trade associations and universities should make collective education studies so that the workforce taking part in building production can specialise in this area. Quality workmanship will enable the correct use of materials and allow a shorter construction period. Furthermore, the bids in the 1999 Marmara earthquake housing supply process passed through different subcontractors, thus reducing the overall profit, and in some cases resulted in the bankruptcy of the constructors. Also, such applications indirectly affected the quality of workmanship. These results show that bidding conditions need to have certain standards.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine production of permanent housing in Turkey after the 1999 Marmara earthquake in terms of planning, design, and construction, and to identify problems that were faced. Earthquake survivors face many problems that affect the return to normalcy, including disruptions in temporary and permanent housing. To improve the earthquake survivors' social-psychological status, it is imperative to shorten the transition from temporary to permanent housing. For the transition to be as brief as possible, planning, design, and construction of permanent housing need to be carried out seamlessly.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey is carried out among those who took part in the permanent housing production in Kocaeli, where, after the Marmara earthquake in 1999, permanent housing practices were dense.\nFindings: - As a result of the study, the most important problem in the production process is found to be the limited time allocated for design and construction, and the restrictions in construction materials and elements imposed by the administration. Serious losses in the disaster make the ground state the factor of greatest priority in choosing the settlement area.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Kocaeli is chosen as the study area because after the earthquake, nearly 40 per cent of the permanent housing was constructed in Kocaeli. The study involves a multi-dimensional inquiry in the context of site selection, area design, housing design, construction, and supervision criteria.\nOriginality/value: - These data can serve as a resource for government/planners who develop policies for meeting post-disaster reconstruction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Performance management process integration in retail supply chains	[ "Retail", "Supply chains", "Performance management", "Logistics performance", "Process integration", "Communicate integration ambitions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The retailing sector is continuously growing, competition is increasing and logistics performance is important for achieving a stable competitive advantage, according to a number of recent studies (Menachof et al., 2009; Ganesan et al., 2009; Amato and Amato, 2009; Fernie et al., 2010; Lorentz and Lounela, 2011; ECR, 2011; Randall et al., 2011; SAP, 2012; Sandberg, 2013). Management of logistics performance, such as service levels and lead time, is therefore critical (ECR, 2011). One way of improving performance and competitiveness in supply chains is by integrating supply chain partners, as suggested by, e.g. Bagchi et al. (2005), Cao and Zhang (2011), Guan and Rehme (2012), Prajogo and Olhager (2012) and Mellat-Parast and Spillan (2014). An obvious type of integration is ownership-based vertical integration (Rangan et al., 1993). Romano (2003) identified four other types of integration in supply chains: functional, logistical, informational and process. This study focusses on process integration. There is no clear or widely accepted definition of process integration (Chen et al., 2009; Cao and Zhang, 2011). However, the conclusion is that items such as supply chain partners jointly conducting, agreeing upon or eliminating duplicated activities are frequently mentioned in definitions of process integration.\nLiterature review: In the first section, studies that have explored and classified the degree of performance management process integration are described. In the second section, factors affecting the degree of process integration are presented. An operationalizing table is presented in the third section.\nMethodology: Research approach\nCase descriptions: The first section is devoted to the daily groceries supply chain and the second to the home decorating supply chain. First, the degree of performance management process integration is explored, described and classified. Then the factors that affect the degree of performance management process integration in the relation are described and classified according to the operationalizations in Table I. The descriptions are mainly done in table form, as recommended for case study descriptions by Barratt et al. (2011).\nPropositions on factors that affect the degree of performance management process integration in retail supply chains: Altogether, we can state that the supply chains have different degrees of performance management process integration. Different affecting factors have appeared from the case descriptions. The retail supply chains and the relations are compared in Table III.\nConclusions, contributions and further research: Conclusions: the purpose of this study was to explore and generate propositions on factors that affect the degree of performance management process integration in retail supply chains. The performance management processes of two retail supply chains were explored and their degree of process integration was classified. Differences in the degree of performance management process integration and affecting factors lead to the generation of five propositions. Dependence, brand importance, business process integration, performance demand and the existence of a performance management standard seem to be positively related to the degree of performance management process integration in the relation. Both factors that affect process integration in general and performance management process integration specifically are included. Some insights on integration in a vertically integrated retail chain were provided. The study implies that we know more about affecting factors that determine the success of process integration, as demanded by Romano (2003). Process integration is related to higher performance levels and competitive advantage (Mellat-Parast and Spillan, 2014). The five affecting factors can be seen as a more systematic and operationalized approach to understanding process integration, as requested by Sheu et al. (2006) and Chen et al. (2009). It has also expanded the knowledge into a retail context as called for by Wiese et al. (2012) and Randall et al. (2011).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore and generate propositions of factors that affect the degree of performance management process integration in retail supply chains.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The performance management processes of two retail supply chains were explored and their degree of process integration was classified. Differences in the degree of performance management process integration and affecting factors lead to the generation of five propositions.\nFindings: Dependence, brand importance, business process integration, performance demand and the existence of a performance management standard seem to be positively related to the degree of performance management process integration in the relation. Both factors that affect process integration in general and performance management process integration specifically are included. Some insights on integration in a vertically integrated retail chain were provided.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study has specified the knowledge in process integration to the performance management process and expanded it into a retail context. It has generated a number of propositions on factors that affect the degree of performance management process integration, including a factor that was not found in previous research on manufacturing supply chains. The contribution to process integration theory is however limited until the propositions are validated in a broader study.\nPractical implications: Knowledge in affecting factors is useful when \"performance management managers\" need to communicate integration ambitions with other managers within and outside their own company. The detailed descriptions of performance management processes and integration practices can serve as inspiring benchmarks, as in the daily groceries supply chain, where the industry standard is especially interesting. They can also indicate practices to avoid, as in the home textiles supply chain. Another managerial take-away is the need to handle each relation, manufacturer-wholesaler and wholesaler-retailer store, with their specific affecting factors in specific ways.\nOriginality/value: Previous knowledge on performance management process integration is mainly based on manufacturing companies. This study expands existing knowledge into a retail context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Effects of inviting customers to share responsibility in the context of impersonal service	[ "Reactance", "Impersonal service", "Invitations to share responsibility", "Willingness to share blame" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One unique aspect of service management is that customers are typically part of the production and delivery process. This \"inseparable\" nature of many services implies a significant degree of interdependence between providers and customers (Solomon et al., 1985). In such situations, customers and frontline employees contribute, interact and get involved in the creation and execution of the service (Ghobadian et al., 1994; Gronroos, 2000). Although the degree of interaction and involvement varies with the type of service, the responsibility for successful service outcomes is thus shared (Sierra et al., 2009). Because customers play a key role in the outcome of a service encounter, service organizations aiming to create added value in the transaction must monitor their customers' behavior, learn from it and manage their collaborative relationship accordingly.\nShared responsibility in service exchanges: Customers are increasingly being encouraged to take on more active roles in \"producing\" services. They are no longer a passive audience but active \"co-creators\" of value in concert with service providers. In that process, according to Dong et al. (2008), their personal needs are better served and their satisfaction enhanced. Lengnick-Hall (1996) has urged management to examine the roles that customers can and do play in the service-production process, while Bendapudi and Leone (2003) have asserted that actively encouraging customers to be co-creators of service value will be the next frontier in competitive effectiveness.\nUnilateral vs reciprocal invitation to play an active role: A \"unilateral\" invitation to play an active part in service delivery will be worded in such a way as to demonstrate clearly to customers that their own efforts are necessary for a fully successful outcome. Service providers can further enhance customer perceptions of shared responsibility by offering them some value in behaving reciprocally. Houston and Gassenheimer (1987) have defined such reciprocity as \"a social interaction where movement of one party evokes a compensating movement in some other party.\" In other words, people expect that favors done for others will be rewarded by being returned in kind (Zhang and Epley, 2009). Receiving such a favor thus creates imbalance in an exchange, which may engender a sense of obligation or indebtedness and the feeling that it must be returned (Laochumnanvanit and Bednall, 2005).\nPsychological reactance: Invitations to share responsibility in the service transaction might be seen as attempts to influence customers' behavior. In practice, individuals will differ in the extent to which they view such attempts as threatening and are consequently prone to exhibit \"reactance\" to them. It is thus to be expected that customers' perception of shared responsibility for service outcomes will be moderated by their predisposition to such reactance.\nStudy 1a: Method\nStudy 1b: Method\nStudy 2a: Method\nStudy 2b: Method\nGeneral discussion: The management of enlightened service organizations will view customers as \"partial employees\" (Kelley et al., 1990) and make efforts to engender a perception of shared responsibility for the service outcome (Sierra et al., 2009). While a large body of research has examined customer participation in person-to-person service transactions, there have been few studies of how customers can be made to recognize shared responsibility for the success of the exchange when the transaction is impersonal and collective. The aim of this study has been to close that gap in the knowledge, by means of four studies examining how customers can be motivated to work with the service provider toward enhancement of their service experience.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers respond to a service provider's invitation to share responsibility for the experience of an \"impersonal\" service that is not customized but available to all customers on an equal footing; specifically to assess the extent to which the tendency to psychological reactance moderates their responses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Four studies investigate the effects of such invitations on perceptions of shared responsibility, the mechanism underlying that process, the effect of trait reactance on susceptibility to an invitation, and the extent to which a predisposition to reactance moderates the effect of an invitation on willingness to share blame for service failure.\nFindings: Service customers are more likely to feel a sense of shared responsibility and less likely to experience reactance in response to a \"reciprocal\" invitation to participate in \"co-creation\" of the experience than to a more \"unilateral\" invitation. That heightened perception of shared responsibility was restricted to low-reactance individuals, who were also more willing to share the blame for service failure in response to a unilateral invitation and even more so when it was reciprocal. The willingness of high-reactance individuals was unaffected by the type of invitation.\nOriginality/value: Whereas the relevant literature has focussed mainly on person-to-person service transactions, the studies reported here show how customers may be converted into active partners in an \"impersonal\" service encounter.