title
stringlengths 6
301
| keywords
listlengths 0
23
| messages
listlengths 2
2
|
|---|---|---|
Evaluating the effectiveness of a multi-professionally agreed list of adverse events for clinical incident reporting in Trauma and Orthopaedics: A follow-up study
|
[
"Clinical audit",
"Patients",
"Safety",
"Reports"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: This follow-up study is the final phase of a two-year research project (see Giles et al., 2004). The first paper emphasised the significance of adverse events, which are estimated to occur in up to 10.8 per cent of hospital admissions (Barach and Small, 2000) and cost in the region of PS2.9 billion annually (Vincent et al., 1999). As a result, various methods have been used to help identify error, such as retrospective case note review (Brennan et al., 1991), trigger tools[1] and incident reporting systems. The development of incident reporting systems has been by far the most common method used to help identify adverse events. The systems used within healthcare have been primarily derived from the aviation and nuclear power industries. In spite of this effort, it was emphasised that up to 95 per cent of adverse events in healthcare are not reported (Firth Cozens, 2002). This underreporting is thought to be a result of a number of barriers to reporting including, for example fear of reprisal and poor feedback following an adverse event (see, for example Lawton and Parker, 2002; Pilpel et al., 1998; Uribe et al., 2002; Vincent et al., 1999; Wakefield et al., 2002; Walker and Lowe, 1998). In order to help overcome such high levels of underreporting, trigger lists/adverse event lists are often used to help healthcare professionals to identify reportable adverse events (Cresswell, 2004). However, there is little evidence to suggest how effective incident reporting trigger lists/adverse events lists are at increasing levels of incident reporting. This of particular importance as the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) are currently in the process of piloting a national reporting system, the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS), which aims to identify national patterns, to identify patient safety priorities and to develop practical solutions (www.npsa.nhs.uk, accessed June 2004).The first phase of this study aimed both to clarify what healthcare professionals understand by the term adverse event and to develop a \"standardised\" list of adverse events, which may act as a prompt for clinical incident reporting within Trauma and Orthopaedics (see Giles et al., 2004). This follow-up phase aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the adverse event list as a prompt for clinical incident reporting in Trauma and Orthopaedics. The results of two questionnaires, which were aimed at evaluating awareness and usage of the adverse event list and the analysis of trends in routine incident reporting data are presented below.\nMethods: Participants\nResults: Participants and response rates\nDiscussion: Awareness and usage of the adverse event list\nConclusion: The results clearly indicate that the adverse event list had little impact on levels of incident reporting in orthopaedics. It is likely that a change in culture is needed to accompany any future interventions. Future research needs to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes of healthcare professionals towards incident reporting if future interventions are to impact on incident reporting levels.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The first phase of this study developed a multi-professionally agreed list of adverse events for clinical incident reporting in Trauma and Orthopaedics. This follow-up study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the adverse event list.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Two follow-up questionnaires were sent to healthcare professionals working in Trauma and Orthopaedics in two of the participating National Health Service (NHS) Trusts (n=247 for the first questionnaire and n=240 for the second questionnaire). Trends in routine incident reporting data were also monitored over a two-year period to determine the impact of the adverse event list on levels of adverse event reporting.\nFindings: - The questionnaires indicated that awareness about the adverse event list was good and improved between questionnaires. However usage of the adverse event list appeared to be poor. Multiple regression analysis with the dependent variable count of orthopaedic incidents suggested that the adverse event list had little, if any impact on levels of reporting in Trauma and Orthopaedics.\nOriginality/value: - The results of this study suggest that a practical tool, such as the adverse event list has little impact on incident reporting levels.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The performance impact of business process standardization: An empirical evaluation of the recruitment process
|
[
"Business process re‐engineering",
"Standardization",
"Process management",
"Recruitment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: An important management question is how to enhance the performance of a company's business processes. Over the past few decades, firms have increasingly structured their activities along end-to-end business processes and the \"process-centric\" perspective of a company's activities became prevalent (Tallon et al., 2000; Barua et al., 1995; Kettinger et al., 1997; Skrinjar et al., 2008; Goldkuhl and Lind, 2008). One possible level to increase the performance of a given business process is \"process standardization.\" Accordingly, process standardization is receiving increased academic and practitioner attention. Venkatesh (2006), for example, identifies \"process standardization\" as one of three \"broad future research directions.\" An impressive number of recently published papers on process standardization shows the associated relevance (Sanchez-Rodriguez et al., 2006; Bala and Venkatesh, 2007; Wuellenweber and Weitzel, 2007; von Stetten et al., 2008; Muenstermann and Weitzel, 2008).From a practitioner perspective, attention is largely aimed at huge cost-saving opportunities through process standardization - as a recent Computer Weekly headline (Hadfield, 2007) impressively illustrates:BP Retail expects to save up to PS600 m over the next few years by standardizing business processes and IT systems at all of its petrol stations around the world.But besides cost savings, process standardization as a tool of business process management (BPM) can offer further value. Swaminathan (2001) demonstrates \"better operative process performance through business process standardization\" and argues further that \"process standardization provides immense benefits.\" Ramakumar and Cooper (2004) declare that \"process standardization proves profitable\" while Wuellenweber et al. (2008) suggest that process standardization also increases transparency and controllability.Unfortunately to date and to our best knowledge, no stringent empirical exploration of the impact of process standardization on process performance exists. Therefore, in this paper, we aim at answering the research question:RQ. What is the impact of process standardization on process performance?We suggest that a better understanding of the impact of process standardization on process performance might benefit business process research, standardization research, and BPM practice alike by providing a new perspective on how and why particular process standards are developed and used (de Vries, 1999) with the eventual goal to theoretically link research on business process optimization to business value research (Melville et al., 2004; Balasubramanian and Gupta, 2005).To explore the relationship between process standardization and process performance and to evaluate if this research area warrants more extensive research, we develop (Section 2) and empirically evaluate (Section 3) a model of the impact of process standardization on process performance using data from 156 firms. The paper closes with a discussion of the results, potential limitations and possible areas of further research (Section 4).\n2 Research model: 2.1 Process standardization\n3 Methodology: 3.1 Constructs and data\n4 Conclusions: 4.1 Key findings and contribution\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to show if business process standardization (BPS) has an impact on business process performance and should be considered as both a valid business process management (BPM) measure and a regular driver of process success.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An empirical analysis based on data from 156 firms is used to evaluate the hypothesis that process standardization positively impacts business process time, cost, and quality.\nFindings: - First, the paper proposes a model and empirical operationalization to analyze the impact of process standardization on process performance. Second, empirical analysis shows that BPS has a decisive impact on process performance (R2=61.9 percent). Precisely, there is a significant impact on process time, cost, and most notably on quality. The results indicate that the impact is strongest in services firms and varies subject to a firm's strategy type.\nPractical implications: - The results suggest that BPS should regularly be considered a prime action item and major tool in a firm's BPM toolbox.\nOriginality/value: - The paper is among the first to empirically show the vital impact of process standardization on performance. For academics and practitioners interested in BPM and the value impact of processes, the results suggest adding process standardization as a regular argument into research on and management of business processes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Brand crisis communication through social media: A dialogue between brand competitors on Sina Weibo
|
[
"Advertising campaign",
"Brand crisis communication",
"Micro-blog message",
"Sina Weibo"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Social media phenomenon can now significantly impact a firm's reputation, sales and even survival. Social media can be defined in terms of functional building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation and groups (Kietzmann et al., 2011). When a company or a brand faces a crisis, social media can be the most timely and effective platforms to disseminate the attitudes of the parties concerned. The use of social media in brand crisis communication becomes a common practice to win public sympathy and support.\nLiterature review: Brand crisis and crisis communication theories\nMethod: Data collection\nResults and discussion: A textual analysis of JDB's Weibo messages entitled \"Sorry\"\nConclusion: This paper analyzes the Weibo messages by JDB as an advertising strategy in time of brand crisis which arises from the long-term trademark dispute between Jia Duo Bao and Wang Lao Ji. The public opinion is also revealed through the relevant web comments. In this case, JDB makes full use of the crisis response strategies, such as bolstering, victimage, scapegoating, denial, justification, attacking the accuser and excuse, to communicate its attitude on Weibo; the new technique of \"acting cute\" is particularly useful for JDB to turn a crisis into an advertisement. Under the guise of apology, JDB reminds the consumers of all its great achievements in protest against injustice. JDB has successfully diminished the negative effect of the event by emphasizing the grievances it suffers as a victim in the dispute. The netizens respond eagerly and favorably to JDB's postings in social media. The majority of the consumers make approving remarks about these messages as advertisements and show their support or sympathy for JDB, although a few negative responses indicate the level of advertising irritation. The EG practices of netizens further enhance the interaction between competitors and consumers in the Weibo community, which is another indicator of the entertainment value of advertising. The advertising value of these Weibo messages and the validity of this advertising strategy to maintain the brand voice have been proved by consumers' perceptions regarding the worth of this practice.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how companies make use of social media communication to turn crises into opportunities and how consumers respond to this brand management strategy, and evaluate the effects of this kind of advertising campaign.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses the textual analysis method to examine the verbal fight between two brand competitors on Sina Weibo. An interpretative analysis approach is adopted to analyze a series of micro-blog messages and relevant responses and comments. A statistical analysis is conducted to reveal the public opinion on this case.\nFindings: The brand crisis due to trademark dispute has been successfully turned into an advertising campaign, which received eager and favorable responses from the consumers. In the name of making apologies, the company in crisis availed itself of the Weibo platform to make a veiled protest against the verdict of the Court. The technique \"acting cute\" was proved to be effective in diminishing the negative effect of a brand crisis and winning public sympathy and support.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research findings may provide insights into the interplay between brand advertising and corporate crisis communication on the platform of social media.\nPractical implications: This study can inform practitioners of useful techniques to deal with brand crises via social media.\nOriginality/value: The value of this study lies not only in its contribution to the body of knowledge on online crisis management with a case of Chinese companies, but also in its validation of the interplay between crisis communication and advertising.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Services under new management: the myth of a fresh start
|
[
"Retail",
"Experimental design",
"Servicescape",
"Market signals",
"Cue utilization theory",
"Relevance theory",
"Search/experience services"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is common practice for a business to institute new policies, make significant changes to existing offerings or make changes to the organization and its management over the course of its life (Kalaignanam and Bahadir, 2013; Warner et al., 1988). Is it possible that some signals have some positive and some negative effects under certain conditions? In the advertising literature, for example, Mitra and Lynch (1995) found that the same advertisements that increased price elasticity in some decision environments decreased it in others. In some cases, announcing a policy change, an alteration to core offerings or an organizational change may be a positive cue about an organization and its services perceived to ultimately benefit the customer (Estelami, 2008; Landon and Smith, 1998). On the other hand, announcing this same change may indicate problems with the organization or service, lowering perceptions of its overall reputation (Xia et al., 2004). This suggests that a signal or market cue could have distinct effects on different outcomes.\nTheoretical background: Market signals/cues\nMethodological approach: To examine these hypotheses, we conducted two consumer-based experiments. We chose to use a restaurant setting, as many respondents would be able to readily identify with this type of service and the categorizations of \"fast-food\" and \"fine-dining\" serve as representations of services high in search attributes and high in experience attributes, respectively. Many researchers have used the distinction between fast-food and gourmet (i.e. fine-dining) restaurants as proxies for services that can be distinguished as search vs experience services (Ford et al., 1988; Mitra et al., 1999). We previously defined search services as those that were standardized and relatively easy to evaluate prior to consumption (Table I). Fast-food restaurants (e.g. McDonald's, Burger King, Harvey's) fit these two criteria. Restaurants such as these are very similar in their offerings and their design, allowing consumers to infer quality without prior experience (Roest and Rindfleisch, 2010). Furthermore, many of these restaurants offer very standardized products/services (e.g. drive-through services, counter service, menu selection) that do not vary much between locations of the same brand(e.g. McDonald's) nor across brands (e.g. McDonald's vs Burger King) (Namin, 2017). Thus, we classify fast-food restaurants as a service high in search attributes. In contrast, fine-dining or gourmet restaurants tend to be less easy to evaluate prior to consumption, as there is more variability in their offerings (e.g. customized menus, customized decor, unique personnel) (Ghobadian et al., 1994; Grove and Fisk, 1992) and much more uncertainty in the minds of the consumer prior to purchase (Schmenner, 2004). Thus, we classify fine-dining restaurants as a type of service high in experience attributes. Restaurants are typically viewed as hybrid services, meaning that they are services associated with the delivery of a tangible product (i.e. food). We use the term \"service provider\" to refer to restaurants, recognizing that a product is a core element of the service.\nGeneral discussion: The goal for this research was to examine how consumers might interpret some market cues in services. We hypothesized that prior experience, service type and signal relevance would dictate the effects of an \"UNM\" cue on two distinct consumer perception measures - service quality and reputation. We summarize our findings in Table XII.\nLimitations and future research: Our research has some limitations. The study is limited to one industry (i.e. restaurants) as an example of search and experiential services. Future research should attempt to replicate these results in other services such as credence services (e.g. medical services, financial services). Further extensions of such research may prove useful in the context of CEO changes in large corporations or other key staff announcements in other industries. We examined the effects of market signals on perceived quality and reputation. Future research should examine other dependent variables such as firm reputation, customer commitment and behavioral intentions. We brought forth the notion of \"signal relevance\" and suggest that it may be explicitly tied to attributions. Further research needs to examine this assertion in more detail and examine multiple signals (relevant/irrelevant) and their contingent effects on consumer perceptions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer-side effects of \"under new management\" (UNM) signs. The authors integrate cue-utilization theory and relevance theory to guide hypotheses about the conditions under which these signs are and are not beneficial.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two consumer-based experiments were used to examine the quality and reputation effects of restaurants signaling a management change on potential and existing customers.\nFindings: The results suggest that positive and negative effects are possible. The direction of these effects is contingent upon consumers' prior experience, type of service (i.e. search/experience) and the relevance of the signal.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is limited to one industry (i.e. restaurants) and examines the effects of market signals on perceived quality and reputation. In addition, this research brought forth the notion of \"signal relevance\" and suggested that it may be explicitly tied to attributions. However, this assertion must examine multiple signals (relevant/irrelevant) and their contingent effects on consumer perceptions.\nPractical implications: The findings advise businesses to use caution when using signals such as an \"UNM\" sign, as they appear to have different effects depending on the experience of the consumer with the service and the relevance of the signal.\nOriginality/value: This research contributes to the literature on cue utilization theory to understand the effects of marketplace cues on consumer perceptions. It contributes to marketing theory and practice by proposing a model of cue effects based on prior customer experience, type of service and cue relevance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Improving patient safety in Libya: insights from a British health system perspective
|
[
"Training",
"Patient safety",
"Quality healthcare",
"Policy",
"Risk management",
"Governance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Assessing variations in service quality was first considered in the early twentieth century by Codman (Ballard et al., 2004). Healthcare safety epidemiology studies in the USA (Brennan et al., 1991) and Australia (Wilson et al., 1995) shifted the safer healthcare focus. In Western health services, studying safety failures suggests that 1 in 10 people entering hospital experience an adverse event and 1 in 300 patients suffer profound consequences (Baker et al., 2004; Hogan et al., 2012; Zegers et al., 2009). Landrigan et al. (2010) suggested an even higher harm rate (25 per 100 admissions). Authors affirm that this rate has not changed over time. Consequently, a global patient safety movement was triggered by the Institute of Medicine's landmark report \"To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System\" (Kohn et al., 2000). However, despite patient safety initiatives, harm to patients is still considered to be a reality in health services worldwide (Landrigan et al., 2010; Leistikow et al., 2011; Wachter, 2010).\nUK response to patient safety issues: Several events and influences have contributed to the UK's emerging patient safety initiatives. In the 1970s and 1980s, audit, quality activities and litigation costs increased. High-profile cases such as the Bristol paediatric cardiac surgery (Kennedy, 2001) and the Shipman inquiries (DoH, 2007) focused on healthcare safety and human error (Reason, 2000). Findings from major adverse events reviews (Brennan et al., 1991; Wilson et al., 1995) shifted the focus towards patient safety in the UK. In 2000, the UK's Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and Department of Health (DoH) published \"An organisation with a memory\" report (DoH, 2000). This was the government's first report to set the scene for NHS patient safety improvements. The report indicated that 400 people in the UK die or are seriously injured from events related to medical devices each year. Additionally, adverse reactions to drugs and hospital-acquired infections cost the NHS over PS1 billion per year. The NHS was described as having an old-fashioned approach to learning lessons from mistakes, so the report focused on shifting organisational culture, which inhibited reporting. A national, cohesive system that shares lessons learnt when things go wrong was missing (DoH, 2000). \"Building a Safer NHS for Patients\" is another report published by the DoH (2001) in response to the CMO's report and detailed specific plans, and timetable for promoting patient safety. Building local capacity, promoting a reporting culture and sustaining change through education, learning and performance assessment at both local and national levels were specific key areas targeted for action (DoH, 2001); for example, aiming to reduce medical prescription errors by 40 per cent by 2005. A key change to improve patient safety was to establish the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) in 2001, which aimed to encourage reporting and learning from patient safety incidents and near misses.\nPatient safety governance and regulation: Patient safety in the NHS is heavily regulated. Several bodies set standards and monitor organisations to ensure that their operations follow protocol. These regulatory bodies also enforce consequences on managers that do not meet standards. The Care Quality Commission (CQC), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and Monitor (now NHS Improvement) and the NHS Litigation Authority (previously known as National Clinical Assessment Service) are among the DoH's major arms-length bodies with regulatory roles (DoH, 2013). In addition to monitoring organisations, other government bodies are also responsible for regulating healthcare and specialised medical professionals to ensure compliance with standards. The Professionals Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) oversees statutory bodies that regulate health professionals. Different healthcare professions such as dentists, opticians and midwives are regulated by the PSA's separate bodies (nine regulatory bodies are overseen by the PSA), which conduct audits, monitor performance and report to the Parliament. Organisations that hold health and social care occupation voluntary registers are also accredited against PSA standards. Fitness to practice schemes were introduced by these professional regulatory bodies to emphasise clinicians' individual patient safety responsibilities (Terry et al., 2005).\nImproving patient safety through education and training: Education plays a key role in developing safe, high-quality health and nursing care (Francis, 2013; Mansour, 2012; Pearson et al., 2009; Slater et al., 2012; Wong et al., 2010). Health Education England (HEE) managers reported that patient safety education and training for undergraduates and apprentices alone is not sufficient to improve patient safety (Education and Training Comission for Patient Safety, 2016) and recognised that combining patient safety education and training with a learning culture within provider organisations, and a supportive system that enables workers to provide effective and safe care to patients, is important. National Health Service staff are provided with opportunities for learning and development throughout their careers; for example, following Berwick's (2013) review into patient safety, the National Quality Board's (2013) human factors in healthcare concordat committed to including human factors, principles and practices in core education and training in NHS England. Patient safety education in England is promoted and encouraged by many agencies including professional regulators. General Medical Council (GMC) and Nursing and Midwifery Council officers collaborate with undergraduate and postgraduate education providers and the HEE to ensure that students are conversant with patient safety and quality improvement. A recent DoH (2015) report entitled \"Culture change in the NHS\" described medical students as the service's eyes and ears and future safety leaders. HEE officers established the Commission on Education and Training for Patient Safety, which recommends ways to improve awareness. Several English bodies recommend that patient safety education and training is integrated into the medical curriculum and staff development programmes. Training for nurses and midwives was designed by NPSA based on lessons learnt from other industries. The \"Safety First\" report (DoH, 2006) recommended that the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement (now within NHS Improvement) should collaborate with all UK medical Royal Colleges and education providers to ensure that patient safety advances are incorporated into their curriculum. The GMC has a statutory responsibility to set, maintain and promote undergraduate and postgraduate medical education standards including patient safety. The World Health Organization (2009) published a patient safety curriculum for medical schools, which was adopted by many UK educational providers to enhance patient safety education and training. Simulation-based training is being used to reduce errors and improve patient safety (Salas et al., 2005); for example, the National Institute for Health Research Patient Safety Translational Research Centre at Imperial College London hosts a busy patient safety programme and offers a two-year Patient Safety Master's degree, training workshops and an annual symposium, which have been offered since 2007. Subsequently, 100 students have been awarded the MSc in Quality and Safety (NIHR, 2016).\nPatient involvement in patient safety: \"Building a Safer NHS for Patients\" (DoH, 2001) emphasised that patients need to be given a clear role in helping to promote and achieve patient safety goals. Patient and public involvement in safety was also promoted by the NPSA since its inception. Several campaigns and numerous leaflets, aiming to encourage and empower active patients, were introduced in the NHS over the past decade along with strict guidelines for healthcare staff on how to engage, communicate and involve patients or families following error or harm (NPSA, 2006, 2007, 2009). There is a widespread belief that patients can improve healthcare safety once they are involved (Davis et al., 2011; Hibbard et al., 2005). The NHS Constitution, which established NHS England's principles and values, makes it clear that patients must be told about any safety incident related to their care. The NHS Constitution clearly sets out patients' rights to an open and transparent relationship with their healthcare providers (DoH, 2009a). Patient and public involvement in the UK is a key pillar in healthcare policy as it is a tool to improve services quality, which enhance accountability for public spending. The Department of Health (DoH, 2009b) report views patient and public involvement as an opportunity for patients to help design and deliver high-quality services. Patients in the UK are given the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes, evaluate services and lodge complaints about healthcare providers, which should lead to an improved healthcare system (Longtin et al., 2010). Patients are also invited to present their experiences to board-level executives and within education to evaluate their satisfaction levels and their perspective on treatment clinical outcomes (Jha et al., 2014; Langer et al., 2016).\nPatient safety measurement and monitoring: A key strategy adopted by UK NHS managers is learning from incidents; a method used for improving safety in industries such as aviation, which is being established in healthcare (Barach and Small, 2000). Managers in the NHS are required by regulatory agencies to report incidents (Rooksby et al., 2007) and hospital incident reporting is a risk governance process (Benn et al., 2009). In 2003, the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) was established by NPSA officers, which require hospital managers to report incidents. Currently, the agency receives over 1 million reports per year in England (Hutchinson et al., 2009), which are analysed and used for learning purposes to help NHS managers avoid incidents. Hospital risk management standards have been defined by the NHS Litigation Authority, which requires hospital managers to have a documented process for internal and external incidents and near misses (NHS Litigation Authority, 2012). Managers are required to report all incidences that occur within their premises to ensure lessons are learnt. Incident reporting schemes, developed in accordance with the host organisation, have technical and social components that are shaped to meet the organisation's needs (Balka et al., 2007), which is the case in the British system as these reporting systems are adapted to local needs. There are also other data used by NHS staff to measure and monitor patient safety performance, which has links to incident reporting, such as the annual NHS Staff Survey, which includes safety culture and incident reporting questions (Healthcare Commission, 2008). A rating is also awarded by the NHS Litigation Authority following a risk management assessment that is conducted within each hospital (NHS Litigation Authority, 2012). Traditionally, routine NHS information systems were mainly developed for management and administrative purposes, and not to help with measuring health status or healthcare outcomes (Majeed et al., 1994). There are different interventions used in the NHS to monitor patient safety, such as safety walk-rounds, which are used to visibly indicate senior manager commitment to safety that helps to establish a good safety culture (O'Dea and Flin, 2001). Risk registers are commonly used across English healthcare settings, which are mandated by external regulators such as the NHS Litigation Authority. Local risk registers are updated regularly at divisional and departmental levels in which all risks are graded using a standard matrix. Risks with the highest scores are included in the trust's overall risk register (McIlwain, 2006).\nPatient safety in Libya: the way forward: Libya's health system has suffered poor funding, neglect, inadequate development and non-modernisation (El Oakley et al., 2013). Libya's health services are provided free to all. The country averages 37 hospital beds per 10,000 people, which is among highest number per person in Africa (WHO, 2010b). Libyan healthcare quality deteriorated following the 2011 civil war (Daw et al., 2015). Distrust in Libya triggered a multimillion dollar medical tourism industry (Saleh et al., 2014).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Patient safety programmes aim to make healthcare safe for both patients and health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to explore the UK's patient safety improvement programmes over the past 15 years and explore what lessons can be learnt to improve Libyan healthcare patient safety.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Publications focusing on UK patient safety were searched in academic databases and content analysed.\nFindings: Several initiatives have been undertaken over the past 15 years to improve British healthcare patient safety. Many stakeholders are involved, including regulatory and professional bodies, educational providers and non-governmental organisations. Lessons can be learnt from the British journey.\nPractical implications: Developing a national patient safety strategy for Libya, which reflects context and needs is paramount. Above all, Libyan patient safety programmes should reference internationally approved guidelines, evidence, policy and learning from Britain's unique experience.\nOriginality/value: This review examines patient safety improvement strategies adopted in Britain to help developing country managers to progress local strategies based on lessons learnt from Britain's unique experience.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Store brand evaluative process in an international context
|
[
"Purchase intention",
"Attitude",
"Store brand",
"Preference",
"Private label"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Consumer attitude towards store brands (SB) has changed remarkably in recent years (Shukla et al., 2013). Consumers are now delighted to find SBs in stores in which they shop (Diallo et al., 2013). At the same time, an ever-increasing number of SBs are currently being launched in almost every consumer-packaged goods category (Ter Braak et al., 2014) because of the strong competitive pressure that retailers face (Liu and Wang, 2008). As a result, SBs have reached significant levels of market penetration across Europe and North America (Manzur et al., 2011; Sellers-Rubio and Nicolau-Gonzalbez, 2015). According to Private Label Manufacturer Association (2015), the market penetration of SBs exceeds 50 per cent in Switzerland and Spain and reaches 45 per cent in the UK, 44 per cent in Germany, 35 per cent in France and 21 per cent in Italy. In the USA, the SB market share amounts to 21 per cent.\nBackground and hypotheses: According to Laroche et al. (2001), the most widely accepted paradigm for explaining the aforementioned evaluative process is \"Cognition, Affect and Behaviour\", initially proposed by Howard and Seth (1969). Essentially, consumers assess purchase alternatives following a three-step process (Blackwell et al., 2006). The usual chain of effects begins with the formation of an attitude based on the shopper's beliefs regarding product performance relative to key evaluative criteria. Attitude development is followed by the emergence of a preference for one product/brand within the alternative set over the others. Finally, preference leads to an intention to act (i.e. purchase) (Oliver and Linda, 1981).\nMethodology: A preliminary study was conducted to aid in the development of the survey instruments. In total, 16 in-depth interviews were held in urban areas in Chicago (USA) and Madrid (Spain) with similar characteristics. To select the sample, three stratification variables were used: gender, age and education. The fieldwork was conducted in November 2011. Interviews contributed to defining the profile of SB consumers in an international context.\nResults: All independent variables were measured with a single item, except for exploration and consumer consciousness. Descriptive results for these single indicators are shown in Table II. The average values were relatively low, generally below the intermediate position of the scale (4). Price and efficiency had the lowest values. By contrast, smart shopping was the only indicator whose mean exceeded 5. Regarding the dependent variables in the models with an interval scale, SB attitude had a higher mean than purchase intention, although the latter had a greater standard deviation.\nDiscussion: The findings confirm that consumers' evaluation of SBs follows a three-step process that begins with the formation of an attitude towards the brand, which directly influences brand preference and subsequently positively affects purchase intention.\nConclusions and implications: The great majority of consumer studies related to SB choice focus on end-user attitudes towards these brands. Only a small number of studies examine shoppers' behavioural responses, and research that investigates the affective and conative components of the decision-making process simultaneously is scarce (Jin and Gu Suh, 2005; Caplliure et al., 2010; Diallo et al., 2013). Our study fills this gap in the literature by proposing a conceptual model that analyses the three phases of the alternative evaluation process: attitude, preference and purchase intention formation. Moreover, most studies refer to consumers from a single country. By contrast, our research uses a multinational sample that offers a higher degree of external validity and greater generalisation of the results.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationships between the different phases of the store brand (SB) evaluative process (i.e. attitude, preference and purchase intention) in an international context and to investigate how each of them is influenced by selected perceptual characteristics of consumers, psychographic consumer traits and product evaluative criteria.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data were obtained from a survey of 1,118 shoppers from six different countries. Consecutive chained multiple and logistic regression models that incorporated the main antecedents into each stage were applied.\nFindings: The main results are as follows: first, quality inferences based on brand image and reputation have a significant positive effect on SB attitude; second, shoppers' propensity to explore and their risk perceptions are antecedents of SB preference rather than SB attitude; and finally, impulsiveness has a significant positive impact on SB purchase intention.\nPractical implications: The results can assist retailers in developing strategies according to the specific phase of their customers' evaluative process: promoting expert recommendations and opinion-leader testimonials in the attitude formation stage, investing in innovation in the preference formation stage and improving the overall shopping experience in the purchase intention stage.\nOriginality/value: This paper extends research on the consumer decision-making process by empirically demonstrating that SB preference is a mediating variable between SB attitude and SB purchase intention. From a practical perspective, this work involves an extensive empirical study that aggregates data from shoppers across six Western countries. This multinational sample offers a high degree of external validity and generalisation of the results obtained.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate governance and chief executive officer compensation
|
[
"Corporate governance",
"Compensation",
"Boards of directors"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The well-publicized collapses of large publicly traded companies have incited much controversy over the failures of corporate governance structures to properly protect investors. Perhaps the most blatant example of corporate governance failure and the one that has caused the most public disdain involves that of executive compensation. Core et al. (1999) finds evidence that suggests CEOs earn greater compensation when governance structures are less effective. Executive compensation levels have skyrocketed to the point where the ratio of CEO compensation to average employee wages for large firms increased from 44:1 in 1965 to 301:1 in 2003. Compensation levels resulted in such a hue and cry from the general public that the US Congress placed a ceiling of one million dollars on the deductibility of executive compensation[1]. Hall and Murphy (2003) report that performance-based incentives such as stock options account for the lion's share of CEO compensation. It is plausible and perhaps probable that stock options and other equity-based incentives offered CEOs shifted CEO's focus from managing their firm's profitability to managing their firm's stock price. Such a shift may not be supportive of a firm's ability to plan and execute a long-term strategy for the benefit of the firm's long-term shareowners.The collapse of Enron Corp. at the end of 2001 resulted in such a public outcry that the US Congress drafted, and on July 30, 2002, President Bush signed into law, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Sarbanes-Oxley). Sarbanes-Oxley contains many reforms intended to protect investors by raising corporate governance standards designed to improve the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. Section 304 of Sarbanes-Oxley requires the CEO (and CFO) to reimburse the company for any bonus or other incentive-based or equity-based compensation received and any profits realized from the sale of company securities during the 12-month period following the issuance of misleading financial statements that were required to be restated as a result of misconduct. Additionally, in 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission approved reforms to the corporate governance requirements of the New York Stock Exchange, the National Association of Securities Dealers, and the American Stock Exchange. The exchange reforms are intended to raise corporate governance standards and enhance the accountability, integrity, and transparency of firms' disclosures to shareholders.The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is an association between the level of performance-based incentives offered to CEOs and the composition of firms' boards of directors and the compensation committee.We find that the presence of CEO duality (boards of directors that are chaired by the firm's CEO), the number of other boards served by the firm's board members, and the size of the firm's board are significantly associated with the performance-based incentives offered to CEOs. In particular, we find that the presence of CEO duality reduces the likelihood of lower levels of performance-based incentives offered to CEOs. Additionally, we find that CEOs are more likely to receive lower levels of performance-based incentives when the majority of the compensation committee members serve on less than three other boards, and when the size of the board is less than or equal to nine members.Pay for performance\nResearch design: Hypothesis development\nResults: Sample description\nSummary and conclusion: Our results are consistent with some of the guidelines for improving corporate governance that are promulgated by groups such as the National Association of Corporate Directors. In particular, calls for improving corporate governance by separating the positions of Chairperson and CEO, relying on small boards, and limiting the number of other boards on which a board member may serve are all consistent with our results. However, contrary to many guidelines for improving corporate governance, we find no evidence that independent outside directors, board tenure, type of board member experience, mandatory retirement of board members before reaching age 70, having a majority of compensation committee members who are retired, and prohibiting active CEOs from serving on compensation committees, result in improved governance systems.This study makes an important contribution to the corporate governance literature. We have documented an association between board structure and CEO compensation. We find that companies that place the CEO in the position of chairperson of the board are less likely to keep CEO performance-based compensation levels low. We also find that the likelihood of keeping CEO performance-based compensation levels low is increased in companies that limit their board members to serving on less than three other boards, and in companies that keep the size of their board to less than ten members. It appears that company boards are able to monitor and control the compensation level offered to CEOs. Shareholders who desire to keep CEO compensation levels low may consider supporting the separation of the positions of CEO and Chairperson of the Board, as well as, supporting limiting the number of other boards directors may serve, and reducing or keeping the size of the board to a maximum of nine members.This study is limited by the fact that our sample may not be representative of the general population of companies in the US. The companies in our sample were chosen at random and reflect a broad representation of many industries. Future research may focus on industry specific relationships between boards of directors and CEO compensation. It would be interesting to determine if the relationship between corporate governance and chief executive officer compensation is sensitive to the industry in which firms operate.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine whether there is an association between the level of performance-based incentives offered to CEOs and the composition of firms' boards of directors and the compensation committee.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Univariate tests are used to test the relation between the level of performance-based incentives and corporate governance structures. A logistic regression analysis is used to predict the probability of CEOs receiving low performance-based incentives when various characteristics of firms' boards of directors and compensation committees exist.\nFindings: - The authors find the presence of CEO duality reduces the likelihood of lower levels of performance-based incentives offered to CEOs. Additionally, the authors find CEOs are more likely to receive lower levels of performance-based incentives when the majority of the compensation committee members serve on less than three other boards, and when the size of the board is less than or equal to nine members.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study is limited by the fact that the sample may not be representative of the general population of companies in the US.\nPractical implications: - Shareholders who desire to keep CEO compensation levels low may consider supporting the separation of the positions of CEO and Chairperson of the Board, as well as supporting limiting the number of other boards directors may serve, and reducing or keeping the size of the board to a maximum of nine members.\nOriginality/value: - The authors have documented an association between board structure and CEO compensation. It appears that company boards are able to monitor and control the compensation level offered to CEOs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Challenges and conceptions of globalization: An investigation into models of global change and their relationship with business practice
|
[
"Change",
"Strategic choice",
"Globalization",