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Pushing for partnership: physician engagement and resistance in primary care renewal	[ "Canada", "Primary care", "Social identification", "Doctors", "Qualitative research", "Social processes" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In healthcare, aspiring agents of policy or practice change must navigate a complex intergroup landscape. The need to make change intelligible and palatable - not merely to individuals, but to committed members of professional groups, each inclined to defend its own boundaries, status, and values - poses a significant challenge (Ferlie et al., 2005; Kerfoot, 2007; Currie et al., 2010; Kreindler, Dowd, Star and Gottschalk, 2012). When a proposed system change demands the participation of a group that tends to regard itself as independent of the system, the challenge is formidable (Kreindler et al., 2014). Such is the situation of Canada's provincial and regional policymakers and managers (hereafter \"decision-makers\") in the arena of primary care.\nMethod: Context\nResults: Decision-makers' preferred strategies\nDiscussion: Decision-makers' pursuit of intergroup partnership (CSIMS4) was misaligned with the prevailing state of physician-decision-maker relations, hindering the progress of PCR. This pattern of results contrasts with what Kreindler et al. (2014) observed among organizations that were engaging physicians effectively; none of these attempted to initiate a partnership with physicians whose level of engagement was minimal, nor to leapfrog over a CSIMS stage. But it also contrasts with what Fiol et al. (2009) observed in a hospital whose managers and physicians were locked in intractable conflict; in that instance, managers leapfrogged over multiple stages, attempting to enforce unity when they had barely embarked on relationship-building. In the present case, decision-makers' deviation from the prescribed progression was more subtle: although they attempted to redefine the intergroup relationship without first having reinforced physician identity, they did not attempt to replace subgroup identity with shared identity - no one expected fee-for-service physicians, who until recently might have had no relationship whatsoever with \"the system,\" to suddenly embrace it as an identity object. Yet even this slight departure from the recommended sequence had adverse consequences for PCR implementation. This novel finding provides important corroboration for CSIMS, and for stage models of social identity management more generally. The study also contributes to the literature on social identity management through its thorough examination of both agents' and targets' perspectives, which has been lacking in prior studies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Healthcare policymakers and managers struggle to engage private physicians, who tend to view themselves as independent of the system, in new models of primary care. The purpose of this paper is to examine this issue through a social identity lens.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Through in-depth interviews with 33 decision-makers and 31 fee-for-service family physicians, supplemented by document review and participant observation, the authors studied a Canadian province's early efforts to engage physicians in primary care renewal initiatives.\nFindings: Recognizing that the existing physician-system relationship was generally distant, decision-makers invested effort in relationship-building. However, decision-makers' rhetoric, as well as the design of their flagship initiative, evinced an attempt to proceed directly from interpersonal relationship-building to the establishment of formal intergroup partnership, with no intervening phase of supporting physicians' group identity and empowering them to assume equal partnership. The invitation to partnership did not resonate with most physicians: many viewed it as an inauthentic offer from an out-group (\"bureaucrats\") with discordant values; others interpreted partnership as a mere transactional exchange. Such perceptions posed barriers to physician participation in renewal activities.\nPractical implications: The pursuit of a premature degree of intergroup closeness can be counterproductive, heightening physician resistance.\nOriginality/value: This study revealed that even a relatively subtle misalignment between a particular social identity management strategy and its intergroup context can have highly problematic ramifications. Findings advance the literature on social identity management and may facilitate the development of more effective engagement strategies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Assessing the maximum level of customer satisfaction in grocery stores: A comparison between Spain and the USA	[ "Customer satisfaction", "Grocery stores", "Store attribute perceptions", "Different countries", "Spain", "United States of America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Grocery retailers today face more dynamic and competitive environments than ever before. From the supply side, the processes of fusion and acquisition during the past two decades have resulted in strongly concentrated, very competitive and highly international company structures (Arnold and Fernie, 2000; Burt et al., 2002; Dupuis and Prime, 1996). European food retailers such as Tesco and US retailers such as Walmart even operate in multiple countries. Thus, it is not surprising that grocery retailing topics related to entry strategies, motivations and obstacles to retail internationalisation have received considerable attention from both practitioners and academics (Alexander, 1990; Treagold and Davies, 1988; Uusitalo and Rockman, 2004; Williams, 1992; Wrigley, 1989).Changes in the retail landscape have been accompanied by simultaneous and significant changes on the demand side. For example, modern consumers exhibit new purchase behaviours and consumption habits; as Berne (2006) shows, certain socio-demographic factors (e.g. growing immigration, more single-person homes, increasing numbers of women working outside the home, smaller households, progressive aging of the population) mean that grocery store customers differ greatly from those who existed only a decade ago.Accordingly, food retailers must look constantly for resources and internal capabilities on which to base their strategies to remain competitive (Davis et al., 2008; Gonzalez-Benito, 2002). They also need to identify how customers perceive them to establish the correct combination of unique elements that will enable the retailers to generate synergies (Betancourt et al., 2007). This goal has even greater relevance for food retailers that aim to compete in countries different from their original home country (Arnold and Fernie, 2000; Johnson and Allen, 1994).In this sense several key attributes, as identified in prior literature, enable grocery retailers to differentiate themselves from competitors in the market. Therefore, this study aims to identify the underlying factors of these attributes and determine the relationship that exists between:* customer perceptions of these focal factors; and* customer satisfaction with their purchases.This latter goal is especially relevant because food retailers are conscious of the importance of customer satisfaction on the success of their commercial strategies and achieved results (Gomez et al., 2004; Martinez-Ruiz et al., 2010). The limited margins in grocery retailing also mean long-term customer satisfaction is a critical success factor. Moreover, we focus on the maximum level of customer satisfaction, because as service providers, food retailers must determine whether their main objective is simply to satisfy consumers with their performance or to deliver a maximum level of perceived service quality (Spreng and MacKoy, 1996). This study shows retail managers which attributes and factors they should emphasise to achieve the maximum level of customer satisfaction, taking into account the notion that customer satisfaction, among other aspects, represents an important antecedent of loyalty (Fornell, 1992; Sivadas and Baker-Prewitt, 2000; Yu and Dean, 2001).In recognition of the international structure of grocery retail groups worldwide, this research also aims to assess differences in customer satisfaction factors and their varying impacts on the maximum level of customer satisfaction according to customers' national residence. This research offers a useful contribution to food retailers that intend to operate (or currently operate) in different countries, because it reveals key factors to take into consideration to launch a grocery retail operation that appeals to different cultural characteristics. Bearing this goal in mind, we examine two different customer samples from two continents - North America and Europe - such that we collect data about not only the store factors that contribute most to the maximum level of customer satisfaction but also the differences in customer satisfaction that reflect where customers reside.In the next section, we therefore review characteristic attributes of food stores identified in relevant literature. In Section 3, we detail our data, obtained from two samples of customers gathered in food stores in two different countries (Spain and USA). After identifying the store factors that underlie these attributes, we propose a series of hypotheses relating to the influence of these factors on the maximum level of customer satisfaction with the purchase experience. In Section 4, we test the proposed hypotheses, using a binary logistic regression analysis that identifies which factors exert the greatest influence on the maximum level of customer satisfaction, across the two customer samples. In turn, the study reveals several interesting conclusions and managerial guidelines relative to retail grocery establishments in different continents, as we detail in Section 5, including the attributes that customers value most, their underlying factors, and sources of differentiation for retailers.\n2 Characteristic grocery attributes: literature review: According to prior literature (Berne, 2006; Davis et al., 2008; Ganesh et al., 2007; Gomez et al., 2004; Martinez-Ruiz et al., 2010), it is possible to identify a series of attributes of retail establishments that, when used properly by retail distributors, establishes strategic methods of differentiation that customers value positively and that thus are highly likely to influence the degree of customer satisfaction.2.1 Quality\n3 Data description and hypotheses development: In this section, we describe the data collection process, as well as the statistical information obtained from these data. The data enabled us to analyse customer perceptions of different attributes of the commercial establishment and understand which factors underlie these attributes. Using these factors, we evaluate our research hypotheses, which refer to the influence of various factors on consumer purchase satisfaction.3.1 Sample and data collection\n4 Model and results: We carried out a binary logistic regression analysis of the customer databases to assess how the identified factors affect maximum levels of customer satisfaction. In our model, the factors provide predictor variables that exert an influence on maximum customer satisfaction.Cox-Snell's and Nagelkerke's statistical pseudo-R2 quantify the proportion of variation explained by the model of logistic regression, similar to R2 in a linear regression model. Table IV below presents the values of the pseudo-R2. As seen on this Table, the values of Nagelkerke's and Cox and Snell's pseudo-R2 are reasonable, such that the model explains between 9.9 per cent and 14.7 per cent of the variability of the endogenous variable in the Spanish sample, and between 8.7 per cent and 12.5 per cent in the US sample. These statistics must be interpreted with caution though because they do not explain variance as the R2 coefficient does in a linear regression.Table V shows the results of the analysis for the two samples. For the Spanish sample, the factor that contributes most to the maximum level of customer satisfaction is services and convenience, followed by the QI. However, the economic factor does not influence maximum customer satisfaction. A similar trend appears for the US sample: The factor that contributes most to the maximum level of customer satisfaction is services and quality, followed by convenience. Again, the economic factor does not influence the maximum level of customer satisfaction.The results for the maximum levels of customer satisfaction indicate that customers are totally satisfied with factors related to the services offered by the grocery retailer. In particular, the customer attention, additional services and store atmosphere attributes are commonly valued most by consumers in both samples. The attributes of quality of merchandise, store brand, proximity, assortment variety and opening times are also valued to varying extents, depending on the country. Specifically, US consumers most value quality and store brand, but Spanish consumers value them to a lesser extent. Conversely, the attributes of proximity, assortment variety and opening times are considered by Spanish consumers elements of the most valued factors, whereas US consumers regard these attributes as part of the second most valued factors. Finally, it is important to highlight that the attributes of price and promotions, which make up the economic factor, are not significantly valued by either sample and therefore do not influence the maximum level of customer satisfaction.Accordingly, we find support for H1, H2, H4 and H5, pertaining to the influence of services and convenience, QI, services and quality and convenience on maximal customer satisfaction. The hypotheses regarding perceptions of economic value did not receive support. In Table VI, we summarize these results.These results make it possible to distinguish three types of attributes that represent different factors with varying levels of importance, according to their valuation by customers in different countries. These important research findings prompt us to propose a classification of attributes and factors, according to their importance in terms of customer evaluations in different countries of residence. The first-order factor includes the most valued attributes by all customers, independent of the country of residence. The second-order factor includes attributes whose importance is lesser than those of the first-order factor but still critical for reaching a maximal level of customer satisfaction, though they vary depending on the country of residence. Finally, the third-order factor contains remaining attributes that are valued relatively less by consumers but still have some influence on customer satisfaction. It is important that grocery retailers operating in various countries take into account not only these attribute classifications, but also their importance weighting according to customer perceptions. Figure 1 illustrates the different attributes and factors to which grocery retailers should pay particular attention, in order of implementation priority.\n5 Discussion: In the dynamic, competitive environment that grocery retailers face today, a study of store attributes and factors that enable retailers to differentiate themselves from other competitors and achieve a strong competitive position in the industry offers an important contribution to marketing literature. Therefore, this study recognises the influence of customer satisfaction, especially satisfaction due to customers' perceptions of certain store attributes, on food retailers' ability to differentiate themselves from competitors and thereby obtain a stronger position in the minds of consumers, which in turn supports firm survival and repeat-purchase activity. In this respect, we have determined the influence of factors that underlie store attribute perceptions on the maximum level of customer satisfaction, which is often a primary goal of grocery store managers - and arguably of any retail operation.The findings have great relevance because they reveal which factors customers value most as the means to differentiate food retailers, as well as their relationship to maximum satisfaction level. We have conducted a descriptive investigation that includes key attributes identified by prior literature and obtained main factors that underlie these attributes, according to a factorial analysis of the main components. Our overall objective has been to analyse which factors display the greatest influence on the maximum level of customer satisfaction, a topic of great interest to marketing researchers and managers alike.We analysed two samples of 422 and 400 consumers who purchased from different types of self-service food establishments in two representative Spanish and US cities. The results confirm that for the Spanish sample, perceptions of service and convenience, along with a QI, have positive and significant influences on the maximum level of customer satisfaction. The findings are similar for the US sample: Perceptions of service and quality, along with convenience, positively and significantly influence maximum customer satisfaction. Finally, the EV does not have a significant influence on the maximum level of customer satisfaction in either country.An in-depth assessment of these results evinces how, on the whole, consumers achieve maximum levels of satisfaction according to factors related to the services offered by the retail managers. Specifically, the attributes of customer attention, additional services and store atmosphere are commonly and primarily valued by both Spanish and US consumers. In addition the attributes related to the quality of the merchandise, commercialised brands, proximity, assortment variety and opening times are valued to certain extents, depending on the country. However, the price and promotions attributes, which make up the economic factor, are not significantly valued by either sample and therefore do not influence the maximum level of customer satisfaction.Although our use of convenience sampling means we cannot generalise our results, it also allowed us to identify a certain factor structure that contributes to customer satisfaction in food stores and that differs depending on the country. Regarding the different valuation of convenience in the two cultures, it is important to take into account differences in not only the retailing structure but also the population structure. Although some convergence may have occurred lately, a clear divide remains between Western European countries and Northern Europe and the USA. For example, the Spanish population is characterised by an increased number of households but fewer people per household, which probably has contributed greatly to changes in traditional Spanish spending and consumption habits (CES, 2008). However, the age at which young people leave their parents' home to establish their own household and the prevalence of elderly persons living with their children remain remarkable features (Bover, 2008).This study offers three key recommendations for managing establishments, especially for retailers that intend to operate (or are currently operating) in different countries. First, we identify factors that customers value most. These particular factors can facilitate managers' ability to define their strong and weak customer touch-points and determine the areas they may need to improve to maintain their competitive position in the market. Second, our study reveals a group of underlying factors and determines the influence of each on the maximum level of customer satisfaction. Managers thus can better design and implement marketing strategies that support an amplitude and range of products, brands, services and convenience offered, as well as their QI and the monetary value of purchases, as appropriate for their customers. Third, because this study considers different customer samples gathered in different countries, it offers additional value. It reveals elements that can help retailers construct a sustainable competitive advantage though differentiation and suggests the elements of marketing strategies that may increase client satisfaction, depending on customer profiles. Therefore, these results are especially relevant to grocery retailers operating on different continents, because they indicate main factors to take into consideration before attempting an expansion into different nations or continents.The present study also has some limitations though. For example, we did not test for measurement equivalence across the different countries, which could result in a flawed understanding of the consumer behaviour patterns. Furthermore, it is important for companies to consider more than just the maximum level of satisfaction, especially if they focus on the transition of satisfaction into a long-term loyalty relationship. As some research has indicated (e.g. Anderson and Sullivan, 1993; Mittal and Kamakura, 2001; Oliver, 1997), satisfaction can be linked to loyalty, but its impact may depend on diverse elements of prior relational experiences (Rust et al., 2004). In this respect, Chandrashekaran et al. (2007) note the relevance of measuring satisfaction strength and its influence on the translation of satisfaction into loyalty.Many open questions thus remain. Further research should determine the impact of the detected factors on the degree of customer loyalty toward certain commercial formats and specific establishments. We also propose using confirmatory factor analysis, as proposed by Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1998), to test for cross-national invariance. In addition we suggest replications of our study that take into account overall customer satisfaction instead of maximal customer satisfaction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to establish the main factors that underlie store attributes, to examine which exert the greatest influences on the achievement of a maximum level of customer satisfaction. This study seeks to determine if there are significant differences not only in the factor compositions but also in their influence on customer satisfaction, depending on the country of residence of focal customers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The test of the proposed framework consists of analyses of two samples of customers that purchased in grocery stores in Spain and the USA. Following a factor analysis of the principal components, a binary logistic regression analysis tests the influence of the identified factors on customer satisfaction.\nFindings: - This work contributes to extant literature by assessing differences in the main factors that contribute to satisfaction with food stores, depending on the location of the customer.\nPractical implications: - This work is especially useful to grocery retailers that operate, or plan to operate, in different countries; it outlines key factors to consider to achieve upper-bounded customer satisfaction scores.\nOriginality/value: - The proposed classification of attributes and factors, according to their importance for customers' evaluations in different countries, includes three main factors. The first-order factor includes the most valued attributes by all customers, independent of the country of residence. The second-order factors include attributes with lesser importance though still valued by customers; the importance depends on the country of residence. Finally, the third-order factor attributes are valued relatively less.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social media exploration for understanding food product attributes perception: the case of coffee and health with Twitter data	[ "Social media", "Coffee", "Health", "Food", "Perception", "Sentiment analysis", "Content analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Coffee is one of the most commonly consumed beverages in the world, with fast growing sales at global level (International Coffee Organization [ICO], 2018). The coffee industry is continuously investing to meet coffee consumption trends by offering new sensorial attributes, consumption experiences and occasions of consumption. There is a growing trend to highlight coffee's product of origin, sustainability, organic, fair trade and environmental friendliness (Samoggia and Riedel, 2018). Consumers are continually looking for new products in the coffee category, and the coffee industry has to keep up with product innovation.Coffee has seen a revolutionary growth over the recent decades from an ordinary commodity to a speciality product. One contributing factor to an increase of coffee consumption is consumer enthusiasm for gourmet coffee varieties (e.g. Espresso-based beverages, frozen-blended, cold brew, nitrogen-infused). Today's coffee trends include premiumisation, customisation, single origin and roast type (Panhuysen and Pierrot, 2018). Other factors that contribute to an increase in coffee consumption are convenience and functional aspects (NCA, 2018a). Convenience means that high quality coffee can be purchased at speciality coffee shops or easily prepared at home. Functional means coffee with functional benefits. Recent studies found that consumers want coffee with benefits for metabolism, alert or energy boosting, for healthier skin or high in antioxidants (NCA, 2018a). There is increasing interest towards health-oriented coffee products, with specific focus on ready-to-drink coffee (Just-drinks.com, 2018). Coffee is an essential part of many people's daily routines globally. People drink coffee for pleasure because of its sensory properties (taste and aroma) and for stimulation due to its psychoactive properties (Nieber, 2017). This popularity and the possible beneficial health effects make coffee a product of public and scientific interest (Loftfield et al., 2016), and of importance for the public health sector (Grosso et al., 2017).Consumers have contradictory perceptions of the effects of coffee consumption on their body and health (Samoggia and Riedel, 2019; Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee - ISIC, 2016). Some people perceive coffee as bad for their health and wish to drink less coffee. Others enjoy drinking coffee, perceiving coffee consumption as a pleasant moment in their daily routine, to be consumed alone or shared with others (Samoggia and Riedel, 2018). Yet, it is unclear whether coffee fits within the trend of indulgent treats, healthy lifestyles and diets, increasingly common among consumers (Euromonitor International, 2017). Food products enriched with healthier and tastier options are growing in popularity as they satisfy busy and gratification-seeking lifestyles (Jiang and Leung, 2012).Coffee is already consumed as a functional drink, in particular as a source of energy in the morning for its caffeine content. However, its health impact has been questioned over the years due to consumers' concerns over caffeine effects on human body. Currently, there is limited understanding over consumers' perception on coffee health impact. Coffee is consumed at global level, and social media messages can capture worldwide consumers' opinions over coffee and health and provide insights on associated messages' content and sentiment. Considering current consumers' interest towards healthier food options, an explorative analysis of the perceptions on the relationship between coffee and health may provide advice on new market management potentials to the coffee industry.The present study extends research approaches of food product attributes perception analysis by adopting social media as a source of information. This paper aims at exploring the use of Twitter as a tool to develop future marketing opportunities for the coffee industry. In particular, the paper focusses on exploring Twitter messages' content and sentiment towards health attributes of coffee.\n2. Theoretical framework: The present research adopted a utilitarian and hedonic consumer behaviour perspective. Utilitarian value and hedonic value have different effects on consumer behaviour (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). Utilitarian products are \"effective, helpful, functional, necessary and practical\". The products are purchased for their practical uses and satisfy the consumer's needs (Holbrook, 2006; Lu et al., 2016). Hedonic products are \"fun, exciting, delightful, thrilling, and enjoyable\". The value \"arises from people's own pleasure in the consumption experience, appreciated for their own sake\" (Holbrook, 2006; Lu et al., 2016).The present study explored how health, a utilitarian attribute of coffee, is perceived (Wang and Yu, 2016). The perception can influence consumer purchasing behaviour and companies' marketing strategies to cater to that behaviour (Chen and Sun, 2014; Cronin et al., 2000; Chen and Dubinsky, 2003). Past studies support that the understanding of the appreciation of product attributes serves as value cues. The consumers' value perception can be used to predict consumer behaviour.Recent reviews on coffee consumer behaviour highlight the importance of the hedonic dimension in coffee consumption. The sensorial appreciation (e.g. aroma, taste) and the recreational (e.g. socialisation) aspects are key elements in coffee consumption (Samoggia and Riedel, 2018). Utilitarian values are also crucial in coffee consumption. Many coffee consumers are motivated by the stimulation and alertness that coffee can provide. Coffee drinking experience becomes functional when coffee, with its caffeine content, is consumed for the physiological benefits (e.g. increased energy, improved performance, diminished headache and increased blood pressure).\n3. Literature review: 3.1 Health properties of coffee\n4. Materials and methods: Data gathering and elaboration were carried out in different steps (Figure 1). 