"Business practice"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper builds on a recent contribution in the theorisation of \"globalization\", and seeks to apply the insights from that development to a more complex understanding of the concept of globalization within the field of business. The paper draws primarily on a conceptual framework developed by O'Byrne and Hensby (2012) that reviews eight models of global change.\nCurrent conceptions of globalization in business and management: We begin this paper with the claim that much of the literature on globalization suffers from a narrow understanding of its subject matter. When commentators refer to \"globalization\" they often do so without any clear, thorough interrogation into the actual dynamics of the process in question. \"Globalization\" thus becomes a thing, the actual meaning of which is left uncontested. As Tomlinson (2007, p. 148) points out, the \"processes and experiences it describes [...] are hardly ever actually, literally global in their reach\".\nUnderstanding global change: eight models: This contribution treats global change as a complex mesh of overlapping processes, often leading in very different directions. Eight such processes are discussed, although these are introduced as general conceptual forms, and the reality of global change exists at the intersection of them all. The eight models are: globalization; liberalization; polarization; Americanization; McDonaldization; creolization; transnationalization; and balkanization. In this section of the paper we offer a short summary of each, but by way of preface, an even shorter summary can be presented in Table I.\nAn evaluation of the potential implications of the models of global change for business practice: The first of the models, globalization, presents many challenges to business practice. The term has often been used in a rather generic and ambiguous sense in the extant business literature, however, it is arguably the model of global change that has been most heralded and discussed within the business and political communities to which individuals, enterprises, corporations and governments have to respond. In terms of operating at a global level some economists have advocated the convergence of economic markets, systems and practices (Ohmae, 2001, Dicken, 2007). Similarly, as previously noted, there have been debates in marketing, human resource management and technology about developing global practices and systems to support international business activity. The growth of the global brand and its reach across the world has led many to believe that markets, consumers and economies are now inextricably linked at a global level. Businesses are also now starting to see the effect of global regulation on their activities, be it through international agreements on emissions (such as the Kyoto Protocol, 1997), or calls for greater regulation of financial markets (EU Summit on Financial Regulation, 2008). Whilst it is debatable to what extent consumers, employees and employers see themselves as \"global citizens\" or \"global corporations\" the continued rise of the global brand, convergence of markets and economies and the role of global regulation are likely to continue to impact on business practice and operations for the foreseeable future. It could be argued that the growth in interest of corporate social responsibility (CSR), particularly as it relates to the environment as a global resource and the rights of employees as global citizens, is in itself an example of globalization as a model of global change (Beck, 2005). Korzeniewicz and Moran (2007), in recent contributions to the debate, have perhaps been the strongest advocates of globalization in arguing that the unit of analysis for measurement of such aspects as inequality and business performance should shift from the level of the nation-state to the globe. As a strategic response to operating within this model of global change businesses and enterprises need to be able to exert influence at a global level, to global stakeholders and policy makers and potentially gain competitive advantage through increased brand recognition and extension.\nConclusion: Within this paper we have sought to articulate the complexity underpinning debates around globalization. We have advocated the application of a multi-dimensional approach which highlights the various forces at play in global transformation. We have attempted to be careful in not prioritising any one such force, or any single explanatory factor, because to do so would be to fall into the very trap of reductionism and simplification of which we have been critical from the outset. However, we are not suggesting that in many cases the reality of these forces and processes is not driven by particular power interests. Ours represents a contribution to a \"critical globalization studies\".\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper, which is conceptual in both nature and approach, builds on a recent contribution to the theorization of \"globalization\" and seeks to utilise the framework developed therein to help promote a more complex conceptual understanding of the potential implications of how business operates and responds to these challenges in a global environment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws primarily on a heuristic framework developed by O'Byrne and Hensby that reviews eight models of global change. In this paper, the authors review and give consideration to the relationship between these models and business practice and contend that this relationship is far more complex than the majority of the current literature in the business and management field represents. Within the paper, the authors explore and discuss the dynamics of the eight models of \"globalization\" and assess the potential implications for business practice of working within these often conflicting and contradictory paradigms of \"globalization\". As part of this review, the authors consider the strategic implications of \"globalization\" for business practice and propose a conceptual model with eight strategic options which are aligned to the eight models of global change.\nFindings: The paper presents a tentative heuristic framework seeking to align the eight models of global change with strategic options that companies might peruse in response to the global forces for change. The paper concludes by advocating a more integrative and complex understanding of globalization than is currently the case and identifies potential for further research in this area.\nOriginality/value: The paper develops a conceptual framework for assessing the challenges that processes of globalization present to business. The paper places a particular emphasis on considering the strategic implications of the various models of global change and offers a tentative framework for further debate and discussion.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Orchestration and governance in digital platform ecosystems: a literature review and trends
|
[
"Control",
"Governance",
"Ecosystems",
"Literature review",
"Business models",
"Digital platforms"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: With the rapid progress of digital technology and new business models to support those, platforms and related eco-systems have received attention from scholars from such diverse disciplines as industrial economics, strategic management, information systems (IS), product management and innovation management (Gawer, 2014; McIntyre and Srinivasan, 2017; Nambisan and Sawhney, 2011). The increased interest in this phenomenon can be attributed to a number of factors:\n2. Theoretical framing: a multifaceted definition of platform: In industrial economics, platforms are seen as an intermediary between two or more groups of customers. Because of the existence of an indirect or cross-side network effect, a platform creates value between two distinct sets of customers (Evans, 2003; Evans and Schmalensee, 2008; Gawer, 2010, 2014; Rysman, 2009; McIntyre and Srinivasan, 2017). The network effect emphasises the importance of large platform ecosystems (Lee et al., 2015), leading to a winner-take-all syndrome. Researchers with a background in engineering see a platform as a specific type of modular artefact designed for collaboration and innovation between multiple entities to leverage the economics of scope (Gawer, 2014). In this world view, the platform can also be decomposed into three core components, that is, a stable, low-variety core, a set of high variety, continuously evolving peripheral modules and interfaces linking the core and peripheries (Baldwin and Woodard, 2009). Gawer (2014) classified platforms in three distinct categories, that is, internal platforms for usage within firms, supply chain platforms to be used in the extended supply chain of a firm and industry platforms that cater to multiple heterogeneous, independent actors from multiple industries. As our focus is on inter-organisational governance across a single platform, we exclude internal and supply chain platforms from our analyses. The reason being that we wanted to focus on platforms that allow diverse ecosystem partners primarily from independent organisations, while internal and supply chain platforms are used for value creation by involving different subunits or suppliers of a firm (Gawer, 2014). Governance of industry platform is more challenging and needs urgent attention. Partners in this type of platform ecosystem can come from different industries having different life cycles, that is, infrastructure providers have lifecycles of 15-20 years, while service providers have very short lifecycles as well as different cultures and practices (Mukhopadhyay and Bouwman, 2018). The increasing cost and complexity of coordination can overshadow the gain coming out of collaboration.\n3. Research method: For determining the source content for this review, we drew principles from structured literature review approaches (Rowley and Slack, 2004; Webster and Watson, 2002; Zhang et al., 2014). The design of this literature survey ensured that we did not limit ourselves to only a few journals, a particular methodology or a particular discipline (Webster and Watson, 2002); instead, we focus on the well-known scholarly databases with a number of key words involving a number of steps:\n4. Literature review findings: We will discuss the empirical basis of the papers analysed, theories used and key themes in governance research from the extant literature.\n5. Discussion and future research opportunity: Our research paper provides an overview of the state of the art with regard to platform ecosystem governance knowledge and research. We identified a number of research gaps, which can act as a potential agenda for future studies on digital platform ecosystems governance.\n6. Conclusion: Our study consolidates and provides a multi-faceted definition of digital platform ecosystems. We systematically reviewed the theoretical foundation, methodologies and key research topics in the platform governance literature. Based on the literature study, we consolidated our findings in a model, which can be used by researchers for further research as well as by practicing managers to have a more structured conceptualisation of the different aspects of platform governance. This model can be tested empirically, making use of mixed method approaches, for single platform leaders, as well as in ecosystems in which no clearly defined platform leader, or more than one platform leader, can be distinguished.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Because of the attention increasingly being focused on digital transformation, interest in business models of platform-enabled ecosystems is rising rapidly. Although there are different theoretical views on the role of ecosystems, a synthesis of research, with a focus on governance and orchestration in dynamic, multi-industry eco-systems, is lacking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review was conducted by following a rigorous search protocol in the scholarly databases covering both journal articles and conference papers These papers were subsequently filtered, and finally, 48 relevant papers were selected for analysis.\nFindings: The review identifies five key aspects of platform governance design that need close consideration: the meta-organisation or ecosystem design, coordination mechanisms, mechanisms for value co-creation, value appropriation mechanisms and architectural principles. To achieve balance among a set of competing demands, platform leaders need to devote adequate attention to these aspects.\nPractical implications: Based on a literature review, the authors provide an overview of underlying theoretical views, research methods and key trends to develop a sound theoretical grounding for research on platform governance design. The paper also suggests research gaps in the existing literature and sets directions for researchers to strengthen the understanding of effective platform governance design. The paper also provides valuable information to managers in developing or leading a successful platform ecosystem.\nOriginality/value: The paper uses existing literature published in this topic and original in nature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Stationarity and stability of underwriting profits in property-liability insurance: Part II
|
[
"Underwriting",
"Property insurance",
"Insurance liability"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In Part I of this work, we pointed out the severity of analyzing the underwriting cycle with non-stationary or not stable series. More detailed analysis is needed to confirm the preliminary results from Part I.It is important to check the stability of a series before taking differences because some properties of a series exist only on the original scale, but not after taking differences. It is also important to be aware that a unit root test may indicate that a time series is not stationary, when in fact the series is stationary but has undergone a structural change during the sample period. In this case, neither taking differences nor using a deterministic time trend will work well.If the combined ratio is stable but not stationary, then the methods that make this series stationary should work properly. If the combined ratio is not stable, apparent non-stationarity may arise from the structural changes even though the sub-series before and after the structural changes are stationary. Then, it is appropriate to inquire what and when the change or changes might have been, and what might have caused them. This research not only updates prior studies, but also extends them by conducting stationarity and stability analyses to bring different perspectives of underwriting cycles.\nMethodology: Stationarity tests: augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test for unit roots\nResults: We proceed through a sequence of hypotheses to determine whether a change in CR's properties has taken place. First, the ADF test is used to check stationarity. By minimizing AIC and SC, we find that the number of lags (p) in the summation term of equation (1) is one. The results of the ADF test for CR (in Table I) show that inland marine and private passenger auto physical damage are found to be significantly stationary at the 5 percent level.As mentioned in the discussion of Hypothesis 2, we check for structural changes in the chosen years[5]. Since the private passenger auto physical damage and inland marine series are stationary, they are excluded from the structural change analysis. The results for a structural change in 1984 are reported in Table II[6]. Most coefficients are not significant, which suggests that even though the liability insurance crisis seems to have a substantial impact on the insurance industry, this impact did not extend to most lines. Thus, the underwriting results of individual lines seem to behave independently and we expect they may have structural changes in different years. Since the chosen years do not show significant changes for most lines, we accept that the years of structural change are unknown and thus we need to find the year of structural change for each line.The Chow test and switching regressions are used to find out whether or not a structural change occurred, and if it did, to determine when it occurred. Table III shows the results from the Chow test and switching regression method for the industry CR. Even though both methods are used, we expect the results should be consistent. In Table III, the values of the F-statistics and log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) are highly correlated, but LLRs usually indicate greater significance than F-statistics. Also, two different time periods for the industry data are used to check the reliability of the shorter time period's results. Even though the longer series is more significant, both series are quite consistent. However, the most significant F-statistic and LLR for CR is in 1981, but the most significant year for CR1 is 1993. This shows that both methods have limited power at the beginning of the period. Therefore, the time period chosen for this analysis is very important. If we allow more than one breakpoint, i.e. the breakpoints in 1981, 1986, and 1993, both periods have the same results. But with our data period, it is more likely to have only one breakpoint. In this case, we accept that the year of structural change for the industry is 1981. Figure 1 presents LLR by year for CR from 1952 to 1997, and shows that the structural change in the insurance industry occurred gradually and reached its peak at 1981.Tables IV-VI present the results of the Chow test and switching regression by line. When the LLRs and F-statistics are significant in only one year for a given line of business, it indicates that the structural change happened abruptly and the shock of the change did not carry on for more than one year. Some lines, such as farmowners' multiple peril, allied lines and earthquake, ocean marine, workers' compensation, commercial auto liability, and reinsurance, have abrupt structural changes. Since some lines do not have any year with significant F-statistics and LLRs at the 10 percent level, we conclude that these lines did not undergo a structural change in the time period. These lines are fire, aircraft, commercial physical damage, and boiler and machinery. Most lines have more than one year with LLRs and F-statistics significant at the 10 percent level. This means that the structural changes occurred gradually and the shock carried on for several years. The year with the most significant F-statistics and LLR is conventionally taken as the breakpoint. The year of structural change for each line is listed on the bottom line in Tables III-VI.The next step is to apply the dummy variable method to every line with structural change. The results are shown in Table VII. The significant coefficients and the improvement of the adjusted R2 imply that the explanatory power of the AR(2) process for CR increases significantly by identifying the years in which structural changes occurred.There is another issue worthy of attention. For the AR(2) process as in equation (2), a is expected to be positive and b to be negative. When structural changes are involved, e and f are expected to have signs consistent with a and b. However, the results in Table VII show that e and f have opposite signs to a and b and that the coefficients cancel each other out. In other words, most lines followed AR(2) processes before the structural changes, but AR(1) after the changes[7].For lines that are non-stationary and have no structural change - fire, aircraft, commercial auto physical damage, and boiler and machinery - we use the first difference of CR to run AR(2) processes. Unfortunately, the coefficients are not significant and the explanatory power of the AR(2) process is not satisfactory.Our final step is to compare the cycle lengths before and after the structural changes. Table VIII presents the cycle lengths of all lines from an AR(2) process without time trend, with a time trend, of those lines without structural changes, and of those lines with structural changes. AR(2) processes with time trend is the same model as Venezian (1985) and Cummins and Outreville (1987), but the cycle lengths are very different from these two studies. Many lines are not cyclical, which makes it difficult to compare cycle lengths before and after the structural changes. The change of cycle lengths, increasing number of non-cyclical CRs, and switching from AR(2) process to AR(1) show that the nature of the time series properties of CR has changed.\nConclusions: Traditionally, the AR(2) process plays an important role in modeling underwriting margin, explaining underwriting cycles, obtaining the cycle lengths, and predicting when a soft or hard market is coming. In recent years, the AR(2) process seems to have reduced explanatory power for the underwriting margin. Structural changes may explain the observed changes in the underwriting cycle, such as long cycle lengths and the low explanatory power of the AR(2) process.Figure 2 shows that CR underwent a structural change in 1981. According to the definition from Balke (1991), CR is consistent with a shifting trend rather than a segmented trend. Thus, we cannot simply use one deterministic trend to represent the whole relevant time period without considering the possibility of breaks.Figure 3 reveals the behavior of the nominal interest rate for three-month Treasury bills. It shows a similar pattern as the combined ratio. Malliaropulos (2000) found that the real interest rate, nominal interest rate and inflation went through structural changes around 1981[8]. It will be interesting to find the possible reasons to explain the cause of the structural change for the insurance industry and why it happened in 1981. Since the interest rate and the combined ratio have a similar pattern, we may be able to explain this phenomenon by examining the relationship between the interest rate and CR before and after the structural change (Leng et al., 2002).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To examine the existence of underwriting cycles for the property-liability insurance industry as a whole, and by line of business. Specifically to consider whether the combined ratio is stationary and stable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test is employed for unit roots, while dummy variable methods, the Chow test, and switching regression are used for stability.\nFindings: - Underwriting profits of most lines of business and all lines combined are not stationary and have structural changes. For the whole property-liability industry, a structural change occurred in 1981. Before the change, underwriting cycles existed since combined ratios followed an AR(2) process. After the change, combined ratios are non-stationary.\nPractical implications: - Without clear underwriting cycles, there is more difficulty for the insurance industry in pricing and reserving, for regulators in monitoring the financial strength of insurers, and for customers in terms of the affordability and availability of insurance.\nOriginality/value: - The paper recognizes the non-stationarity of combined-ratio series, years of structural changes in the insurance industry and specific lines of business, and the possibility that underwriting profit is cointegrated with investment income.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Work transformation following the implementation of an ERP system: An activity-theoretical perspective
|
[
"Corporate culture",
"Corporate identity",
"Employee involvement",
"CHAT"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Changes in information technology, especially ERPs, are interesting organizational events for examining expansive development of work activity.\n2. Work after the implementation of an ERP system: The implementation of computer-based information systems has been a major organizational change driver in the past years.\n3. The case: A primary multinational pharmaceutical company was in the final stage of the company-wide implementation of the business management software solutions application and service (SAP/3) package. Being the last organizational unit to be included in the ERP system, employees in the HR department faced significant challenges in the effort to change their activity to adjust to the logics of a system that had been only partly customized for the company, primarily to meet the needs of other departments, such as sales, accounting and finance, production and logistics. In fact, HR was considered essentially a staff department, supporting other more strategical organizational areas.\n4. Constraint and control vs empowerment: HR employees' main concern were deskilling, the loss of existing knowledge and the prospective lack of personal, non-system-mediated interaction with other employees. The system became the center point of all activity. The practitioners felt that their interaction with the system was mostly frustrating, as it was no longer in their power to make sense, both individually and collectively, of their everyday activities. Even if ERPs have the potential to make all relevant information visible for the employees and to reduce the segregation of tasks, this feature was not supported in the local implementation:\n5. Discussion: The implementation of the ERP system had caused conflicts and disturbances, aggravating contradictions that already existed between activity systems and introducing new types of contradictions. What kind of role did the ERP system play in the network of activity? Partly a tool (as a technology), partly an object of its own (as it embeds specific goals), the SAP's boundaries were hard to draw.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to introduce the Human Resources (HR) module of the SAP suite in the Italian branch of a leading multinational pharmaceutical company. This study can be re-conducted within the interpretive tradition of information technology studies focusing on the attempt to understand and describe how software users in the HR department interpreted the enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, how they changed their work practices and the changes that occurred in organizational discourses and meanings alongside the process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case study/intervention took start with the impulse of the Italian HR department manager, who was struck by the way that the ERP system technology implementation was affecting work life of the employees in the department. This research/intervention used interviews, focus groups and internal documents as sources of data. The authors conducted and analyzed 20 narrative interviews and 3 focus groups with middle managers, and they analyzed about 120 pages of internal memos.\nFindings: The implementation of ERP systems is almost invariably accompanied by great expectations of increased process rationalization, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and upper managers' discourses make large use of what Engestrom et al., 2010 have called process efficiency rhetoric. But the ERP technology, most likely, will neither revolutionize management nor will it become a \"complete calculation machine\" that runs an entire work organization (Quattrone and Hopper, 2005, p. 731).\nOriginality/value: The implementation of the ERP system has caused conflicts and disturbances, aggravating contradictions that already existed between activity systems and introducing new types of contradictions. Pre-existent contradictions become clearer; there is a stronger interconnection between activity systems. The individual agents could experiment an expansion in their activities if only they will initiate a movement of expansive learning and if they are not prevented from doing so by coercive control. The natural expansion of the subjects' scope of activity and horizons of possibilities could be sustained by the ERP technology if it is not used as a tool for domination and if the upper management does not try and separate what cannot in actuality be separated: The actors' capabilities of improvised learning, which makes the institution of a new mode of the activity possible, and their capacity to assume collective control of the meaning and direction of the transformation of the activity. ERPs are technologies that can naturally bring transformations in the activity system and networks where they are introduced, but in some cases, they can easily and in a non reflective manner be intended as tools for oppression by the upper management.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
HC and financial performance with two HRM strategies
|
[
"Performance management",
"Thailand",
"Human capital",
"Buy-bureaucratic",
"Make-organic",
"HRM managers"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Human resources are a central component of a firm, and are critical to an economy's successful transition (Kim et al., 2010). Organizations that possess skilled and cooperative human resources are the most likely to succeed. The only difference between human and other capital is that the monetary value of other capital can normally be measured by accounting book value. However, in considering a company's financial value, it is likely that most listed firms would have a higher market value than book value. These values are the result of intellectual capital, of which human capital is a key component (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997; Roos and Roos, 1997). This value is not easily measured. However, to improve its value, firms need to pay more attention to human resource management (HRM), as it relates directly to human capital.\nLiterature review: Human capital measurement\nResearch methodology: This study includes only the firms that are listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, a total of 593 firms, excluding those in the rehabilitation sector. Moreover, only companies with complete financial data are selected for further analysis.\nFindings: The questionnaire was distributed to 593 firms, of which 154 firms responded, at a response rate of 25.97 percent. After verifying the data, eliminating incomplete questionnaires, and eliminating firms without specific financial information about ROE or price-to-book ratio, a total of 128 firms remained in the sample for analysis. The respondents were 44 percent male and 56 percent female employees who had been working for their firm for an average of 11.55 years. The majority of the respondents were high- or mid-level executives (87.1 percent), and most firms were from industrial (25.6 percent) and service industries (20.7 percent).\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study finds, moderate levels of human capital measured qualitatively through the survey overall. The quantitative measurement using the annual employee-related expense ratio averages 464,661 Thai Baht annually per employee.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between levels of human capital and financial performance of firms that use two distinct human resource management (HRM) strategies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey of 128 HRM managers was conducted to assess differences in human capital between firms using different HRM strategies. A multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between firms' human capital and financial performance.\nFindings: The results show that companies employing a make-organic strategy have a higher level of human capital than companies employing a buy-bureaucratic strategy. There was no relationship between the level of human capital and long term financial performance of firms with both make-organic and buy-bureaucratic strategies.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research contributes toward understanding the effect of HRM strategy and facilitates an optimal strategy choice depending on the organization. However, this study did not consider the lead time between changes in human capital and the effect on financial performance.\nPractical implications: The research encourages firm managers to understand the value of human capital, preparing them for changes in the future.\nOriginality/value: This study is among the first to investigate the relationship between human capital and financial performance considering different HRM strategies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analytic hierarchy process for the success of e-government
|
[
"Analytical hierarchy process",
"Decision making",
"E‐government",
"Risk management",
"Strategy,"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: E-Government or e-Governance\n2. The Analytic Hierarchy Process: The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a logical Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) technique that allows decision makers to model complex problem based on mathematics and human psychology (Saaty, 2000). It can be defined as \"an approach to decision making that involves structuring multiple choice criteria into a hierarchy. The relative importance of these criteria is assessed. Alternatives for each criterion are compared that relies on the judgments of experts. An overall ranking scale of the alternatives is then determined\". It also takes both objective and subjective factors into consideration to drive ratio scale ranking that measure intangibles in relative terms. In AHP, the importance weight is obtained from data rated by a pair-wise comparison. AHP is useful where important elements of the decision are difficult to quantify or compare, or where communication among team members is impeded by their different specializations, terminologies, inclinations or perspectives. The potential of addressing both objective and subjective criteria and incorporating tangible and intangible factors is considered a source of the strength of the AHP. The AHP is applied in complex and various situations, such as in telecommunication services, in analyzing the customer's perception of the importance of the Quality of Service (QoS), and to estimate the overall Customer Satisfaction (Sato and Kataoka, 1995). Other application areas might also include personal, social, manufacturing, politics, engineering, education, industry, business, government, group decision-making, strategic framework, and healthcare (Gerdsria and Kocaoglu, 2007; Colace et al., 2006; Saaty, 2008; Vaidya and Kumar, 2006; Yan Song, 2006). Comparing AHP with Multi-Criteria Ranking Ordering (MRO) revealed that although AHP requires more user time than MRO, AHP resulted lower variance in the assessments produced by different decision makers. Therefore it may be warranted for high critical situations (Akhavi and Hayes, 2003). Applying the AHP to Information systems selection showed that even though the AHP is based on strong theory, SMART method is more practical than AHP because it can be exercised manually (Yap et al., 1992). However, this finding is limited to manual approach and use of software will address complexity problem. Recently, there is a focus on the integration of AHP with other tools such as quality function deployment, SWOT analysis, and data examination for optimum performance (Ho, 2008). On the other hand, examples difficulties of the AHP may be: a possibility of different hierarchies being applied to identical problems, major changes in results may occur if the hierarchy is changed slightly, and the absence of statistical theory that underlie the process (Dyer, 1990) and that the AHP method needs more validation (Holder, 1990). Nevertheless, Saaty (1991) responded to Holder's comment as inequity explored speculations.\n3. Risks of failure: A risk-free project is unrealistic. It is essential to prepare effective procedures in place to deal with expected threats for any government to deliver value of continues services and information. Risk management is a particularly important issue for e-Government, due to its complex, interdependence nature, and the lack of money back in case of failure if compared with private sector. Practically, threats sources make e-Government vulnerable to complete or partial failure. There is no single or common cause of e-Government failure but rather there are several mal-distributed causes. For example, based on surveying different e-Government initiatives along with Fishbone analysis, it has been shown that Design-Reality gap, Management leadership, Technology and Human Culture may be considered among the main threats to a successful transformation into e-Government, particularly in developing countries (Sultan, 2004). As per the experience of the authors, Table I summarizes possible threats sources that may cause failure to e-Government projects in the ICT areas other than outsourcing.\n4. Approach: The AHP is applied to the problem of the MCDM for answering the question \"what is the most effective decision should be taken to reduce the failure risks that threaten the transformation into e-Government?\" To consider different route of multiple actions, the problem of failure of applying ICT in government is decamped into a hierarchy consisting of a goal, (which is successful transformation to e-Government); subordinate criteria (which may be high penetration of the use of: e-Service, e-mails, and e-Administration); and alternatives approaches (which may be: minimum Culture resistance/seniority, ICT's Skill, committed Leadership, and Technology readiness). A pair-wise comparison matrix of the relative importance effects of the alternatives is established subjectively by utilizing the author's experiences. This subjective judgment is converted to numerical values for deriving their numerical weights and priority. This makes it possible to accomplish an effective decision on which alternative is the most important.Figure 2 shows the proposed AHP for the case of e-Government transformation. As it is a common among many governments' strategy, the goal (Level 0) is a successful transformation to e-Government using the enabler ICT. Several factors such as high penetration of e-Service, e-mail, and e-Administration are selected as criteria (or objectives) in the first level (Level 1) in the hierarchy for making the decision. E-Service means delivering government services electronically (24 x 7) between government to other government agencies (G2G), to business (G2B), to citizens (G2C) and to the government employees (G2E). E-Administration denotes a paperless open workflow and procedures within the concerned parties. Each one of the criteria might be affected by various alternatives of causes (Level 2) such as Culture, i.e. resistance, seniority, and awareness; skills, leadership commitment at top and senior levels, and ICT readiness.The goal, factors, alternatives are interrelated with each other. Level 1 is a pair-wise comparison matrix of size of 3 x 3 with respect to the goal. Level 2 encompasses three pair-wise comparison matrices of size 3 x 4 each. Pair-wise comparison of objective i and objective j (where i is assumed to be at least as important as j), are carried out for each level using values of Vij on 1 to 9 scale as shown in Table II to reflect the relative importance of each factor. The relative scores of alternatives' weight for each objective (criterion) of the pair-wise comparison matrices is derived by computing the normalized principle Eigen vector (Priority vector). The degree of consistency of the results is checked by computing the consistency ratio (CR). If its value is less than 10 percent, then the results is considered consistent. The consistency ratio (CR), the consistency index (CI), the Eigen value of the comparison matrix and the Random Consistency Index (RIn) are related by: Equation 1 Equation 2 Where (RIn) is the Random Consistency Index and its value is a function of the matrix size (n).The Values of (RIn) versus (n) are obtained from Table III.Table IV depicts an example of a 3 x 3 pair-wise comparisons matrix for the practical case study of such computation. The practical results of the pair-wise comparison of level (1) with respect to the goal, scores on alternatives for e-mail criteria, e-Administration criteria, and e-Service criterion are shown in Tables V-VIII respectively. The normalized principle Eigen vectors, Eigen Value, consistency indexes (CI), and consistency ratios (CR) are also calculated and given for each case. The resulting priority vector (the relative scores of alternatives for each objective/criteria) is illustrated in Figure 3, and the overall consistency ratio CR is found less than 10 percent as described in Table IX, meaning that the pair-wise comparisons are consistent.The sensitivity of the results to changes in the pair wise comparisons is investigated for each criterion (e-mail, e-Administration, and e-Service), and the results are shown in Tables X-XII. The resulting relative scores of alternatives for each objective/criteria) is illustrated in Figures 4-6 respectively.\n5. Discussions and conclusions: E-Government project is a core of the national strategy globally for its benefits now and in future. Though, e-Government projects experience probability of risks of failure particularly in developing countries. The problem of e-Government projects failure is complicated due to its compound multi-attribute nature and causes. Non-systematic strategy to reduce the risk of failure connected with expensive e-Initiatives, loss of e-Government expected payback may turn into a nightmare. Based on mathematics and human psychology the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a suitable approach that allows decision makers in e-Government project to tackle the complex problem of risks.A case study of the problem of e-Government projects failure and using AHP for multiple decisions making revealed that for any of the criteria (penetration of e-mail, e-Administration, or e-Service) the alternative ICT Skills represents the highest priority with average relative score of 53.59 percent. Follows are Culture (resistance, seniority, and awareness), Leadership commitment (at top and senior levels), and Technology readiness alternatives with averages 24.46 percent, 15.26 percent, and 6.69 percent respectively. In other words, the influence of ICT Skill is two times more weight than Culture alternative, three times more weight than Leadership alternative, and about eight times more preferable than Technology alternative for the success of e-Governance. It is found that the results are not sensitive for consistent pair-wise comparison in criteria or in alternatives. The result of AHP analysis emphasizes the highest importance of human skill for the success of e-Government transformation. The presented methodology for reducing e-Government failure can be applied to other various areas such as vendor selection, ICT strategic directions, and planning.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to warrant the success of applying information and communications technology (ICT) in e-government projects, particularly in developing countries, through risk management and modeling of multi-decision situation. This analytical approach would lead to effective and efficient management of e-government projects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Risk management showed that other than information security risk, failures are common in e-Government projects due to other factors particularly in most parts of developing countries. The problem is a complex multidimensional situation, since project mangers are usually faced with critical diverse decisions and alternatives from which to choose. Employing the multivariate technique of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) allowed decision makers to implement the most important and efficient actions for successful e-Government projects.\nFindings: - The difficulty of e-government projects is further complicated due to its compound multi-attribute environment, considerable economic loss, and mal-distribution of causes of failure. Using the AHP approach, e-government case study revealed that - for e-government success - the decision maker should tackle the highest influence of ICT skill issue because it is of more value than other alternatives: specifically twice, three times, and eight times more than, respectively, culture, leadership, and technology.\nOriginality/value: - This case study can provide an understanding into the risks and multi-decision problem of e-government projects success. Rather than disastrous subjective decisions, a systematic approach using AHP offered decision makers a rational answer to what are the highest priority obstacles to tackle to safe guard against failure of e-government projects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The relationship between students' subject preferences and their information behaviour
|
[
"Students",
"Schools",
"Universities",
"Critical thinking",
"Information research",
"Information behaviour",
"Disciplines"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper reports selected findings from a study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council entitled \"Developing Deep Critical Information Behaviour (IB)\". The project ran from 2010 to 2012 and investigated the nature, extent and pattern of occurrence of deep and surface IBs amongst students at secondary school and university, studying in England. It also sought to investigate the extent to which, in the view of key stakeholders (i.e. educators, librarians and administrators), the development of deep IB could be enabled and fostered. The project used a mixed-methods approach: stage 1 comprised interviews and focus groups with learners and stakeholders; and stage 2 consisted of a questionnaire-based survey carried out in schools, colleges and universities in South Yorkshire and the Midlands.\n2. Literature review: This review focusses on three key areas:\n3. Methodology: The methodology adopted for the study consisted of two stages. First, a series of structured interviews was conducted as outlined below (Table III). Questions focussed on students' self-reported IB and on teachers' observations of IB. Since students above KS3 have increasing control over their choice of subjects, connections between academic discipline became more apparent in interviews with older students.\n4. Results: 4.1 Quantitative analysis\n5. Discussion: The research considered in the literature review above supports the view that IB varies according to subject of study. The evidence presented in this paper provides further support for this view as well as suggesting an explanation (see below).\n6. Conclusions: This paper has made a contribution by providing a new perspective on the relationship between subject discipline and IB, by extending categorisation of IB with a new \"'a-critical' category\", and by proposing a model of students' engagement with information (Figure 2) using the novel lens of tool application and tool acquisition.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between preferred choice of school subject and student information behaviour (IB).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Mixed methods were employed. In all, 152 students, teachers and librarians participated in interviews or focus groups. In total, 1,375 students, key stage 3 (11-14 years) to postgraduate, responded to a questionnaire. The research population was drawn from eight schools, two further education colleges and three universities. Insights from the literature review and the qualitative research phase led to a hypothesis which was investigated using the questionnaire: that students studying hard subjects are less likely to engage in deep IB than students studying soft subjects.\nFindings: Results support the hypothesis that preferences for subjects at school affect choice of university degree. The hypothesis that a preference for hard or soft subjects affects IB is supported by results of an analysis in which like or dislike of maths/ICT is correlated with responses to the survey. Interviewees' comments led to the proposal that academic subjects can be classified according to whether a subject helps students to acquire a \"tool of the Mind\" or to apply such a tool. A model suggesting how IB may differ depending on whether intellectual tools are being acquired or applied is proposed.\nPractical implications: The \"inner logic\" of certain subjects and their pedagogies appears closely linked to IB. This should be considered when developing teaching programmes.\nOriginality/value: The findings offer a new perspective on subject classification and its association with IB, and a new model of the association between IB and tool acquisition or application is proposed, incorporating the perspectives of both teacher and student.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The triad value function - theorizing the value potential of connected relationships
|
[
"Value",
"Triads",
"Subjectivity",
"Connectedness",
"Connection",
"Value potential"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The significance of network structure for value creation and appropriation is conceptually well established (Ahuja, 2000; Burt, 1992; Coleman, 1988) and empirically demonstrated in studies of wider business networks applying social network analysis (Jensen, 2003; Shipilov and Li, 2008). However, among the expanded set of perspectives and concepts available for the study of value in and of business-to-business (B2B) relationships (Lindgreen and Wynstra, 2005), few go beyond the value of goods, services and dyadic relationships. But, the conceptualization of the \"direct and indirect value functions\" of business relationships (Walter et al., 2001, 2003) offers the first steps in capturing the impact of structure on dyadic value creation. Business relationships offer a present outcome for the involved parties (the direct value function) and a future potential in the network resulting from the business partner's positions, which may offer access to valuable resources, information and actors (the indirect value function). Still, the significance of the structural properties of the network context in which the direct and indirect value functions are operating is not elaborated in detail. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap using the triad as the unit of analysis.\nMethod: The subject matter of the study is the operation and significance of connections for value creation/leverage (interactive processes) in supplier-distributor-customer triads (structure). For this purpose, a critical realist approach is supportive, as agency is not privileged over structures or vice-versa; the one depends on the other (Fleetwood, 2005), and the important issue is to explore the relationship between the two (Mutch et al., 2006). Within this approach, the role of theory is to negotiate and modify the relationship between what we sense and observe and how to express this understanding (Sayer, 1992). In other words, theory supports the move beyond description of what goes on to an attempt to explain why. However, the (re-)conceptualization of a phenomenon is not based on theory alone but is grounded in inference from data as well as from theories about structures and mechanisms. In the following, the process, which leads to the conceptualization of the triad value function, is described.\nThe case study: The case-study illustrates the insights resulting from the application of the triad value function in the third round of analysis. Data from the four triads are organized in three narratives, which illustrate the working of the triad value function:\nDiscussion and implications: This paper contributes by demonstrating how connectedness of relationships results in varying value potentials. This is achieved through the conceptualization of the triad value function, which elaborates on existing knowledge about connectedness (Emerson, 1972b). The relevance of the connectedness for the study of value-creating processes lies in its potential to support and integrate the study of processes and structures in constellations which go beyond the dyad. The concept emphasizes that shape alone does not capture complex exchange processes (Molm and Cook, 1995); in this example, value-creating processes. The triad value function presented in this paper sets off from the re-description of connectedness as an actor-perceived and actor-interpreted phenomenon (Anderson et al., 1994). This is in line with existing research which defines the value of offerings (Gronroos, 2011; Vargo and Lusch, 2004), value of dyads (Corsaro and Snehota, 2010) and networks (Ibarra et al., 2005) as actor-perceived. The triad value function explicates that the actions and decision taken by parties in separate dyads are influenced by the actors' individual perception of the overall value potential of the structural context. Thus, it offers an extra dimension for a detailed study of variation among value creation processes, not only between differently shaped structures but also between identically shaped structures.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to explicate how connectedness of relationships results in varying value potentials of triads.\nDesign/methodology/approach: First connectedness is re-described as an actor-perceived and actor-interpreted phenomenon. The re-description is used to theorize the triad value function. Next, the applicability and validity of the concept is examined in a case study of four closed vertical supply chain triads.\nFindings: The case study demonstrates that the triad value function facilitates the analysis and understanding of an apparent paradox; that distributors are not dis-intermediated in spite of their limited contribution to activities in the triads. The results indicate practical adequacy of the triad value function.\nResearch limitations/implications: The triad value function is difficult to apply in the study of expanded networks as the number of connections expands exponentially with the number of ties in the network. Moreover, it must be applied in the study of service triads and open vertical supply chain triads to further verify the practical adequacy of the concept.\nPractical implications: The triad value function cannot be used normatively or prescriptively. It is a descriptive tool which indirectly supports managerial decision-making through the analysis of how the structural context of a triad influences the value of relationships.\nOriginality/value: The paper offers an additional aspect for the study of value in and of triads. It illustrates that perceived connectedness of relationships operates as a triad value function, which captures the structural value potential of the triad for a focal actor.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Forces for and forces against: Vagaries of - and capacity building for - practice relevant research