4.1 Step 1 - data gathering\n5. Results: 5.1 Analysis of tweets\n6. Discussion: The present research explains the results according to the utilitarian and hedonic theory. This paper highlights the relationships between the consumer-perceived beliefs of utilitarian functional attributes and hedonic value of coffee product attribute. The utilitarian value perception is considered as health-related, pertaining to consumer value perceptions of coffee as beneficial or detrimental to health. The hedonic motivation suggests a coffee consumption experience based on a consumer's positive response associated with product consumption, including enjoyment and social appreciation.The present study contributes to the literature by enriching research work on coffee product attribute beliefs and value perceptions. Previous studies suggested that coffee consumers' perceived utilitarian value is predominantly driven by functional and economic attribute perceptions, whereas perceived hedonic value is dominated by content sensory attribute beliefs of coffee (Wang and Yu, 2016; Samoggia and Riedel, 2018). Limited attention has been given to specific coffee health attribute as key element of consumer-perceived utilitarian and hedonic coffee consumption attitude.Research results show that consumers mainly have a hedonic approach to coffee drinking. Coffee arouses emotions and creates pleasant experiences. It is perceived as an enjoyable drinking habit and part of a trendy lifestyle. The way social media users select hashtags shows that they aim at drinking coffee in a fashionable and stylish manner. It fits with beauty, fitness, travel and summer. Coffee brings favourable emotions, wellness and positive state of mind. Past research findings support this outcome (Samoggia and Riedel, 2018; Bhumiratana et al., 2014; Agoston et al., 2018). Coffee is considered nutritionally good, contributing to weight loss within a low-calorie diet and bringing energy to the drinkers. It provides a hedonic, indulgent and light drinking experience. The overall coffee image is trendy, beneficial for body and mind and gratifying. There is limited interest in focussing on specific medical health effects of coffee. Moreover, in addition to the many indifferent consumers, there are also many positively inclined messages towards the potential positive health effects of coffee. These consumers associate the health attribute of coffee as a utilitarian value. The utilitarian value derives from the health benefits that coffee provides. These consumers provide a rational explanation to coffee consumption. Thus, results support that coffee can be positioned in consumers' mind for its health benefits. This type of positioning strategy would aim at satisfying a consumers' utilitarian need. The insights offered by the present study complement past research findings supporting the uncertainty consumers have on coffee health effects (ISIC, 2016; Corso et al., 2018; Corso and Benassi, 2015).Furthermore, this research shows that the issue of coffee and health is of interest for the wide public and for media institutions. Media institutions, through their social media accounts and the high number of followers, can exert great influence on public perception of coffee effects on health. This is due to the fact that consumers' accessibility and exposure to media content is higher, compared to scientific publications. As supported by past studies, consumers may more easily trust media messages that echo science-based information and research findings, rather than companies' communication and promotional messages (Weingart and Guenther, 2016).The perception of consumers towards some health effects of coffee is positive. Tweets' sentiments towards coffee and health suggest that consumers can be receptive to a utilitarian health-oriented product positioning of coffee products. This is supported by past studies. Coffee is already positioned in consumers' minds to be a beverage that can boost their energy during a stressful workday and facilitate a relaxing afternoon among friends (Samoggia and Riedel, 2018). As past studies on consumers' behaviour support, consumers are still uncertain about the health benefits of coffee. Medical studies' findings on positive effects of coffee on health are shared on Twitter. However, the present research findings support that Twitter users use the hashtags cautiously. In particular, they tend not to expand their visibility pointing on the positive relation between coffee and medical health. They mostly adopt an emotional and hedonic communication style.Furthermore, the present research highlights the value of social media as sources of information for research studies. Social media users can be considered communities of food consumers useful to extrapolate information on food product attribute perception. Social media users post, comment on and assess innovative products and food attributes (Dong and Wu, 2015). As supported by past studies, Twitter users' messages are rich in information and provide preliminary cues on consumers' perceptions that are worth exploring to conceptualize food product attributes. There are thousands of tweets posted daily, and they picture consumers' sentiment towards a specific topic (Montoyo et al., 2012; Mostafa, 2018).Companies may consider Twitter and Facebook messages as an electronic form of the traditional word-of-mouth marketing technique (Mostafa, 2018). The present research shows that social media can be used as an extensive focus group useful for marketing and consumer research. By examining the content of tweets, companies can gain insights on consumers' attitudes about a specific issue or product (Simeone and Russo, 2017). Social media information can be used to explore the consumer-perceived utilitarian and hedonic value of a specific food product. Past research studies have examined social media to predict consumer behaviour (Alalwan et al., 2017; Hamilton et al., 2016; Erkan and Evans, 2016; Patino and Pitta, 2012; Wang et al., 2012; Zhu and Chen, 2015). Others focussed on Twitter data to analyse the launch of a new product and to explore consumers' opinions (Rathore and Ilavarasan, 2017). Another study analysed how consumers reacted to existing products and gave suggestions for new products (Martini et al., 2013). The present research uses social media to explore the users' utilitarian and hedonic perception of a specific food product attribute. It is an application of social media content and sentiment analysis and provides results valuable for implementing a utilitarian or hedonic benefits marketing strategy of coffee product.\n7. Conclusion: The investigation highlights the potential of social media as a source of information for marketing purposes, and it explores how communication contents could drive food and beverage companies in developing innovative positioning strategies for coffee products. Companies may pay attention to social media content for a better understanding of consumers' perception or reaction to a given message. Social media are used to achieve successful branding and as part of wider advertising campaigns. They should be exploited also to establish a dialogue with consumers. They may provide scientifically informed evidence on recent research updates on the effects of coffee on health. Social media should become an integral part of the overall proactive marketing strategy of any company, especially if pursuing innovation.Furthermore, the present research provides a direction on what aspects of coffee and health a communication strategy should focus on. The focus should be on the coffee effects on state of mind or diseases related to brain functioning. If coffee's beneficial effects on health are scientifically proved, the coffee industry will have an opportunity to further develop its marketing strategy. This could value consumers' interest towards health and wellness beverages and a trendy lifestyle.Research results support the effectiveness of the utilitarian and hedonic consumer behaviour theory approach to analyse the consumers' perception of coffee health benefits gathered through social media data. Results also support that consumers' coffee experience is driven by a complex set of factors, and there is need to adequately capture the different dimensions. Results further show the proximity of utilitarian and hedonic values of consumers' perception of coffee. 7.1 Managerial implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Food companies and consumers are increasingly interested in healthy food and beverages. Coffee is one of the most commonly consumed beverages worldwide. There is increasing consensus that coffee consumption can have beneficial effects on human body. This paper aims at exploring Twitter messages' content and sentiment towards health attributes of coffee.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research adopted a utilitarian and hedonic consumer behaviour perspective to analyse online community messages. A sample of 13,000 tweets, from around 4,800 users, that mentions keywords coffee and health was collected on a daily basis for a month in mid-2017. The tweets were categorized with a term frequency analysis, keyword-in-context analysis and sentiment analysis.\nFindings: Results showed that the majority of tweets are neutral or slightly positive towards coffee's effects on health. Media and consumers are dynamic Twitter users. Findings support that coffee consumption brings favourable emotions, wellness, energy, positive state of mind and an enjoyable and trendy lifestyle. Many tweets have a positive perception of coffee health benefits, especially relating to mental and physical well-being.\nResearch limitations/implications: The high number of users and tweets analysed compensates the limited amount of time of data collection, Twitter messages' restricted number of characters and quantitative software analysis limitations.\nPractical implications: The research provides valuable suggestions for food and beverage industry managers.\nOriginality/value: This work adds value to the literature by expanding scholars' research on food product attributes perception analysis by using social media as a source of information. Moreover, it provides valuable information on marketable coffee attributes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cognitive styles within an exploratory search system for digital libraries	[ "Attitudes", "Digital libraries", "Individual differences", "Cognitive style", "Information behaviour", "Educational informatics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Significant amounts of cultural heritage material are now available through online digital library portals to users with varying levels of expertise and ability to find, navigate, interpret and use such information. Increasingly, the providers of cultural heritage (i.e. libraries, museums and archives) are seeking to make their content more widely accessible and in innovative ways. Cultural heritage institutions are seeking to provide richer user experiences that support connectivity between people, content and applications, to support writers as well as readers, and to enable collaborations with and between users. For example, a new generation of cultural heritage portals is encouraging user participation through the tagging of resources and making recommendations to other users (Carmagnola et al., 2007; Trant, 2009). However, this vast amount of material from libraries, museums and archives can also be overwhelming for many users who are provided with little or no guidance on how to find and interpret this information (Johnson, 2008; Skov and Ingwersen, 2008; van den Akker et al., 2013). Potentially useful and relevant content is hidden from the users who are typically offered simple keyword-based searching functionality as the entry point into a cultural heritage collection. The situation is very different within traditional mechanisms for viewing cultural heritage (e.g. museums) where items are organised thematically and users guided through the collection.\n2. Background: Adapting cultural heritage to the digital age\n3. The PATHS system: Within the context of the EU-funded PATHS (Personalised Access To cultural Heritage Spaces) project[1], we have developed an experimental system to assist users in their exploration of digital cultural heritage (Hall et al., 2014). Navigation in the PATHS system is based around the metaphor of pathways (or trails) through the collection, an approach that has been widely explored as an alternative to standard keyword-based search (Furuta et al., 1997; Reich et al., 1999; Shipman et al., 2000; White and Huang, 2010). Pathways are collections of artefacts organised around a theme, which form access points to the collection. Although the PATHS system could be applied to any document collection, our focus has been on cultural heritage since pathways are particularly useful in this context. Users accessing these collections are often unfamiliar with their content, making keyword-based search unsuitable since they are unable to formulate appropriate queries (Wilson et al., 2010). Search interfaces utilising functionalities that go beyond keyword search have shown to be more suitable for exploratory search (Marchionini, 2006). Pathways support this exploration by echoing the organised galleries and guided tours found in museums.\n4. Methodology: Data collection\n5. Results and analysis: In this section we present the raw findings from the user evaluation, with analysis by users' cognitive style on the wholist/analytic dimension, along with discussion on the meaning of these findings in the light of the research questions. The findings are presented in three sections:\n6. Discussion of the findings: In this work we have tested the hypothesis that the behaviour and attitudes of individuals to the navigational features of the PATHS system would differ according to cognitive style, as suggested in previous literature (Bawden and Robinson, 2011; Chen and Ford, 1998; Wang et al., 2000). For the questionnaire survey of user attitudes towards the various PATHS features, statistically significant differences were found. In the case of the experiments into user behaviour, the sample size was too low to establish statistical significance. However, differences were found in behaviour relating to cognitive styles, and the direction of these differences was consistent with that suggested in the hypotheses. We have interpreted these findings as indicative of a trend worthy of further systematic investigation.\n7. Conclusions: In this paper we have investigated the effects of users' cognitive style on their use of a prototype system for exploring digital collections of cultural heritage. Much of the research literature has focused on the notion that individuals display behaviour in accordance with their cognitive style, and in instructional contexts on matching the style of information presentation to each individual's style. There has been less emphasis on individuals' attitudes towards system features designed to support the matching process, and support designed to compensate for the weaknesses of each style, as opposed to matching information presentation and navigational affordances to an individual's style. The present study provides further evidence of links between style and search/navigation behaviour to support other studies, but in the context of an experimental interface to a large cultural heritage digital library. It also offers a significant contribution to research into cognitive styles by proposing a model suggesting a converse relationship between behaviour and attitudes to support: individual users displaying search/navigation behaviour mapped onto the strengths of their cognitive style, but placing greater value on interface features that support aspects in which they are weaker. This distinction is worthy of further investigation and will be our focus of upcoming investigation with a second version of the system that incorporates a richer set of features for exploring and navigating digital collections of cultural heritage.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cognitive style on navigating a large digital library of cultural heritage information; specifically, the paper focus on the wholist/analytic dimension as experienced in the field of educational informatics. The hypothesis is that wholist and analytic users have characteristically different approaches when they explore, search and interact with digital libraries, which may have implications for system design.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A detailed interactive IR evaluation of a large cultural heritage digital library was undertaken, along with the Riding CSA test. Participants carried out a range of information tasks, and the authors analysed their task performance, interactions and attitudes.\nFindings: The hypothesis on the differences in performance and behaviour between wholist and analytic users is supported. However, the authors also find that user attitudes towards the system are opposite to expectations and that users give positive feedback for functionality that supports activities in which they are cognitively weaker.\nResearch limitations/implications: There is scope for testing results in a larger scale study, and/or with different systems. In particular, the findings on user attitudes warrant further investigation.\nPractical implications: Findings on user attitudes suggest that systems which support areas of weakness in users' cognitive abilities are valued, indicating an opportunity to offer diverse functionality to support different cognitive weaknesses.\nOriginality/value: A model is proposed suggesting a converse relationship between behaviour and attitudes; to support individual users displaying search/navigation behaviour mapped onto the strengths of their cognitive style, but placing greater value on interface features that support aspects in which they are weaker.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cross-country findings on tacit knowledge sharing: evidence from the Brazilian and Indonesian IT workers	[ "Information technology", "Organizational culture", "Cross cultural studies", "Tacit knowledge", "Knowledge sharing", "Organizational commitment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In a knowledge-based economy, a company's ability to manage knowledge is a major source of organizational competitive advantage (Chang and Li, 2015; Chen et al., 2018; Le and Lei, 2018). In this context, organizations are increasingly aware of the importance of knowledge sharing (KS), especially the tacit type. Tacit knowledge is a kind of knowledge that someone has as a result of his/her personal and professional experiences. Therefore, tacit knowledge is unformulated, personal and difficult to communicate and formalize (Becerra, 2008; Chen et al., 2018). KS is the capacity of disseminating, transmitting or transferring knowledge between individuals and organizations (Le and Lei, 2018). KS is particularly relevant when knowledgeable workers leave the organization because of the loss of valuable information. It seems to be the case of the IT professionals, such as programmers and analysts, because they have enjoyed favorable conditions in the job market over the past decade. This means that good professionals have been getting better job offers from competitors, increasing the turnover rates in this industry. Moreover, tacit KS is the common practice between IT professionals due to the nature of IT work which demands an intensive exchange of experience and information (Chen et al., 2018). IT workers tend to rely on each other to solve problems, deal with debugging and ask for task-related advice.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses development: 2.1 Organizational culture and tacit knowledge sharinng\n3. Method: 3.1 Instrument development\n4. Findings: 4.1 Analysis method\n5. Discussion and implications: The objective of this research is to investigate how organizational culture, individual characteristics, and social environment influence tacit KS of Brazilian and Indonesian IT workers. The results indicate that organizational culture and network ties have a similar effect on tacit KS in both countries, whereas the personality traits present different aspects. We also tested the mediation effect of organizational commitment in the relationship between organizational culture, social environment, personality traits, and tacit KS. Organizational commitment reflects employees' identification with organizational values, goals and objectives (Zhou et al., 2008; Borges and Mote, 2016). Although the findings suggest that IT professionals from Brazil and Indonesia are significantly committed to the organizations, the mediation effect of commitment varies between countries.\n6. Conclusions: The findings of this research provide empirical support and increase confidence that tacit KS depends on cultural specificities supporting previous research that advocates in favor of incorporating cultural contexts on knowledge management literature. In a macro level analysis, it seems that individual aspects such as the influence of personality traits on tacit KS are more susceptible to cultural contexts. However, the results of organizational culture are still inconclusive and need further investigation to address how cultural aspects inside organizations shape managerial practices and behaviors that mimic national values and assumptions in both countries. On the other hand, the findings on commitment and social network offer evidence in favor of universality. It seems that aspects directly related to the organization such as the strength of network ties and the level of organizational commitment hold across different cultural contexts. Future research could use these findings as reference to investigate whether Brazil and Indonesia are similar due to their economic development proximity or due to their cultural traits. Future studies could also investigate if the similarities are related to a specific characteristic of the IT category since IT professionals tend to assimilate universal language and behaviors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare the factors that can influence the tacit knowledge sharing (KS) in two different cultures by investigating information technology professionals (IT) in Brazil and Indonesia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey method was used and a standard questionnaire was applied. The sample size comprised 115 respondents from Brazil and 86 participants from Indonesia. A partial least squares analysis was used to assess the structural and confirmatory models and test the hypotheses.\nFindings: The results indicate that, in both cultures, IT workers who are committed to the organization are more likely to engage in tacit KS behavior. Similarly, strong social ties play an important role in the willingness to share tacit knowledge. Also, there are major differences between the organizational cultures; for instance, whereas Brazilians seem to be influenced by team-oriented cultures, Indonesians seem to be indifferent.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations include the small sample size as only two cultures were chosen to assess the differences and the representation of just one professional category (IT).\nOriginality/value: This paper provides theoretical contributions as the literature lacks a macro-level analysis on the KS comparison between countries. The results advance the comprehension of tacit KS phenomenon by testing in a cross-country comparison the mediation effect of organizational commitment. To practitioners, this research presents important empirical contributions indicating how organizational culture, social environment, personality traits and employee commitment impact an individual's willingness to share tacit knowledge with their coworkers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Nostalgic advertising in India: a content analysis of Indian TV advertisements	[ "ELM", "Content analysis", "Emotional appeal", "Nostalgic advertising", "Resource matching hypothesis", "Television ads" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nMotivation for the study: Advertising plays an important role in helping firms compete in emerging markets such as India. Based on World Advertising Research Centre projections, Indian advertising expenditure is predicted to grow by 13.8 per cent in 2015 which is more than twice the previously projected rate of 5.6 per cent. Moreover, India is one of the few countries to experience the largest boost in ad spend, amid Eurozone stagnation, Russian sanctions and the Asian slowdown. Indian TV advertising, in particular, is witnessing 21 per cent growth in 2015 which is double the originally predicted rate of 10 per cent (Warc, 2016). The TV ad industry in India is close to US$ 3.5 billion. This is particularly noteworthy, since in developed markets, ad spends on TV are coming down (Chandran, 2009; Steel, 2013).\nLiterature review and research questions: We present the literature review in three sections: the advertising literature, nostalgia (the emotion which is being studied in this research) and content analysis of advertisements.\nConceptual framework and hypotheses: We draw on resource matching hypothesis (Meyers-Levy and Peracchio, 1995) and elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (Petty et al., 1983) to build our conceptual framework around nostalgia. According to the resource matching hypothesis, the persuasiveness of a message is maximised when cognitive effort required for the processing of the message content matches with the cognitive resources allocated for it by the individual (Meyers-Levy and Peracchio, 1995). According to the ELM, when the elaboration likelihood is high (low), consumers process information through the central (peripheral) route of persuasion. When the issue or product has high personal relevance or risk associated, it becomes more important to form a reasoned opinion. Thus, when product involvement is high, people are more motivated to devote cognitive effort in order to evaluate the true merits of the product (Petty et al., 1983).\nMethodology: This study tested the hypotheses by using content analysis of Indian TV ads. \"Content analysis is a scientific, objective, systematic, quantitative, and generalisable description of communications content\" (Kassarjian, 1977, p. 10). According to Kassarjian (1977), content analysis is particularly useful when objective and systematic evaluation of large volume of material is required. In this study, we assess the emotional appeals used in Indian television ads. There is a plethora of ads available from more than 800 channels on Indian television from which we selected a reasonably sized sample. Due to the volume of ads, content analysis is appropriate.\nResults: We present descriptive analysis followed by testing of hypotheses.\nDiscussion of the results: The results of content analysis of Indian TV advertisements revealed following patterns and trends. Advertisers in India more commonly use a mix of rational and emotional appeal rather than rational or emotional appeal alone. The logic behind this trend in practice can be traced to a study conducted by Millward Brown. Based on 330 ads analysed in Millward Brown (2009) LinkTM copy-testing database, it was found that most successful ads are those which use both rational and emotional appeals rather than rational or emotional appeals alone. The presence of factual claims along with emotional cues might help people in justifying their brand choices based on reason and not feelings alone.\nImplications: The study has the following implications:\nLimitations and future scope of the study: This study provides a snapshot of the television advertising in India in terms of usage of emotional appeals in general and nostalgic appeal in particular. But this snapshot is limited to India in terms of location and for a period of one specific year. Our study considered ads on the basis of high GVT of channels such as Star plus, Colors and Zee TV which target a specific segment of audience. Future research may be conducted by selecting channels based on other parameters and those which target different audience. This study might provoke future researchers to measure the amount of nostalgia evoked through different types of nostalgic elements and further investigate the effectiveness of different combinations. This study opens interesting research avenues to explore the differences between nostalgic appeal and another commonly used appeal such as humour in Indian TV advertisements. Moreover, differences in nostalgic advertising between different nations and different media can also be explored in future. Also, findings on lack of use of negative emotional appeals and sexual appeals in Indian TV ads, might provoke researchers to further explore these areas in Indian context. This study may also provoke researchers to discover new emotions that can be used in advertisements. While our study focussed on nostalgic advertising on TV, other studies on content analysis in India have generally been confined to the print medium (e.g. Kalro et al., 2010; Fernando et al., 2014); would their results be the same if they are replicated on TV ads? This would be interesting to probe. While our study did give snapshot of the nostalgic ad scenario in India, it does not offer prescriptive suggestions to brand managers. Research may study when different types of nostalgic appeals are effective and when they are not. While we found that nostalgic appeals are used more extensively for products in the maturity phase of the PLC, what we do not compare is the relative efficacy of nostalgic appeals vs other types of appeals (e.g. humour) for such products. Future research can examine this. While our study did give snapshot of the nostalgic ad scenario in India, it does not offer prescriptive suggestions to brand managers. Research may study when different types of nostalgic appeals are effective and when they are not.