|
[
"Management research",
"Research methods"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Demand for academic research in management and business studies to be relevant to practice has grown apace since Pettigrew (1997) introduced his \"double hurdles\" notion of academic rigour and practice relevance as joint criteria for evaluating it. The British Journal of Management's position on this centred around the notion of \"Mode 2\" research, of which practice relevance was a key attribute (Hodgkinson, 2001). Successive presidents of the Academy of Management have made conference speeches on this topic so it is perhaps not surprising that recent editions of the Academy of Management Journal have joined the bandwagon. In August 2007, there was an Editors' Forum devoted explicitly to research with relevance to practice (Rymes, 2007b), and in December 2007 an Editors' Forum that reviewed research of the preceding 50 years and looked forward to the future, also contained a number of papers on practice relevant research (Rymes, 2007a). It would be possible to quote from any number of examples of papers on the topic; Pfeffer's position, expressed in his paper in the December 2007 Editors' Forum, is typical of many. He argued that he, and possibly many of his colleagues in the Academy of Management, have \"a dream for the future in management research [...].\" His dream encompasses:* having more effect on the actual practice of management in organizations in both the private and public sectors;* being at least as [...] influential in the formation of policy [...] as our sister social science disciplines and, more specifically, on a par with economics; and* being as connected to, and as engaged with, and as relevant to our profession -management - as our sister professional schools such as Engineering, Education and Medicine.The forces for practice relevant research are, however, not only academic. UK government has been pushing for management and business research to be relevant to practice for some time. The Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) current emphasis on \"practice engaged research\" is one way in which that policy is enacted; I will return to that in due course.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the forces which militate against building capacity for research in business and management that satisfies the double-hurdle criteria of academic rigour and relevance to practice, despite strong pressures in favour of it.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is a reflective piece based on a small number of interviews with researchers, and a variety of initiatives and events in the business and management environment.\nFindings: - Forces for practice relevant research include rhetorical statements from high-profile academics, government, the research councils, and many business and management researchers. Forces against it relate principally to editorial and reviewer processes relating to journal publication and grant awards. Modes of academically rigorous, practice relevant research actually carried out are highly varied - some variations are discussed - but these are not widely understood by funding councils, editors, reviewers, or even by researchers working in different modes of such research.\nOriginality/value: - The principal point of this paper is a call for capacity building to develop in the community an understanding of the nature of rigour in different modes of practice relevant and cumulative research. This contrasts with, but is in addition to, more traditional calls for effort to be applied to the further development and promulgation of practice relevant research approaches themselves.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Knowledge sharing in cross-functional teams: a coopetitive model
|
[
"Effective knowledge sharing",
"Coopetitive knowledge sharing",
"Cross‐functional projects",
"Cross‐functional team",
"Cross‐functional coopetition",
"Co‐opetition",
"Knowledge management",
"Team working",
"Cross‐functional integration"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Cross-functional project teams are composed of individuals drawn from various functional units who possess specialized knowledge and skills relevant to the completion of projects (Clark and Wheelwright, 1992; Holland et al., 2000; Witt et al., 2001).Prior studies emphasize that the potential value of cross-functional teams will be realized if their members utilize their expertise and knowledge in conjunction with the knowledge and expertise of other members (Hong, 2008; Love and Roper, 2009). Knowledge sharing provides individuals with a better understanding of the know-how and skills of others, and makes them capable of responding to situational demands even though the complexity of the task is beyond the cognitive capabilities of each member (Szulanski, 2000).Nonetheless, achieving effective knowledge sharing in cross-functional project teams is proved to be problematic (Sethi et al., 2001). For example, broad organizational perspectives and social identities in cross-functional contexts exacerbate challenges in achieving effective knowledge sharing. The extant literature states that cross-functional team members could be identified more strongly with their functional unit, both socially and psychologically, than with their cross-functional group (Pinto et al., 1993; Keller, 2001; Randel and Jaussi, 2003). Allegiance to functional units often lead to the implications of treating knowledge as a private good, rather than the public good of the group (Wasko and Faraj, 2000). This along with different functional objectives, priorities, and agendas that could be in conflict, make team members from different functional areas unable to exploit their diverse knowledge and expertise (McDonough, 2000; Randel and Jaussi, 2003).This study is undertaken to provide researchers and practitioners with a model that can be used to explain the forces behind effective knowledge sharing behaviors in cross-functional projects. More specifically, this study draws upon the two inherent aspects of knowledge sharing (cooperative and competitive aspects), and it proposes a theoretical model that predicts effective knowledge sharing in cross-functional project teams. The proposed model postulates multi-dimensional cross-functional cooperation and competition as the two underlying forces that drive effective knowledge sharing behaviors. The model is tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and the survey data collected from 115 IT project managers.\n2. The notion of coopetitive knowledge sharing: The cooperative nature of multi-party project teams requires frequent communication and effective knowledge sharing among team members (Sethi et al., 2001; Huang and Newell, 2003). At the same time, knowledge has been acknowledged to be a competitive advantage for those who possess it at the right place and at the right time (Lorange, 1996; Van Der Bij et al., 2003). According to Yang and Wu (2008), if special knowledge is a competitive advantage, it is also a source of power for those who own or possess it in the organization. Accordingly, those who possess specific knowledge could enjoy benefits and unique positions that might be lost by sharing. Therefore, the competitive advantage of knowledge may lead individuals to hoard their perceived important knowledge or to offer incomplete transfer of knowledge. This mixed characteristic affects knowledge sharing practices, and it can be explained by the notion of coopetitive knowledge sharing.According to the notion of cooperative knowledge sharing, simultaneous cooperation and competition affect the occurrence of knowledge sharing (Loebecke et al., 1999). Cross-functional cooperation promotes knowledge sharing, because it is associated with the perception of individuals on the collective use of the shared knowledge in pursuing common interests of the team. Cross-functional competition impedes knowledge sharing, because it is associated with the perception of individuals on the use of the shared knowledge to make private gains and outperform other cross-functional members. The competitive aspect is mainly concerned with the strategic costs of sharing knowledge that inhibit knowledge sharing, both at inter and intra organizational levels (Loebecke et al., 1999; Luo et al., 2006).The extant literature exhibits a consensus on the conceptualization of cross-functional coopetition (e.g. Tsai, 2002; Luo et al., 2006). Cross-functional coopetiton is treated with two distinctive constructs: cross-functional cooperation and cross-functional competition (Tsai, 2002; Luo et al., 2006; Lin, 2007). However, there are two voids that should be discussed:First, there is no consensus on investigating the coopetition effect in cross-functional contexts (the mechanism through which coopetition generates organizational outcomes) (Tsai, 2002; Luo et al., 2006; Avital and Singh, 2007; Lin, 2007; Lin et al., 2010). For example, Tsai (2002) and Luo et al. (2006) investigated the synergic impact of competition and cooperation on knowledge sharing behaviors, whereas Lin (2007), Avital and Singh (2007), and Lin et al. (2010) investigated the separate impacts of cooperation and competition on organizational outcomes. There are also inconsistencies in the conceptualization of cross-functional cooperation and competition in these studies. For example, cross-functional cooperation in Tsai meant social interaction (a facet of cooperation), whereas Luo et al. (2006) and Lin et al. (2010) conceptualized cooperation with indicators that refer to frequent communication, problem solving, gratifying relationships, and/or shared goals. Similarly, Tsai investigated only competition for resources and market share among functional units, Lin et al. (2010) were more concerned about competitive conflict, and Luo et al. (2006), Lin (2007), and Avital and Singh (2007) looked as both competitions for tangible and intangible resources. In summary, there is a need to systematically understand the mechanisms through which cross-functional coopetition affects knowledge sharing behaviors. This understanding allows providing a consensus on the analysis of this concept and its consequences on knowledge sharing behaviors.Second, the literature on coopetitive knowledge sharing has put much effort on investigating the impact of coopetition on the frequency or occurrence of knowledge sharing, rather than the effectiveness of the knowledge being shared.In the next sections, the authors postulate and examine a theoretical model that shows how the two forces of cross-functional cooperation and competition affect effective knowledge sharing behaviors. The proposed model addresses the research objective of this study (to provide researchers and practitioners with a model that explains the forces behind effective knowledge sharing behaviors in cross-functional projects). In addition, this study contributes to the coopetition literature by filling the two discussed voids (no consensus on the conceptualization of coopetition effect, and lack of attention into effective knowledge sharing behaviors).\n3. Theory: 3.1 Effective knowledge sharing\n4. Results: 4.1 Data collection\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study aims to present a model that can be used for predicting effective knowledge sharing behaviors in cross-functional project teams.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Drawn from the extant literature, a coopetitive model of knowledge sharing is postulated. Data from 115 project managers are used to test the proposed model, using partial least squares (PLS).\nFindings: - The findings confirm the applicability and predictive power of the proposed model. Three dimensions of cross-functional cooperation (cooperative task orientation, cooperative communication, and cooperative interpersonal relationships) were proved to directly drive effective knowledge sharing behaviors. The results show that competition affects effective knowledge sharing behaviors through influencing cooperative behaviors. In addition, this study shows that different dimensions of competition generate mixed impacts. Competition for tangible resources was found to positively affect cooperative communication of individuals, whereas competition for intangible resources (political competition) had negative impacts on cooperative communication and task orientations.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study contributes to the extant literature by presenting a model that predicts effective knowledge sharing practices in cross-functional projects. In addition, the results advance the current understanding of the concept and modeling of coopetitive knowledge sharing.\nPractical implications: - The proposed model of this study can be used by managers in order to facilitate problematic knowledge sharing processes within cross-functional teams.\nOriginality/value: - This study stands as one of the first attempts in providing a model that explains the forces behind effective knowledge sharing behaviors in cross-functional teams. The model explores coopetition effect in a systematic way, which has not been previously studied.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Representative bureaucracy in the Arab Gulf states
|
[
"Gender",
"Government",
"Bureaucracy",
"Emerging markets",
"Arab countries",
"Public companies"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Women remain in a minority of middle and senior positions internationally, despite economic, legal and moral arguments about the benefits of gender diversity (Beaufort and Summers, 2014; Campbell and Minguez-Vera, 2008; Simpson et al., 2010). In particular, a pattern of gender inequality in civil and professional life persists in the Middle-East region (Jayashree and Lindsay, 2016; Kelly, 2010; Pharaon, 2004).\nRepresentative bureaucracy: Ideas of RB have attracted significant interest within the field of public administration over the last half-century (Van Ryzin et al., 2017). The central, normative, theme of these ideas is that public bureaucracies, which represent the citizens they serve, will achieve more responsive government (Selden, 1997; Sowa and Selden, 2003). While theories of RB have been developed primarily for Western, Anglo-Saxon democracies, it is suggested they may hold explanatory power for AGS. These countries are monarchical rather than democratic; nonetheless they too face a need to be responsive to their citizen populations. The elites that run governments of the AGS are not autonomous, but are embedded in and reliant upon society (Gray, 2016).\nMethod: Our study was conducted to investigate the numbers of women, compared with the numbers of men, in various management positions within the hierarchies of government and government-owned companies in the AGS. The countries were chosen because of their strategic importance in the Middle-East (Kapiszewski, 2006; Nakhleh, 1986). These nations share similarities of culture, language, religion, political systems and sources of income, leading some to consider these states as a fairly homogenous group (At-Twaijri and Al-Muhaiza, 1996). Governments in AGS own and control a large proportion of the economy, from education and healthcare to finance and industry. Examples include the \"Qatar National Bank\", \"Saudi Basic Industries Corporation\", and, in the UAE, the \"Advanced Technology Investment Company\" and \"Etisalat\" (telecommunications) (Hertog, 2013). In such \"state capitalist\" countries (Musacchio and Lazzarini, 2012), boundaries between the public and private sectors are blurred, and government-owned companies are context-specific hybrids, holding characteristics of both private and public sector organisations (Emmert and Crow, 1988).\nFindings: The results for the ten \"top\" industry types are given, i.e. the ones containing the majority of managers. In alphabetical order, these industries types and examples of industries were:\nDiscussion: Women's under-representation in management roles was evidenced throughout the industries investigated. This finding of the depth of gender inequality is somewhat consistent with a methodologically similar study of the private sector in Arab Gulf countries (Kemp et al., 2014). Our study found more than double the number of women managers in the public sector, compared to that of the previous private sector study. This difference was, however, observed within the wider context of very low levels of female representation at managerial level across both sectors in all Arab Gulf countries. In this study, on average only 12 per cent of managerial positions were occupied by women, and there were none, or very few, women in management positions in some industries. Our study findings are set within a public sector where levels of authority and power increase towards the apex of the hierarchy (Al-Halawani, 2002). Yet, the voices of women in management, in these governments and government-owned companies, are silent and silenced, and women are barely visible in management in some countries and industries (see also Crutzen, 2014; Madichie and Gallant, 2012; Morley, 2014; Simpson and Lewis, 2005). As a consequence, women's contribution to decision making is likely to be limited in the governments and government-owned companies of Arab Gulf countries.\nLimitations and future research direction: These findings were the result of data analysis that was conducted to investigate numbers of women (compared with men) in the public sector by position and industry type. From this study, the causes of women's underrepresentation cannot be confirmed because of the methodological approach. However, the vastly unequal numbers and percentages of women and men across industry types suggest alignment with those reasons for gender inequality reviewed in the literature, i.e., deeply entrenched inequality at three layers (individual, organisation and society) (Metcalfe, 2011).\nConclusion: Gender analysis was conducted of data collected from \"Eikon\", a database of company information for the Middle East. These data contained names and positions of 8,936 officers for 846 government companies in those six countries. The distribution of men and women in public sector management positions were analysed by position and industry. Findings were of a depth and a breadth to women's underrepresentation in the public sector of AGS.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to apply the lens of representative bureaucracy (RB) to women's representation at management level in governments and government-owned companies in Arab Gulf states (AGS), and to consider the implications for government stability, legitimacy and performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were analysed of the numbers of men and women in management positions (8,936), of government and government-owned companies (846), for the six countries of the AGS. Analyses were conducted on the presence/absence of women in management for ten industry types.\nFindings: Governments and government-owned companies in the AGS were identified as hybrid (public/private) institutions. Women were found to be underrepresented at management levels in public sector bureaucracy; women clustered in a narrow range of industries; all countries returned a high result of zero female managers in these industries.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research is limited by data collected from a single source, \"Eikon\", which is a commercial database. The implication of these results is a benchmark for future studies on women's representation at management level in governments and government-owned companies of Arab Gulf countries.\nPractical implications: The practical implication of this study is for concerted government intervention to address gender inequality in management of governments and government-owned companies across the AGS.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study of RB in AGS and extends the theory of RB to a new geographical and cultural context. There is value in application of RB to government and government-owned companies as a regional form of hybrid public-private organisation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Making a difference in the workplace: Future directions in diversity, IPV, and occupational stress
|
[
"Equal opportunities",
"Occupational health and safety",
"Stress"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In March 2006, I attended the sixth international conference on occupational stress and health held in Miami entitled \"Work, Stress, and Health 2006: Making a Difference in the Workplace\". It was a joint conference organized by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The conference has grown in popularity and in size since its inception in 1999 and has become a premier conference on occupational stress. Over 400 papers were presented by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners from primarily North America and Europe. The sessions covered many areas of occupational stress including diversity and intimate partner violence (IPV).In the first international conference on occupational stress and health there was limited focus on diversity; however, there was a noticeable growth in this area of research at the conference in Miami. While there were many excellent conference papers with relevance to equality, diversity, and inclusion, I have chosen 11 to review in this report. These represent some of the most cutting-edge research and theory on diversity, IPV and occupational stress. All of the articles selected can make a positive difference in the workplace.In the first section of this report, I review important articles that highlight the differences in gender and ethnicity in occupational stress. The section is divided up into three parts of the stress cycle: causes of stress, coping with stress, and stress outcomes. In the second section, I review the session on IPV. There were two main focuses in this session: the effects of occupational status on abused women and the effects of IPV on the organization.\nStress: Causes of stress\nIntimate partner violence: IPV and occupational status\nConclusion: This year's occupational stress and health conference provided some important insight on the growing body of diversity literature. From the papers presented at the conference and summarized in this report, we can see that diversity research can play a significant role in understanding the effects of occupational stress. Whether it is Kohler and Munz who found that men and women did not differ on maladaptive coping or June et al.'s paper that showed minorities were more likely to experience back pain, all the papers reviewed in this report have direct implications for organizations that can make a positive difference and increase opportunities for workplace equality among non-dominant groups. Stress may be viewed differently, coped with differently and may have different outcomes for minorities than with male Caucasians.In order for organizations to successfully implement a stress program, they will have to ensure that the program addresses these differences. Organizations need to develop strategies to reduce both physical and psychological risk to minorities while addressing disparities and health treatment towards minorities. Furthermore, the session on IPV has shown that there are important organizational ramifications that need to be addressed more aggressively. First, future IPV research should consider the employment of victims based on their occupational level and status and their employment status. Second, researchers are continually trying to demonstrate the financial cost of organizations in order to draw their attention to the problem of IPV. In conclusion, the Miami conference represents the forefront of diversity and stress research and I look forward to many articles that will come out of the conference.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report on the sixth international conference on occupational stress and health.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In March 2006, the sixth international conference on occupational stress and health was held jointly by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Miami. The conference title was \"Work, Stress, and Health 2006: Making a Difference in the Workplace\" . Papers presented at the conference provided important insight on the growing body of diversity literature.\nFindings: - Specifically, researchers found that diversity plays a significant role in understanding the effects of occupational stress. Stress may be preceived differently, dealth with differently and may have different outcomes for minorities than with male Caucasians.\nPractical Implications: - The session on Interpersonal violence suggested that researchers should consider the employment status and occupational level of victims. Furthermore, new research is trying to estimate the actual financial cost to organizations.\nOriginality/value: - Overall, the conference was successful and provided future directions for research on diversity and occupational stress.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The spillover effect of incidental social comparison on materialistic pursuits: The mediating role of envy
|
[
"Materialism",
"Envy",
"Social comparison",
"Spending propensity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: People strive to attain superiority and escape feelings of inferiority (Adler, 1927; Festinger, 1954). However, this goal is often threatened by unfavorable social comparisons. Although individuals play an active role in selecting comparison targets, unflattering comparisons are difficult to avoid (Mussweiler et al., 2000). For example, a student might feel dumber than his or her classmates who got higher scores on an exam, football players might feel inferior compared to the team that they lost against or an overweight person might perceive a negative self-image after seeing a supermodel in a television ad. When others' advantages matter to the self, people experience envy, which is an unpleasant and painful sense of inferiority, blended with resentment and hostility (Smith and Kim, 2007).\nTheoretical development: Social comparison and envy\nStudy overview: Our main proposition is that comparison with a superior target elicits envy, and as a result, leads to higher materialism and greater spending propensity on public products. We conducted four studies to test this hypothesis. Study 1 supports the idea that, after comparing themselves to superior counterparts, individuals place greater importance on material goods (H1). Study 2 replicates the result in Study 1 using another social comparison manipulation, and confirms the mediating role of envy (H2). Study 3 further investigates the type of envy (benign versus malicious) that drives the observed effect. Study 4 extends the findings of Studies 1-3, and demonstrates that consumers who make upward comparisons are more likely to spend money on publicly visible products, as compared to those who make downward comparisons and those who do not make any social comparisons (H3).\nStudy 1: academic achievement comparison and materialism: Study 1 examines whether materialism varies as a function of social comparison. We manipulated social comparison in an academic achievement context. We expected that a comparison with a superior student would motivate undergraduates to place a higher value on material goods than a comparison with an inferior student.\nStudy 2: the mediating role of envy: Study 1 demonstrated that, as compared to downward comparisons, upward comparisons caused higher materialism in consumers. Study 2 investigates the underlying mechanism for this observed effect. To manipulate social comparison, we asked participants to recall a past experience of when they were either better off or worse off than other people. We predicted that an upward comparison experience would induce envy, which, in turn, motivates individuals to embrace higher materialism.\nStudy 3: benign versus malicious envy: The purpose of Study 3 is twofold. First, because recent research (Crusius and Lange, 2016; Van de Ven et al., 2009, 2011) suggests that envy can either be malicious (containing hostile feelings) or benign (free of hostile feelings), Study 3 explores the type of envy that drives our effect by measuring them separately. Belk (2011) proposed that contemporary consumption is primarily driven by the desire to \"level up\" through consumption emulation (i.e. benign envy) rather than \"level down\" by harming others (i.e. malicious envy). However, Van de Ven et al. (2011) suggested that, while benign envy motivates consumers to acquire a desirable product that a superior other owns, malicious envy drives them to pursue a desirable product that a superior other does not own. As both of these effects can lead to a general materialistic orientation, we predict that both benign and malicious envy are associated with increased materialism and play a mediating role for the relationship between social comparison and materialism.\nStudy 4: public versus private consumption context: Thus far, we have shown that, relative to downward comparisons, upward comparisons elicit higher materialism, which is mediated by envy (both benign and malicious). Study 4 extends the consequences of social comparison from materialism to spending propensity. Because material possessions signal owner status and communicate social advantages only if these are consumed or displayed publicly (Wong, 1997), we propose that upward comparison will further result in greater willingness to spend on publicly visible products as compared to private products.\nGeneral discussion: This research proposes that incidental envy elicited in prior, nonmaterial social comparison situations increases materialism and public spending propensity. We tested this hypothesis across four studies. First, we showed that undergraduate students exhibited greater materialism after comparing their academic performance to a better student, as opposed to a worse student (Study 1). Next, we demonstrated the underlying mechanism for the observed effect by revealing envy as the mediator (Studies 2 and 3). We further showed that people were more likely to spend money on publicly visible products after making upward social comparisons than downward or no comparisons (Study 4).\nConclusion: In summary, this research examines the role of incidental envy in connecting threatening social comparisons and consumers' materialistic pursuits. Across four studies, we demonstrate that a comparison with a superior target induces envy, which, in turn, motivates people to embrace materialism and spend in a public context. In doing so, our findings shed light on the literature of social comparison, envy, materialism and beyond.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine whether social comparison in a prior, nonconsumption circumstance (e.g. in an academic setting) affects consumers' materialism and subsequent spending propensity, and explores the incidental feeling of envy as the underlying mechanism.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Four experiments have been conducted to test these hypotheses. Study 1 manipulated social comparison in an academic domain, and measured undergraduate students' materialism after they compared themselves to a superior student or to an inferior student. Study 2 used a recall task to manipulate social comparison and examine the mediating role of envy. Study 3 examined which of the two types of envy (benign or malicious) affected materialism. Study 4 examined the downstream consequences on spending propensity in both public and private consumption contexts.\nFindings: The results suggest that consumers place greater importance on material goods and are more likely to spend money on publicly visible products after making upward social comparisons than after making downward social comparisons or no comparisons. Furthermore, envy acts as the mediator for the observed effect of incidental social comparison on materialism.\nOriginality/value: First, this study improves our understanding of the consequences of social comparison and envy by demonstrating that incidental envy (both benign and malicious) experienced in a prior, unrelated social comparison can motivate materialistic pursuits. Second, the present research contributes to the compensatory consumption literature by revealing that, in a social comparison context, envy is the affective underpinning that gives rise to the motivation to engage in compensatory consumer behavior. Third, the findings also enrich materialism research by exploring an important situational antecedent in driving materialistic orientation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
What one feels and what one knows: the influence of emotions on attitudes and intentions towards knowledge sharing
|
[
"Knowledge sharing",
"Emotions",
"Attitudes",
"Intentions",
"Knowledge management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As knowledge is often seen as one of individuals' prime assets in today's knowledge economy, it can be assumed that people will have strong feelings about sharing their knowledge. Common sense would dictate, for instance, that people will be more inclined to share their knowledge with people towards whom they feel positive emotions (liking, empathy) than would be the case with people towards whom they have negative emotions (anger, disappointment). Therefore, the connection between emotions and knowledge sharing is a very interesting one to research, but one that has not been the subject of much empirical research to date. This paper contributes to the literature by filling that void by integrating theoretical insights on emotions and knowledge sharing, and providing a thorough empirical exploration of the relationship between these two concepts.Building on a conceptualization of knowledge sharing as \"making individual knowledge collective\", a distinction is made between ego-focused (or individual) emotions on the one hand, and other-focused (or collective) emotions on the other (Aaker and Williams, 1998; Markus and Kitayama, 1991). A prime example of an ego-focused emotion is pride, whereas empathy is seen as a typical other-focused emotion (Aaker and Williams, 1998; Mueller, 1987). In this study, pride and empathy are related to two previously distinguished attitudes towards knowledge sharing: eagerness, a strong internal drive to share what one knows, and willingness, which is also a positive attitude towards knowledge sharing, but one that is more conditional (De Vries et al., 2006). Where eagerness is primarily derived from an individual passion for a practice, willingness stems from a focus on the collective's interests (De Vries et al., 2006). These attitudes, in turn, are assumed to be positively related to an individual's intention to share knowledge.Based on these foundations, the research question that is central to this study is:How do emotions (pride and empathy) influence attitudes towards knowledge sharing (eagerness and willingness) and knowledge sharing intentions?In the following paragraphs, we first present our theoretical foundations with regard to attitudes and intentions towards knowledge sharing, and emotions. Based on these foundations, we present five hypotheses which were tested through a scenario experiment in a large IT organization. After elaborating on the setup of the empirical study, we discuss the results of the experiment and relate these to our hypotheses. In the discussion section, the theoretical implications of our findings are discussed, as well as avenues for future research.\n2. Emotions and knowledge sharing: In order to discuss the possible influence of emotions on knowledge sharing attitudes and behavior, we first define knowledge sharing and distinguish two different attitudes towards sharing: eagerness and willingness. Next, we discuss how ego-focused and other-focused emotions (in this case, pride and empathy) are assumed to be related to these attitudes.2.1 Knowledge sharing attitudes and intentions\n3. Method: The empirical study in which our hypotheses were tested, was part of a larger company survey on barriers to knowledge sharing within the organization. This survey was sent out to 450 employees from two departments of the Dutch branch of a large international IT company. Of these 450 employees, 252 filled out the survey (56 percent). Unfortunately, for privacy reasons, we could not ask respondents' age or gender. All employees were trained experts in their field of either software development or general technology services. All respondents were involved in high-tech, knowledge intensive work (software engineering, hardware development, technological consultancy, et cetera). Therefore, sharing knowledge was of high importance to their daily practice.To test our hypotheses, we designed four different scenarios which were manipulated to stimulate either pride or empathy. In each scenario, respondents were presented a hypothetical situation in which one of their colleagues asked them for help on a certain topic on which the respondent was knowledgeable, but which was not related to their current projects. Respondents were told that the person requesting their help was working on a tight deadline and really needed help, but respondents were also told they were in no way obliged to help the other person.Respondents were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. In the low pride condition, respondents were told that the person requested help from the respondents because other, more knowledgeable and experienced, persons were unavailable at the moment. In the high pride condition, respondents were told that the person requested the respondent for help because they felt the respondent was the most knowledgeable and experienced person in the field. In the low empathy condition, respondents were told that the person who requested for help was considered unlikeable, irresponsible and generally unwilling to help others. Finally, in the high empathy condition, respondents were told that the person who requested for help was considered likeable, responsible, and generally willing to help others.3.1 Measures\n4. Results: 4.1 Manipulation checks\n5. Discussion: In answer to our research question, our findings show that pride and empathy do affect eagerness and willingness to share knowledge. Furthermore, these emotions also influence knowledge sharing intentions, partly mediated by eagerness and willingness: both eagerness and willingness mediate the relationship between pride and knowledge sharing intention. However, only willingness turned out to mediate the relationship between empathy and knowledge sharing. These findings have a number of implications for theory on both knowledge sharing and emotions.One of the central assumptions behind this study was that emotions are an important factor in explaining knowledge sharing. Our findings indicate that this is indeed the case: the emotional state that an individual is in at a certain moment, is likely to influence his or her attitude towards knowledge sharing as well as his or her intention to actually share knowledge. Therefore, our findings contribute to the literature on knowledge sharing by highlighting the role of emotions, providing empirical insight into the role that emotions play in people's intentions (and subsequent behavior) in terms of knowledge sharing. With that, we add to the practice-based literature on knowledge (e.g. Brown and Duguid, 2001; Cook and Brown, 1999; Hislop, 2002) by providing additional insight into the \"emergent\" or bottom-up character of knowledge sharing, and the factors influencing that process.In that process, people's intrinsic motivations are especially important (Osterloh and Frey, 2000), and those intrinsic motivations are influenced by their attitudes towards both the collective, and the practice that this collective (and they as individuals) engage in. The distinction between eagerness and willingness to share appears to be a valuable one, as we find that these attitudes both play a role in explaining knowledge sharing intentions, and that they are both influenced differently by the emotions of pride and empathy. Using attitudes as mediators between emotions and (intentions towards) behavior thus contributes to the literature on emotions, as it provides new insights into how emotions influence behaviors. Our findings show that emotions do have a direct influence on knowledge sharing intentions, but that there is also an interesting mediating role for different attitudes.Pride was found to affect both eagerness and willingness, and both eagerness and willingness mediate the relationship between pride and knowledge sharing intention. This seems to confirm the statement that pride may be primarily be an ego-focused emotion, but that it does have a collective element as well: public appraisal of expertise, skill and performance contributes to evoking pride (Williams and DeSteno, 2008), and in that sense pride is not an exclusively individual emotion. Consequently, it does make one eager to share out of the wish to showcase one's expertise, but not without an eye for the collective interest: pride invokes both eagerness and willingness, so collective performance is a relevant motivation for people feeling pride as well. At least for those feeling what is called achievement-oriented or authentic pride, which stems from mastering a skill, receiving a high academic mark and being recognized for that (Tangney, 1999; Tracy and Robins, 2004), as opposed to what is called hubristic pride, which has no particular target and refers to an unconditionally positive view of oneself. Authentic pride is in essence adaptive to the social context, whereas hubristic pride is entirely self-focused (Lewis, 1997; Williams and DeSteno, 2008). Actually, hubristic pride may be more of a personality trait than an actual emotion, due to its stable and lasting nature. It might well be that hubristic pride would only invoke eagerness to share, since it lacks the feeling for social context that is a part of achievement-oriented pride.Consistent with our expectations, empathy seems to transmit its effect on knowledge sharing primarily by affecting willingness to share knowledge, not by increasing eagerness. Willingness was the only significant mediator of the relationship between empathy and intention to share, the mediating effect for eagerness was not found to be significant. In spite of the fact that the contrast analysis showed no significant difference in the size of the indirect effects for eagerness and willingness, this is a clear indication that willingness does play a role in the relationship between empathy and intention to share, and eagerness does not. This means that our theoretical argumentation that empathy can also enhance the feeling that what one knows is very valuable to others, enhancing one's own passion for the practice and thus positively influencing the eagerness to share, does not hold. Where (authentic) pride clearly has an other-focused element in it, next to its ego-focus, the reverse does not hold for empathy: empathy is a fully other-focused emotion, and motivates the individual to primarily focus on the collective interests. This is in line with research that consistently finds a positive relationship between empathy and pro-social behavior (Eisenberg and Fabes, 1990).In conclusion, our findings have implications for theory on both emotions and knowledge sharing. As the two concepts have not been related in a systematic way before, clarifying the relationships between ego- and other-focused emotions on the one hand, and attitudes and intentions towards knowledge sharing on the other, is a contribution to both literatures. Our findings emphasize the need to include emotions more explicitly into research concerning knowledge sharing. By connecting these two areas of research, this study provides new interdisciplinary insights. The findings of this study can be the basis for future research into the influence that emotions exert on knowledge sharing, and the mechanisms through which this influence takes shape.In such future research, some important limitations of this study should be taken into account. First, only two emotions were studied, both of them positive. For future research, it would be interesting to include a far wider range of emotions, and also to compare the influence of positive emotions (such as enthusiasm, empathy and happiness) on knowledge sharing with negative emotions such as anger, fear and grief. In that sense, our study serves as a first exploration of the interesting interplay between emotions and knowledge sharing. A second important limitation stems from the hypothetical character of the scenarios used in this study. Although the manipulation checks convincingly indicated that the intended emotions were invoked by these scenarios, it would be valuable to study the influence of emotions on knowledge sharing in a more realistic setting. A laboratory experiment, for instance, in which subjects would interact with an actor in a role play setting in which actual emotions would be invoked, might be a promising way to do this. In such an experiment, actual knowledge sharing behavior might also be observed, instead of only asking respondents about their intentions. Thus, a richer and more detailed picture can be obtained of the influence of emotions and knowledge sharing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to provide theoretical and empirical insight into the relationship between emotions and knowledge sharing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Hypotheses concerning the influence of pride and empathy on knowledge sharing attitudes and intentions are developed, based on prior research. The hypotheses were tested by means of a survey within the Dutch branch of a global IT organization, in which respondents (n=252) were asked to evaluate one of four different scenarios, invoking either pride or empathy. Respondents were asked their attitude and intention towards knowledge sharing in the situation sketched in the scenario.\nFindings: - Pride and empathy were found to affect eagerness and willingness to share knowledge. Furthermore, these emotions also influenced knowledge sharing intentions, partly mediated by eagerness and willingness. Both eagerness and willingness mediate the relationship between pride and knowledge sharing intention, whereas only willingness turned out to mediate the relationship between empathy and knowledge sharing.\nResearch limitations/implications: - An important limitation is that the scenarios which were used were hypothetical. A suggestion for further research is to conduct a lab experiment (for instance, using a role play situation) in which emotions are manipulated in an interactive setting.\nOriginality/value: - Emotions have not been related to knowledge sharing in a systematic way before. By connecting these two areas of research, this study provides new interdisciplinary insights.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Workplace learning in crowdwork: Comparing microworkers' and online freelancers' practices
|
[
"Workplace learning",
"Self-regulated learning",
"Crowdwork",
"Online freelancing",
"Microwork",
"Learning strategies",
"Learning activities",
"Learning practices"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Definition and types of crowdwork\nWorkplace learning: Prior research: Despite a shortage of research on learning practices within crowdwork, the learning practices of employees in traditional occupations have been studied extensively, demonstrating that deep and powerful learning occurs in everyday working life (Billett et al., 2008; Felstead et al., 2009; Illeris, 2011; Malloch et al., 2011). Although crowdworkers' learning practices and strategies cannot be assumed to simply mirror those of employees in traditional workplaces, because of the fundamental differences in the underpinning work practices, several key points from research on workplace learning and related research on organisational psychology could be brought to bear on the analysis of learning within crowdwork. First, research on workplace learning has highlighted the significance of learning with and from other people. Collaboration with and guidance by \"significant others\" such as more knowledgeable colleagues, mentors and clients, and incidental knowledge sharing opportunities in the workplace have been shown to be important stimuli for learning (Eraut, 2007). Similarly, previous research on work motivation has highlighted the important role of social factors such as knowledge of other people's performance and goals, observing others and receiving feedback from others, competition, persuasion and encouragement and group norms and goals in workplace learning (Klein et al., 2008). In many conventional workplaces, workers have opportunities - deliberate and incidental - to benefit from proximity and availability of other people to learn from and with. Crowd workplaces are radically distributed and opportunities to establish such connections are typically not designed into the tasks and the workflows on crowdwork platforms. The extent to which the learning processes within crowdwork incorporate a social dimension is not yet understood. Although it is plausible that crowdworkers connect to others for knowledge sharing and collaboration, the forms and processes of such crowdworker self-organisation for and self-regulation of learning are not understood (Lehdonvirta et al., 2019).\nMethods: Crowdwork settings studied\nResults: In this section, we report the findings on WLAs and SRL strategies undertaken by the participants in the course of their work on the platforms. In line with the hypothesis and the purpose of our study, we report the results on item-level rather than clustering them into the constructs underpinning the scales (e.g. collaborative WLAs, individual WLAs, SRL planning, SRL implementation, SRL reflection, etc.). In this study we seek to identify the scope of use of WLAs and SRL strategies. The reason is that we hypothesised that, compared to online freelancers, microworkers may be using a narrower range of WLAs and SRL strategies because microwork tasks are considered to be more routine and lower-skilled than online freelancing tasks are. Therefore, we summarise and compare the data for each WLA and SRL strategy reported.\nSelf-regulated learning strategies: Second, we compared the patterns of use of SRL strategies between both groups, across three phases of SRL: planning, implementation and reflection. We found that both types of crowdworkers adopt a wide range of self-regulated learning strategies and motivation beliefs across all three phases of SRL (Table III).\nDiscussion: Taken together, our findings suggest that, within both types of crowdwork, intensive on-the-job learning appears to occur, as measured by the scope of WLAs and strategies reported. Also, our findings suggest that, despite the differences in the complexity and skill requirements underpinning the crowdwork tasks they undertake, both types of crowdworkers are largely learning-oriented and self-regulated. Importantly, in both types of crowdwork, workers undertake social - rather than only individual - learning activities and strategies, despite the autonomous and fragmented nature of crowdwork tasks and workflows.\nConclusions and implications: This paper set out to, first, scope WLAs and self-regulated learning strategies undertaken by crowdworkers from two types of crowdwork platforms - online freelancing (represented by Upwork) and microwork (represented by Figure Eight, previously CrowdFlower) and, second, to test if there were quantitative differences in the patterns of use of these activities and strategies between these two types of crowdworkers. The findings suggest that considerable majorities of both types of workers undertake a wide range of WLAs and self-regulated learning strategies, both individual and autonomous as well as social and collaborative. Several statistically significant differences were identified between the different types of crowdworkers. In particular, two moderate and moderately strong associations were uncovered, whereby online freelancers were statistically more likely to report:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore workplace learning practices within two types of crowdwork - microwork and online freelancing. Specifically, the paper scopes and compares the use of workplace learning activities (WLAs) and self-regulatory learning (SRL) strategies undertaken by microworkers (MWs) and online freelancers (OFs). We hypothesised that there may be quantitative differences in the use of WLAs and SRL strategies within these two types of crowdwork, because of the underpinning differences in the complexity of tasks and skill requirements.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To test this hypothesis, a questionnaire survey was carried out among crowdworkers from two crowdwork platforms - Figure Eight (microwork) and Upwork (online freelancing). Chi-square test was used to compare WLAs and SRL strategies among OFs and MWs.\nFindings: Both groups use many WLAs and SRL strategies. Several significant differences were identified between the groups. In particular, moderate and moderately strong associations were uncovered, whereby OFs were more likely to report (i) undertaking free online courses/tutorials and (ii) learning by receiving feedback. In addition, significant but weak or very weak associations were identified, namely, OFs were more likely to learn by (i) collaborating with others, (ii) self-study of literature and (iii) making notes when learning. In contrast, MWs were more likely to write reflective notes on learning after the completion of work tasks, although this association was very weak.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes empirical evidence in an under-researched area - workplace learning practices in crowdwork. Crowdwork is increasingly taken up across developed and developing countries. Therefore, it is important to understand the learning potential of this form of work and where the gaps and issues might be. Better understanding of crowdworkers' learning practices could help platform providers and policymakers to shape the design of crowdwork in ways that could be beneficial to all stakeholders.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Challenging workplace inequality: Strategies to transform gender perceptions in a machista culture
|
[
"Gender",
"Change agents",
"Discursive practices",
"Women executives"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe influence of gender: Gender stereotypes seem to have been around since time immemorial. Left unchallenged and it is a safe bet to assume that they would not be going away any day soon.\nGender roles in Mexico: Mexico is one society where assumptions of gender differences persist. In this \"machista\" culture, men are revered for their masculinity and women for their nurturing qualities and care toward others. Familial responsibilities are thus seen as inherent to the female role, and it is only during recent decades that women's presence in the country's labor force has become significant. They now account for around 40 per cent of Mexico's total workforce. The 1994 NAFTA agreement, which prompted this increase, has also led to greater prominence of female managers. Nonetheless, the percentage of those occupying senior positions continues to lag behind the global average.\nSameness and difference: One discursive approach is based on the premise that men and women are equal yet socialized differently. This has resulted in weaknesses that can be resolved so that women managers acquire the masculine characteristics, which are perceived to serve their male counterparts well.\nBeyond binary assumptions: Any focus on sameness and difference presents no significant challenge to the gender binary. It is only by doing so can any change agent hope to transform the practices and structures that uphold gender inequality in a firm. The essence of this notion is that attributes become gender neutral and enable both men and women to adopt styles of management appropriate to a given situation in the company. A similar view purports that certain qualities are innate and totally unconnected to whether a person was male or female at birth.\nComment: The review is based on \"Top women managers as change agents in the machista context of Mexico\" by Salvador Barragan, Mariana I. Paludi, Albert Mills, published in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. This paper explores gender stereotyping in Mexico and the possibility of women executives in challenging inequality. It is argued that some strategies only result in temporary change and essentially preserve the status quo. A more radical approach that addresses the gender binary is advocated.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: Scope exists for women executives to challenge the prevailing gender inequality within the machista culture in Mexico. Approaches based on sameness and difference can inspire greater equality in the short term but in reality help preserve essentialist notions of gender. A more profound strategy is advocated as means to address the gender binary that provides the foundation for inequality.\nPractical implications: The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Diverting round obstacles to diversity: University celebrates success - and shares mistakes
|
[
"Equal opportunities",
"Higher education",
"Universities",
"Social inclusion",
"Change management",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nLearning from achievement - and from what goes wrong: When an organization successfully implements a change in outlook and culture - in this case a university initiating a diversity effort - there is an opportunity for other organizations to learn from the achievement. Fortunately, things seldom run smoothly in formulating and implementing such programs. Fortunately? Well, yes - because learning from things which didn't exactly go to plan often offer a better lesson that those that did.Take the case of Saint Xavier, a Catholic university in Chicago, which serves a diverse population of more than 5,700 students and was recognized in 2007 as being one of the most diverse campuses in the Midwest region of the USA. The university leadership had acknowledged the importance of taking a focused approach towards becoming a campus that values and celebrates diversity and inclusion, and formally began the journey in 2005 using the multicultural organizational development model (MCOD).The successful implementation of the program is reflected in themes identified and endorsed as institutional priorities, including:* recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and staff;* a review of hiring policies and procedures, and development of diverse applicant pools; and* diversity training and development including awareness and skill building, and student learning and development including integrating diversity into the curriculum and pedagogical strategies.Specific efforts that continue to take place at Saint Xavier reflect progress on all three themes. The university has sponsored campus-wide training for creating an inclusive and welcoming environment. The four schools within the university have held workshops and implemented plans for more inclusive promotion of positions and expansion of applicant pools. Both the number of female and minority candidates from underrepresented groups recruited and selected demonstrate improvement over previous years. In terms of curricular and pedagogical development, all undergraduate students are required to take at least two courses related to diversity. These actions were encouraged and enhanced by the formal diversity effort. Each year all units submit a report to update progress towards the objectives outlined in the action plans.\nProblems and challenges facing Diversity Action Team: However, along the way, members of the Diversity Action Team (DAT) encountered obstacles and challenges. DAT was the name given to the internal change team charged with laying the foundation for instituting the organizational changes necessary to become a multicultural university and to integrate a self-renewing process dedicated to helping the university to reach its goal of excellence through diversity.While most members of the university community were open to the process and change, some were not. There were participants who felt there was no problem with acceptance and treatment of individuals from backgrounds different from the majority. Some suggested that asking questions regarding race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation invites problems. Some expressed concern that asking questions regarding sexual orientation was offensive to the university's religious heritage.\nPre-assessment before engaging in formal process: Consequently, it is recommended that institutions committed to implementing a diversity initiative conduct a pre-assessment before engaging in the formal institution-wide process. The purpose is to develop an understanding of the culture, its receptiveness to diversity initiatives, and willingness to embrace change. Understanding the internal forces, the level of openness or resistance, the sources of resistance and identifying champions will enable the process to be informed. A pre-assessment effort would minimize surprises, roadblocks, and derailers.Particular focus needs to be placed in developing a survey that works well for the institution. For Saint Xavier, it would have been advantageous to have included input from a broader group than just the change team. One such example would be tapping into the tenured and senior faculty who are not serving on the committee for survey development. This early involvement would have important implications. In addition, before administering the institution-wide survey, a pilot study should be conducted to test for reactions, concerns, and clarity.Launching any university-wide initiative needs significant financial support and dedicated personnel. Although the financial commitment for the first two years was evident, there was skepitcism about the university's long-term commitment. The long-term financial and human resources implications should be carefully reviewed before beginning the process. A transparent budget and timely feedback will assist in the development and execution of the activities in the action plans.\nMost felt engaging in diversity-related efforts was the right thing to do: Ongoing commitment and support from all members of the leadership team was mixed. Most felt that engaging in diversity-related efforts was the right thing to do; however, not all consistently modeled the behavior of an inclusive educational environment. Occasional skepticism around the initiative and a level of discomfort when speaking about diversity was evident. Some leaders did not realize how visible their actions were and the impressions made by what they were overheard saying and what they did or didn't do. Also, given the workload and urgency of the many issues they face, the urgent was allowed to drive out the important. Therefore, their support was viewed as more passive than active.The key factor required for a successful transformational change process is the leadership of the institution. The leadership team must demonstrate its commitment to achieving the goals and supporting the process the institution is about to undertake. It needs to be well versed and fully supportive of the framework to be utilized in the transformation process, and must model the requisite behaviors of an inclusive community. Sufficient time must be dedicated to pre-work with the external consultant and leadership team before officially rolling out the change initiative. This would include formal training on developing cultural competency as well as a thorough understanding of the change process to be used.The role of DAT was erroneously viewed as leading the change effort, when it was only to facilitate the process. The responsibility for leading the change effort belongs to the leadership team. While DAT members were committed to the work of the committee, their managers were not always supportive of their involvement or meeting attendance. The leadership team should openly acknowledge and promote the work of the diversity team on an ongoing basis. The prioritization of workload and time commitment should be defined in advance and the change team needs to be recognized and positively reinforced for their contribution. The members of the change team would benefit from more training on many aspects of the work they are about to begin.Those involved in the implementation recognize that having a more thorough understanding of the change process would have allowed them to more effectively execute the process, to have been better prepared to influence change, and to have had a more positive experience. They recommend anyone following in their footsteps to thoroughly prepare, pre-plan and pre-assess. It is critical to communicate the vision, involve members across the institution, provide transparency of resources available, and train and develop the leadership team, change team members, and the community.\nComment: This review is based on \"Celebrating our diversity: creating an inclusive climate in a US university\" by Monica C. Gavino, John E. Eber and David Bell, who provide insight and reflections on a Chicago university's initiation of a diversity effort. They offer recommendations for helping with successful implementation of an organizational change initiative and assisting institutions to navigate through the process more effectively.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: - Institutions committed to implementing a diversity initiative should conduct a pre-assessment before engaging in the formal institution-wide process. The purpose is to develop an understanding of the culture, its receptiveness to diversity initiatives, and willingness to embrace change. Understanding the internal forces, the level of openness or resistance, the sources of resistance and identifying champions will enable the process to be informed. A pre-assessment effort would minimize surprises, roadblocks, and derailers. Launching any university-wide initiative needs significant financial support and dedicated personnel. The long-term financial and human resources implications should be carefully reviewed before beginning the process. A transparent budget and timely feedback will assist in the development and execution of the activities in the action plans. The key factor required for a successful transformational change process is the leadership of the institution. The leadership team must demonstrate its commitment to achieving the goals and supporting the process the institution is about to undertake.\nPractical implications: - Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nSocial implications: - Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that can have a broader social impact.\nOriginality/value: - The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Internationalisation of the Spanish fashion brand Zara
|
[
"Fashion",
"Retailing",
"International marketing",
"International business",
"Market entry",
"Spain"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Zara is one of the world's most successful fashion retailers, operating in 59 countries. However, there is little research about the firm in English as the majority of publications have been written in Spanish. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining the internationalisation process of Zara. This study adopts an in-depth case approach based on extensive secondary research. Literature published in both English and Spanish has been reviewed, including company documents such as annual reports. The paper starts with a brief overview of the global textile and clothing industry, followed by the case study of Zara. The main part of the case examines the key aspects in the internationalisation of Zara, namely motives for internationalisation, market selection, entry strategies, and international marketing strategies. In the final section, comparisons are made between Zara and two of its main competitors, H&M and Gap.The global textile and clothing industry\nThe case of Zara: Established in 1975, Zara is the flagship of Inditex (Industria del Diseno Textil, SA), a holding company located in Galicia (Northwest Spain). In a relatively short time frame Inditex has become the world's second largest clothing retailer with 2,692 stores spread across 62 countries worldwide by the end of January 2006. In addition to Zara, which accounted for 66 percent of the group's turnover in 2005, Inditex owns seven other clothing chains:1. Kiddy's Class (children's fashion);2. Pull and Bear (youth casual clothes);3. Massimo Dutti (quality and conventional fashion);4. Bershka (avant-garde clothing);5. Stradivarius (trendy garments for young women);6. Oysho (undergarment chain); and7. Zara Home (household textiles).The Zara concept\nThe internationalisation of Zara: Zara opened its first store in 1975 in La Coruna, Northwest Spain. During the 1980s, Zara expanded within the domestic market, opening stores in all Spanish cities with a population greater than 100,000 inhabitants (Ghemawat and Nueno, 2003). The international expansion of Zara started with the opening of a store in Oporto (Portugal) in 1988. By the end of January 2006, Zara was operating in 59 countries with 852 stores: 664 stores were located in Europe (259 in Spain), 112 in America, 45 in the Middle East and Africa and 31 in Asia (see Figure 1). International sales accounted for 69 per cent of total turnover in 2005, with Europe being the largest market by far. This section will discuss the internationalisation process of Zara, focusing on three issues:1. motivation;2. market selection; and3. entry options.Motives for internationalisation\nZara's main competitors: Zara's major international competitors in terms of market share are H&M and Gap, Inc. This section will first present some background information of the two firms before offering some comparison with Zara.H&M\nConclusions: Zara is a successful international retailer which, in less than 30 years, has transformed itself from a Spanish local brand into a truly global brand. This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the firm. The research has examined the internationalisation process of the firm with a special focus on motives, entry options and international marketing strategies. The main drawback that arises in a single case study is that of limited validity and representativeness, which constrains the potential for making generalisations (Creswell, 1998). Another limitation is that the study was based solely on secondary data. However, this case is deemed adequate to provide good insight, and establish the avenue for future studies.Although the paper has made some preliminary comparisons between Zara and its two main competitors, a more thorough comparative study of all three firms would reveal what is being internationalised: management expertise and systems? Innovative technique or strong retail brands (Brown and Burt, 1992)? Two areas are of particular interests in the further study, namely the linkage between entry strategies and the degree of standardisation, and the relationship between retail brand image and positioning in different markets.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Research on the internationalisation of retailing has been mainly focused on market entry issues. This paper attempts to examine the internationalisation process from an international marketing perspective using Spanish fashion retailer Zara as a case study.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An in-depth case approach was adopted based on extensive secondary research, which includes literature published in English and Spanish as well as internal company documents.\nFindings: - The internationalisation of Zara seems to follow the classic \"stage model\" by firstly entering geographically or culturally close markets before taking opportunities in more distant markets. This global expansion was triggered by both push and pull factors. Compared with the competition, Zara has three distinctions: vertical integration to achieve a faster turnaround time; use of franchise and joint ventures for rapid expansion; and use of the store as the main tool for promotion, with low spend on advertising.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The main drawback in case studies is that of limited validity and representativeness, constraining the potential for making generalisations. However, this case is deemed sufficient to provide valuable insights and improve understanding in this area.\nOriginality/value: - Little attention has been devoted to the internationalisation process from an international marketing perspective. Aiming to fill this gap in the literature, this study provides important insights into Zara's internationalisation process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Social media analytics in the construction industry comparison study between China and the United States
|
[
"Big data analytics",
"The construction industry",
"Weibo",
"Twitter",
"Comparison study",
"China",
"The United States"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With technology developments and data blooming all over the world in recent years, the construction industry, even a traditional and conservative industry, also generates data in each project. Social media platforms, as a general way to collect data, provide construction companies and workers channels to express their experiences and feelings (Boyd, 2015). At the same time, practitioners in the construction industry, including companies and workers, begin to use social media platforms to promote and market their business (Hendricks, 2015). Crawling data from social media platforms is one of the best ways to analyze and predict trends of the construction industry (Tang et al., 2017). Therefore, the research gap in this paper is how to use these data to benefit the construction industry.As two countries with many construction projects, it is valuable to use China and the United States as pilot studies to find out similarities and differences in the local construction industry by using social media analytics. This paper aims to discover differences in the construction industry between China and the United States by using big data analytics on data from social media platforms. Objectives of the presented research are to review social media usage in the construction industry, to review research on big data analytics in both China and the United States and to analyze data crawled from social media platforms.This paper reviews research on two parts: social media usage in the construction industry and big data analytics in both China and the United States. Then the Methodology section explained how data were collected in social media platforms, together with what kinds of analysis have been conducted in this research. In the Discussion section, results have been discussed based on each analysis method. Similarities and differences between China and the United States in the construction industry have been reviewed. Possible explanations of why these happened were also provided. At the end of the paper, big data analytics as an emerging method were suggested to apply in the construction industry. Future research directions were also suggested at the end.\nLiterature review: Social media usage in the construction industry\nMethod: This comparison study is based on two famous social media platforms in China and the United States: Weibo and Twitter (Concannon, 2016). Weibo is the largest social media where both individual and media companies can share news and information (Kai, 2016). Originated as a Chinese version of Twitter, at the beginning it only allowed 140 Chinese characters for each post. Now it allows longer messages that may include both texts and multimedia contents. Compared to Weibo, Twitter changed more slowly. Nowadays, it also allows multimedia contents but still limits the lengths of tweets. The data collection of Twitter was the same as what has been mentioned in the research of Tang et al. (2017). For Weibo, the data were collected in a similar way to make sure the same period of data and similar distribution are sampled. For both Weibo and Twitter, three different kinds of information were collected: user's messages, user's graph and retweet graph.User's messages: By using the platform-provided APIs, all Weibo messages of interested users were collected in the period from October 7, 2009 to April 14, 2016. By using the Web search-based crawler, all the tweets of interested users were collected in the period of 05.16.2008~03.10.2016.User's graph: The user's following and being followed were included. If a user A follows a user B where A is called follower and B is called followee. All the user connections up to April 20, 2016 were collected in construction domain for Weibo, while all the user connections up to March 15, 2016 were collected for Twitter.Retweet graph: The graph that a user's message refers to another user is retweet graph. A surrogate method is used to obtain the retweets, which is to detect the \"@\" key. When a user uses \"@\" to mention another user, a retweet is regarded as happened. For both Weibo and Twitter, the same way is adopted to retrieve the retweet graphs.Following the research of Tang et al. (2017), four clusters of social media users are of interests: that is, construction workers, construction companies, construction unions and the public media consistently publishing news about construction-related topics. The clusters' content analysis has been shown in the paper of Tang et al. (2017), which demonstrates that dividing social media accounts into four clusters is useful for analyzing the contents they shared and comparing different stakeholders in the construction industry. A similar way of classifying accounts into four clusters was conducted, and again the agreement of annotation is greater than 90%. Statistics for Weibo data is shown in Table 1, while statistics of Twitter data is shown in Table 2.\nResults and discussions: Results of the collection of all Twitter and Weibo data\nConclusions and further research: From comparison of data collection in Weibo and Twitter, construction workers have a more significant number of tweets compared to messages. Conversely, the construction media has a greater number of Weibo messages compared to the number of tweets. From types of tweets analysis, overall tweets were similar types. Also, the four clusters shared similar follower-following ratios in both social media platforms. From content comparison, all clusters had similar trending - that public accounts were used to post tweets and messages to promote their business. However, unions and media on Weibo published more topics related to infrastructures. Media on Twitter posted more news on safety and energy. From hashtag analysis, workers on Weibo used hashtags for advertisement, while in Twitter one of the top hashtags was \"unemployment,\" thus more relevant to their jobs. From sentiment analysis, all clusters again had similar trending, while workers had more frequent negative tweets among all four clusters.There were limitations in this research. Firstly, data sources were limited to Weibo in China and Twitter in the United States. Secondly, content analysis has been limited to keywords and hashtags. Understanding limitations, some future research directions could be suggested. Firstly, more data sources would be used to crawl data, such as government open source websites. Then contents from tweets and messages would be dug deeper for certain topics, such as mental health of construction workers and construction site safety.This paper provided an alternative method to collect data for research in the construction industry. Online social media provides a lot of useful information for construction workers, companies, unions and related media. The location, time, as well as the content published by social users make possible a new direction of big data analytics for construction industry. The comparison based on social media reveals business insights between countries. A new principled way of developing comparison studies has been proposed and may be further formalized as a signal for construction management and intelligent business analytics. Results from the research benefited both academia and practitioners for choosing research topic and decision-making on policies.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discover similarities and differences in the construction industry in China and the United States by using data analytic tools on data crawled from social media platforms.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The method comprised comprehensive data analytics using network link analysis and natural language processing tools to discover similarities and differences of social networks, topics of interests and sentiments and emotions on different social media platforms.\nFindings: From the research, it showed that all clusters (construction company, construction worker, construction media and construction union) shared similar trends on follower-following ratios and sentiment analysis in both social media platforms. The biggest difference between the two countries is that public accounts (e.g. company, media and union) on Twitter posted more on public interests, including safety and energy.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research contributes to knowledge about an alternative method of data collection for both academia and industry practitioners. Statistical bias can be introduced by only using social media platform data. The analyzed four clusters can be further divided to reflect more fine-grained groups of construction industries. The results can be integrated into other analyses based on traditional methodologies of data collection such as questionnaire surveys or interviews.\nOriginality/value: The research provides a comparative study of the construction industries in China and the USA among four clusters using social media platform data.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Animosity, subjective norms, and anticipated emotions during an international crisis
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Buying behaviour",
"Country of origin",
"Kuwait",
"Denmark"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Although the globalization of markets has created various opportunities for international marketers, it has also posed many challenges. Actions of various types by governments, companies, and the press may not always be well received by citizens of other countries. International incidents that are perceived as offensive can lead citizens of one country to experience animosity toward the \"offending\" country, with potential negative repercussions on its respective companies. In fact, consumers may opt to boycott products from the offending country as an expression of disapproval and protest (Ettenson and Klein, 2005). Many past and recent incidents illustrate that company sales often suffer severely as a consequence of consumer anger toward the country associated with the product (Riefler and Diamantopoulos, 2007). For example, during Second World War consumers expressed their disapproval of the war by renaming the German-named food sauerkraut to \"liberty cabbage\" (Amine, 2008). Shoham et al. (2006) demonstrated that the conflict between Arab and Jewish Israelis in general, and specifically the \"Intifada\" uprising, affected Jewish Israeli consumer behavior. Specifically, they showed that Jewish Israeli domestic tourism to Arab cities suffered immensely. Similarly, Bahaee and Pisani (2009) found that Iranian consumers experienced animosity towards the USA stemmed from a US law that prohibits the presence of US goods and businesses in Iran.Previous research has investigated experiences of animosity resulting and how animosity may have a negative impact for multinational corporations (Klein et al., 1998; Ettenson and Klein, 2005; Nijssen and Douglas, 2004). However, such models have stemmed from most behavioral frameworks in marketing which assess the impact of consumer product judgments (PJ) on product responses (Klein, 2002; Heslop et al., 2008). This paper explores and introduces the additional roles of anticipated emotions and subjective norms (SN). Although emotions have been identified as an important part of the consumption experience and responses to advertising, Bagozzi et al. (1999) argue that much less is known about the role of emotions in marketing behavior, compared to information processing and behavioral decision research. Consequences of international crises on consumer purchase behavior should be assessed from both a cognitive and an affective perspective. Accordingly, in order to enhance our understanding of the full impact of consumer animosity, it would be beneficial to investigate the role of anticipated emotions, which is an example of a forward-looking emotion (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006). Moreover, by drawing on the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975), the current research delves into the role that social conformity plays when consumers decide whether or not to purchase foreign products, when actions of companies or governments cause negative repercussions. Hence, the inclusion of the SN construct offers a significant contribution to researchers' understanding of how social factors other than animosity can affect intention to buy products during strained times.As an illustration of such controversial international occurrences, the research herein examines the incident involving the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in the Danish press, and the impact of such an incident on the perceptions of and preferences for Danish products by Kuwaiti consumers. What became known as the Mohammed cartoons controversy began when Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on 30 September 2005, including a depiction of Mohammad with a bomb in his turban. Many Muslims around the world, including official governments, condemned these cartoons. In Muslim societies, insulting the Prophet Mohammad is generally considered the gravest of all crimes (Knight et al., 2009). Fury in the Middle East continued to rise steadily when the newspaper declared that the cartoons represented freedom of expression, and major European newspapers in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and France continued to reprint them. By the end of January 2006, Imams from many Middle Eastern countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, began to call for a boycott of Danish products (Jensen, 2008). In this context, the objective of this paper is to develop and test several hypotheses concerning consumer purchase intentions toward offending country products following an international crisis based on the animosity literature and several additional theories pertaining to emotions and social factors.\n2 Literature review: 2.1 Country of origin and country image\n3 Methodology: 3.1 Measures\n4 Results: The results of the hypothesis testing are reported in Table III and Figure 3. H1 argued that Danish PJ would positively influence Kuwaiti consumer WTB those products. The hypothesis was not supported, as PJ of Danish products were not found to be related to consumer WTB Danish products (b=0.048, t=0.937, p>0.05). Meanwhile, the results supported H2, which states that animosity is negatively related to Kuwaiti consumer WTB Danish products (b=-0.234, t=-4.093, p<0.001), but not to their PJ of Danish products (b=-0.108, t=-1.904, p>0.05). H3 argued for the impact of SN on Kuwaiti consumer WTB Danish products. This hypothesis was also supported, as SN are negatively related to the WTB (b=-0.232, t=-3.750, p<0.001). H4 and H5, concerning the effect of the Kuwaiti consumer-anticipated emotions on WTB, were also supported. Negative emotions anticipated from buying Danish products and positive emotions anticipated from not buying Danish products were hypothesized to lead to less consumer WTB Danish products. Negative emotions anticipated from buying Danish products were negatively related to their WTB Danish products (b=-0.227, t=-2.375, p<0.05). Positive emotions anticipated from not buying Danish products were also found to be negatively related to their WTB Danish products (b=-0.135, t=-2.079, p<0.05). Finally, for H6, GR assigned to Denmark for the publishing of the cartoons would be positively related to animosity and was supported (b=0.445, t=7.661, p<0.001).\n5 Discussion: The findings of this study, like those from previous studies, support that animosity does not lead to less favorable PJ but rather is associated with less WTB a product from a country perceived to have instigated a transgression. However, the results suggest that several additional factors other than animosity might affect consumer intention to buy products from the transgressing country. These results support that SN related to buying Danish products, negative emotions expected from buying the product, and positive emotions expected from not buying the product were all associated with Kuwaiti consumers' reduced WTB Danish products. The standardized parameter estimates also suggest that animosity is the most important factor, followed by the social pressure to avoid Danish products, NAE, and finally PAE. However, contrary to the results of previous studies, the current study found that PJ of Danish products are not related to Kuwaiti consumer WTB Danish products. This might be due to the dominant effect of the other variables in the model. To test this explanation, the researchers estimated a model in which product judgment was the only independent variable influencing WTB. The relationship was significant (b=.144, t=1.972, p<0.05), which indicates that animosity, SN, and anticipated emotions have overpowered the effects of the PJ of Danish products.Furthermore, this study provides insights into the MIMIC modeling of animosity suggested by Riefler and Diamantopoulos (2007), who suggested that this type of modeling enables researchers to determine the relative importance of the reasons that have led to animosity. These results of the current study indicated that respondents experienced animosity as a result of their perceptions that Denmark does not respect religions, not that Denmark defamed the character of the Prophet Mohammed. Based on these results, any future research should clearly distinguish between perceptions that might be presumed to arise from the incidents themselves and the actual emotions elicited by such perceptions.Finally, the results of the current study suggest that GR is an important factor influencing animosity. This finding concurs with the results of Leong et al. (2008), who found that, when Asian consumers blamed Americans for the Asian crisis, they were more likely to experience animosity toward the USA.\n6 Managerial implications: Based on the results of the current research, other factors in addition to animosity may influence a consumer's decision to withhold consumption of products from a perceived transgressor's country. The social norms attached to buying products from Denmark were shown to have a comparable influence on Kuwaiti consumer animosity toward Denmark. This may be important in countries characterized by high levels of collective traditions or behavior. As previous research has indicated, SN tend to dominate purchase intention in cultures characterized by high levels of collectivism (Lee and Green, 1991). As such, this may suggest that producers of publicly consumed products might suffer more than producers of privately consumed products. Moreover, some business establishments focus on distributing their products in channels that are not publicly visible. For example, fast food chains might emphasize their home delivery service (more private), as opposed to in-store dining (more public). Therefore, the motivation to comply with social norms might be higher in the latter.The results clearly indicate that consumers experience anticipated emotions when they are faced with the decision to buy Danish products or not and that such emotions have an impact on consumer decisions to buy Danish products. This indicates that the act of avoiding Danish products is emotionally driven; however, animosity is distinct from anticipated emotions. Specifically, animosity is a negative emotion that a consumer feels toward another country, anticipated emotions relate to the emotions that a consumer anticipates from either buying or avoiding the products from that country. Animosity, like anger, in the study herein, is mainly driven by perceptions of lack of respect and involves behaving aggressively and \"getting back at\" the cause of the anger (Bougie et al., 2003). However, anticipated emotions are not associated with a desire for retaliation, but rather a desire to avoid the pains of engaging in a behavior or reap the benefits of not engaging in a behavior (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006). These results are consistent with boycott literature, which suggests that self-enhancement plays a very important role in consumer decision to boycott (Klein et al., 2004). According to Klein et al. (2004), self-enhancement deals with trying to avoid the negative consequences of not boycotting (i.e. feeling guilty) while also trying to gain the positive consequences of boycotting (i.e. feeling good about oneself). We found similar results that support consumers' decisions to avoid products from a transgressing country, where they are motivated to a great extent by how it makes the consumer feel. Consumers are more likely to participate in a boycott if they anticipate that they will feel good as a result, or anticipate that they will be able to avoid feeling bad about themselves. Therefore, this suggests that it is important for a marketer to understand that consumers may not only be venting their anger by avoiding products from the transgressing country but also seeking to feel good about themselves and avoid the self-blame and public reprimand that result from not avoiding such products.Based on the results herein, managers should assess the reasons leading to the situation of animosity. For example, the data presented herein demonstrate that Kuwaiti respondents' perception of a lack of respect for religion on the part of Denmark is what ignited the animosity toward Denmark. Knowing this reason would enable managers to better recover and respond to such crises. Indeed, responding to crises without knowing what the transgressed population thinks of the transgressor could spell disaster, and therefore, careful monitoring of consumer sentiment is crucial. Moreover, the extent to which Kuwaiti consumers assigned responsibility to Denmark for publishing the cartoons also seems to play an important role in their animosity. Therefore, while there are limited options that marketers of all types of Danish products can adopt at such tense times, it is recommended that the marketer not withdraw from the Kuwaiti market for an extended period but rather \"keep a low profile\" until consumer sentiments change (Heslop et al., 2008; Edwards et al., 2007). For this reason, tracking research is of utmost importance during times of international crises.\n7 Limitations and future research: The current research utilized a general measure for assessing Kuwaiti consumer WTB products from a country toward which animosity had been directed as a result of a specific event. Future research should examine whether the effects of animosity, SN, and anticipated emotions vary by product category. Indeed, the results of the current research suggest that SN might be more influential for products consumed publicly. In addition, future research might examine the role of religiosity in crises that include religious overtones. The effects of animosity, SN, and anticipated emotions as antecedents to animosity might differ based on an individual's level of religiosity.The sampling approach poses a limitation as non-probability sampling was used. The use of probability sampling approaches was difficult in the current context because frames (e.g. mailing lists) are difficult to obtain in Kuwait. Other forms of probability (e.g. cluster) and non-probability sampling (e.g. mall intercepts) were also considered, but the use of intercept approaches might have excluded a large portion of potential respondents who are conservative in nature.This research examines the role of SN in a collective society, and therefore, generalizations cannot be made regarding the impact of the collectivism on SN. Future research should examine whether the impact of SN on the preference for products from a country that is a target of animosity differs based on whether the country is individualistic or collectivistic. For example, Lee and Green (1991) found that the SN play a more important role in Korean (collectivist culture) respondents' decision to buy Sneakers compared to their US (individualist culture) counterparts. Future studies should examine whether individualism/collectivism moderates the impact of SN on consumer decisions to avoid products from transgressing countries.The current study examined animosity as the only emotional reaction that might be experienced toward Danish entities. Although care was taken to include the emotions that respondents mentioned in a pilot study, future research should focus on including additional possible emotions. For example, in the social psychology literature, Cuddy et al. (2007) identified that individuals might feel pity, contempt, and admiration toward other groups. Thus, future research might examine the impact of such emotions on consumer preference for foreign products.Another limitation in this study is that the relationship between the antecedents of animosity and GR was not examined. The main antecedent reason to emerge as a significant predictor of animosity was the perception of the lack of respect. Miller (2001) suggests that GR may in fact be the antecedent of animosity. Such an assertion was not tested in the current study and can be tested in future studies by using a multi-item measure of respect.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This research seeks to add to the body of research pertaining to animosity by examining the additional roles of anticipated emotions and subjective norms on consumers' purchase intentions regarding foreign products when companies' or governments' actions cause negative repercussions. The paper also examines the role of group responsibility as an antecedent to animosity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were collected using a snowball sampling technique among undergraduate students from a prominent university in Kuwait. Of the 460 questionnaires received, 13 were eliminated for incompleteness. Sample members were aged 18 and above, and 53.9 percent of the respondents were females.\nFindings: - Subjective norms related to buying Danish products - as well as the negative emotions expected from buying the product and the positive emotions expected from not buying the product - led to less willingness to buy Danish products. In addition, social pressure was found to be the more important factor in consumers' willingness to buy compared to anticipated emotions.\nOriginality/value: - This paper suggests that, in addition to animosity, other factors influence a consumer's decision to withhold consumption. Therefore, managers need to assess the emotions and norms characterized by citizens of the target country to capitalize on such information when marketing their products.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The economics of Participation and Employee Ownership (PEO): an assessment
|
[
"Participation",
"Cooperatives",
"Citations",
"Employee ownership",
"Profit sharing",
"Labour managed firm",