\nConclusion: We conducted this study to understand the current state of nostalgic advertising in Indian television. For this, we subscribed to an online database of advertisements and selected top five Indian channels based on their ranks according to GVT. Our final sample consisted of 700 TV ads shown on Indian television over a period of one year. Each advertisement was analysed and coded for various parameters such as type of appeal, category of product, type of emotional appeals, process of emotional appeal, nostalgic elements, type of nostalgic appeal and degree of information disclosure. ELM and resource matching hypothesis were used to develop our research model and formulate research hypothesis. All the seven hypotheses were supported and the results were found to be statistically significant. This study showed a moderate presence of nostalgic advertising in Indian television.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence of nostalgic advertising in Indian television and its execution with reference to extent of information disclosure, level of involvement, type of products and stages in product life cycle (PLC).\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research uses a content analysis of 700 TV advertisements aired between January-December 2013 from top five Indian TV channels based on their rank according to Gross Viewership in Thousands.\nFindings: Humour/happiness was the most commonly used emotional appeal and nostalgic ads constituted 12 per cent of the emotional ads in Indian television. \"References to past family experiences\" was the most commonly used nostalgic element. As hypothesised, nostalgic ads use low information disclosure strategy (vis-a-vis high/medium information disclosure strategy) and are more commonly used for low involvement products (vis-a-vis high involvement products), experience products (vis-a-vis search products), and non-durables (vis-a-vis durables). Also, nostalgic appeals are more commonly used at maturity stage of PLC (vis-a-vis introduction stage).\nOriginality/value: This is the first research to analyse the content and execution of nostalgic advertising in India. This study is also one of the first to provide a comprehensive framework on nostalgic advertising. The interrelationships among variables such as product category, process of emotional appeal, degree of information disclosure and stage in PLC has not been investigated earlier, in the context of nostalgic advertising. Moreover, this study is the first attempt to present a snapshot of TV ads in India.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Big bangs and cold wars: The British industrial relations tradition after Donovan (1965-2015)	[ "Industrial relations", "Donovan report", "Marxists" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"It all started with the big bang\" goes the song by the Barenecked Ladies as the theme tune to the American TV comedy of the same name.\nDonovan and beyond: The re-formation of international capitalist competition meant a new searchlight on the workplace and especially on workers' productivity in the advanced manufacturing sector. Thus, the Donovan commission was asked to investigate the deep-seated problems of work and recommend solutions to the labour problem. The focus was entirely on shop steward power on the factory floor, despite lip service to other aspects of industrial relations (Crossley, 1968; Turner, 1969; Goldthorpe, 1974). The service sector and the public sector were largely ignored. The group of academics brought together to dissect the body in question contained leading experts from Oxford and Warwick Universities. The main players are well known as Hugh Clegg, Bill McCarthy, Allen Flanders, Alan Fox, and George Bain. All went on to dominate British academic industrial relations for 20 years or more. Indeed their legacy is felt still, but much of their analysis and many of their recommendations are long gone.\nMore class struggle at home and abroad: By the early 1970s the Cold War was at renewed heights both at home and abroad. The Marxist left, like the devil, comes in many disguises, and all were revealed and reviled by mainstream academic and political commentary. Some communists in university departments had to write under assumed identities to avoid persecution and, as union membership surged alongside industrial action, so the communists played their part to the full. This was the high noon of the red scare in British industrial relations, and forged the future splits with many academics and practitioners eventually seeking solace in the bland middle ground of compliance.\nThe working-class movement in retreat: Brown (1981) published his edited work summarising the current situation before the full force of the Thatcher years kicked in. Here was Donovan re-united with a focus on bargaining, workplace disputes and dispute resolution, and strikes as both an industrial weapon of mass destruction as well as a form of social protest. This matched an extensive self-regarding bibliography of the subject (Bain and Woolven, 1979), a useful ACAS (1980) handbook, and a backward looking account of the heyday of union power (Taylor, 1980). By the time, therefore, of Thatcher's first election victory in 1979, industrial relations was centre stage (the first workplace survey was published in 1980). This was to continue until the end of the century.\nW(h)ither the class struggle?: As the song says:\nIn conclusion: Academic studies and research projects have failed largely to keep up as the newly increased commodified student experience does not respond well to change and challenge. In HRM departments the same tired prescriptions are still trotted out, new textbooks seem to take a secular view of the 2008 crash, namely that it changed nothing. The crushing blow dealt to living standards and social wage through cuts in public service provision and pensions are researched anthropologically as something that happens to the poor, political fragmentation of the working-class movement (particularly on the nationalist right) is seen as curiosity, but not linked to the system and/or its failures. Nobody appears willing and able to join up the dots of systemic capitalist failures (CLASS since 2012 has tried to remedy this weakness), traditional harsh remedies and outcomes, and introspective trade union policy making. The absence of struggle means an absence of coherent resistance, and with that both the movement and those in university departments studying the movement (at work and beyond the workplace) become bogged down chasing red herrings down dead-end allies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief and partial overview of some of the issues and authors that have dominated British industrial relations research since 1965. It is cast in terms of that year being the astronomical Big Bang from which all else was created. It traces a spectacular growth in academic interest and departments throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and then comments on the petering out of the tradition and its very existence (Darlington, 2009; Smith, 2011).\nDesign/methodology/approach: There are no methods other than a biased look through the literature.\nFindings: These show a liberal oppression of the Marxist interpretation of class struggle through trade unions, collective bargaining, strikes, and public policy. At first through the Cold War and later, less well because many Marxists survived and thrived in industrial relations departments until after 2000, through closing courses and choking off demand. This essay exposes the hypocrisy surrounding notions of academic freedom, and throws light on the determination of those in the labour movement and their academic allies to push forward wage controls and stunted bargaining regimes, alongside restrictions on strikes, in the name of moderation and the middle ground.\nOriginality/value: An attempt to correct the history as written by the pro tem victors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Wringing more value from advertising dollars: the customer satisfaction boost	[ "Brand equity", "Customer satisfaction", "Advertising", "Competitors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Wringing more value out of advertising dollars offers a challenge that has prompted research encompassing a wide range of variables, ranging from an examination of loyalty-based segmentation (Knox, 1998) to media spending inefficiencies (Xueming and Donthu, 2005). These studies and many more have attempted to ameliorate the problem articulated by a number of marketers including the late John Wanamaker: \"Half of my advertising is wasted; I just don't know which half\" (Yunjae and Leckenby, 2006).\nAdvertising and brand equity - the role of customer satisfaction: Aaker (1992) defines brand equity as a set of assets linked to the brand name (or symbol) that add value, enabling the product/service to command higher margins and generate current and future sales. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that brand equity enhances financial performance (Peterson and Jeong, 2010) and that investors disproportionately value strong brands (Madden et al., 2006). These links between brand equity and favorable financial outcomes can be used to justify advertising budgets (Peterson and Jeong, 2010), based on the reasoning that communicating product availability, features, and benefits all contribute to improved brand awareness and to cultivation of favorable attitudes towards the brand, thereby enhancing brand value (Ailawadi et al., 2003).Clearly, however, all advertising will not be equally effective. In this study we examine one factor expected to influence the effectiveness of ad dollars in building brand equity. Specifically, we look at whether the relative position of the company's CS ratings as compared to its competitors' CS ratings has an impact.While previous studies have associated brand equity enhancement with advertising (Peterson and Jeong, 2010; Heath, 2009) and with customer satisfaction (Pappu and Quester, 2006), none has looked at their interactive effects. In addition, past studies have focused on a company's brand equity as affected by its own advertising effort or CS. In contrast, our study considers both a company's own CS ratings and those of its competitors, to test the expectation that their relative position contributes to the effectiveness of ad dollars in enhancing brand equity. For example, we look at whether the relative position of Hewlett-Packard's CS ratings compared to the CS ratings of Dell impacts the return on Hewlett-Packard's ad dollars in building the HP brand.We expected advertising to be more effective in building brand equity when the advertiser's CS ratings are greater than those of the competitors, for example, expecting Hewlett-Packard's advertising dollars to do more to build HP's brand equity when their CS ratings trump the CS ratings of Dell rather than when Dell's CS ratings are relatively higher. Two lines of reasoning support this argument.The first involves word of mouth communication and its online parallel, word of mouse (Gelb and Sundaram, 2002), and their role in introducing a brand to those previously unfamiliar with it, or those familiar with it but not yet a buyer. Here the assumption is that more satisfied customers will recommend the brand to others, making the advertising of that brand likelier to command attention and be more believable. A Harris Poll (Harrisinteractive, 2009) found that among \"adults who had a memorable product purchase, use, or service experience,\" 57 percent said they had communicated about their positive experience with others.The link to an increased likelihood that those \"others\" pay attention to the advertising of the recommended brand is easy to imagine. Suppose someone hears from a friend or co-worker an approving comment, or sees favorable reviews online. Such a favorable introduction first raises the likelihood that a potential customer will notice an ad for the brand recommended to him or her - leaving the sound on during a television commercial instead of muting it, or clicking on a web site or a pop-up ad.Furthermore, the favorable \"introduction\" from a trusted source also can make the advertising more believable that it might otherwise be. That outcome is by no means universal: Wangenheim and Bayon (2007) investigated the link between customer satisfaction, word of mouth communication, and the acquisition of new customers and found that involvement on the part of a potential source of recommendations moderated the relationship. Certainly, however, customers who are satisfied and involved with a brand will increase the credibility of that brand's advertising as they recommend it to others. Overall, then, increased attention to an ad and increased believability of its message offer two bases for expecting that customer satisfaction will help advertising to be effective in enhancing brand value.The second line of reasoning involves repurchases by current buyers. Here neither word of mouth nor word of mouse is an issue. Reminding current users to repurchase will logically pay off to a greater extent when buyers are more satisfied with the brand than with competing brands, increasing the likelihood that reminder advertising will lead to a rebuy. Thus, for a brand with comparatively high CS ratings, a reminder ad has greater ability to increase brand equity, and viewed in a financial framework, has greater ability to increase current and future earnings.The arguments above are supported by De Matos and Rossi (2008), who write that the level of customer satisfaction has an influence on two behaviors, namely WOM and repurchase intention. However, the study described here adds an additional issue - that it is not customer satisfaction in the absolute sense that increases the effectiveness of advertising, but CS in the relative sense when compared to the satisfaction experienced by the customers of a brand's major competitors.Of course, the same reasoning employed above indicates that it harms the effectiveness of advertising when a brand trails its rivals in CS ratings. If the customers of rival brands are more satisfied with their choices than are a brand's own customers, word-of-mouth communication and likelihood of repurchase begin to work against the brand that trails in CS. Buyers of the trailing brand begin to hear from others, online or face to face, about those buyers' happy experiences that appear to outstrip their own. Consequently, they pay more attention to the advertising of those rival brands and also find the messages more believable than would otherwise be the case. If so, the competitor's advertising becomes relatively more effective, and that of the trailing brand less so.Based on these arguments, we tested the proposition that the positive impact of advertising expenditures on brand equity will be greater when the company's own CS ratings exceed those of its major competitors than when the opposite holds true. We tested this expectation in a study using nine years of secondary data on advertising expenditures, consumer satisfaction, and brand equity.