"Shared capitalism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The inaugural edition of this journal provides an opportunity to assess Participation and Employee Ownership (PEO). I do so by discussing several matters. First, are issues relating to the field of PEO. Is there in fact a separate field of PEO or is it rather a sub-field of another area? When did the field/area emerge and how has it evolved? How is it defined? What is the actual scope of concrete forms of PEO? How important is PEO within economics and how has the composition of PEO changed? To facilitate discussion of some of these issues I draw on a typology that appeared some time ago (Ben-ner and Jones, 1995). While researchers in PEO use many terms, most agree that the field is characterized by a focus on arrangements in organizations that emphasize participation in control (several terms are used such as employee involvement (EI) and employee participation (EP)) and/or arrangements that emphasize participation in economic returns (we encounter terms such as financial participation (FP) or employee ownership (EO)). The typology illustrates the breadth of examples of PEO, including labor managed firms, firms with profit sharing and codetermined firms. For some of these cases I also try to assess what is known about their changing scope around the world. To investigate the importance of PEO within economics and how its composition has changed, I mainly use data from Google Scholar (GS) and Web of Science (WOS). For key terms such as EI, EP, FP and EO as well as for actual cases of PEO such as worker cooperative and self-managed teams, I document the changing composition of research within PEO. To provide illustrations of the changing importance of the field of PEO relative to related fields such as industrial relations, I also assemble some comparative data.\n2. Origins and development: The pioneering work in the field of PEO is the first theoretical analysis of the LMF by Ward (1958). As such, PEO originated as part of the field of comparative economic systems attracting scholars interested in \"third-way\" alternatives to capitalism and state-ownership. However, when Jaroslav Vanek established a doctoral specialization on participation and labor management Cornell in the late 1960s under Jaroslav the field began to really take off. Vanek's program on participation and labor management (PPLMS) was very strong on economic theory, or at least on one way of theorizing about participatory and LMFs. Vanek's The General Theory of Labor Managed Firms published in 1970 is a key milestone in the field (though afterwards other important work emanated from Cornell, especially Vanek, 1977, 1971)[2]. Equally, PPLMS gave the field an institutional identity. While this program at Cornell in principle covered a range of firms with varying degrees of EI and FP, the main focus was firmly on firms that were labor managed or worker/producer cooperatives[3].\n3. Definitions: In part because the field of PEO attracts scholars of diverse stripes, it is apparent that there is no consensus as to what exactly constitutes the field of PEO and if it even represents a unique field. Besides EO and EP, the interests of scholars are revealed by diverse and commonly recurring descriptors such as shared capitalism, FP, performance-based pay and EP, as well as interest in actual cases including labor managed firms, teams and producer cooperatives. However, I believe that there is a field of PEO. Fundamentally, it is defined by the study of issues surrounding organizations in which workers in their organization have, to a greater degree than in an investor owned firm/capital managed firm, at least one of the following two rights, namely: the right to participate in enterprise decision making, hereafter control rights/EI; the right to participate in any net returns/surplus (after costs), hereafter return rights/FP. For many scholars within PEO the focus is on cases where both rights coexist; indeed, for many this is a requirement for defining the field. While there are related fields where these two rights for non-managerial workers sometimes are discussed and included in organizational analysis (e.g. high performance workplace practices, human management resource practices, social enterprises and personnel economics) in none of these related fields are these two rights for workers placed at center stage.\n4. The scope of PEO: There is abundant evidence that in most economies, both developed and emerging, there are many organizations that have PEO arrangements. Such firms range from public to private and for profit and not for profit. At the same time, it is also apparent that hard evidence on the nature and scope of firms with varying degrees of PEO is quite uneven. In the main this state of affairs reflects the fact that for most types of PEO there are no on-going censuses or reliable on-going surveys. Often the scope and nature of types of firms with PEO must rely on ad hoc surveys, such as the PEPPER reports for European countries (e.g. Uvalic, 1991). Consequently, in many instances we do not know with great reliability the incidence of particular cases of PEO or whether particular types of PEO are becoming more commonplace.\n5. Changing importance of the field of PEO: While firms with EO and/or EP may be a growing feature around the world, is this reflected in the influence of work by economists on PEO? Is the influence of particular types of PEO changing? To get a sense of the changing nature and influence of academic work in the area of PEO one might compare the cases identified in Table I with the original typology in Ben-ner and Jones (1995) where all cases were for studies published before the early 1990s. In part because of subsequent academic work in the area, the main cases of interest today are often quite different than those spotlighted in the earlier typology. For WCs besides Mondragon now we see references to Uruguayan PCs (e.g. Burdin and Dean, 2009) and more recent studies for France (e.g. Fakhfakh et al., 2012) and US plywood firms (e.g. Craig and Pencavel, 1992). But bigger changes have also occurred concerning other participatory forms; the deeper institutional base is reflected in many more numerous examples of FP. Now there are more examples of knowledge and studies of EO including US cases (e.g. Kruse et al., 2010). There has also been lots of work in the last 20 years on group incentives, e.g. Lemieux et al. (2009) and Song et al. (2015). Also, reflecting the significant growth in the importance of teams, there has been an outpouring of work by economists (e.g. Hamilton et al., 2003). Newer studies seem to have appeared on what were once viewed as the most significant forms of participation--e.g., on works councils in Germany and their performance impact, see Hubler and Jirjahn (2003) and Addison et al. (2001). Equally the literature on PEO has changed as certain descriptors, such as shared capitalism, have become more commonplace than in the past.\n6. Influential studies and scholars within PEO: To identify the most influential studies and scholars within PEO in this section I mainly rely on manually collected citation data[24]. To identify the most influential individual studies I compile a citation-driven list of the most cited empirical works where, to appear in the list of the most cited scholarship in PEO, normally a GS citation count that exceeds 250 is required. While I exclude all influential theoretical papers such as Ward (1958), Freeman and Lazear (1995), Holmstrom and Milgrom (1994), Kandel and Lazear(1992), because of their wider impact during earlier years in other fields, I do include some of the more influential books written by economists such as Vanek (1970), Horvat (1982), Ellerman (1993) and Dow (2003) and the review by Meade (1972) which do not contain original empirical work[25]. Likewise I include influential surveys which also may not contain original empirical work, e.g. Bonin et al. (1993). In relying on a procedure that uses cumulative citations I recognize that such an approach that is clearly biased against younger scholars. In particular, the more recent work by younger scholars is de-emphasized, if not ignored[26]. By implementing this procedure, 52 studies are identified. These 52 studies are listed in Table IV together with their GS counts. Based on these count data for individual studies I make six observations.\n7. Qualitative assessment: While the citation way of assessing individual studies and the contributions of individual authors may be considered as largely market driven, since the world is riddled with market failure using another and more qualitative way to assess studies by reading them is a useful complementary procedure. To this end I review the contributions of several of the most influential and mainly empirical studies in the field of PEO. I take a sweeping look at the hypothesis-testing literature written by economists in the last 40 years or so. I try to assess what represent some of the more important advances and milestone studies in the field of PEO and try to answer questions such as: For which types of PEO and for which matters is the impact the greatest? What is the state of knowledge in empirical work in this field?\n8. Conclusions and implications: This paper begins by discussing the evolution of PEO and arguing that indeed there is a field of PEO, rather than PEO representing a subfield of something else. At the same time, PEO has been characterized by markedly changing contours, especially a marked movement away from its origins when the overwhelming focus was restricted to the theory of the LMF. However, by various indicators, the tilt toward an emphasis on FP rather than EI has not been as pronounced as some might have expected. While as noted earlier there are several issues concerning the precise nature of the field, one should also note that this is not a remarkably different situation than for other related interdisciplinary fields such as HRM and industrial relations[47]. It is trite to remark that more work is needed in pinpointing the precise parameters of the field and how it is distinguished from related areas of study[48].\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss diverse matters concerning the field of Participation and Employee Ownership (PEO) coinciding with the launch of the JPEO.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper used mixed methods including bibliometric analysis.\nFindings: Significant gaps exist in our knowledge of the scope and nature of PEO. Citation counts illustrate both the changing composition of research within PEO and faster relative growth than terms used to describe related fields such as labor unions and trade unions. Based on manually collected citation data I identify the most highly cited studies within PEO. Few of these studies attain a \"home-run\" citation count. However, PEO scholars are cited 19 percent more than economists in top 30 schools and the median C5 (total citations for the author's five most highly cited papers) is more than 260 percent of the median for economists in \"top 30\" institutions. There is also some weak evidence that the citation bias in economics against female scholars is not as marked in PEO as elsewhere. A qualitative assessment of PEO studies suggests markedly uneven progress in empirical work across types of PEO.\nOriginality/value: No similar review has been done before.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Collaborative innovation for more value: how to make it work
|
[
"China",
"Innovation",
"Strategy",
"Value",
"Collaboration",
"Telecom",
"Huawei"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In today's highly competitive and open environment, companies face a world of exponential technological change and increasing uncertainty caused by global competition, technical progress, challenges from disruptive innovators and the like. One solution for coping with the change and uncertainty is to increase a company's capabilities through collaborative or open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003). Collaborative innovation can reduce uncertainty and enhance success with complementary knowledge and abilities.\nResearch methodology: In addition to the literature review, this paper is based on the direct experience over many years of two Huawei technology executives - then the head of the technology cooperation department (TCD) and the manager of the same unit - who are co-authors of this paper, along with two British academics active in innovation research. As such, this paper is a rare example of practitioner and academic co-production in management research.\nA value-oriented collaborative innovation model: We show a spiral four-stage process model for collaborative innovation in our account of successful technology development at Huawei Technologies, which set up a dedicated department in 2007 to collaborate globally. This TCD looks after joint technology development or research partnership as projects and promotes the results into product design. Huawei found it is hard to evaluate this kind of effort with conventional tools to judge the performance of an investment project because business value was realized only in the long term. Therefore, TCD developed a behavioral model that generalized collaboration as a four-stage process, with the output results fed into further collaboration decisions. Each stage is itself a decision concerning different aspects of value generation. We call this the SWIM model: scope, weave, identity and modularize (Figure 1).\nData, knowledge and guide: The decision at each stage cannot be made without the necessary data, knowledge and guide. These three elements are central to the SWIM model (Figure 1). TCD maintains a digital platform to accumulate project data and relevant knowledge about collaborations. The data are managed centrally and can be accessed according to different security levels. Some tools are provided to give a statistical insight into all aspects of collaborations.\nConclusions: This paper builds a framework for the process of collaborative innovation management, drawing on both research and real practice. It focuses on the whole process, especially strategic planning activities, such as project and team selection, that take place before innovation collaboration starts. It argues that the leverage effect of collaborative innovation can be achieved with three conditions: a holistic map to guide internal and external activities, a committed resource pool to execute the activities and a flexible infrastructure to support the process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on \"how to create value from collaborative innovation,\" which is a core question when companies plan open-innovation initiatives. China's Huawei Technologies is taken as the main case study, with other companies' practices as further examples to elaborate and validate a new yet practical model.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper is based on the direct experience over many years of two Huawei technology executives - the very recent head of the technology cooperation department and the current manager of the same unit.\nFindings: This study provides a spiral four-stage model, named SWIM, with each stage being a decision guided by a 2 x 2 matrix. These stages, named scope, weave, identify and modularize, try to balance resource allocation toward a foreseeable value, though it might be long term.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is primarily based on one company. The validity of its recommended model can be tested only after other companies have applied it.\nPractical implications: The research offers a practical framework for how companies can improve their open innovation.\nSocial implications: Large companies are important players in innovation networks. Improving the ability of large companies to operate open innovation will help many other companies and the society as a whole.\nOriginality/value: The proposed model is original and provides insights from China and is not a traditional source of management innovation. The paper will also help Western readers get a better understanding of management in what will soon be the world's largest economy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Demographic differences in Jordanian bank service quality perceptions
|
[
"Perceptions",
"Service quality",
"Jordan",
"Customers",
"Banks",
"Demographics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Quality of service within the banking sector has increased over the last decade (Chaker and Jabnoun, 2010; Titko et al., 2013). There is no generally agreed-upon definition of service, as it varies from one person to another; however, quality of service can be understood as an overall assessment of a particular service by a customer, and it determines the extent to which the customers' expectations are met and their subsequent degree of satisfaction (El Saghier and Nathan, 2013).\nLiterature review: Within the banking sector in Jordan, there are both Islamic and conventional banks. Jordan's entire banking sector is expanding with the growth of Islamic and conventional domestic banks and the influx of new foreign banks, thereby increasing the amount of competition between banking institutions (Hanif, 2010; Miani and Daradkah, 2008). With increased competition, banks must focus on effectively retaining existing customers and attracting new customers in order to remain profitable and to survive. Customer satisfaction predicts customer retention. Satisfied customers are likely to stay with their banks, while dissatisfied customers are more likely to switch banks (Bizri, 2014; Dispensa, 1997; Eklof et al., 1999; Gustafsson et al., 2005; Kassim and Souiden, 2007; Naser et al., 1999; Wirtz, 2003). It reasonably follows that, in order to remain competitive, banks, or any other business for that matter, must find a way to systematically attain, monitor, and maintain optimal customer satisfaction. Therefore, Islamic and conventional banks in Jordan need a means of understanding the aspects of their customers relevant to their specific banking needs and values so that they can devise the best approach to target new customers and satisfy existing customers. Service quality is a key predictor of customer satisfaction and provides a comprehensive profile of customers, which is directly relevant to their banking behaviour and values (Cronin and Taylor, 1992). In addition, service quality is related to a service's likelihood of becoming and remaining successful (Buttle, 1996; Lewis, 1989; Moore, 1987). Therefore, an instrument to assess BSQ is imperative.\nMethod: Instruments and materials\nData analysis and results: The data analyses and results are organised according to the research objectives of the present study. First, the descriptive statistical analyses and results for the six demographic variables provide the demographic profile of the customers of Islamic and conventional banks in Jordan. The following set of analyses and results identify the demographic variables that produce significantly different service quality perceptions in these customers. The findings summarised at the end of this section discuss the results and their implications pertaining to the impact of demographics on service quality perceptions.\nDiscussion: This study investigates demographic differences in BSQ perceptions of Jordanian banking consumers across six demographic variables. This research enables evaluation of the specific demographic factors that potentially impact the perceptions of BSQ, and facilitates the identification of the service quality model specifically influenced by each demographic factor. Previous research finds that demographic factors, including gender, age income, occupation, and education, influence perceived BSQ (Gupta and Bansal, 2011; Meng and Elliott, 2009; Naser et al., 1999; Tam, 2004). However, little research exists that empirically investigates demographic effects on service quality perceptions. Moreover, the existing research is cultural specific, and therefore, service quality researchers need to assess service quality across demographics so that banks can understand their customers better (Lal et al., 2014). There is no previous research investigating such differences in the specific context of both Islamic and conventional Jordanian banking customers. Thus, this study fills the knowledge gap and the findings provide insight and guidance that Jordanian bank managers can use to understand, attract, and better serve their customers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess differences in banking service quality (BSQ) perceptions across demographic subgroups of Islamic and conventional Jordanian banking consumers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data are collected using surveys. The survey contains items for three different measures of overall BSQ perceptions. The researchers mailed surveys to a random sample of 2,000 banking customers in Jordan. Responses to questionnaire items measuring respondents' BSQ perceptions were analysed using one-way analysis of variance with Tukey's honest significant difference post hoc tests to assess subgroup differences in six demographic variables: gender, age, occupation, income, education, and religion.\nFindings: BSQ perceptions are significantly different in four of the six demographic variables. Age and education do not impact on BSQ perceptions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings indicate demographic effects on Jordanian banking consumers' perceived BSQ. Study limitations include demographic subgroup underrepresentation and survey structure. Future research should obtain a more representative sample for better generalisability.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that Jordanian banks should structure their services to best accommodate their customers' demographics. In addition, banks can use the findings to guide the development of demographic-driven marketing to target and attract customers efficiently.\nOriginality/value: This study is the first to investigate demographic differences in the perceived service quality of Jordan's Islamic and conventional banking customers. The findings can contribute to future research on BSQ, and guide Jordan's banking management towards more effective marketing and service provision.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Intellectual capital and performance: testing interaction effects
|
[
"Intellectual capital",
"Financial institutions",
"Social interaction",
"Financial performance",
"Uganda"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The recent changes in the global economy, consisting of complex, dynamic and competitive environment have led to a difference between the modern approach to value creation and the traditional way of monitoring operations (Ting and Lean, 2009). More so, Cuganesan (2006) observed that rapid technological changes, increasingly sophisticated customers and the importance of innovation shifted the bases of competition for many businesses away from traditional physical and financial resources to intellectual assets. Thus, there is wide spread recognition that intellectual capital (a strategic resource) is critical force that drives business growth (Huang and Liu, 2005).One particular industry that is so competitive and dynamic is the microfinance (CGAP, 2002; Adongo and Christopher, 2005). This industry is complex and highly innovative (Kalyango, 2004), with great potential to expand the financial frontier to the poor in a sustainable manner (Littlefield et al., 2003), and to a great extent dependent on intellectual capital for a source of renewal (Sharabati et al., n.d.).Much of the extant research on intellectual capital has focused on the developed world - specifically within Scandinavian nations (Sharabati et al., n.d.). However, this phenomenon has a global appeal because of its quest for solutions to the nations' development challenge (CGAP, 2002). In addition, there is great interest in advancing intellectual capital in developing countries, Uganda being the best choice because of:* the adopted market-oriented and enterprise development approach by the microfinance industry;* the major reforms in the financial sector, including commercialization and regulation of microfinance institutions' (MFIs') operations;* quite a number of MFIs, which are more than 1,500 (AMFIU, 2009); and* stiff competition that never existed before in the industry.Microfinance industry represents part of financial sector set up to finance small and micro-enterprises, which are excluded from the traditional banking practice (Labie, 2001; Ledgerwood, 1999; Kalyango, 2004; Megicks et al., 2005). Over the past decade the industry has transformed into a large, dynamic private sector catering for the financial needs of the low-income household and economically poor (Nannyonjo and Nsubuga, 2004). Most firms in the industry have embraced a more business-oriented outlook and maintaining their target groups of economically active poor while focusing on achieving operational and financial sustainability (Kalyango, 2005; Baguma, 2008). The Ugandan microfinance industry has therefore adopted market-oriented and enterprise development approach after suspending a social-mission-oriented activity that could no longer be undertaken on a commercial basis (Fernando, 2000). While social orientation remains important, today a core group of microfinance service providers considers microfinance as a commercial operation and operate on a commercial basis. The commercialization has therefore made the industry more competitive (Fernando, 2000). The microfinance industry has also reduced its dependency on donor grants and concessional funding which have further threatened performance of microfinance firms (Kalyango, 2004). The above challenges are serious threats to performance of microfinance industry (Baguma, 2008).As a result, microfinance industry has recognized that a sustainable solution to the above challenges lies in building more efficient and strong financial institutions that are capable of cultivating strategic assets that are firm specific. Ugandan microfinance firms have realized that increased investment and management of assets that are valuable, rare, and hard-to-imitate (Barney, 1991; Stiles and Kulvisaechana, 2004) is the answer to the challenges faced (Baguma, 2008; Nannyonjo and Nsubuga, 2004). They are assets which enhance the firm's competitive advantage and superior performance, which Stewart (1997) referred to as intellectual capital. This therefore provides a fruitful setting for intellectual capital assessment in Ugandan microfinance industry.The research setting for this particular study is unique because the concept of intellectual capital has not been given serious attention in Uganda. The fact that the study covered three predictor variables (HC, RC and SC) it was appropriate to test the interaction effect of these dimensions on performance. According to Friedrich (1982), when the research design involves two or more independent variables, there is always more to consider than simply the \"main effects\" of each of the independent variables. This study is hence expected to benefit stakeholders as follows:* Microfinance institutions will have a more definite and direct understanding of intellectual capital mix or blend that is useful to their success. Moreover, Bennet (2000) had earlier observed that knowledge on the right blend of intellectual resources eases the management of intellectual assets to create firm value.* Besides, understanding of how intellectual capital elements combine to influence firm performance leads to better resource allocation, which eventually promotes better firm performance.* Furthermore, this study represents one of only a handful in extant literature to focus on Uganda and the first one to focus on measuring intellectual capital development in the microfinance industry. It thus offers a novel perspective.This paper is organized into five sections. The first section is the brief overview of the research and contribution of the study. It is followed by literature review and hypotheses in the second section to discuss the theoretical background of the research and previous studies on intellectual capital. The third section is to discuss the source of data, research methodology and framework. The fourth section concentrates on interpretation of the findings and discussion. Finally, the fifth section concludes and gives recommendation for future research.\nLiterature review: While earlier scholars may not agree on the precise definition and shape of intellectual capital, there is broad consensus that it contains human capital, relational capital and structural capital (Tovstiga and Tulugurova, 2009; Bontis, 2002; Stewart, 1997; Edvinsson and Sullivan, 1996, Lynn, 1998). Such taxonomy permits researchers such as Sofian et al. (2008) to delineate intellectual capital as the possession of knowledge and experience, professional knowledge and skill, goal relationships, and technological capacities, whose synergic effect can boost firm performance. Edvinsson and Malone (1997, p. 358) broadened the definition to \"knowledge that can be converted into value\". On the other hand, Halim (2010) conceptualized human capital as what a single employee brings into the value adding processes, consisting of professional competence, social competence, employee motivation, and leadership ability. Maheran and Khairu (2009) describe structural capital as competitive intelligence, formulas, information systems, patents, policies, etc., resulted from the products or systems the firm has created over time. In the same way, Welbourne (2008) delineates relational capital as an invisible asset based on developing, maintaining and nurturing high- quality relationships with any organization, individuals or group that influences business performance.Relationship of intellectual capital dimensions and financial performance\nStudy design and methodology: This study used cross-sectional and quantitative research designs to address the hypotheses covered in this research.The study population included 78 microfinance institutions registered with Association of Microfinance institutions (AMFIU) in Uganda (Microfinance Directory 2009/10). Sample size of 65 firms was targeted and arrived at by adopting Yamane's (1973) sample size selection approach. According to Yamane, sample size is given by: Equation 1 where:n =is a sample size;N =is total population; andE =is tolerable error.On the basis of Yamane's approach with total population (N) 78 and tolerable error (e) 0.5 percent, the sample size (n) was 65 firms. Yamane's sample selection was preferred because it fairly yields a representative sample. Besides, the sample size generated using this approach fairly mirrors the results one would have got using a table of random samples by Krejcie and Morgan (1970). Simple random sampling was employed to select 65 firms from the total population of 78 firms.The unit of analysis was microfinance institutions whose senior members of staff were the units of inquiry. Though a maximum of eight senior managers per firm were targeted, number of respondents from the firms ranged between five and seven senior managers. To address variations in firm responses, a minimum of five senior managers were considered for analysis. The decision to accept a minimum of five senior staff per firm is based on Ntoumanis' (2001) and Field's (2006) guidelines on sample selection. Other scholars like Baer and Frese (2003), and Ngoma (2009) adopted and used a minimum of three respondents per firm. Thus, a minimum of five senior managers per MFI was sufficient for the study. However, out of 65 firms, 51 responded, hence giving a response rate of 78.4 percent.Measurement of variables\nResults: Sample characteristics\nDiscussion and conclusion: This research investigated and tested the interactive effect of intellectual capital dimensions on financial performance in Ugandan microfinance industry.Relationships between intellectual elements and financial performance\nConclusion: In conclusion, the significant multiplicative effects of human capital and structural capital, and relational capital and human capital on performance confirm a spurious or conditional relationship; thereby satisfying H4 and H5. Besides, the two interaction terms are nonadditive and their inclusion in the model gave rise to monotonic interactions (Bennet, 2000; Friedrich, 1982; Aiken and West, 1991). Since the interaction term between structural and relational capitals is additive; there is no more to consider than simply the main effects of each of the independent variable. The fact that some of the study results contradict empirical findings in the existing literature, the application of these study findings should be used with a lot of caution in other industries.\nImplications for management and researchers: Theoretical implications\nLimitations of the study: The findings of this study are subject to some limitations that provide the initiatives for future research; and some of these include:* One of the possible reasons for the varied results of the study is the methodology used for measuring intellectual capital. Although the constructs have been defined as precisely as possible by drawing relevant literature and validated by practitioners, the measurements used may not perfectly represent all the dimensions.* Future studies could use the same basic hypotheses and regression construction, but implement the study in terms of a longitudinal rather than a cross-sectional design. The longitudinal study would need to correct changes in data relative to time element. Despite possible limitations of using single-period data, the results of the present study provide valuable insights into the effect of intellectual capital on microfinance firms' financial performance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction effect of intellectual capital elements and how they fuse to affect financial performance in microfinance institutions. The major purpose is to explore the appropriate blend or mix of intellectual capital elements that explains the source of value creation - hence performance - in microfinance institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper adopts the ModGraph program (Excel version) along with the Kenny and Boran approach to test conditional hypotheses.\nFindings: - The magnitude effect of human capital on performance depends on any of structural or relational capital; hence the assumption of nonadditivity is met. However, no significant interaction effects were established between relational and structural capital.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Only a single research methodological approach was employed and future research through interviews could be undertaken to triangulate. Furthermore, the findings from the present study are cross-sectional - future research should be undertaken to examine the multiplicative effects studied in this paper across time\nPractical implications: - In order to boost the wealth of microfinance institutions in Uganda, managers should always endeavor to find a viable intellectual capital mix or blend that can add value to the firm.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study that focuses on testing the interactive effects of intellectual capital elements on financial performance in Ugandan microfinance institutions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Sequential combination of consumer experiences and their impact on product knowledge and brand attitude: The moderating role of desire for unique consumer products
|
[
"Product knowledge",
"Consumer experiences",
"Brand attitude",
"Desire for unique consumer products"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Marketing 2.0 provides an ideal environment for interactive marketing. Internet empowers the customers to share their opinions and experiences with those who are interested in the same products/services/brands. Those consumers who choose to be involved in a virtual environment (e.g. virtual reality or 3-D advertising) are thus exposed to the virtual experience (VE), a new form of consumer experience (Daugherty et al., 2008).\nLiterature review: Consumer experiences\nMethod: Research design\nResults: After omitting the uncompleted questionnaires from the formal experiment, a total of 270 valid samples were obtained. Through a kh2 independent test (p>0.05), this study found that the factors of subjects' gender, education, online shopping experience, own a MP3 player (or not), and DUCP do not significantly impact the random arrangement.\nDiscussions: Summary of findings\nAcknowledgment: The authors would like to thank the Editor and two reviewers for many helpful comments and suggestions. They also thank National Science Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 97-2410-H-027-003-MY3.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the sequential combination of consumer experiences on product knowledge and brand attitude. Additionally, the moderating role of desire for unique consumer products (DUCP) was also discussed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Four types of sequential combinations of consumer experiences were designed: exposure to escapist virtual experience preceding direct experience (VEescapist-DE), exposure to education virtual experience preceding direct experience (VEeducation-DE), exposure to escapist virtual experience preceding indirect experience (VEescapist-IDE), and exposure to education virtual experience preceding indirect experience (VEeducation-IDE). A total of 302 undergraduate college students in Taiwan participated in this study.\nFindings: The results revealed that DUCP moderated the sequential combination of consumer experiences on product knowledge. For the high level of DUCP, there are significant differences among the effects of the sequential combination of consumer experiences on product knowledge. Specifically, it was found that VEescapist-IDE produces the highest product knowledge while VEeducation-DE produces the lowest product knowledge. Regarding the low level of DUCP, there are not significant differences among the effects of sequential combination of consumer experiences on product knowledge.\nOriginality/value: This study extended the studies of Daugherty et al. (2008), Pine and Gilmore (1999), and Keng et al. (2012) to further explore the effects of the sequential combination of experiences.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Applying sustainability into engineering curriculum under the background of "new engineering education" (NEE)
|
[
"Sustainability",
"Curriculum reform and innovation",
"Engineering curriculum",
"NEE",
"Tongling University"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The concept of sustainability dates back to the 1960s but may have conflicted with the pursuit of economic perspectives to some extent (Albareda-Tiana et al., 2018; Bond and Morrison-Saunders, 2011). Sustainability has attracted attention worldwide in the areas of economics, Information Communications Technology, manufacturing and agriculture (among others; Bifulco, et al., 2016; Dumreicher, 2008; Martins, 2016). The increasing tension between natural resources and economic development has reinforced the acceleration of sustainability, from where it represented marginalized practices to it currently occupying a place of privilege in economic development (Matus et al., 2012). The achievement surrounding the UN's adoption of sustainable development goals (SDGs) is acknowledged as the determination of national competitive capability moving forward (Zhuang and Xu, 2018). However, achieving sustainability will not be possible without the involvement of key stakeholders. Through their initiation and promotion of new ideas and knowledge on sustainability, universities constitute a central stakeholder in the advancement of sustainable development (Tang, 2018). Specifically, they encourage systematic thinking engagement and the adoption of pedagogy to deal with real-world sustainability issues (Abner, et al., 2019). Importantly, this helps to promote the development of new knowledge, attitudes and behaviors among university students (De Leeuw et al., 2014). Universities are also considered an essential agent in engineering training and qualification and in transformation in this field in the era of Industry 4.0 (Ramirez-Mendoza et al., 2018; Cevik et al., 2018).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Strategies to meet the challenges in the context of Industry 4.0\n3. Method: 3.1 Implementation context\n4. Results and discussions: 4.1 Concepts of sustainability and willingness to attend sustainability-related curricula\n5. Conclusion: The NEE strategy has inspired many universities in China and their teaching staff to reform their outdated courses. The practices associated with the NEE strategy include implementing various approaches to develop students' multi-disciplinary capacity. Accordingly, a new sustainability-related curriculum was launched for students in the quality management and engineering faculty at Tongling University, China, by incorporating the concept of sustainability into teaching processes. This curriculum not only addressed the gap in knowledge concerning engineering curriculum reform in one local university within the NEE context but also addressed the significance between curriculum re-orientation and changes in students' KABs toward sustainability. Previous studies have produced divergent findings with regard to correlations among knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. For example, some authors have concluded a high level of knowledge toward sustainability increased awareness of sustainability, leading to a positive impact on attitudes and behaviors. Conversely, others (He et al., 2011) have argued correlations exist between low levels of environmental knowledge and a positive impact on attitudes and behaviors.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of applying sustainability to the engineering curriculum at a university in China.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A new curriculum, \"ethics, involvement and sustainability,\" was designed and presented to engineering students from an undergraduate major in quality management engineering. This curriculum incorporated knowledge acquisition and skills training into sustainability via various teaching approaches in a mandatory curriculum at Tongling University, China. Pre- and post-questionnaire surveys, as well as a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, were adopted to evaluate the changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of respondents before and after curriculum implementation.\nFindings: Significant changes in knowledge and attitudes were observed following the implementation of the curriculum. In terms of the development of new behaviors, the changes tended to be moderate. Generally, respondents were satisfied with the effectiveness of the new interdisciplinary curriculum post-implementation.\nPractical implications: Positive results were observed for the pilot and practice of the new engineering education (NEE) strategy at the cooperating university in China. Specifically, the integration of sustainability into curriculum design, implementation and evaluation inspired greater social responsibility in engineering students' decision-making processes. Additionally, it shed light on how to integrate the concept of sustainability into curricula. One limitation of this study was the absence of a comparison group that did not experience the new curriculum.\nOriginality/value: Scant attention has been paid to local universities in the context of the newly-launched NEE strategy. This study provides new insight regarding the implementation of sustainability into engineering curricula and practice via formal, but diversified, teaching approaches.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Culpable leaders, trust, emotional exhaustion, and identification during a crisis
|
[
"Leadership",
"Trust",
"Identification",
"Attribution",
"Crisis",
"Emotional exhaustion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Crises such as the loss of the Malaysian Airline flight (MH 370) and the Hurricane Katrina disaster highlight how issues of culpability become salient for individuals during a crisis. For instance, in the case of the Malaysian Airlines crisis, issues of culpability were raised concerning the pilots, the quality of the aircraft, and the handling of the crisis by the Malaysian government. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that devastated states along the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, even though it was a natural disaster, there were questions as to whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency bungled the handling of the crisis situation, and whether the various city governments could have minimized the damage by having superior infrastructure in their cities.\nTheoretical model: Attribution theory suggests that when individuals judge others, they assess the extent to which the behavior of a target is consistent with his/her previous behaviors, distinctive from their other behaviors, and whether others in the same situation would behave similarly (Kelley, 1973; Schwarz, 2012). Additional factors that individuals may take into account are whether the behavior was controllable, stable, and global in that it could affect a range of outcomes (Weiner, 1985, 1995). Further, exacerbating the complexity of this attribution process is, that as followers judge their leaders, the process is influenced by their liking of their leaders, their personal emotional characteristics (Dasborough and Ashkanasy, 2002), and by their own social attribution style (Martinko et al., 2007).\nMethodology: We discuss the methods used in this study by describing the focal organization that served as the context of our study, the data collection methods, sample, and measures.\nAnalysis and results: Table II presents the descriptive statistics and the correlations between variables. As indicated by this table, the followers overall had moderate levels of trust toward their leaders (mean=4.33), had relatively low levels of emotional exhaustion (mean=2.04), and had relatively high levels of organizational identification (mean=5.50).\nDiscussion, contributions, and implications: In this section, we address the contributions and limitations of our study, and the implications for future research and practice. We discuss these topics below.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate followers' judgments of the culpability of their leaders and the organization's external stakeholders in causing a crisis. The authors study the differences in effects of these judgments on their trust toward their leaders, their emotional exhaustion, and their levels of organizational identification.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using the survey method the authors collected data from 354 individuals from an organization that filed for bankruptcy. Respondents' comments also provided qualitative data that was used to triangulate the findings.\nFindings: The authors find that individuals' judgments that their leaders were culpable led to reduced trust, increased emotional exhaustion, and contrary to expectations reduced organizational identification. Therefore, it appears that in situations of perceived leader culpability during a crisis, followers tightly couple their leaders with the organization as a whole. In contrast, their judgments that external stakeholders were culpable were associated with increased trust toward their leaders, increased organizational identification, and they had no relationship with their levels of emotional exhaustion. The analysis of the qualitative data provides some insights into their judgments and the dependent variables.\nResearch limitations/implications: Organizational members' judgments of culpability are important factors that should be considered in crisis management research, and in research on trust, emotional exhaustion, and organizational identification. A limitation of the study is that it is cross-sectional in nature. Therefore, future research could test the findings in a longitudinal study.\nPractical implications: Leaders need to understand the judgments of their followers during an organizational crisis. These judgments have implications for when and how leaders can mobilize their followers and the leadership tasks during crisis containment.\nOriginality/value: Extant research tends to focus on the judgments of external stakeholders during a crisis. This study is one of the first to examine the effects of internal stakeholders' judgments of culpability for causing a crisis on their trust, emotional exhaustion, and organizational identification. Further, existing empirical studies on followers' attributions during a crisis tend to be laboratory based. The study provides empirical evidence from individuals in an actual organization in crisis.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Marketing executive development in a changing world: the needed executive skills
|
[
"CMO",
"Marketing executives",
"Strategic skill development"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nMarketing and the marketing executive: The marketing executive is the new key figure in industry so stated an article in News Front magazine which emphasized the importance of finding and training the right people for the marketing team. It stated \"You must develop marketing executives who can and will carry the marketing program to a successful and profitable conclusion.\" This paper was written almost 50 years ago and was also cited as the first sentence in my book: The Marketing Executive of the Future (Montana, 1967, p. 15).\nThe challenges ahead: The marketing challenges of the future have been predicted by many leading authorities and business experts. A typical viewpoint, that is in many ways timeless, can be taken from Herbert D. Bissel, the former Vice President of Marketing at Honeywell, Incorporated, during the 1960s when he stated the following:\nThe emerging trends: The increased tempo of change\nKnowledge and skills needed: The trends and changes which will characterize tomorrow's market demand that the effective marketing executive acquire certain skills and knowledge.\nConclusion: The marketing executive has and will continue to remain a key figure in industry and business development. Organizations of all kinds must not only come to this realization but must also be proactive in developing the increasingly important Marketing Executive of the Future.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges and marketing executive development needs of the future as revealed in surveys of senior marketing executives, chief marketing officers and CEOs of major corporations in the USA and globally.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A historical analysis of the marketing function, its importance and emerging needs was conducted.\nFindings: Within this paper, the two questions of key importance that will be explored to manage marketing in tomorrow's world are as follows: what emerging trends present challenges to the marketing executive of the future? And what skills and knowledge trends and changes demand that the effective marketing executive acquire? The conclusion of this study indicate that the marketing executive of the future must have the needed skills in managing innovation and change, educating and developing leaders, understand technology, formulate and implement strategy, apply new leadership concepts, collaborate with government, anticipate social and technological advances, become more customer oriented and be more flexible.\nOriginality/value: The paper is valuable in that it highlights the challenges and needs of senior marketing executives going forward in a changing world.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Implementation of patient safety initiatives in US hospitals
|
[
"Patients",
"Patient care",
"Health and safety",
"Hospitals",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: US hospitals are becoming more aware of the need to reduce medical errors and to improve patient safety. Two reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published in 2000 and 2001 recommended that patient safety become a national priority (Institute of Medicine, 2000, 2001). The reports highlight the extent of the problem of errors in health care, explore the costs of these errors, and recommend improvements in health care delivery. The first report suggests that medical errors account for more than 98,000 deaths per year in US hospitals. The same study indicates that 58 percent of these error-related deaths may be preventable. They acknowledge that the necessary system improvements will require a \"concerted effort\" on the part of many individuals from patients to policy-makers. A medical error is defined as:... the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (i.e. an error of execution) or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (i.e. an error of planning) (Institute of Medicine, 2000, p. 28).An adverse event is defined as \"an injury caused by medical management rather than the underlying condition of the patient\". Some medical errors can lead to adverse events. An adverse event attributable to error is a \"preventable adverse event\" (Institute of Medicine, 2000, p. 28). In response to the disturbing number of medical errors and preventable adverse events, many hospitals have undertaken initiatives targeted towards patient safety. The National Patient Safety Foundation defines patient safety as \"the avoidance, prevention and amelioration of adverse outcomes or injuries stemming from the process of health care.\" We define patient safety initiatives (PSI) as activities intended to prevent or ameliorate adverse outcomes or injuries stemming from the process of health care.The problem of medical errors is now receiving attention as an important topic in operations management research (Tucker and Edmondson, 2003; Tucker, 2004). In fact, Bretthauer (2004) reiterates the need for more service operations research that focuses on improving safety in health care. Other studies have stressed the benefits of using operations management techniques to improve reliability of health care operations. For instance, Thompson et al. (2003) found that implementing the Toyota Production System in health care settings improved patient safety dramatically. As a result of not only the IOM reports but also due to internal and external pressures, hospitals across the country are developing PSIs to assist in reducing medical errors and adverse events.As an industry, healthcare has lagged behind other fields - such as commercial aviation - in systematically identifying and preventing errors (Gaba, 2001; Gaba et al., 2003). Healthcare organizations strive to be high-reliability organizations (Roberts, 1990; Weick et al., 1999; Gaba, 2001). A high-reliability organization is defined as an organization that operates successfully in a complex and challenging environment and achieves low levels of failure (Gaba, 2001; Gaba et al., 2003). The aviation industry, considered a \"classic high-reliability organization\", has been extremely successful in reducing error rates due to the effective implementation of a variety of safety programs over several decades. It has been widely asked how healthcare might transfer the lessons learned in the aviation industry to improve patient safety. To that end, McFadden et al. (2004) developed and evaluated a framework for reducing hospital errors and improving patient safety based on the relevant medical literature, as well as a previously published aviation safety framework (McFadden and Towell, 1999). They used a case study approach, interviewing directors of quality or performance improvement, and risk managers at four hospitals in Illinois to identify strategies that aid in reducing hospital errors. We gathered extensive survey data from 252 hospitals throughout the US to test McFadden et al.'s model of the factors influencing successful implementation of PSIs. The paper also contributes to the literature on patient safety by testing specific mechanisms that are associated with successful implementation of PSIs. The following research questions were investigated in this study:RQ1. What factors influence the implementation of PSIs?\nBackground: Research attention has focused on the subject of errors and adverse events, their implications, and underlying causes in hospital settings. In this section, we examine this literature to understand the causes of medical errors, key strategies for reducing the risk of medical errors, and barriers to the implementation of these patient safety strategies.Causes of medical errors and adverse events\nConceptual framework: We can now synthesize the findings of the prior literature to develop a conceptual framework that guides this empirical study. The foundation underlying our framework is the set of PSIs discussed above: Partnership of all stakeholders, open discussion about errors, education and training programs, statistical analysis of error data, and system redesign. The common theme that ties these elements together is an emphasis on the process over the individual, which is consistent with the philosophy of TQM (Deming, 1986). These PSIs were drawn from a variety of sources, although they were first developed as a coherent group in a study in which the principles of safety from the aviation industry were applied to the context of health care (McFadden et al., 2004). This study showed support for the validity of these PSIs as variables that will reduce the occurrence and impact of medical errors in hospitals.This purpose of our framework is twofold: first, to provide an approach to understanding what will affect the successful implementation of PSIs; and second, to understand whether implementing these PSIs will yield benefits to a hospital with respect to medical errors, quality, customer satisfaction, and cost.We first consider the factors that will affect the implementation of these PSIs in a hospital. As we noted above, prior research has found that organizations are more likely to pursue activities that are perceived to be important (Dutton and Duncan, 1987; Nutt, 1987; Morash et al., 1996). Hence, one factor we expect to increase the likelihood of successful implementation is the perceived importance of the PSIs. In addition to understanding the factors having a positive influence on implementation, we also have identified a set of barriers to implementation. If these barriers are high, then the level of implementation would be expected to be low. Eliminating or reducing these barriers is therefore, expected to increase the level of PSI implementation. From this discussion we can now specify three constructs of the conceptual framework: PSI importance, PSI barriers, and PSI implementation. The first two hypotheses follow:H1. The greater the PSI importance, the higher the level of PSI implementation.\nData and variables: Data\nResults: We employed regression analysis to test our research hypotheses. Hypothesis H1 suggests that when the PSIs were perceived to be more important by the patient safety leader, the more the patient safety leader perceives they have been implemented. Hypothesis H2 argues that lower levels of internal and external barriers to implementation would lead to higher levels of implementation of PSIs. Table VIII shows the hierarchical regression analysis used to test these hypotheses. The control variables were entered into Model 1, and then the PSI importance and PSI barrier variables were entered as a group in Model 2. The second model is statistically significant overall (F=12.37, p<0.001), and the increase in R2 from 0.15 to 0.34 was also statistically significant (F=22.81, p<0.001).In evaluating H1, we found that the perceived importance variable, PSI_IMPT (measuring perceived importance of the PSIs), was statistically significant with a positive sign, which indicates that when these factors are perceived to be important, they are likely to be implemented. Therefore, H1 is supported. We also note that the quality management variable CQI (measuring CQI) was also statistically significant, which indicates that hospitals having a CQI program would be more likely to implement these PSIs.In addressing H2, we found only one of the barriers to implementation, BARRINT (internal barriers to implementation), to be statistically significant. The negative sign of the parameter estimate indicates that a lower level of this set of barriers is likely to result in higher levels of PSI implementation (or equivalently, higher levels of barriers will result in lower levels of implementation). The other barrier variable, BARREXT, was not statistically significant, however. Therefore, we have partial support for H2.The third hypothesis (H3), argues that greater levels of implementation of the PSIs will lead to higher levels of hospital benefits. Table IX shows the regression model used to test this hypothesis, where the hospital benefits variable (BENEFITS) is the dependent variable. In this model, PSI implementation (PSI_IMPL) was statistically significant and positive in direction, indicating that higher levels of implementation lead to higher levels of benefits to the hospital, even after adjusting for all other variables in the model. Therefore, H3 is supported. Also, quality management variables (QUAL1 and CQI in Model 1; CQI in Model 2) were positive and statistically significant, indicating that these hospital benefits were also related to the use of other quality management approaches.\nImplications and conclusions: The results of this study provide support for the conceptual framework shown in Figure 1. The first hypothesis (H1) relates the perceived importance of the PSIs to their actual implementation. We hypothesized that the greater the perceived importance of PSIs, the higher the level of implementation. The results from our regression model supported this hypothesis. Specifically, our findings suggest that the more emphasis the patient safety leader places on these PSIs the more likely the hospital is to actually implement them. Therefore, it appears that an effective strategy for increasing the level of implementation at hospitals is to have an enthusiastic patient safety leader who buys into the various initiatives. This is an important finding for more senior hospital administrators who want to create change in their organization. Approaches for getting hospital administrators and employees to realize the importance of the PSIs could involve increased education through research efforts as well as through professional conferences and seminars on this issue. Given that the level of PSI implementation at the hospitals surveyed was at a moderate level (a mean value of 3.49 on a 0-5 point scale), there appears to be ample opportunity to increase the level of implementation at many hospitals.Managerial approaches promoting the implementation of PSIs can also take the form of removing or reducing barriers that are likely to impede the implementation of the PSIs. Consistent with this approach, hypothesis H2 states that the lower the level of PSI barriers, the higher the level of PSI implementation. This hypothesis was partially supported by this research. While the internal barriers (lack of top management support, lack of resources, lack of incentives, and lack of knowledge/understanding) were found to have a significantly negative impact on implementation, the external barriers (legal environment, media coverage of errors, and cost pressures from insurance firms) were not found to be significant. Therefore, in order to improve the level of implementation, hospital administrators should focus on breaking down internal organizational barriers. Possible actions may include providing incentives for reporting errors, increasing employees' knowledge and understanding about errors, increasing the level of support of top management for PSIs, and providing the necessary resources (time, money, etc.) towards this endeavor.Hypothesis H3 states that the greater the level of implementation of PSIs, the greater the benefits to the hospital. This hypothesis was supported. Our research findings indicate that higher levels of PSI implementation were associated with an increased level of benefits to the hospital. These benefits were related to quality and operational performance (quality improvement, increased customer satisfaction, net cost savings, and reduction in the frequency and severity of errors).This research provides guidance for administrators who are faced with the task of improving patient safety. Guidelines include developing a partnership with all stakeholders (e.g. administrators, doctors, nurses, patients) and encouraging the use of open discussion groups (face-to-face or otherwise) to talk about errors freely in order to learn from hospital errors. In addition, hospitals should develop education and training programs for employees (e.g. doctors, nurses, administrators), collect and statistically analyze error data, and redesign systems (restructuring the functioning of equipment, technology, procedures, etc). Our research also shows that hospital administrators should remove internal barriers (e.g. lack of incentives and lack of resources) in their organizations that may be limiting the extent to which the PSIs are implemented.These findings provide insight into a very important issue that is of national and international importance. From a practical perspective, the results can be used as a road map that will aid hospital administrators in addressing patient safety issues more effectively. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has placed a strong emphasis on patient safety. Hospital accreditation has been increasingly tied to intervention and prevention of hospital errors. It is imperative that hospitals develop effective solutions to reduce medical errors in order to strengthen quality of patient care nationwide.The results of our study suggest several areas worthy of future research. It would be interesting to explore the relationship between organization culture and implementation of PSIs. One type of culture may be more likely than others to implement error reduction methods. In addition, international concern in the area of patient safety is growing. For instance, researchers in Canada have recently becoming involved in assessing patient safety outcomes (Baker and Norton, 2004). In Singapore, strong political commitment and institutional capacities have helped the country experience a paradigm shift toward the broader concept of error monitoring and error prevention (Lim, 2004). Therefore, results obtained in the US could be compared against those observed in countries such as Canada and Singapore. Finally, conducting an in-depth analysis of a specific hospital's processes and system redesign efforts to improve patient safety is yet another possible area of future research. A study of this sort might provide additional insights into the details of the process of PSI implementation and how that implementation process could be improved. For example, research of this sort might examine the details of the organizational changes needed to increase the perceived importance of patient safety or remove barriers to patient safety. These topics, among others, would be fruitful areas for future research in the area of patient safety.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to explore the use of patient safety initiatives (PSIs) at the US hospitals. These PSIs include such approaches as open discussion of errors, education and training, and system redesign. In particular, the paper seeks to examine factors that influence the implementation of PSIs as well as the benefits realized from their implementation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws on the TQM and medical safety literatures to develop a conceptual framework for improving patient safety. Extensive survey data were gathered from 252 hospitals throughout the US to test McFadden et al.'s model of the factors influencing successful implementation of PSIs.\nFindings: - Certain barriers (lack of top management support, lack of resources, lack of incentives and lack of knowledge) significantly impeded implementation while other factors (perceived importance of PSIs) facilitated implementation. It was also found that implementation of PSIs was associated with benefits to the hospital in areas such as medical error reduction, cost reduction, and patient satisfaction.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The use of a single respondent represents a possible limitation. Future research will explore organizational culture and its relationship to patient safety.\nPractical implications: - The findings provide direction for implementing more effective PSIs at hospitals.\nOriginality/value: - The paper contributes to the literature on patient safety and medical errors by testing specific mechanisms that are associated with successful implementation of PSIs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Construction delay risk taxonomy, associations and regional contexts: A systematic review and meta-analysis
|
[
"Taxonomy",
"Scheduling",
"Terminology",
"Delay",
"Systematic review",
"Construction planning",
"Project risk management",
"Risk paths",
"Regional contexts",
"Association rules"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Every project undergoes a level of uncertainty (Zou et al., 2007; Luu et al., 2009). Construction projects are no exception. The numerous stakeholders involved, long durations, complexity and significant internal and external interactions have made the construction industry a risky business (Taroun, 2014). Without effective risk management, a considerable amount of the project time and resources would be spent to confront problems for which prior response had not been planned. The literature is consistent on the fact that poor risk management is one of the major reasons causing budget overruns, delays, tarnished reputation or even failure of projects (De Meyer et al., 2002; Wang et al., 2010; Kardes et al., 2013; Monteiro De Carvalho and Junior, 2015; Pimchangthong and Boonjing, 2017; Habibi and Kermanshachi, 2018).\n2. Methodologies: This systematic literature review is using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) to improve the quality of literature analysis and reporting (Moher et al., 2010). PRISMA provides a checklist of items that should be covered when undertaking a systematic review and meta-analysis. Also, this research is using the \"mixed methods systematic review\". This is the most effective methodology when a research study is focusing on particular gaps in research, as it combines both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the literature, and mitigates the subjective judgement bias of mono-method literature analysis (Oraee et al., 2017). Given that, this research undertakes the main steps listed in Figure 1 to address the research questions. The methods that have been used for each of these steps are also shown in Figure 1, where applicable, and have been elaborated on in the following sub-sections.\n3. Findings: 3.1 Delay risk terminology\n4. Analysis of findings: From the systematic review of the delay risk literature, several observations can be made. First, it highlights lack of a common language for delay risk among practitioners and accentuates the essence of developing such a standard definition of project risks to become the basis of delay risk management. This research sheds light on the existing delay risk literature and developed a delay risk terminology and taxonomy. The terminology developed by this research incorporates different terms used in the literature to define the best phrases to describe the risks based on their plurality. The taxonomy includes 26 main delay risks and 10 risk categories, which can be organised into three main groups of Stakeholders, Resources and Processes.\n5. Conclusion: Delay risk management in construction industry lacks a standard language as a baseline for delay risk communication. On this account, this research systematically reviewed the literature to formulate a delay risk terminology and taxonomy, and then evaluated the generalisability of the taxonomy across regional contexts. In total, 46 articles were finally identified using a systematic literature review, and qualitative data for the top 10 delay risks reported in each article were coded and analysed using the constant comparative method. As a result of the analysis, 26 individual delay risks were identified. By applying a word frequency analysis, a terminology was determined to describe each risk. Furthermore, the risks were cross-tabulated to risk categories to develop a risk taxonomy in the form of an RBS. Ten risk categories were identified at the third level of the risk taxonomy, and these were grouped into Stakeholders, Resources and Processes classes at the second level of the taxonomy. Next, the extent to which the risk taxonomy is generalisable across regional contexts was investigated. Accordingly, the risks were sorted based on their frequency of reported occurrence in different regions. It is concluded that some risks including R21 - Financial difficulties, R14 - Inadequate planning, R25 - Shortage of material at site and R1 - Changes by the owner may go beyond specific regional contexts, while some others such as R18 - Underestimation of project complexity, R4 - Improper construction methods, R23 - Low material quality and R16 - Poor project control are more related to the regional context.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to systematically develop a delay risk terminology and taxonomy. This research also explores two external and internal dimensions of the taxonomy to determine how much the taxonomy as a whole or combinations of its elements are generalisable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using mixed methods research, this systematic literature review incorporated data from 46 articles to establish delay risk terminology and taxonomy. Qualitative data of the top 10 delay risks identified in each article were coded based on the grounded theory and constant comparative analysis using a three-stage coding approach. Word frequency analysis and cross-tabulation were used to develop the terminology and taxonomy. Association rules within the taxonomy were also explored to define risk paths and to unmask associations among the risks.\nFindings: In total, 26 delay risks were identified and grouped into ten categories to form the risk breakdown structure. The universal delay risks and other delay risks that are more or less depending on the project location were determined. Also, it is realized that delays connected to equipment, sub-contractors and design drawings are highly connected to project planning, finance and owner slow decision making, respectively.\nOriginality/value: The established terminology and taxonomy may be used in manual or automated risk management systems as a baseline for delay risk identification, management and communication. In addition, the association rules assist the risk management process by enabling mitigation of a combination of risks together.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Pre-loved luxury: identifying the meanings of second-hand luxury possessions
|
[
"Meanings",
"Luxury",
"Consumers",
"Second-hand",
"Buying behavior"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this issue.\n1. Introduction: Several trends indicate that the greater availability of luxury goods poses challenges to contemporary luxury markets. It has been claimed that luxury products are now available to a greater number of consumers, at least in some form (Thomas, 2007; Corbellini and Saviolo, 2009). One explanation for this \"democratization of luxury\" is that technological development enables luxury products to be widely available; the Internet in particular has broadened possibilities to acquire luxury products from different sources (Okonkwo, 2009). Sales of luxury goods (i.e. apparel, leather goods and accessories, watches, jewelry and cosmetics) reached 285 billion in 2012, and the annual growth has been forecast to amount to 7 per cent during the next few years (BCG, 2014). However, the market growth ushers in many challenges and complexities to the global luxury markets as the new consumer segments, and their buying behaviors demand better understanding of the segments, their profiles and the market actions.\n2. Meanings of luxury consumption: When it comes to luxury brand consumption, the prior literature has solely focused on the consumption and marketing of brand-new luxury products (Han et al., 2010; Hung et al., 2011; Fionda and Moore, 2009; O'Cass and Frost, 2002; Wiedmann et al., 2009; Truong et al., 2010). To date, second-hand luxury has been neither empirically nor theoretically discussed in the field of luxury consumption research. Therefore, our theoretical discussion builds upon the existing research, focusing especially on luxury branded products and consumers' motives for acquiring them. To this end, we discuss the dimensions through which luxury in branded products has been defined and differentiated from non-luxury items.\n3. Perspectives on second-hand consumption: To understand the meanings related to second-hand luxury, it is necessary to discuss the meanings that consumers attach to acquiring used products. By doing so, we draw on the literature that focuses on second-hand consumption, particularly with respect to cherished possessions and the meanings related to them, especially in the case of collections.\n4. Methodology: The empirical data for this study were generated through qualitative interviews with ten Finnish women in the fall of 2012. All ten informants were fashion blog writers possessing luxury items that they had purchased both as brand new and as second-hand. The informants' ages varied between 25 and 40 years. They represented different demographic backgrounds with diverse economic resources and were interested and involved in fashion apparel and accessories. The informants were chosen purposively to enhance the understanding of the meanings attached to second-hand luxury possessions. To obtain relevant empirical data, it was, therefore, reasonable to choose informants who have access to and an interest in both luxury and second-hand luxury items. The interest in this study lies in \"consumers of luxury brands\" instead of \"luxury consumers\". \"Luxury consumers\" are regarded as a restricted group of people defined by financial limits and consumption preferences with specific lifestyles (Wiedmann et al., 2009). \"Consumers of luxury brands\", instead, represent consumers from diverse income levels and are regarded as a suitable target group with diverse consumption from mass-market fashion to high luxury fashion.\n5. Meanings attached to second-hand luxury possessions: The current findings highlight that the informants discussed and evaluated second-hand luxury possessions through five meaning themes: Sustainable Choice, Real Deal, Pre-loved Treasure, Risk Investment and Unique Find. Below, these meaning themes are elaborated in depth and exemplified with quotations from the current data. It is important to note that the five meaning themes are overlapping and non-exclusive, so that several meanings may have come up in one interview, and a specific second-hand luxury possession could be connected with varied meanings. For example, a second-hand handbag could be attached not only to the meanings of sustainability but also to individuality and differentiating oneself from the masses with unique products.\n6. Discussion: On the basis of the current data, we have identified five meaning themes that represent the variety of meanings that are attached to second-hand luxury possessions. Figure 1 illuminates how these meanings can be positioned along the dimensions between social - individual and authentic - inauthentic to structure the phenomenon of second-hand luxury consumption. The first dimension exemplifies how the symbolic value of the luxury possession can be manifested through self-related motivations or through social-related motivations. The second dimension shows how the authenticity of the possession appears to be an important characteristic when discussing second-hand luxury possessions.\n7. Conclusions: At the beginning, we asked whether a luxury possession that is bought second-hand can still be perceived as luxury or not. On the basis of this study, we end up claiming that the experience of luxury can be transferred from one owner to another in the second-hand markets. In fact, we uncovered that second-hand luxury possessions may hold even deeper meanings for their owners, and consumers develop even closer relationships with them than with brand-new luxury products. This is because the owners of second-hand luxury items appear to have more active and even empowered roles when acquiring these possessions, and therefore, the experience of luxury is co-created with the consumer(s), the luxury product, the luxury brand and the distribution channel.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to shed light on the consumption of second-hand luxury brands, identifying the meanings attached to second-hand luxury possessions in the context of fashion and, specifically, in the case of luxury accessories. Prior discussions of luxury consumption and marketing have focused on brand-new luxury goods, thus largely neglecting the emergence of markets for used luxury products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The empirical data for this study were generated through interviews with ten Finnish women and through fashion blogs concerning luxury goods that are bought second-hand.\nFindings: The findings show that second-hand luxury possessions are characterized by five different meaning themes: Sustainable Choice, Real Deal, Pre-loved Treasure, Risk Investment and Unique Find. The study highlights how consumers are able to achieve luxury experiences even without exclusive service, as the informants attached meanings of luxury to second-hand luxury possessions, especially with regard to the symbolic value and authenticity of the product. However, the meaning of authenticity appears to be a double-edged sword in this context, as consumers may also consider that they are taking a financial as well as reputational risk when acquiring a previously owned luxury item.\nOriginality/value: This study brings forward novel viewpoints to discussions on luxury brand marketing by connecting the issue with the topical phenomenon of second-hand and luxury consumption. The study suggests important managerial implications for luxury brand marketers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Deja vu 4 U
|
[
"Public health",
"Government",
"Australia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Front page stories of significant adverse events, preventable deaths, extensive waiting lists for surgery and resulting multiple patient safety reviews and enquiries across a nation pressure politicians of all persuasions to propagate corrective policies. The objectives of these policies are twofold. In no particular order, they are to improve the system and to garner votes for election. The measure of which is the more important in the minds of the proposing politicians is how cosmetic is the proposed \"surgery\" on healthcare?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to describe early developments in the Australian healthcare agenda stemming from a recent change in national government.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach is to give the perspectives of an interested observer and stakeholder.\nFindings: - Healthcare looms large in any democratic election agenda. Promises are made that possess international echoes. Delivery of health care reform in the first few months of the new Australian Labor [sic] Government comply with these suppositions. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose=the more things change, the more they stay the same.\nOriginality/value: - Health care changes in Australia are drawn to the attention of an international audience.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Impact of relational differences on supervisor/subordinate dyad
|
[
"Job satisfaction",
"Demography",
"Age groups",
"Gender",
"Workplace"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This study was designed to assess the impact of age and gender differences between human resources (HR) professionals and their supervisors on the job satisfaction and organizational commitment levels of the professionals. Shore et al. (2003) identify relational demography as the theoretical underpinning of supervisor and subordinate relationships. Relational demography research, based upon social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987), generally supports the proposition that age and gender diversity within the supervisor/subordinate dyad will negatively impact the subordinate's satisfaction with and commitment to the organization.This focus on the impact of demographic diversity within the supervisor/subordinate dyad is particularly important in light of the demographic revolution currently underway in the US due to the rapid aging of the workforce (Crampton et al., 1996). Boomers are maturing, people are living longer and the birthrate is declining (Crampton et al., 1996). Although managers must adapt to the increasing number of older workers, many managers are uncomfortable with supervising employees who may be their parent's age (Crampton et al., 1996). Alternately, older workers may be equally uncomfortable being supervised by super-ordinates as young as their children. In both cases, awkwardness may be apparent because traditional societal structures, such as the family, reserve positions of authority and responsibility for older, male family members. It is expected that the dynamics of the older-worker/younger-supervisor dyad will make both participants uncomfortable and that this lack of comfort will be manifested in lower levels of satisfaction and commitment. Since employees are a firm's greatest asset (Motwani et al., 1993), and managers are frequently searching for methods, techniques, and processes that will improve employee performance, an investigation of the age and gender differences becomes important (Green et al., 2004).Over the past three decades, the percentages of women generally in the workforce and specifically in the managerial ranks have dramatically increased (Kravitz, 2003). These trends increase the likelihood that supervisors will be female. Discomfort may be associated with working for a supervisor of a different gender. Pelled et al. (1999) state that employees may find it difficult to identify with others of a different age and gender. Subordinates with significantly older or younger supervisors of a different gender are, therefore, likely to experience discomfort that may result in reduced job satisfaction and reduced organizational commitment on the subordinate's part.A national survey of HR managers working in the US manufacturing sector was conducted to collect data related to:1. age and gender differences between managers and their supervisors; and2. the managers' levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.The following section incorporates a review of the literature and develops the study hypotheses. A description of the methodology used to assess the hypotheses is then presented and is followed by discussion of the results of the study. The results section includes a description of the sample, assessment of the reliability and validity of the study scales, and a presentation of the ANOVA results. Finally, a conclusions section is provided which summarizes results of the study, describes the limitations of the study and the need for future research, and discusses the implications of the study results for practicing managers.\nLiterature review and hypotheses: Relational demography\nResults: The sample\nConclusions: This national survey of HR professionals working for large US manufacturers yielded surprising results. The manufacturing organizations surveyed are in relatively mature industries and likely have well established HR functions. Relational demography theory and the published results of previous studies support the general proposition that subordinates who are different in age and gender from their supervisors are less satisfied with their jobs and less committed to their organizations than other subordinates. The results of this particular study do not support the general proposition. HR professionals were found to be unaffected by age and gender diversity. While these results were initially surprising, consideration of the moderating impact of managerial interventions to minimize and even reverse the negative effects offers potential explanation.While it is believed that this study fulfills its intended purpose and makes a valuable contribution to the relational demography research, several limitations should be noted. The first limitation relates to the population surveyed. Of the 279 respondents, 78 (28 percent) are female. The US Census Bureau (2003) reports that 30.7 percent of the 2002 manufacturing labor force in the US is female. As shown in Table II, only 22 of the respondents had female supervisors. Although it appears that the number of females and, in particular, female supervisors is under represented in the sample, it is likely that the sample accurately reflects the current status of the manufacturing labor force. It should be noted, however, that the study focused on gender differential as opposed to gender classification. A future survey of HR professionals in the services sector, where 62.3 percent of the workforce is female (US Census Bureau, 2003), might serve to alleviate some of the concerns related to relatively low absolute number of female respondents and female supervisors. Another limitation relates to the inability to classify the sample according to background variables related to the proportion of manufacturing activities conducted or outsourced abroad. Because respondents were assured of anonymity, it was not possible to identify specific companies and obtain financial statements. A final concern relates to the absence of measures of the individual and organizational strategies that might moderate the negative impact of demographic dissimilarity in the workplace. These concerns may only be addressed with future research that strives to determine precisely why HR professionals appear immune to age and gender diversity.Further research is necessary to determine whether the implication can be supported and extended to include other measures of diversity, such as race, education level, and cultural background for HR professionals. It is additionally important to determine whether the specialized knowledge and skills possessed by HR professionals have, in fact, resulted in workplace strategies that mitigate the negative impact of diversity. If this is the case, it is also important to determine whether the specialized knowledge and skills can be successfully transferred to other categories of employees with similar results.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Prior research indicates that workplace diversity negatively impacts the job satisfaction and organizational commitment levels of minority workers. This study investigates the impact of age and gender diversity between human resources (HR) professionals and their supervisors on the satisfaction and commitment levels of the professionals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data from 279 HR professionals employed by large US manufacturers were collected using a traditional mail methodology and were analyzed using ANOVA.\nFindings: - Neither age differential, gender differential nor age and gender differential interaction were found to impact the job satisfaction and organizational commitment levels of HR professionals.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Although it appears that the number of females and, in particular, female supervisors is under represented in the sample, it is likely that the sample accurately reflects the current status of the manufacturing labor force.\nPractical implications: - The negative impact on supervisor/subordinate relationships of demographic differences may be mitigated through the implementation of diversity management strategies, such as those adopted by HR professionals.\nOriginality/value: - These unexpected findings may be attributed to the heightened awareness of diversity-related legislation and regulation on the part of HR professionals. Additionally, HR professionals as a group are likely more attuned to the potential negative impact of workplace diversity and more skilled in applying workplace strategies to minimize the negative impact of such diversity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Factors influencing knowledge productivity in German research groups: lessons for developing countries
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Knowledge creation",
"Innovation",
"Developing countries",
"Germany"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Publicly funded basic research can facilitate economic growth by increasing the stock of useful knowledge and creating new firms or enhancing the opportunities of existing private firms to innovate (Nelson and Rosenberg, 1994; Dasgupta and David, 1994; Martin et al., 1996). Scientific research, however, is an expensive process and there is no straightforward relationship between inputs in terms of money and personnel, and outputs in terms of knowledge. Developing countries are confronted with the problem of catching up with the leading knowledge producers in order to be internationally competitive while having only scarce scientific resources available. An efficient allocation of research resources is therefore particularly important for them.Since developing countries have accumulated only little experience with scientific research, it is essential for them to understand the research practice of the relatively successful science systems of the large \"knowledge producers\" - above all US, Japan and Germany. This is true even if developing countries cannot simply take over the practices in these countries because of cultural and infrastructural differences. Nevertheless, understanding the factors of success in scientifically advanced countries may be helpful for developing countries in order to assimilate the research management practices of leading knowledge producers in a modified form.Germany is among the four largest knowledge producers in the world in terms of papers published and money spent (National Science Board, 2004; OECD, 2005). Moreover, it shares with China, Japan and other non English-speaking countries the problem that if their scientists publish in international journals they have to do so in a foreign language (English). Therefore, in this paper, the authors regard Germany as a relevant case study and explore whether and how developing countries might learn from it.Exploring the relationship between inputs and outputs of research is a straightforward way of measuring research productivity. A combination of cost-benefit analysis and evaluation of research results has therefore been used by several scholars (e.g. Herbertz and Mueller-Hill, 1995; Healey et al., 1988; Salter and Martin, 2001; Guan and Wang, 2004). Practice and research, however, have demonstrated that besides the availability of resources, knowledge management is relevant for knowledge creation efficiency in organizations: the better knowledge management is, the higher is ceteri paribus the productivity (Rubenstein-Montano et al., 2001).There are only few studies that focus on specific scientific organizations and explore how organizational factors like knowledge management influence research productivity. The UNESCO in 2002 indicated that \"case studies of good practice and benchmarking, the more efficient exchange of that information, were strongly recommended\" (Braddock and Neave, 2002). In this article, a social-scientific approach is used to address the question of the impact of knowledge management on research productivity instead of directly measuring knowledge productivity of research groups by a comparison of inputs and outputs.\nKnowledge management and knowledge creation theory: \"Knowledge management\" in a broad sense consists of systems, mechanisms and routines implemented by organizations to ensure that the right knowledge is available to the right person at the right time. \"Knowledge creation\" is a process that produces new knowledge. The availability of existing knowledge in this sense is an important prerequisite for knowledge creation. Knowledge management and knowledge creation hence interrelate and overlap, and knowledge management is regarded as a strong facilitator of knowledge creation (Rubenstein-Montano et al., 2001). While knowledge management has been studied by many scholars (e.g. Demarest, 1997; Henriksen, 2001; McInerney, 2002; Blair, 2002), knowledge creation has only been addressed by few researchers. The most prominent contributions to knowledge creation theory, so far, come from Nonaka and Tackeuchi (1995) and Krogh (1998).Nonaka and Tackeuchi (1995) outline the process by which an individual's personal knowledge (tacit) can be transformed into organizational knowledge (explicit) that contributes to the success of the company as a whole. They regard knowledge creation as a \"spiral of knowledge\" in which new knowledge is created in an iterative process of internalization, socialization, externalization, and combination of knowledge. Their pioneering theoretical framework of knowledge creation makes the process of knowledge creation intelligible for research. So far, their four-process model has been applied to information theory (Lueg, 2002), innovation theory (Hall and Andriani, 2002), the culture of knowledge management (Blanzieri et al., 2003) and has been used as model in several other empirical studies (e.g. Conradi and Dyba, 2001).For Krogh (1998) the knowledge creation process is composed of two types of sub-processes: individual (self-governing) and social (public, collective) processes. In individual processes, individuals learn and think for themselves, thus these processes are impervious to the organizational context. Collective processes, however, involve interaction with others and thus are strongly influenced by the structure and culture of the organization.Because of the different organizational goals of academic research organizations and private companies, knowledge creation in research organizations has some features that differ from those of knowledge creation in companies. The principal goal of academic research organizations (in basic science) is the publication of research results. Considering this goal, the authors propose a modification of the model of Nonaka and Takeuchi, furthermore incorporating the basic distinction of Krogh between individual and collective processes. Figure 1 shows a modified model that seems better suited to research organizations than the original Nonaka-Takeuchi model. The model divides the knowledge creation process into five sub-processes in terms of their function: knowledge acquisition, idea forming, knowledge sharing, idea modification, and knowledge expression. Using Krogh's theory, a distinction between individual knowledge creation processes (gray boxes in Figure 1) and collective knowledge creation processes (white boxes) is made.\"Knowledge acquisition\" is the process of searching for and obtaining new information from all kinds of knowledge sources. Since seeking new scientific information requires access to organizational resources, e.g. libraries, literature databases, online journals or the internet, knowledge acquisition in research groups is considered a social process. Based on the knowledge acquired in the first step researchers may develop some genuinely new ideas. This process depends on the individual knowledge accumulation and the creativity of the researcher. Thus, \"idea forming\" is an individual process. New ideas, however, at first are just subjective beliefs. Sharing these ideas with colleagues, exposing them to their criticism and listening to their further insights is the next step towards inter-subjectively accepted knowledge. \"Knowledge sharing\" thus is a social process. Cognitively responding to criticism or incorporating new aspects gathered from communication with colleagues may lead to a revision and improvement of the initial idea. However, this process again depends primarily on the creativity and ingenuity of the individual researcher. \"Idea modification\" is thus an individual process.The first four steps of the model (knowledge acquisition, idea forming, knowledge sharing and idea modification) should be considered a circular iterative process. After several cycles, a mature insight may be formed. Then, researchers \"express\" their new knowledge by means of conference presentations and publications. In doing so, they have to interact with co-authors, journals, conference organizers, reviewers, translators or technical editors. The final process of \"knowledge expression\" hence is also a social process.The individual processes (idea forming and idea modification) are mainly determined by the accumulated knowledge, expertise, psychological features and creativity of individual researchers. Improving the individual processes, from an organizational perspective, is only possible by indirect measures of personnel recruitment and creation of an environment in which individual skills are developed and activated (human resources development). Productivity differences of individual scientists have been studied, for example, by Allison and Stewart (1974) and Levin and Stephan (1991). However, previous research suggests that compared to individual creativity, organizational creativity has a stronger association with innovation performance (Bharadwaj and Menon, 2000; Amabile et al., 1996).This article hence focuses on the organizational level and tries to identify some factors influencing knowledge productivity in research groups. The research focuses in detail on the three mentioned social knowledge creation processes. These processes, however, are crucially dependent on organizational institutions, routines, resources and culture, and thus can directly be influenced by the management of the organization.\nResearch design: The aim of the empirical survey described here is to analyze the practice of knowledge management in German research groups and its perceived efficiency by the leaders of these groups. This research problem is addressed by a case-study approach, conducting in-depth face-to-face interviews with the heads of 15 German research groups. These interviews took place in June-September 2003. Due to the small sample size and the focus on only one research area they cannot be understood as being representative; this survey must be considered a pilot study testing the usefulness of this empirical approach for the analysis of knowledge management practices and efficiency. As Braddock and Neave (2002) have noted, different fields need different management arrangements and procedures. In order to allow a meaningful comparison between the cases studied, the sample is limited to physics as a prototypical scientific discipline.Sample\nFindings: Subjective factors of research efficiency\nDiscussion and conclusions: Limitations of the empirical approach\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims at studying implicit knowledge management practices in research groups using a theoretical model of knowledge creation. The goal is to identify factors that contribute to high knowledge productivity. Based on the findings of a study of German research groups, implications for developing countries shall be discussed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 15 in-depth face-to-face interviews with heads of German academic research groups in the field of physics were conducted. The questions referred to the current practices of knowledge creation and knowledge management and to the subjective assessments of these practices.\nFindings: - The study identified human resource management as the weakness of the German knowledge management practice. There seems to be an inherent contradiction between the goals of attracting promising students to a career in science and securing mobility. Knowledge management and infrastructure otherwise seems well-developed and the heads of research groups consider themselves very important for knowledge productivity.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Because of the small sample-size and the limitation to only one research field and one country the results cannot be generalized. The survey thus has to be regarded as a pilot study.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides useful information on factors influencing knowledge productivity in research groups.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Money ethic, moral conduct and work related attitudes: Field study from the public sector in Swaziland