\nData sources, sample, and measures: We obtained data for the study from widely-recognized sources. They are Compustat for advertising expenditures, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) website for CS ratings, and Interbrand's top 100 list of companies for brand equity. Only brands for which all three sources provided data were included in the study, and the need to juxtapose advertising expenditure data and customer satisfaction ratings with brand equity data required limiting the list to companies whose name is synonymous with their brand (e.g. Coca-Cola, Apple, McDonald's, Nike).Additional criteria for inclusion included availability of annual advertising expenditures, availability of CS ratings for the company and at least one of its top three competitors, plus availability of annual brand equity data. We collected yearly advertising expenditure, customer satisfaction ratings (both for the company and their competitors) and brand equity data for the selected brands/companies from 2001 to 2009, including as many observations as possible. This time period was chosen based on data availability: Interbrand reports are available only from 2001 onward, and at the time of data collection, advertising expenditure data could only be obtained up to 2009. Our final sample consisted of 182 (annual) observations across 27 companies.* Advertising expenditures - we obtained yearly advertising expenditures for each company from Compustat and calculated the percentage change in advertising expenditure from the previous year. Using change rather than absolute amount provided comparability across companies.* Relative customer satisfaction - we obtained each company's own CS rating and the CS ratings of its competitors from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) web site at: www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=34). We calculated the average CS rating of the top three competitors. The top three competitors were identified using company reports published in LexisNexis Academic. If CS ratings were not available for all three competitors, we calculated the average of those available or used the absolute value in the case of just one competitor. We then compared the company's own CS rating to the average CS ratings of its competitors and created a dummy variable indicating whether a given company's own CS rating was greater than those of its competitors and included it in our model (the dummy variable=1 if the company's CS rating exceeded the average CS rating of its competitors, and dummy variable=0 if the company's CS rating was lower than the average CS rating of its competitors).* Brand equity - year-to-year change was again the measure, and our data source was the annual top 100 global brands list published by Interbrand. The list provides both the value of the brand and the percentage change in brand value from the previous year. Such annual lists can be obtained at: www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-2008/best-global-brands-2010.aspx. In calculating the value of the brand, Interbrand takes into account the profitability of the brand, the portion of the purchase decision attributable to the brand name (not price or features) and brand strength - the brand's ability to command future earnings. A detailed description of the method can be obtained at: www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-methodology/Overview.aspx. We used percentage change in brand value from the previous year, published in Interbrand's annual top 100 brand list reports, as our measure of brand equity.We used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to analyze the data. This method of analysis is required when there is a nested structure in the data (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002), as in this study where annual observations are nested within companies. The method allowed us to test the overall idea that brand equity would be predicted by advertising expenditures, by the CS comparison dummy variable (1 or 0), and by the interaction between advertising expenditure and the CS dummy variable.\nResults and managerial payoff: Table I provides the results of the HLM analysis. It shows that advertising dollars have a significant positive impact on building brand equity. Supporting the overall idea prompting this study, we also find that this positive impact is greater when a company's CS ratings trump the CS ratings of its competitors as opposed to trailing them. Figure 1 shows the outcome pictorially.These results suggest the possibility of gaining more effectiveness from advertising expenditures, but one limitation should be noted. Since advertising expenditure data and brand equity data are necessarily based on year-to-year percentage changes, company size is not a confounding factor, but the absolute level of the variables might be. Possibly companies with poor products and/or poor service in a given year trail their competitors in customer satisfaction, cut the advertising budget so that they spend too few dollars in an absolute sense, and see brand equity sink, but the root cause lies with the product or service failure, and the relative CS ratings are simply one consequence. We used \"top 100\" Interbrand companies in the expectation that such a disaster scenario would be rare among such firms, but nevertheless accept as a limitation the possibility that some antecedent factor affects all the variables of interest here.Taking that limitation into account, it does appear that advertising offers more potency in building brand equity when a brand commands greater satisfaction among its customers than its rival brands do among their customers. The implications then appear to be straightforward:* A company can test for itself the relationships we found here. While we limited the dataset to \"best\" brands and to brands synonymous with the company name, any advertiser can forgo those constraints. A multi-brand company, for example, can see what data are available concerning the leading competitors of its several brands. Data on advertising expenditures, consumer satisfaction and brand equity can be purchased or obtained from publicly available data sets and applied to an analysis like the one here for product categories/brands of specific interest.* Customer satisfaction data, one's own and those of major competitors, are likely to be worth collecting/purchasing even if other data are not available. This study suggests that such data may offer assistance in advertising budgeting decisions. Advertising in times when one's own CS ratings trump the CS ratings of one's major competitors, even if narrowly, appears to increase the brand equity impact of advertising dollars.* If a higher relative CS rating is linked to the increasing the effectiveness of advertising in building brand value, managers may consider what else it might be relevant to. Do higher CS ratings offer opportunities to exploit in channels of distribution, for example?* Clearly an important implication from this study is the penalty in advertising effectiveness for the company that trails its rivals in customer satisfaction. If the cause or causes can be identified, they are likely to require expenditures to ameliorate them, whether through quality control procedures, sales training, customer service hires - the list seems endless. For a company to continue to advertise at the same level while skimping on such expenditures makes little sense. In essence, the opportunity to meld advertising with favorable word-of-mouth and high-percentage repurchase is diminished. In such a context, it seems plausible to consider shifting some of the advertising budget toward actions that will increase consumer satisfaction. First, a company can expect to gain more brand equity for each advertising dollar spent in the future. Second, in line with the flip side results of this study, outdoing competitors' CS ratings may significantly reduce the effectiveness of those competitors' advertising dollars.In summary, the relationship between advertising expenditures and their brand equity payoff appears greater for companies with not just satisfied customers but customers who are more satisfied than are the customers of rival brands. Managers may intuitively have suspected that all along, but this supporting data may help them to act on that intuition.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to offer a new perspective on increasing advertising effectiveness, testing the idea that the link between advertising expenditures and brand equity is greater when a company's consumer satisfaction ratings exceed those of their competitors than when such ratings trail those of competitors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study used published data for 27 companies and their competitors from 2001 to 2009, providing 182 observations for analysis using hierarchical linear modeling. Annual data on advertising expenditures (obtained from Compustat) for companies whose corporate names are synonymous with their brand (e.g. Apple, McDonald's, Nike) formed the basis for testing the proposition of interest. Yearly brand equity data obtained from Interbrand, and customer satisfaction (CS) ratings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index website were employed to test whether year-over-year increases in advertising expenditure resulted in increasing the value of the brand and whether this positive effect was accentuated when a company's CS ratings exceeded those of its competitors.\nFindings: - As expected, a year-over-year increase in advertising expenditures contributed to enhance brand equity, but this positive effect was significantly greater when a company's CS ratings trumped the CS ratings of its competitors as opposed to trailing them.\nOriginality/value: - If a company trumps its competitors in CS ratings, it should consider spending more on advertising, because now their ad dollars have a bigger bang for the buck in contributing to enhance the value of the brand. A company trailing its competitors in CS ratings should consider taking funds from the advertising budget to remedy that disparity, whether by product improvements, sales training, customer service hires, or whatever seems needed. Not only can increasing CS make future ad dollars more effective, on the flip side, it can make competitors' ad dollars less so.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Making teachers ' pedagogical capital visible and useful	[ "Practice theory", "Teacher education", "Mentor education", "Pedagogical capital", "School development", "Sketching" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Initially, we want to establish two basic assumptions:\nWork with pedagogical capital - background: The concept \"pedagogical capital\" is still in development. Here, we will initially make an account of the background and growth of the concept over time. The development of the concept's definition has been dependent on the contexts in which it has been used. The idea to use pedagogical capital as a metaphor for experiences and influences that teacher students brought with them to teacher education was initially created in a joint research project between teacher education institutions in Malmo and Copenhagen. In this project, different influences on the development of teacher students in the two countries were studied (Henningsson-Yousif, 2006; Henningsson-Yousif et al., 2007). The idea of students' possession of pedagogical capital developed into a feature in one of the teacher education programmes at Malmo University (Henningsson-Yousif and Viggosson, 2009; Viggosson, 2011). Some 400 students have, for a number of years, written documents named pedagogical capital. The writing of this document has been the start of a course in school development with the aim of preparing students for a well thought-through position in school in relation to colleagues, school heads and the political system. As a second feature, the students interview a teacher. This interview is recorded, transcribed and analysed. The students establish fictitious work teams with the assignment to construct a strategy for school development. In this work, the students make use of their written and unwritten pedagogical capital, the interviews, literature and seminars.\nThe concept \"pedagogical capital\": Pedagogical capital has further been developed in studies with teachers (Henningsson-Yousif, 2010, 2011, 2012). These studies focus on what pedagogical capital gets expressed when teachers or school heads are interviewed and asked to make sketches concerning their assignments in school or preschool. Thus, the concept has developed from being associated with experiences relevant to educational contexts to referring to what is activated and emerges in pedagogical situations from our individual resources. On the one hand, an interpretation of a situation as pedagogical might be based on it involving teaching and learning components; this is the most simplistic definition. However, on the other hand, a pedagogical situation could be defined as a situation in a larger context with presumptions of the nature of the context and the role of the participants. The perception and analysis of the context and the specific situation could be presumed to have an impact on the participants' attitudes, feelings and possible impulses or perceived requirements to act.\nSketching as a method to make pedagogical capital visible: We have now introduced the concept of pedagogical capital. One method to gain insight in to how, for example, teachers perceive and analyse their context and relations between different persons, elements and institutions is to ask them to visualise this by making sketches.\nStories as a method to make pedagogical capital visible: In recent decades, there has been an increasing focus on different narrative traditions (Clandinin and Conneli, 2000; McCwan and Egan, 1995; Morch, 2004; Odegaard and Birkeland, 2001; Smidt and Kopart, 1998). People throughout the ages have shared stories with each other. We communicate using stories to create shared understanding and meaning in life. The method of writing practice stories is grounded in a narrative tradition.