|
[
"Ethics",
"Corruption",
"Money",
"Public sector organizations",
"Swaziland"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is a changing value of money in virtually all societies across the world. Its importance in most societies is however not controversial. Employers and management of organisations have used money as an instrument to attract, retain and motivate employees because money has significant impact on the behaviour of employees, their performance and organisational effectiveness (Heneman, 1992; Lawler, 1990; Tang et al., 1998, 2000a). In the money and individual difference measurement literature, the money ethic scale (MES) is one of the most \"well-developed\" and systematically used measures of money attitude (Mitchell and Mickel, 1999, p. 571). Tang and his associates developed the MES, which assesses people's general positive attitude towards money; they also investigated the psychological meaning of money (Tang et al., 1998, 2000a). Even though reportedly used in several studies across the world, the MES has probably not been used in Africa before.Money attitudes is in part influenced by culture and the needs of society within that culture as reflected in cross-cultural studies which have attempted to interpret the relationship between culture and ethical decision making (Robertson and Fadil, 1998). Results from empirical studies that have examined the effect of culture on ethics have consistently shown a strong relationship between these two variables (Robertson, 1993). An understanding of these efforts is critical in the identification of how cultural differences can lead to misunderstanding of improper behaviour and policies across borders (Robertson and Fadil, 1998). Schlegelmilch and Robertson (1995) in a comprehensive cross-cultural study conducted on business ethics determined that an individual's culture and the industry of his/her occupation have the strongest influence on the perception of ethical issues. Overall, the results from the study suggest that different cultural backgrounds and surroundings alter managerial concerns based on the context of the specific ethical issue. Like Schlegelmilch and Robertson (1995), Husted et al. (1996) concurred on the importance of the influence of culture on ethical reasoning noting that culture may affect ethical reasoning even if ethical decisions are similar. In a nationwide poll of money attitudes involving 20,000 people, Rubenstein (1981) showed that 14 per cent of the people in the study ranked \"money\" above all else and 62 per cent rank money among the top three when they were asked to rank all six important topics:1. politics;2. sex;3. money;4. family;5. work; and6. income.The major purpose of the present study is to investigate the perception of ethical and moral conduct in the public sector in Swaziland, specifically, the relationship among money ethic, attitude towards business ethics, corruption perception, turnover intention, job performance, job satisfaction, and the demographic profile of respondents. The study attempts to answer the following research questions:* Examine the relationship between money ethic and attitude towards business ethics.* Examine the response to the money ethic scale (MES) in another cultural milieu - Swaziland.* Investigate the general perception of bribery and corruption in Swaziland.* Evaluate the intercorrelations among the MES, attitude towards business ethics, corruption perception and other variables namely: turnover intention, job satisfaction, self-rated job performance and the demographic profile of respondents.\nMethodology: Sample and respondents characteristics\nFindings: In this study, we seek to investigate the relationship among money ethic, attitude towards business ethics, corruption perception, turnover intention, job performance, job satisfaction, and several demographic characteristics. This would enable us make some predictions about moral conduct and attitude towards ethical issues in the public sector. Pearson's intercorrelation coefficients were calculated to present the general results for all the study variables as shown in Table I.Results show evidence of significant intercorrelation among the MES and its three component factors of evil, budget and success confirming internal validity of the composite all item MES. Tang et al. (2000b, 2002, 2004) had used these three factors in their works. The composite MES was significantly and positively related to attitude towards business ethics and job performance of all study variables. Seemingly, individuals may override ethical values for short-term gains of the business and love for money. Alternatively, it can be argued that love for money may lead individuals to compromise ethical standards. It is equally arguable that increased awareness of correct ethical conduct and an increasing emphasis on a corporate responsible behaviour in the globalised context may enhance moral conduct without necessarily hindering long-term productivity improvements. Organisations and indeed individuals may therefore, have to weigh the cons and pros of their actions, particularly because of the value of transparency, democracy and accountability in the public sector. The positive relationship between money ethic and job performance signify the importance of money as a motivator. This is an interesting result as the motivational impact of money is downplayed by some behavioural theorists (e.g. Herzberg et al., 1967; Herzberg, 1968a). This may be linked to the developing status of Swaziland and its related needs. There are implications of this finding on employment relationship, that is, if money is construed to be insufficient, as is generally the case, employees may revolt. Thus most industrial strife in Swaziland tends to be over salaries. This is similar to the happenings in many other African countries.When the MES was broken down into its three factors (evil, budget and success), results indicated a significant positive relationship between evil and gender (r=0.25, p<0.05), between budget and job satisfaction (r=0.33, p<0.01), and between success and job performance (r=0.35, p<0.01). With the limited interpretation permissible in correlational analysis, our findings may thus suggest that males tend to view money as evil more than females, those who budget their money well tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, and those who view money as linked to success tend to rate their job performance higher.Turnover intention was significantly but inversely related to experience, age and job satisfaction while these same variables were significantly but positively related with job performance. The inverse relationship between turnover intention and job satisfaction, indicates that an unhappy worker is likely to leave the organisation. This has implications for managers because it reinforces the need to create and sustain hygiene factors in the work environment as supported by Herzberg et al. (1967) and Herzberg (1968b). This will further enhance job performance as supported by the positive relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. These are all in line with previous literature (e.g. Staw, 1980; Iaffaldano and Muchinsky, 1985). Again this inverse relationship has the implications that employees that change jobs frequently may not acquire the necessary experience required to excel in a job, and therefore has costs implications for the organisation. Nonetheless, changing jobs is encouraged in contemporary workplace to facilitate greater flexibility and adaptability to current work demands. The four-item corruption perception measure developed for this study was significantly and positively related only to attitude towards business ethics. It can be inferred from the positive relationship that unethical practices at organisational level may exacerbate corrupt business practices among organisational members and hence perpetrate corruption at national level. There were also significant intercorrelations amongst the demographic profiles but this is of secondary interest to the present study.The measure of money ethic using the MES is of significant interest to the present study. Table II shows the extent of agreement or disagreement with the six-item measure of money ethic in our sample.About 76 per cent disagree that money is evil and 55 per cent disagree that money is the root of all evils. This possibly indicates the high premium and \"affection\" that people generally have for money, it is also a tacit rejection of the popular religious phrase along these lines. It is equally interesting that about 63 per cent of respondents agree that they budget their money very well and another 63 per cent agree that they use their money carefully. Still on the money ethic scale, 57 per cent agree that money symbolises success while 59 per cent agree that money represents one's achievement. Respondents were also asked to assess the involvement of their peers, civil servants, the private sector, foreigners and Swazi nationals in corruption on a four-point scale of none, low, moderate, and high (Table III). The respondents were again asked to agree or disagree with four statements to assess their perception of corruption in Swaziland (Table IV).Over 70 per cent of the respondents hold that civil servants involvement in corruption is high, 55 per cent for foreigners and 45 per cent for Swazis. Respondents however indicate that the involvement of the private sector in corruption is moderate (36 per cent) and rated their peers as being uninvolved to low involvement in corruption (none - 33 percent) and low (29 per cent). Results from Table IV indicate that about 75 per cent of respondents agree that bribery and corruption is widespread in Swaziland. Similarly, about 63 percent agree that individuals pay bribes and tips to get things done while 48 per cent hold the same view that organisations have to pay bribes and tips to get things done. It is somewhat comforting, however, that about 42 per cent agreed that they could seek (and possibly obtain) redress through another official if a public official acts against the rules, with 27 per cent being indifferent.\nDiscussion: This study set out to conduct a preliminary investigation for a larger study on ethics and moral conduct in the private and public sector in Swaziland. We tested some corruption perception measures in the public sector of Swaziland. Ethical issues are usually difficult and complicated to investigate, especially because there is never an assurance that respondents are not giving socially desirable responses.Conceptual understanding and measurement of money attitudes has improved since the effort of Tang and his associates to simplify their earlier measure leading to the present six-item measure (Tang et al., 2002). Our results indicated the MES was significantly related to attitude towards business ethics and job performance of all study variables. The usefulness of the scale to predict satisfaction, organisational commitment and actual turnover behaviour has been previously reported in the literature (Tang et al., 2000a, b, 2002). Our result however neither indicated support for the predicted money ethic - turnover intention relationship nor the money ethic - satisfaction relationship reported in the literature, as the relationships were both weak and insignificant. Perhaps this is as a result of the single item global measure utilised in the present study as opposed to the job descriptive index (JDI) and other multi-item scales employed by other studies for measuring job satisfaction (e.g. Tang et al., 2002). Many other scales have items reflecting satisfaction with pay that our global measure lack (e.g. Tang et al., 2000b). Also the present study measures turnover intention and not the turnover behaviour explored by prior studies. While it is normal to expect that people's attitude toward business ethics should not be too different from their money ethic values; it is however interesting to note that money ethic is positively and significantly related to self rated job performance, a view that has been subtly disputed by some behavioural scientist (e.g. Herzberg, 1968a, b). Nonetheless, some researchers have also confirmed the relationship (e.g. Rubenstein, 1981). People who rated themselves highly on job performance also had high scores on the MES.It is also illuminating to discover that a significant percentage of the respondents (70 per cent) believe that civil servants' involvement in corruption is high, while 75 per cent of respondents hold that bribery and corruption is widespread in Swaziland. The agreement of about 63 per cent that individuals pay bribes and tips to get things done and 48 per cent that organisations have to pay bribes and tips to get things done are certainly not very encouraging figures with respect to corrupt practices in the country. The annual worldwide Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TICPI) has not included Swaziland in its African sample in its recent surveys and therefore one does not have a comparative figure to make an assessment on how the country compare with its neighbours and other African countries.One argument that may prove extremely difficult for behaviourists to make is that money does not motivate, whereas a simple argument one can make that will cut across cultures and nations is that money can serve as a motivator. This is perhaps why the two seeming religiously leaned statements of money being evil and money being the root of all evil did not receive support from most of the respondents. The value of money in many parts of Africa where poverty is so pervasive is needless to emphasise. This again perhaps explains why majority of the respondents agrees that money symbolises success and achievement and this probably cuts across cultures and nations in today's world. Tang et al. (2002) noted that in a material-oriented society like the USA, almost all people work for their money and for most people the more money they have the better. African societies are increasingly treading this line. Even though Swaziland is a monarchy, yet the distribution of wealth in the country is significantly more egalitarian compared with the USA and many African nations, excepting the royal family and their proxies, nevertheless money is very important among the people.Managerial and policy implications\nConclusions: This paper has established some important elements in ethical awareness, the importance of money in another cultural setting, the current state of corruption perception, and the various inter-linkages amongst the study variables. This study also provides a groundwork to further examine money attitudes and other work related attitudes and behaviours. Perhaps it is critical to begin to identify and separate issues of ethical conduct that are strictly moral and those with purely business dimension. The workplace is changing so rapidly that the opportunity to set ethical agendas by the management of organisations is both timely and urgent.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study aims to investigate perception of ethical and moral conduct in the public sector in Swaziland, specifically, the relationship among: money ethic, attitude towards business ethics, corruption perception, turnover intention, job performance, job satisfaction, and the demographic profile of respondents.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study was a survey using self-administered questionnaires. Using stratified sampling technique in selected organisations, usable data were collected from 83 public sector employees in Swaziland.\nFindings: - Results indicated significant relationship among money ethic, attitude towards business ethics, turnover intention and job performance. The importance of money as a motivator was also demonstrated. Respondents hold that civil servants' involvement in corruption is high and that bribery and corruption is widespread in Swaziland.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The sample size was small and hence limits generalisation of findings, but provides preliminary information for a larger study. The need to enrich future studies with in-depth follow-up interviews was noted.\nPractical implications: - The respondents' perception of widespread corruption calls for a reinvigoration of government anti-graft efforts and the need to promote ethical consciousness in the country.\nOriginality/value: - This paper has demonstrated the importance of ethical awareness, the importance of money as a motivator and the state of corruption in another cultural setting - Swaziland.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
It's not all about money: the role of identity in perceived fairness of targeted promotions
|
[
"Perceived value",
"Price fairness",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Relational identity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Imagine you have just bought a camera. While chatting with a friend, you learn she had just bought the same camera paying less than you by using a coupon the retailer had sent to her home. How would you feel about paying a higher price than your friend even though you think the regular price of the camera is reasonable? What if you know your friend is a very savvy shopper and knows where to search for coupons? Do you think the retailer was unfair? Do you blame yourself for not searching? Or do you think you just are not lucky?\n2. Targeted promotions: A targeted promotion has three components embedded in it. First, by definition it is selective. When a promotion is targeted, it means not all potential customers would receive it or be eligible. Hence, different targeted promotions vary by how selective they are (e.g. a small vs a large percentage of customers receive the offer). Research has examined the effect of selectivity (i.e. exclusivity) from the perspective of the targeted customers and identified its positive effect (Barone and Roy, 2010a, 2010b).\n3. Hypotheses: 3.1 Perceived price fairness and social comparisons\n4. Studies: 4.1 Study 1\n5. General discussion: In three studies, we examined the effect of targeted price promotions from the perspective of customers who do not receive an opportunity to pay a reduced price. To do so we put targeted promotions in a triangular relationship involving three parties: the seller, the targeted buyer and the non-targeted buyer. While it is not surprising non-targeted buyers consider targeted promotions unfair, we show that a primary reason is centered more on damage to customer relational identity than the economics of reduced perceived value, as demonstrated in Study 1. More importantly, we further investigated the dynamics of how the effect varied when the focus shifts between a buyer-seller to a buyer-buyer relationship.\n6. Implications and limitations: While a targeted promotion is effective in enhancing satisfaction of target consumers, it is important to be careful so that it does not alienate customers who are not targeted. Our research indicates non-targeted customers are sensitive to whoever initiates the targeting. A promotion framed as because of targeted consumers' own activities, such as their search, is perceived to be more fair than a promotion initiated by the seller. Therefore, it is important to provide customers some control. Customer-discovered price discounts are perceived to be more fair than those initiated directly by the seller. If customers attribute a price discrepancy to another customer's behavior or knowledge, it will be perceived as more fair than seller-granted price discounts. Therefore, companies should try to understand target customers' search behaviors and media preferences to facilitate discovery rather than direct targeting while enhancing the effectiveness of the segmentation schema (Shor and Oliver, 2006).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the effect of targeted promotions on perceptions of fairness from the perspective of consumers who are not targeted.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A scenario-based approach is used. Three studies manipulating promotion selectivity and various bases for promotion selection were conducted. A total of 403 people participated in the studies.\nFindings: Results showed that these consumers consider targeted promotions unfair, and the primary reason is centered more on damage to relational identity than the economics of reduced perceived value. The effect is moderated by how the targeted promotion is delivered (buyer-discovered vs seller-delivered) and different basis for selection.\nPractical implications: As companies adopting the practice of dynamic pricing such as targeted promotion, it is important to manage relationship with their consumers. Framing targeted promotions that reduce the salience of seller's role and provide explanations that not attributed to buyer-seller relationship are important in reducing the potential damage of targeted promotion on relational identity.\nOriginality/value: Existing research on perceptions of price fairness has focused on the role of perceived value. This research tested the relative effect of perceived value, relational identity and personal identity in the context of targeted promotion and identified relational identity as the major mechanism.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Leading schools with migrant children in Shanghai: Understanding policies and practices
|
[
"School leadership",
"High-needs schools",
"Migrant children",
"Shanghai PISA"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The education of millions of migrant children in China's burgeoning metropolises has been highlighted by debates around Shanghai's world-leading 2009 and 2012 performance on the programme for international student assessment (PISA). The outstanding performance of Shanghai students in PISA has elicited widespread controversy, both within China and internationally, about the credibility and representativeness of the data (Xu and Dronkers, 2016). One of the key debates was whether the large number of migrant children living in Shanghai were included in the formal education system and, thus, represented in the PISA sample (Loveless, 2013; Roberts, 2013). For example, by using the title of \"PISA's China Problem\", Loveless (2013, 2014) argued that the Chinese Household Registration system (hukou) had a devastating effect on the lives of these migrant children, and that this might not be evident in the Shanghai PISA data.\nHukou and migrant children: The education of migrant children has become a major social issue, mainly because of the barriers of hukou. Hukou is a form of population registration legalised in the 1950s in China (Chan and Zhang, 1999). The hukou system has two main purposes. The first, is to restrict the flow of rural populations to the cities. The second is to regulate resource distribution (Xu and Dronkers, 2016). Because of the impediments imposed by the hukou system, there was little inward migration to major urban centres (within China) until the 1980s. However, as the economic boom gathered momentum in the early 1990s, \"large-scale rural-to-urban migration\" became necessary to maintain the economic engine (Goodburn, 2009, p. 496). As the gates to the cities opened, the purpose of the hukou system became less and less about restricting the movement of rural populations, but maintained its function as an important credentialing mechanism for access to benefits and resources in destination cities (Xu and Dronkers, 2016).\nPolicies on migrant children's education[1]: Since the early 2000s, various initiatives have been implemented to expand educational opportunities and improve the quality of education provided for migrant children.\nLeadership practices: accounts of four school principals: This section presents some empirical findings about who the leaders of the migrant children's schools are and how they lead their schools. Little research has been done in this area. Due to the scope of this paper, we do not provide a detailed account of the interview data; rather, after introducing the basics of the study, we synthesise some of the common leadership strategies adopted by four principals.\nDiscussion: The study examined how principals leading migrant children's schools strived to turn around student and teacher performance over a number of years. These principals selectively adopted multiple leadership strategies at different development stages of the schools. This section briefly discusses the supporting and hindering factors that influence the leadership strategies of the principals; it then explores the implications for understanding school leadership and education quality and equity in Shanghai.\nConclusion: Shanghai's PISA success has impressed the world. However, it has also aroused an amount of scepticism about whether migrant children were included in the PISA sample and whether these students receive an education equivalent to their local peers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is threefold: to sketch the current policy context that frames the education of migrant children in Shanghai; to explore the work lives of school leaders in the privately owned but government-supported schools; and to understand the socio-cultural and educational factors that shape the leadership practices in these schools.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper drew from publicly accessible policy papers and interview data with four principals leading migrant children's schools in Shanghai.\nFindings: Migrant children's schools have received increasing policy recognition and attention. Principals of these schools have strived to adopt various leadership strategies to enhance the quality of education as received by migrant children. However, due to the institutional barriers such as hukou, multiple challenges continue to face migrant children and leaders leading migrant schools.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the first few papers that collected data from principals leading migrant children's schools. The paper contributes to further understandings about leadership in high-needs school context and about education quality and equity in relation to programme for international student assessment success in Shanghai.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Using historic mutinies to understand defiance in modern organizations
|
[
"Leadership",
"Culture",
"Communication",
"Conflict management",
"Organizations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Revolutionary phenomena are constants in modern business environments (De Cock et al., 2007). Even within organizations, bottom-up communication from members can spur upheavals that improve the decisions of leaders. As such, top managers do not just \"figure things out\" from the top (Morrison and Milliken, 2000, 2003). The voice of members can be a positive aspect of organizational functioning. However, barriers and risks can hinder voice. Impediments such as penalties for speaking up about injustices or the absence of exit options can limit the expression of voice and drive organizational dysfunction. In extreme cases, member attempts to express voice in the face of these impediments can become organized into promotions of interest, suspensions of routines, or seizures of power (Land, 2007). On the other hand, voice is part of how innovative organizational systems revolutionize and recondition themselves.In this paper, we examine a notion of member voice that ranges so extreme as to rise to the level of possible mutiny. Our usage of the term \"upward defiance\" is intended to illustrate the friction between members and leaders that exists in such situations. It refers to a specific kind of bottom-up force, and is complementary to the more general concept of voice. It has been addressed in settings such as organizational divisions, boards of directors, entrepreneurial ventures, and academic departments (Golden-Biddle and Rao, 1997; Mallinckrodt and Leong, 1992). Research on these settings suggests that the antecedents of upward defiance include injustices, perceptions of righteousness, coordinated actions and intentions, and climates of sustained tension. Yet, the richness of current narratives is modest in comparison to historic journalistic accounts of mutiny.We examine a set of historic cases with rich documentation: detailed accounts of naval and maritime mutinies. To promote application to modern organizations, we extend voice theory to guide the analysis. The results of our undertaking help clarify the ontological status of upward defiance in modern organizational theory and shed light on its underpinnings for managers in positions of organizational power.\nMutiny and voice: We define mutiny as an organized movement by members in an organization; based on perceived injustice, marked by coordinated extra-role behavior directed upward despite barriers, and intended to subvert the existing order by usurping or overriding legitimate authority. Historically, in British military tradition, mutiny explicitly involves conspiracy and thus requires collective action (Bell and Elleman, 2003). In US military tradition, sole individuals have been convicted of mutiny (Hamby, 2002). Our definition includes multi-member coordination as well as individual disturbances of operations. Mutiny can occur by degrees within the parameters of this definition and is a common notion. For instance, the business press uses the term \"mutiny\" to describe defiance, withdrawal, or takeovers explicitly in organizations. Efforts by top management to reduce expressed employee dissatisfaction in hospitals were reported as \"team effort heads off mutiny\" (Finkel, 2003). An article entitled \"coping with mutiny\" characterized the attitudes and behaviors of survivors of organizational upheaval (Budd, 2003). An article with the headline \"the bounties of mutiny\" examined how to retain employee loyalty (Mckenna, 1990). Upward defiance is common in organizations that depend on independent contractors (MacDonald, 2005). Scholarly articles have also examined mutiny directly (Lammers, 1969) and indirectly via the dissatisfaction and concern of members (Cooper and Withey, 1989).These kinds of upward defiance are not rational organizational actions because they are extraneous to the policies and rules that govern operations. As voluntary behavior outside the bounds of organizational operations, upward defiance is thus functionally similar but conceptually opposite to organizational citizenship behavior (O'Brien and Allen, 2008). As extra-role behaviors, to be sure, voice and upward defiance are not role requirements. Whereas many extra-role behaviors contribute positively to an organization, upward defiance is not always positive because this kind of voice emerges when members are dissatisfied (Griffin et al., 2007). When barriers and risks impede voice, it can escalate further into coordinated intents, coups, or rebellions (Lammers, 1969). Voice thus provides a useful conceptual foundation for examining upward defiance.Voice refers to discretionary, upward, and endogenous communication intended to improve an organization despite the risks associated with such communication. Voice research examines the collective communication of concerns about organizational circumstances (Detert and Burris, 2007; Morrison and Milliken, 2000, 2003). Voice theory articulates a tradeoff between the risks and benefits associated with speaking up. The area stems from Hirschman's (1970) notions of members incurring dissatisfaction or recognizing opportunities for improvement but not communicating those issues to their managers. The non-communication derives from the risks associated with transmitting misgivings to authority figures with personal attachments to circumstances or lacking opportunities to exit. Voice is \"activated\" when the need to resolve an issue outweighs the risks of humiliation, demotion, or other penalties for speaking up.The circumstances created by leaders affect the benefits and risks associated with voice. Leaders are the target-of-voice, because they have the authority to make the desired changes, which pertains to the benefits of speaking up. Leaders can also administer penalties, which pertain to the risks. Voice theory holds that risks are lowered when leaders demonstrate openness and willingness to act on behalf of members (Detert and Burris, 2007). Other factors that encourage voice are traits such as internal locus of control, argumentativeness, or the quality relationships with leaders (Kassing and Avtgis, 1999). Even so, because achieving the benefits of voice can be risky, strategies have emerged for expressing voice (Kassing, 1998).Voice strategies\nHistoric examination: The relevance of mutiny has persisted formally across time and context for four centuries (Bell and Elleman, 2003). \"The Articles of War\", which guided US Navy discipline in the nineteenth century, defined the penalties for mutiny but not what constitutes a mutiny (Guttridg, 1992). Article 94 of The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), adopted in 1950 and still enforceable today, states that, \"Any person subject to this chapter who, with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny.\"Modern organizational life is not divorced from its historic and anthropological roots. The notion of mutiny in this sense derives from military service, but a mutiny can occur in any kind of organization. For instance, although industrial organizations lack the barriers to voice that exist in the military, they are more amenable to collective action based on grievances (Lammers, 1969). As such, early mutinies were common in universities (Lipset and Wolin, 1965), penitentiaries, and relocation centers (Jackman, 1957).Historically, narrative accounts of mutinies provide fascinating insights into basic dynamics (Hoffer, 1969). Their lessons are timeless but easy to forget. An act of defiance can be general or specific to a particular grievance. For example, if members intend to seize power and depose leadership, the purpose is general. However, refusal to perform in protest of inadequate conditions as a strike mechanism is specific in its purpose and may even include a list of demands. Authority relationships and compliance structures also provide context for mutinous action. Authority in mutiny contexts usually involves coercive or reward power and limits the ranges of member options. In many historic cases, the concentration of authority was virtually absolute. Some modern organizational settings, however, have analogous conditions. For example, contracted employees are subject to such power and have taken action when their autonomy is limited (MacDonald, 2005). As well, many online or virtual contexts that thrive on member contributions entail one or few leaders with extreme control over information and process.Environmental change outside an organization, based on elements such as technology or customers, can provide an ingredient for mutiny. Leaders do not always have a clear perspective on change compared to specialists who interface directly and frequently with technology and customers. On the other hand, specialists can be collectively misinformed or ignorant. Either way, the mutiny issue emerges when leadership acts against shared beliefs of members and the context disallows member voice. In such instances, factory workers have collectively frustrated authority and university faculty members have acted to depose administrative authority. The following historic cases allow a closer analysis based on the 29 documented accounts of mutinies in Table I1.Empirical case analysis\nResults: We discovered that mutinies fall into two general categories. The first one is non-cooperative refusal of duty, and was the most common form (89 percent of the sample). The second one was the more stereotypical (and more interesting) form, in which members engage in direct deposition or disposal of formal authority.Mutiny as non-cooperation\nFindings: How can historic records of famous mutinies inform management in contemporary organizational contexts? If one agrees that influence is an important part of being a leader, one implication is that mutinies are a unique view into the structure of leadership. For instance, Guttridg (1992) explained that mutinies \"reflect a gross personal failure of officership\". We reframe the notion to posit that a mutiny is a kind of extreme substitute for leadership (Kerr and Jermier, 1978). After all, the intent of a mutiny involves a definite substitution with respect to current leadership. Moreover, to the degree a mutiny leads to negative outcomes, as noted in the introduction, it is also a kind of tragedy driven by members. Aside from perspectives on leadership, our examination revealed three principal implications for managerial action:1. Manage the gap between echelons.2. Address sources of disgruntlement.3. Develop competence continuously.At first blush, the implications seem like truisms or common sense. However, our elaboration delineates features of organizational contexts missed by a general sociological approach. We show in what follows how they go beyond contributions that emphasize movements from a sociological perspective (Davis et al., 2005). We tailor our findings to management and organizational contexts, in which there are levels of authority and divisions of labor defining the structure of an organization. The presence of an external environment that evolves also adds unique aspects that do not apply to traditional examinations of mutiny (Lammers, 1969).Manage the gap between echelons\nConclusion: Whereas we focused on factors conducive to mutiny, the place of mutiny with respect to voice theory can be clarified by examining the characteristics of mutineers and situations in which mutiny does not take place. Is there a particular type of individual with the predisposition to undertake mutiny? Our research does not suggest such a type, but instead that a mutiny is a social phenomenon that emerges from relations among many people. Though the organized, coordinated aspects of mutiny usually have a ringleader, the individual typically emerges and the development of action requires more than the purview of a single individual. The individuals seen as the leaders of mutinies typically found themselves in that role, rather than having sought it. Mutiny arises from a convergence of dynamic elements in an organizational context and does not follow traditional assumptions about leaders and followers. A closer look at the \"ringleaders\" may provide insights into emergent leadership in contexts of organizational upheaval.Our focus on extreme cases of voice as mutiny allowed us to compare cases and extract underlying themes. Though our conclusions are consistent with most perspectives on voice, we cannot conclude that the conditions will result in mutiny or that their absence will preclude mutiny. Although not available in the data, future research could examine cases in which mutinies did not occur despite existence of the foundations for mutiny. If there are enough available examples of such cases, studies could identify factors that mitigate upward defiance. For example, case studies of the US Coast Guard's after Hurricane Katrina or similar cases could provide data to examine this question. The absence of the identified foundations in successful operations would strengthen the arguments about the underpinnings of mutiny.Our review of mutinies intended to explore whether authority figures in the sample engaged in identifiable patterns of behavior. The evidence suggests that they did. Mutinies occurred when there was deficiency in personal or technical competence, ignorance of member concerns and a gap between echelons. Reducing these underpinnings prevents the seeds of upward defiance from taking root.Despite our historical data, there are parallels in modern organizational life. For instance, to what extent can executives in a bureaucracy understand lower organizational levels? Our results are relevant to a broader international context. The circumstances described in this paper can be especially extreme in developing economies. Mutiny is only a failure of leadership when leaders promote conditions that foster its underpinnings. Our findings shed some light on these underpinnings and clarify what can be done to create and promote healthier contexts.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Guided by voice and leadership theory, this paper aims to articulate the underpinnings of upward defiance (competence deficiency; ignorance of concerns; structural gaps between echelons) and to describe the managerial actions that help depose those underpinnings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper analyzes 30 historic narrative accounts of actual mutinies. The journalistic accounts from bygone eras provide unparalleled insight into the basic dynamics of mutiny and provide novel insights into organizational defiance.\nFindings: - The principal findings show that the underpinnings of mutiny in organizations derive from three foundations: disconnections between authority echelons, modes of addressing member disgruntlement, and the need for management to develop continuous competencies.\nOriginality/value: - The paper goes beyond reports of mutinies in the popular press and lore by applying the findings to modern organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Demand categorisation in a European spare parts logistics network
|
[
"Inventory management",
"Demand forecasting",
"Spare parts",
"Distribution management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Demand for spare parts arises whenever a component fails or requires replacement, and as such it is different from that associated with a \"typical\" stock keeping unit (SKU) (Fortuin and Martin, 1999). Managing spare parts is an important task in modern societies, with tremendous cost implications for the organisations that are holding relevant inventories. From a theoretical perspective, the intermittent nature of the underlying demand patterns creates significant difficulties as far as both forecasting and stock control are concerned. From a practitioner perspective, the considerable investments in spare parts availability signify that very small improvements in this area may lead to substantial cost savings.An important operational issue involved in the management of spare parts is that of categorising the relevant SKUs in order to facilitate decision-making, i.e. select appropriate forecasting and stock control methods, and enable managers to focus their attention on the most \"important\" SKUs (however that is judged). This issue has been overlooked in the academic literature although it constitutes a significant opportunity for increasing spare parts availability and/or reducing inventory costs. In a recent investigation that deals with inventory control related issues for spare parts, Dekker and Bayindir (2004) noticed that despite the huge literature, developed since the 1970s, dealing with this problem, very few studies are actually considering solution implementation and with few exceptions (Ashayeri et al., 1996; Botter and Fortuin, 2000; Boylan et al., 2008; Porras and Dekker, 2008) case studies are lacking.In this paper, we explore demand classification and stock control-related opportunities for increasing service levels and reducing costs in the spare parts industry. We analyse pertinent issues through a case study of a big Japanese electronics manufacturer. Our research work has been launched along with the initiation of a project in the organisation under concern that aimed at restructuring their spare parts logistics network at the European level. The ultimate objective was to reduce lead-times and increase service availability as well as lower the overall stock levels in Europe.Our work has been conducted in collaboration with a dedicated working group in the organisation under concern, responsible for the project. The European spare parts logistics director acted as the project sponsor; the team consisted of four further members from European offices that were selected on the basis of geographical position and local set-up arrangements: Norway (Scandinavia) - small office with on-site repairs; Belgium (Central Europe) - medium size office with on-site repairs; Germany (Central Europe) - largest office with a large off-site third party repair system; UK - large office with both on-site and off-site service repair network. Spain and Italy were also included in the \"minutes\" distribution for the project.Each of the members who participated in the project was either a Service and/or a Logistics senior manager (in Norway and Belgium this was the same person; in the other two cases the Logistics managers attended). Finally, it is important to note that an accountant also participated in the meetings. Although s/he did not have an input to the concept, s/he obviously contributed in relation to costs and margin impacts which were part of the final project presentation to the MD.We will show through this case study, that although a rather \"basic\" (as compared to recent theoretical advancements in this area) categorisation scheme and inventory control rules have been proposed, the organisational savings have been substantial.The remainder of our paper is organised as follows: in Section 2, a review of the relevant literature is provided and in Section 3, the case study organisation is presented along with a detailed description of the pre-project situation and the aspirations of the project. Section 4 presents the solution developed, implementation-related details and the empirical outcome of the intervention under concern. In Section 5, we reflect upon the limitations of our work and we discuss the implications of the project for the theory and practice of Operations Management. Finally, the conclusions of our paper along with some natural avenues for further research are given in Section 6.\n2. Research background: 2.1 Classification of spare parts\n3. Case study organisation: 3.1 Logistical arrangements\n4. Solution development and empirical results: 4.1 Spare parts classification\n5. Reflections and implications: The EPDC project was perceived as a tremendous organisational success. However, it was agreed that a number of issues could have been dealt with more efficiently during the project. For example, some concerns were expressed with regards to the data collection process. Some offices had not been implementing SAP for long so there were some inventory figures which were under/over reported due to poor understanding of the system-related transactions. A number of offices were also occasionally transacting outside the system and this also affected the empirical analysis. In addition, some important future \"trends\" that could have been anticipated and appropriately linked to the forecasting process, were not taken into account. There were some strategic decisions taken after the EPDC project that had a direct effect on sales, the most important one being the \"swapping out\" of products when the cost of service and repair was greater than the cost of a new or similar model (resulting of course in no demand for spares). That was something that could had been foreseen (or more appropriately internally communicated within the organisation) and incorporated in the planning process.In hindsight, more emphasis should have been placed upon analysing the inventory holding costs of the SKUs. Demand value classifications rank an SKU higher if the demand volume is larger; similarly though they do the same if the holding cost is also higher (assuming that a higher price implies a higher holding cost, as is common) whereas one could argue that from a cost perspective the opposite should be preferred. A more thorough consideration of the inventory holding costs could have allowed for the exceptional treatment of some items that are associated with high relevant charges into lower categories and that may had been more pragmatic from an economic standpoint.Finally, and in terms of performance measurement, the stock index has been averaged for the purposes of the project over 6 months. However, averaging over 12 months instead would have resulted in the standardisation of the measure so the obtained figure would be the number of standard months of stock in inventory, and that would have the same interpretation at all times.5.1 Implications for OM theory\n6. Conclusions and further work: Demand classification schemes constitute an essential element of every inventory management system since they facilitate decision-making with regards to both forecasting and stock control. In a spare parts context, construction of the relevant rules is very challenging due to the distinct nature of the underlying demand patterns that often do not resemble those observed in a typical fast moving environment. A considerable amount of academic work has been conducted in the area of stock control for spare parts, but the very issue of classification has not received as much academic attention as the implications of the relevant decision-making in that area would require. Moreover, case studies in this area, that may offer qualitative insight, are also lacking.In this paper, we have examined in detail an inventory management project undertaken by an international electronics manufacturer for the purpose of improving their relevant practices across Europe. The key elements of the project were the amendment of the SKU categorisation solution (along with a restructuring of the forecasting and stock control related procedures) and the centralisation of stock. We have focused on the former issue, discussing implementation related details, constraints related to the IT platform used and benefits derived from the proposed intervention.As discussed earlier, the time frame of the go-live target meant that no thorough examination of far more relevant forecasting techniques could be undertaken during the project. The project team members were convinced, at the conceptual level, of the value associated with the separate treatment of demand sizes and inter-demand intervals (along the lines suggested by Croston, 1972) for the intermittent demand items. Nevertheless, the actual implementation was not perceived as an immediate priority. Similarly, more advanced categorisation solutions that link forecasting and stock control with the underlying demand characteristics (such as the degree of intermittence and the variability of the demand sizes) were also very positively received and the potential for their implementation is currently under discussion. Forthcoming developments of the company's inventory management system for spare parts will be potentially associated with:* Refinements of the categorisation solution to introduce the inter-demand interval as a classification parameter (i.e. link classification to the characteristics of the underlying demand patterns). The robustness of this criterion in both a forecasting and stock control context has been discussed and empirically demonstrated by Boylan et al. (2008).* The implementation of the Syntetos-Boylan approximation, SBA (Syntetos and Boylan, 2005) which is a bias-adjusted modification to Croston's method, for the intermittent demand items.* Looking in a detailed manner at the sources of the variability present in the C category (Boylan and Syntetos, 2008) as well as analysing the heterogeneity of customers' requests along the lines discussed by Kalchschmidt et al. (2006).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Spare parts have become ubiquitous in modern societies and managing their requirements is an important and challenging task with tremendous cost implications for the organisations that are holding relevant inventories. An important operational issue involved in the management of spare parts is that of categorising the relevant stock keeping units (SKUs) in order to facilitate decision-making with respect to forecasting and stock control and to enable managers to focus their attention on the most \"important\" SKUs. This issue has been overlooked in the academic literature although it constitutes a significant opportunity for increasing spare parts availability and/or reducing inventory costs. Moreover, and despite the huge literature developed since the 1970s on issues related to stock control for spare parts, very few studies actually consider empirical solution implementation and with few exceptions, case studies are lacking. Such a case study is described in this paper, the purpose of which is to offer insight into relevant business practices.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The issue of demand categorisation (including forecasting and stock control) for spare parts management is addressed and details reported of a project undertaken by an international business machine manufacturer for the purpose of improving its European spare parts logistics operations. The paper describes the actual intervention within the organisation in question, as well as the empirical benefits and the lessons learned from such a project.\nFindings: - This paper demonstrates the considerable scope that exists for improving relevant real word practices. It shows that simple well-informed solutions result in substantial organisational savings.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides insight into the empirical utilisation of demand categorisation theory for forecasting and stock control and provides some very much needed empirical evidence on pertinent issues. In that respect, it should be of interest to both academics and practitioners.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Assessment of factors affecting maintenance cost of public school facilities