\nDiscussion: In our collaborative analysis, we have brought together experiences from different contexts of different methods of making pedagogical capital visible. Our methods have different theoretical relations but similar ideological groundings. The approaches are related regardless of their different aspects and uses of the pedagogical capital. In both examples - the sketching and the practice stories - the role and place of the teacher or mentor in the educational context was the focus. We have also addressed different situations and interests: school development processes, teacher education organisation and individual teacher and mentor development.\nConclusion: Different dimensions are appealed to in different circumstances. The analysis dimension is particularly useful in school development contexts, while the content experience dimension is focused on in individual development situations. The action dimension could be seen as a visible expression of pedagogical capital and an object of analysis in educational situations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare methods of working with pedagogical capital in teacher and mentor education. The authors make an account of the development of the concept of pedagogical capital and relate it to the theoretical context of practice theory. Empirical data will substantiate the theoretical discussion of teachers\nDesign/methodology/approach: Comparative analyses of the authors\nFindings: Three dimensions of pedagogical capital have been identified: an experience content dimension, an analysis dimension and an acting dimension.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors find potential in using and further developing the concept of pedagogical capital in its various dimensions and in relation to other similar concepts.\nPractical implications: The authors\nSocial implications: The aim of the paper is to underline the value of the contributions people can make to society as a whole and as teachers in school, in particular. The recognition of the ability to analyse and contribute is the essence of this work.\nOriginality/value: The value of the paper is the introduction and development of pedagogical capital in an international context. The value is also the common analyses of educational work in Sweden and Norway.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Work-family conflict and female employees' turnover intentions	[ "Structural equation modelling", "Work–family conflict", "Employees’ turnover intentions", "Family social supports", "Female employees", "Informal organizational support" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past few decades, there have been several changes in global social and economic systems due to increased competition among organisations; hence, the structure of the workforce has changed dramatically. For instance, increases in the demands on individual work performance, job competition and overtime burden (Ward, 2007). On the other hand, due to organisational mergers, reforming and staff layoffs employee job security is rigorous (Ma et al., 2008). Although family and work are essential roles in an individual's life, these pressures affect their personal and professional lives. When the work responsibilities influence family demands, employees may face problems that lead to work-family conflict (WFC) (Lambert et al., 2016). WFC may arise at the point when an individual (female) needs to accomplish several roles including employee, spouse, daughter-in-law and mother (Hussain, 2008). Each role enforces demands, requiring time, energy and commitment (Noor and Maad, 2008). At work, the role of stress from work and life are reciprocally incompatible and the contribution to one side makes the contribution to another side more difficult (ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012). Therefore, WFC identifies as a type of inter-role conflict that incorporates two sorts of loads, for example, settlement with one role that makes it harder to complete the demand with another (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006). It could be argued that both work and family roles demand the individual's time, involvement, commitment and behaviour that can create conflict with the other role (Lambert et al., 2016). Now, in Asia, particularly in the subcontinent, women support men through entering the workforce to meet economic and social needs.\nTheoretical background and hypothesis formulation: SET is defined as the exchange of activities, tangible and intangible, rewarding and costly (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). The exchange happens when an individual participates in the comportment of somebody; then they hope to get something in return. The individuals are involved in exchange behaviour to offer each other something valuable and unbiased. SET states that individuals enter into relations with others to maximise their benefits and reduce costs (ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012).\nResults: Exploratory factor analysis\nDiscussion: The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between informal organisational and family support and the individual WFC among female employees. Hence, the study discusses the results of the alternative structural model. The results indicate that there is no relationship between informal organisational support and WFC at (b = 0.045, p > 0.05). This result is different from that of previous studies, and H1 is rejected. According to Hsiao and Mor Barak (2013) and Hammer et al. (2008), supervisor support has no influence on reducing WFC. Supervisors are more concerned with employee productivity and less committed to employee work-role (Coffey et al., 2009; Batt and Valcour, 2003). Another reason is that high power-distance may create a communication gap between employees and their supervisors; therefore, employees may not be willing to be open about how their job is affecting their family life. According to Lambert et al. (2017), the co-worker's support is not related to WFC. When co-workers provide support to other co-workers and they expect more support in return, it has no effect on reducing WFC (Colquitt et al., 2013). Co-workers might not discuss family issues at work; they may feel uncomfortable to discuss sensitive issues with co-workers (Lambert et al., 2017).\nFuture research and limitation: There are numerous limitations of this study: the sample size was small and all data were collected from Lahore private banks, creating generalizability in findings. Secondly, the cross-sectional research design used in this study due to time limitation. Thirdly, the limited number of supports like informal organization and family social support is used to reduce the WFC.\nConclusion: In Pakistan, women in many situations, have to compromise. Women compromise to fulfil family expectations. To survive in modern times women in Eastern societies are willing to take steps to improve their financial and education standards. Although, in chasing a career, several women are continuously striving to keep family bonds intact while staying within the cultural limits. Based on cultural differences, the results achieved are different from the previous studies conducted in West.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the influences of informal organisational and family support on work-family conflict (WFC) and its subsequent impact on turnover intentions among female employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To evaluate the WFC among female individuals, data were collected through a questionnaire distributed among female employees in the service sector in Lahore, Pakistan, by using convenience-sampling technique. The collected data were analysed through a well-known statistical technique, SEM, using AMOS software.\nFindings: The findings suggest that supports (informal organizational and family) have no impact to resolving the issues of WFC arising because of female members of the family working. Also, it was found that WFC is positively linked to employee turnover intentions.\nPractical implications: By addressing WFC issues, this research has key implication for WFC practically. This study has essential implications for organization, so it can reduce the WFC by creating a supportive environment to create balance amongst work and family life. Specifically, managers need to be aware of the impact that social support and WFC have on turnover intention.\nOriginality/value: This study provides the model of WFC that helps in future research. The research also improves past studies' methodology by testing the direct and mediation impacts between the constructs specifically in female employees. This study is a valuable addition to the existing body of literature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A focused supply chain strategy for luxury fashion management	[ "Fashion industry", "Segmentation", "Brand", "Supply chain management", "Product", "Retail channel" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Luxury is defined in terms of its functional value, its psychological value, and the experience in which customers are highly involved (Fionda and Moore, 2009). Luxury is an industry in which a wide range of products and services are offered, including personal goods, wines, yachts, and cars. Human involvement, limited supply, and value recognition are some of the distinctive features of the luxury industry (Vigneron and Johnson, 2004). Hence, not only does luxury refer to premium priced products, but also it is associated with emotional aspects and experiential value.\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 The principal foundations of luxury fashion\n3. Research methodology: Figure 1 depicts the research framework and what was performed at each stage. Step 1 consisted of the literature review leading to research hypotheses, as elaborated in the previous section. This was followed by Step 2 to explain the relevance and dependence of KPIs on SC configuration. To this end, 30 most frequently quoted KPIs were derived from earlier studies. Nevertheless, in order to rigorously conceptualize such KIPs, and to reach a consensus Delphi study was employed. Consequently, five industry experts were provided with the list of 30 KPIs and were, respectively, asked to list the most relevant KPIs. Subsequently, a final list of 17 KPIs (please refer to Table AI) was derived considering the key SC performance areas, including reliability, flexibility, responsiveness, costs, efficiency (based on the SCOR model), and marketing dimensions, including brand image and customer satisfaction. Successively, survey was designed to analyze the impact of strategic combinations of brand, retail channel, and product on SC strategies. Hypotheses were tested by means of a survey with a larger sample of Italian fashion brands. Survey results were analyzed through factor analysis (FA), where five principal components emerged to represent performance areas. ANOVA technique was then employed to explore the dependence amongst brand-retail channel-product and the key performance areas. The following section explains the details of survey design and result generation.\n4. Analysis and results: 4.1 Performance areas for SC strategy (FA)\n5. Discussion: This study provides concrete model for a focused SC strategy in companies operating in the high-end fashion market. Based on the statistical analysis, the results gave evidence for H1, H2, and H4. FA showed how a SCM strategy could be expressed in terms of operational performance areas. ANOVA, on the other hand, showed that the relevance of those performance areas would actually depend on the characteristics of brand, retail channel, and product. This could suggest that different combinations of brand, retail channel, and product within the same company must preferably correspond to different SCM strategies.\n6. Conclusion: Considering all these aforementioned considerations, it could be articulated that a differentiated SCS must be established in the fashion industry. While most of the participants ranked the product as the main differentiator, it was demonstrated that SCs could be segmented either on the basis of one, two, or three factors. However, often, full SC segmentation cannot be implemented due to excessive managerial complexity. Nonetheless, segmentation based on only one element could also be applied to ease the circumstance. This would mean that there is an importance of hierarchy within the three factors, and the most relevant one seems to be the product, followed by retail channel and brand. Though, the number of companies involved in the study is not sufficient to develop a normative model for SCM strategy differentiation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Globalization and advanced manufacturing capabilities changed industrial dynamics. To this end, not only were new retail concepts developed to broaden the distribution toward larger consumer bases, but alternative ways were also sought to reorganize supply networks for a balance between local and global production. Yet, the choice of supply network configurations must be coherent with a fashion companies' critical success factors. Hence, it is pivotal to understand how such large brand portfolios and global supply networks could be effectively managed in a united way. In this vein, the purpose of this paper is to explain how the triplet of product, brand, and retail channel could affect SC performance, and how the positioning of a luxury company could depend on managerial attitudes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Subsequent to an extensive literature review, 30 most frequently quoted key performance indicators (KPIs) were derived. A Delphi study was then employed to reach a consensus and 17 key KPIs were derived considering the key SC performance areas and marketing dimensions. Survey technique was deployed to examine the impact of strategic combinations of product, brand, and retail channel on SC strategy. Survey results were analyzed through factor analysis where five principal components emerged to represent performance areas. ANOVA technique was then employed to explore the dependence between product-brand-retail channel and key performance areas.\nFindings: Brand, retail channel, and product directly affect operational performance. The positioning of a fashion company would depend on its management attitude toward strategy segmentation and considered stage of the SC. The respondents' profile analysis further showed a preference to segment the SC based on products. Interestingly, this finding is not aligned with earlier research (Brun and Castelli, 2008) suggesting that the brand was to become the most relevant driver for SC segmentation.\nOriginality/value: Academic development and empirical testing is rather rare in the luxury fashion context. Undeniably, SC strategies represent a very relevant issue for fashion companies, and the present study could be considered a first statistical step toward SC segmentation for luxury fashion companies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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