|
[
"Saudi Arabia",
"Contractors",
"Maintenance cost",
"Designers",
"Facilities managers",
"Pubic school facilities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: School facilities play a critical role in the development of students (Le et al., 2018). Maintenance consideration is essential for educational facilities to achieve their intended functions. In particular, maintenance of school facilities is critical for sustaining the functionality of all building systems and components. This, in turn, will facilitate the learning function by providing an environment conducive to learning and academic success (Uline and Tschannen-Moran, 2008). The cost of maintenance represents a significant portion of the life cycle cost of any building (Patacas et al., 2015) and is considered to be a measurement indicator of maintenance performance (Chua et al., 2018). However, it may be the case that maintenance, as a necessary function, tends to be given less attention during the design, of school projects, resulting in defects which, in turn, lead to maintenance cost escalations (Ali et al., 2013).\nMethodology: The following activities were conducted toward achieving the objective of this study:\nLiterature review: Schools play a vital role in equipping individuals with the necessary knowledge and skills for contributing positively to their society. However, schools cannot achieve this crucial role in the absence of sound school facilities that house the various teaching and learning activities. These facilities provide space that ensures both the safety and security of the students, thus facilitating the learning process (Hassanain and Iftikhar, 2015). In fact, the environment provided by the school can have a significant impact on the development of a child, affecting their health, well-being, academic performance as well as the way in which they behave (Park et al., 2011). Furthermore, school facilities in a poor condition can adversely affect a teacher's ability to impart knowledge (Uline and Tschannen-Moran, 2008). Although it is acknowledged that building new school facilities contributes to the enhancement of education, the maintenance of existing facilities is of significant importance (Lavy and Bilbo, 2009). Thus, the formulation of a proper maintenance plan becomes indispensable to the operation of a school (Lavy and Bilbo, 2009). Despite the significance of school facilities to the society at large, the literature indicated the absence of studies on school maintenance factors, which can significantly affect the educational outcomes. Nevertheless, a significant number of previous studies have investigated the maintenance cost factors of other types of facilities, encompassing residential building, hospitals, and commercial buildings. These studies identified and grouped factors under different categories depending on their nature. Furthermore, some of these studies sought to gain the opinion of respondents with different backgrounds, such as design professional, maintenance personnel and facility users, on the factors affecting maintenance cost. It is presumed that the factors affecting the maintenance cost of these different facilities will also have an impact on school facilities. This section presents a review of these previous studies.\nAssessment of factors affecting the maintenance cost of school facilities: A detailed literature review revealed numerous factors in the domain of maintenance cost of various types of facilities. These factors were consolidated into a set of factors deemed appropriate to affect the maintenance cost of school facilities. The applicability of these factors was confirmed by a group of five construction and maintenance professionals who had sufficient experience in the construction and maintenance of school facilities. Table I provides a list of all the identified 54 factors, along with their references.\nData analysis and discussion: The 54 identified factors affecting the maintenance cost of school facilities were grouped under nine categories, as discussed previously. This categorizing scheme was adopted in order to cluster factors under a common category based on the factors relevance/relatedness. To this end, the categorization observed in previous studies, the interviewees' expert opinion, and the author's experience were employed to inform the categorization of the factors, under their respective categories.\nTest of agreement: The test of agreement among all the respondents was conducted using \"the Rank-Order Coefficient of Correlation\" formula (Assaf et al., 2015):\nConclusions and recommendations: The objective of the present study was to assess the factors affecting maintenance costs of public school facilities in Saudi Arabia. In order to achieve the said objective, the study extensively reviewed the literature for factors affecting maintenance cost of various facilities, in general. In addition to the presentation of the previous studies in the domain area, the literature review critically examined the previous studies in terms of the type of the facilities studied, respondents' sample size and characteristics, approach followed to assess factors, most significant factors, and comprehensiveness of the identified factors. This research methodology was adopted owing to the limited number of studies addressing the issue of school maintenance, in general, and the complete absence of studies on maintenance cost of public school facilities in Saudi Arabia, in particular. Altogether, 54 factors were identified after reviewing the literature. The relevancy and comprehensiveness of the identified factors were confirmed through pre-testing with industry experts familiar with the maintenance of public school facilities in the study area. These factors were then grouped under nine categories. Subsequently, the identified factors were subjected to assessment by 60 expert engineers in the design, construction and maintenance sectors using a questionnaire survey. The analysis indicated the most important factors from the perspective of the three parties involved in the study, namely, A/E, CE and ME.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the significance of various factors affecting maintenance costs of public school facilities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Detailed literature review resulted in identifying 54 factors that were categorized under nine groups. This was followed by a questionnaire survey completed by 60 experienced professionals. The relative importance index was used to determine the in-group ranking, as well as the overall ranking of these factors.\nFindings: The study established that the five most significant factors affecting the maintenance cost of public school facilities were \"not providing operations and maintenance manuals to maintenance group\" in the \"construction phase\" category, \"ignoring maintainability studies in design\" in the \"design phase\" category, \"specification of low-quality materials\" in the \"design phase\" category, \"selection criteria of contractors\" in the \"regulations and contracting\" category, and \"lack of quality control during work execution\" in the \"construction phase\" category.\nOriginality/value: The present research represents the first research covering the maintenance cost of public school facilities in Saudi Arabia. The study also presents the unique landscape of facility maintenance in the Saudi Arabian context. The outcome of this research has the potential to significantly cut down unnecessary costs rooted in expensive maintenance of public school facilities, enhancing the quality of these facilities. The findings also underscore the necessity of collaboration and coordination of the various key disciplines toward the realization of cost-effective school facilities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Examining the influential factors for continued social media use: A comparison of social networking and microblogging
|
[
"Social interaction",
"Interpersonal influence",
"Information sharing",
"User continuance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Social networking sites and microblogging services, such as Facebook and Twitter, have earned millions of active users worldwide in recent years (Gu et al., 2016; Ku et al., 2013). Social networking sites and microblogging are popular social media platforms that allow users to create personal profiles, interact with friends and share information (Li et al., 2013; Ellison et al., 2014; Whitty et al., 2017). Social networking sites are mainly used for social interaction among friends (Li and Chen, 2014) while microblogging allows users to post short messages on topics ranging from personal hobbies and interests to current affairs and politics (Hargittai and Litt, 2011). Though social networking sites and microblogging share some commonalities in terms of supporting interpersonal communication, a majority of users still keep using both services.\n2. Theoretical foundation: This study draws upon the TPB and self-regulation framework to investigate determinants of continuance behavior in the context of social media usage. The TPB is one of the most influential theories in explaining and predicting individuals' behaviors, which provide an enriched understanding of antecedents of continuance behavior (Sheppard et al., 1988). The self-regulation framework from social cognitive psychology was proposed by Bagozzi (1992), which states a more complex self-regulation mechanism of relationships from attitudes and subjective norms to intentions (Bagozzi, 1992). This study uses the Bagozzi's self-regulation framework to complement with the TPB to investigate the critical determinants of social media continuance behaviors.\n3. Research model and hypotheses: 3.1 Continuance intentions and behaviors\n4. Research methodology: 4.1 Research sites\n5. Data analysis and results: We used partial least squares (PLS) to conduct data analysis. PLS is a component-based structural equation modeling technique which maximizes the variance explained in the dependent variable and does not require multivariate normality. PLS is more appropriate to validate the model when the model contains both formative and reflective constructs (Chin, 1998). In addition, PLS is best suited for examining complex relationships by avoiding inadmissible solutions and factor indeterminacy (Chin, 1998). Since our model contained formative constructs and was fairly complex, we used PLS and chose Smart PLS 2.0 as our analysis software (Ring et al., 2005) to evaluate the research model and test the hypotheses.\n6. Discussion and implications: 6.1 Discussion of findings\n7. Conclusions: Drawing upon the TPB and the self-regulation framework, we developed a theoretical model to investigate whether and how factors for continuance behaviors differ between social networking and microblogging services. Our findings indicate that information sharing is more powerful in shaping microblogging user satisfaction while social interaction is more salient in shaping social networking user satisfaction. Moreover, social networking users have a higher tendency to respond to interpersonal influence in explaining user satisfaction while microblog users have a higher tendency to respond to media influence in explaining user satisfaction. The mediation effects of user satisfaction between attitudinal beliefs and continuance intentions as well as subjective norms and continuance intention are also supported. Our study findings make important research and practical contributions to the extant literature.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Drawing upon the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the self-regulation framework, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how factors for social media continuance behaviors work differently between social networking sites and microblogging.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey method was used to collect two samples of 557 social networking sites users and 568 microblogging users. The proposed research model was tested with the structural equation modeling technique.\nFindings: The empirical results demonstrate that the impacts of influencing factors on users' continuance behaviors vary by types of social media services. Information sharing has a stronger impact on microblog users' satisfaction than social network users while social interaction has a stronger impact on satisfaction for social network users than microblog users. In addition, interpersonal influence is more effective in shaping satisfaction for the social network users while media influence is more effective in shaping satisfaction for the microblog users.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the first studies that integrate TPB with Bagozzi's self-regulation framework to understand the behavioral model of social networking and microblogging continuance. The findings show that the impacts of attitudinal beliefs regarding information sharing and social interaction on social media users' satisfaction are different across social networking and microblogging contexts. Moreover, this study also reveals different effects of two specific subjective norms - interpersonal and media influence - on continued use of social networking and microblogging.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate social performance and financial-based brand equity
|
[
"Brand equity",
"Brand management",
"Business performance",
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Stakeholder analysis"
] |
[
{
"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: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is receiving increasing attention, especially in recent decades. For example, more than 50 percent of global executives identify CSR as their top priority (The Economist, 2008). Furthermore, economic globalization substantially increases pressures on multinational corporations to address social responsibility issues (Smith, 2009) such as supply chain, environmental protection, working conditions, and employee rights (Mueller et al., 2009). The failure to meet the rising expectations of global society may imperil a global brand's image and reputation - as illustrated by the Nike and The Gap sweatshop disputes. Therefore, managing global brands requires a deeper understanding of the role of CSR.Formally, CSR refers to a company's activities and status related to its perceived societal or stakeholder obligations (Brown and Dacin, 1997; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001) while corporate social performance (CSP) is a company's overall performance in CSR programs in relation to those of leading competitors in the same industry (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2009). Whereas CSR initiatives reflect a firm's programs and investments in sustainability, CSP represents stakeholders' assessments of the overall quality of those programs and investments (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2009; McWilliams and Siegel, 2000).Although the current literature suggests that CSR actions can lead to reputational advantages (e.g. Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Orlitzky et al., 2003), not much has been done to study the effects of CSR on brand equity. Brand equity entails \"the additional value that accrues to a firm because of the presence of the brand name that would not accrue to an equivalent unbranded product\" (Keller and Lehmann, 2006, p. 745). Despite the interrelation between reputation and brand, the two concepts are not synonymous. Reputation centers primarily on the company, whereas brand is customer-oriented (Ettenson and Knowles, 2008). Reputation may create a favorable context for product evaluation but is not a sufficient condition for brand value enhancement. A dearth of empirical support exists for the proposition that CSP improves brand equity (Brady, 2003; Middlemiss, 2003).A related and important, but less acknowledged, research question pertains to whether brands play a role in driving firms' CSP. Global brands are citizens of a global community, and their frame of reference transcends national boundaries (Waddock and Smith, 2000). A global brand's image depends on evaluations of it based on global standards that stakeholders adopt, as well as how global brands in other industries behave socially and environmentally. Thus, regardless of the presence or absence of anticipated tangible returns resulting from CSR investments, brands may underlie multinational firms' CSR initiatives. An illustrative example comes from the recent change in Coca-Cola's CSR strategy. Following criticism about its environmental practices and child labor in developing economies, Coke now aims to become the recognized global leader in CSR (Marketing Week, 2007). Critics speculate that the motive for Coke's belated CSR focus is the threats that negative media exposure poses to its most valuable asset, the Coca-Cola brand (Marketing Week, 2007). Recognizing the role of brands as a possible driver of CSR performance may further understanding of the nature of the brand-CSP link and help assess the impact of CSP on brands.This research explores the presence and direction of the relationship between CSP and financial-based brand equity and examines the moderating effects of firm size using cross-sectional data of large global brands. In particular, this study adopts a financial-valuation perspective and views brands as assets (Srivastava et al., 1998). The financial-based brand equity is defined herein as the additional economic value a brand offers to a company in its relative potential to generate future earnings or cash flows. This research contributes to existing literature in several ways. First, whereas extant work focuses on the impact of CSR on reputation, studying the interrelationship between brand equity and CSR might offer a useful contribution to literature. Second, this research augments existing theories by providing empirical evidence about the nature of the brand equity-CSP linkage. Third, focusing on global brands should shed new light on the management of CSR activities in a unique context.Another distinguishing feature of this empirical work involves the consistent financial-based assessments of CSP and brand equity. In measuring brand equity, most literature uses a popular approach based on consumer mindsets, such as awareness, associations, or attitudes (e.g. Keller, 1993; Keller and Lehmann, 2003). However, some scholars view these mindset measures as antecedents of brand equity (Wang et al., 2006). From a financial perspective, \"intermediate\" customer mindset measures do not translate directly into tangible returns in a brand's market value (e.g. Ailawadi et al., 2003). In a similar vein, measures of CSP in marketing literature (e.g. Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001) are mostly customer-centric. Another alternative CSP assessment approach uses the Fortune social responsibility index (e.g. Luo and Bhattacharya, 2009). Such reputational measures tend to be proxies of the overall management of a firm rather than specific to CSP and run the risk of halo effects (Listen-Heyes and Ceton, 2008; Waddock and Graves, 1997). Another popular CSP metric in management literature uses the measurements produced by the KLD agency that specializes in the assessment of CSR behavior (e.g. Godfrey et al., 2009). The KLD database provides dichotomous measures of firms' CSR activities across several broad dimensions. The KLD measurement, though objective, is qualitative in nature and reflects firms' past CSR participation. From a financial perspective though, CSP assessment should be forward looking. Because CSR activities tend to involve long-term efforts and resource commitments, a company often reaps the benefits of such investments over a longer term. Similarly, brand equity assessment should be forward looking and reflect the brand's ability to generate financial returns in the future, because the outcomes of marketing expenditures often are long-term and substantially delayed (Srinivasan and Hanssens, 2009). When investigating the linkage between CSP and brands, consistency in measurements is desirable.The next section reviews relevant literature and conceptual developments. Subsequent sections describe the data, variable construction, and methodology, as well as present the results. Finally, this article finishes with a managerial discussion and conclusion.\nTheoretical background: Distinction between brands and reputation\nData and variable construction: Dependent variables\nModel and results: Model specification\nSummary and implications: Brand equity provides an important indicator of business performance. A widely held assumption states that good CSP leads to enhanced brand equity. Using cross-sectional data of large global brands, this research empirically investigates the nature of the linkage between brand equity and CSP. The results suggest that while prior CSP is positively associated with brand equity, brand equity influences future CSP only in the case of very large firms. In addition, we find that firm size negatively moderates the relationship between prior CSP and brand equity.This work has important implications for academic researchers. Extant research makes little distinction between reputation and brand for the consequences of CSP, whereas this study highlights the importance of brand equity as a relevant construct. Future studies can further examine the differential impacts of CSP on different types of brand equity such as knowledge equity, attitudinal equity and relationship equity (Tolba and Hassan, 2009). By complementing the stakeholder-based theoretical framework proposed by Maignan and Ferrell (2004), this research empirically tests the role of brand equity as a stakeholder resource of CSR outcomes and finds support for the link between CSP and brand value. In addition, this investigation extends their theoretical rationale by exploring another role of brand equity, namely, as a possible driver of firms' CSP. The importance of the moderating role of firm size implies that a contingency approach should be adopted in studying the CSP-brand equity linkage. Future research can further explore other conditions and boundaries under which this relationship exists.The success of a brand's competitive positioning strategy is determined by establishing points of difference that set each brand apart from its competition (Keller et al., 2002). The findings that CSP contributes positively to brand equity suggest that by investing in CSR, managers not only can improve brand image but also can successfully achieve competitive differentiation and reap tangible returns in the form of brand equity. A case in point is Clorox's recent launch of Green Works (see Nidumolu et al., 2009). After three years of research, Clorox became the first to introduce a new line of natural, eco-friendly cleaning products. The new Green Works line had grown the US natural cleaners market by 100 percent and Clorox enjoyed a 40 percent market share. This natural product line now extends to new categories such as natural wipes and detergents. Viewed in conjunction with our results, this example suggests that as opposed to adopting a defensive perspective to avoid negative CSR impact on brands, managers can take a proactive and integrated strategic approach towards CSR and view it as an opportunity to create and build brand equity.The importance of firm size as a moderator in the interrelationship between CSP and brand equity suggests that managers should carefully evaluate organizational capabilities and characteristics before pursuing brand differentiation strategies through CSR. Managers of smaller-sized firms should be especially encouraged to allocate resources to CSR as it appears to be an effective differentiation tool to gain brand equity. In the case of very large firms, although CSP seems to have a neutral effect on brand equity, brand equity appears to be a driver underlying CSP. This implies that very large firms that manage high-equity global brands are motivated to aim for the highest CSR performance, even over-investing in CSR as a means to protect their brands. This could keep ratcheting up both organizational and stakeholder norms that define appropriate CSR behavior among large corporations (Bertels and Peloza, 2008). Keller et al. (2002) suggest that a brand's positioning depends also on identifying an appropriate frame of reference within which brands may work and addressing features that brands have in common with their competitors. In this view, CSR can become a source of competitive disadvantage if the brands of very large firms fail to perform at least on par with their global peers. When using CSR as a strategic defense tool for maintaining a brand's competitive parity and preserving brand equity, managers of very large firms should be cautious in identifying their peer competitors in the CSR arena, which can transcend industry and national boundaries.This study focuses solely on large corporations that emphasize their brands. Different empirical links between CSP and brand equity may surface if further research includes a larger sample of multinational companies with diverse firm characteristics. This analysis employs an aggregated rating of CSP across multiple areas. Additional studies might address this limitation by considering disaggregate ratings of CSP into different dimensions to deepen understanding of the linkages between specific components of CSP and brands. Moreover, this paper considers only a few variables of firm characteristics. Additional research might offer more insights into the brand equity-CSP link by including more firm-specific variables, such as corporate core abilities. Finally, researchers should extend this study by employing time-series data and methods to examine whether the relationship of CSP and brand equity evolves over time.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this research is to empirically test the interrelationship between corporate social performance and financial-based brand equity. This paper proposes that social performance leads to enhanced brand equity and, conversely, brand equity positively influences social performance. Firm size is hypothesized to play a moderating role in the interrelationship.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper uses cross-sectional, secondary data of global brands. A system of equations is proposed and estimated using seemingly unrelated regression.\nFindings: - Prior social performance has a positive effect on brand equity, but brand equity only impacts future social performance among very large firms. The positive effect of prior social performance on brand equity is amplified in smaller firms.\nPractical implications: - Managers can increase brand equity by using corporate social responsibility as a strategic tool for positioning differentiation. To maintain competitive parity in social positioning and preserve brand equity, very large firms will likely need to ensure that they achieve comparable social performance as their global peer competitors.\nOriginality/value: - This research offers a new perspective that looks at corporate social responsibility as a source and outcome of brand equity. The paper is the first empirical study that tests the interrelationship between social performance and financial-based brand equity. The work offers global managers an improved understanding on how social responsibility relates to brand equity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A tale of two economies: the political and the moral in neoliberalism
|
[
"Political economy",
"Subjectivity",
"Neoliberalism",
"Moral economy",
"Organisations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The aim of this article is to explore the ongoing impacts of neoliberal political economy on the functioning of the moral economy. It achieves this by considering three overlapping registers which are: individual subjectivity, national reconstructions and organisational transformations. These three registers are fashioned by, and subsequently reproduce, the contours of the prevailing politico-economic system. It is important to clarify at the outset that the relationship between the political and moral is undeniably complex; but it is of equal importance to acknowledge that the disjuncture between the two fields has been exacerbated by the penetration of neoliberalism during the last three decades. Accordingly we proceed by considering briefly pre-twentieth century political, social and economic features before stepping into the twentieth century Keynesian period that dominated the UK and the USA after the Great Depression and the Second World War. Attention will then turn to the crisis decades of the 1970s and 1980s and the resurgence of neoliberalism, including the recent economic travails since 2007, which adds contemporary relevance to our argument.\nEmergence of capitalism: Capitalism can be traced to tenth century merchant adventurers (Hall, 2012a, b, p. 40), through fifteenth century Italian city states and the period of Dutch supremacy, to Great Britain in the nineteenth century and the USA in the twentieth (Arrighi, 2010). The system advances through capital accumulation with the economic benefit of constant expansion by means of reinvestment, but also questionable moral effects and social costs. It is a political economy under the tutelage of private ownership, commodities bought and sold in a competitive marketplace for commercial advantage, surplus value extracted from the labour force, and an attendant culture in which material symbols convey the standard of value by which human life is evaluated. Capitalism is berated for devouring life itself primarily because its economic logic prioritizes profit over people (Chomsky, 1999; Harvey, 2005, 2010; Graeber, 2012, pp. 345-355).\nKeynesian interregnum: Hobsbawm (1977, 1994, p. 86) asserts that capitalist systems do not run smoothly. Accordingly, the economic situation of the third decade of the twentieth century was so severe that it damaged economic liberalism for half a century, creating the conditions for the post-1945 reforms by Keynesian \"civilised capitalism\" (Dumenil and Levy, 2004, p. 206)[5]. The challenge of Keynesian polity produced a form of governmental rationality which, according to Foucault (2008 and lecture of 24 January 1979), reflected a crisis of liberalism which in the USA found its response in Roosevelt's New Deal, later built upon by the democratic administrations of Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson's Big Society (Hardt and Negri, 2001, p. 241). In the UK the Keynesian-Beveridge \"solidarity project\" (Garland, 2001) expressed a commitment to full employment, health, education, social security and protection against economic unpredictability. It was to prove only a temporary respite because by the 1970s blizzard warnings returned. If the Keynesian social democratic consensus established a new social contract between capital and labour by reducing income inequalities through a form of managed capitalism (Marquand, 1988), its features were disfigured in the 1970s as capitalist elites fought back to promote a renaissance of classical liberal doctrine in the global economy (Hobsbawm, 1994, p. 409). Accordingly neoliberal economics generate moral dislocations and unhealthy conflict throughout the social hierarchy, even though it has been suggested that conflict, if institutionalized in a civilized manner, can be beneficial in promoting adaptation and adjustment (Coser, 1964; Wieviorka, 2009). However, one of neoliberalism's primary political moves was to disrupt the economic bargaining position of the working classes, for example through weakening the role previously occupied by the trade unions in this process. The loss of economic bargaining and supportive institutions now means that income differentials and material differences are wider, culminating in growing social problems (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009; Dorling, 2011).\nResurgent neoliberalism: The 1970s and 1980s were the crisis decades of economic dislocation, which experienced the reflux of economic insecurity as the state abandoned its Keynesian policy of citizen security through full employment in favour of the economic elite's wish to expose almost everything to market forces (Hobsbawm, 1994). The 1970s began with a conservative government under Edward Heath and ended with the election of another under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. The Thatcher period, ideologically complemented by the Reagan Republicans, reconfigured what Harvey (2010, p. 131) describes as the \"state-finance nexus\" which resonated with aspects of nineteenth century Victorian political-economy (Clarke, 2004, p. 379). The neoliberal formation determined that the stability of money, through strict financial and market discipline, was to be prioritized over the stability of all other social institutions. Government, it seemed, was prepared for us to live with the insecurity caused by economic restructuring, deemed necessary to restore confidence in capitalist markets. The neoliberal class project extolled individual responsibility, personal freedom, competitive markets, and privatization within the economic sphere. The result was the spread of social inequality (Dumenil and Levy, 2004, p. 137; Brook, 2007; Chernomas and Hudson, 2007).\nThe latest crisis since 2007: During the 1980s the deregulated City of London wrested greater control over British economic life, remaking the country in its own image as ethics and values were displaced by the price mechanism (Ferguson, 2008; Posner, 2009). By 2007 the financial sector lost control over its own domain as the more irresponsible and driven amongst the bankers and financiers operated according to their own rules, rather than lock themselves into the symbolic order of the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The primary capitalist force of unregulated drives (Hall, 2012a, b; Stiegler, 2011) stimulated an anomic free for all so that excessive risk taking brought countries to the brink of economic disintegration. The failure of neoliberal logic became culturally endemic (Stiglitz, 2010) manifested in the primacy of business, the priority of money, and the elevation of financial interests above all others. Additionally the championing of neoliberal reason was not the product of the inevitable stride forward of some Hegelian Spirit ploughing its way unhindered throughout the historical process, but a human choice pursued with a Nietzschean disregard for its moral consequences. Despite the crisis, the austerity cuts imposed by the Coalition Government in England and Wales after 2010, the bail-outs and the constant quantitative easing underwritten by taxpayers, the financial industry continued to reign-in lending yet hand out large bonuses to senior managers and traders. Greed was still good despite the failure of the market mechanism to harness it for the benefit of all. The unregulated self prevailed over the collective moral interest, and a preoccupation with commodity objects displaced the Aristotelian transcendental ideal which elevates the mind to a higher level of functioning.\nThree illustrative vignettes: Individual subjectivity - what is happening to us?\nConclusion: The four riders of the apocalypse threaten the social and moral fabric of the world order (Zizek, 2011), but capitalism as \"a system of power and exclusion\" (Graeber, 2012, p. 381), is not draining into the sand. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has fashioned an individual subjectivity where collective morality and empathy for the other, the erstwhile aspirations of the Keynesian solidarity project, have been undermined by the stimulation of competitive anxieties; nationally neoliberal elites have imposed their agenda at the expense of the majority, untroubled by the conscience-stabbing impacts of moral economy. What is currently gathering momentum is hegemonic neoliberalism's penetrative reach into organisational domains, stretching the fragile bonds of social and moral decency to create a new empirical object. A re-energized viral dynamic is stimulating anomie because the demands of ethical and axiological contestation are in retreat as organisations become components in the expanding circuits of capital accumulation, driven by the spectres of financial desperation, the debt burden, and an ideological commitment to expose the provision of services to the competitive drive of the profit motive. To expand Hall's (2012a, b, p. 208) theorization, the established politico-economic and socio-cultural systems fashion the types of individual subjectivity, national contours, and organisational consciousness that they require, which reconfigures them into powerful actors in the reproduction of this system. When they existed above the market, these organisational domains provided the scope, albeit sometimes fleetingly and falteringly, for professional and unionized resistance to government policies and practices. Now, they are confronted with a vector of class power that is hermetically sealing off organisations from the possibility of alternative trajectories and potential sources of resistance. What is being played out and affecting the social and moral substance of organisational existence is the transference of legitimate power from the public sphere into a marketised private domain where capital is the driving force of change. It is the transference of power through institutionalizing neoliberalism in organisational re-formations where the cash nexus threatens professional integrity, ethical demands and responsibilities, axiological considerations and social need, which amounts to the revaluation of normative human values.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This article aims to critically explore current forms of neoliberalism and their impact upon the moral economy. The authors examine how the dominant neoliberal political economy impacts upon three overlapping registers: individual subjectivity, national reconstructions and organizational transformations. These three registers are fashioned by, and subsequently help to reproduce, the contours of the prevailing politico-economic system. The market-driven ethic of neoliberalism, however, is diametrically opposed to that of a moral economy concerned with universalism and equality in meeting human need.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual theoretical piece.\nFindings: The result is that the latter have been replaced by competitive individualism as societies reconstruct themselves in the image of the market place. This profound cultural shift is well known, but in this article, the authors will claim that it has in turn had a profound impact upon individual subjectivities and the key institutions and organisations that have long formed the basis of the Western social democratic consensus.\nOriginality/value: It is original because it theorises the impact of neoliberalism on organisations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Effects of sources of knowledge on frugal innovation: moderating role of environmental turbulence
|
[
"Technological turbulence",
"Market turbulence",
"Frugal innovation",
"Environmental dynamism",
"Sources of knowledge"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Frugal innovation (FI) has become a popular buzzword among management and business scholars (Pansera, 2018; Tiwari et al., 2017). The concept was originated in the context of emerging economies, but increasingly has been receiving interest from researchers and practitioners in the developed economies as well (Tiwari et al., 2017). Researchers argue that emerging markets have become new centers of gravity for technology because of their large market size, growing demands and plentiful source of R&D talent (Agarwal and Brem, 2012). Frugal products in emerging markets offer various low-tech entrepreneurial opportunities, meeting the needs of the local community and improving millions of lives (Radjou et al., 2012). Besides that, emerging markets are also experiencing consumers demand for frugal products/services. This attraction is mainly associated with the characteristics and benefits of the frugally developed products. For instance, frugal products are substantially cheaper, offer core functionalities, optimized performance (Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2017) and triple bottom line - social impact, environmental benefits and business opportunities (Pansera, 2018). Although, frugal products do not have sophisticated technological features, yet, meet customers' basic needs at a low cost by providing a comparably high value (Christensen and Raynor, 2013; Zeschky et al., 2011). Considering these criteria, a discussion focusing on emerging economies is reasonable. Despite huge market for frugal products, theoretical antecedents of FI still remain largely unclear as of today (Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2017). Therefore, it is important to investigate the antecedents of FI.\nLiterature review: Frugal innovation\nMethodology: Procedures and sample\nAnalysis: The PLS-SEM was used to estimate the theoretical model of the research by using Smart PLS application software (Ringle et al., 2005). The PLS-SEM technique is a variance-based approach was chosen as the major analysis techniques for this study. A PLS-SEM assessment is consisted of two stages - measurement model and the structural model. (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). Measurement model indicates indicator reliability, internal consistency reliability and construct validity followed by (convergence and discriminant validity).\nDiscussion: Overall, the findings provide strong support for an idea that knowledge gathered from within and outside firm's boundaries (i.e. internal and external) facilitate FI. Whereas, the moderation of market and technological turbulences strengthen effects internal and external sources of knowledge had on FI. Data revealed that sources of knowledge demonstrate positive influence on FI.\nImplications: Our research findings extend implications for theory, practice and methodology. The theoretical implications are twofold: First, our research developed and tested theoretical model that investigates the effects of knowledge gathered from within and outside firm boundaries on FI. Data reveal positive influence. Findings are in line with prior research which identify the effects of different types of knowledge on innovation generation, adoption, innovation capabilities (Dost et al., 2016; Subramaniam and Venkatraman, 2001; Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005; Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998) and innovation activities (Ardito et al., 2018). Same holds true for FI. Previous studies validate that combination of local ideas and external knowledge expertise facilitates low-cost products and high added value (Bhatti, 2012). External knowledge sourcing balances firm's innovation activities (Ardito et al., 2018). Second, moderating effects of market and technological turbulences were analyzed whether effects of internal and external sources of knowledge strengthen/weaken on FI. Contrary to hypotheses, market turbulence did not moderate the relationship between internal sources of knowledge and FI. When the market turbulence is high, the value of knowledge spill from sources with the firm can be diminished quickly. In such a situation, the best solution is to rely on external sources of knowledge.\nLimitations and future research: Like others, this research also has several limitations that offers directions for future researchers: First, this research is limited to the sampling frame of SMEs in Pakistan. Further studies are strongly encouraged in developed and developing countries to improve on the generalizability of the present findings. Second, knowledge from different sources facilitate FI in SMEs. The conclusion of this research can be applied to large or high-tech industries that require further investigation. Further research is encouraged to test our hypotheses in these contexts to enrich our understanding of knowledge sources and FI. A further examination of industry effects on this link is also encouraged. Third, our research developed and tested items of FI construct empirically. The items were compiled from several definitions and explanations available in the prior research. To best of our knowledge, there is no research that has tested items of FI. Majority of researchers have published their work conceptually (Bhatti, 2012; Brem and Ivens, 2013; Khan, 2016; Radjou et al., 2012; Smith et al., 2014; Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2017). Therefore, future researchers may use FI construct to test its different antecedents and outcomes. Finally, our research tested the contingencies of market and technological turbulences on relationship between sources of knowledge and FI. Future researchers may test the moderation of innovation capabilities (Dost et al., 2016; Subramaniam and Venkatraman, 2001; Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005; Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of internal and external sources of knowledge on frugal innovation (FI), and to what extent this relationship is strengthened/weakened, authors also analyzed the moderating role of market and technological turbulence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is an empirical research. Data were collected from 382 SMEs through questionnaire survey, applied SmartPLS technique to analyse the data.\nFindings: Findings revealed the significant effects of internal and external sources of knowledge on FI. To what extent this relationship is strengthened/weakened, the moderating role of market and technological turbulence was analysed. Data revealed that the moderation of technological turbulence strengthens the effects internal and external sources of knowledge had on FI. Market turbulence strengthened the effects of external sources of knowledge but surprisingly weakens the effects of internal sources of knowledge on FI.\nPractical implications: Findings provide valuable and timely insights for the modern managers as well. Managers who operate in SMEs will have to understand that how knowledge from internal and external sources can be gathered and utilized for producing frugal products. They also will have to weigh which source of knowledge is more important when there is market and technological turbulence.\nOriginality/value: Sustainable and social issues emerge mainly due to scarcity of available resources. Firms seek to solve such pressing issues through improvisation in resources. However, frugal products assist firms to significantly contribute in society and sustainability. Although prior research has discussed the importance of knowledge for innovation, yet the effects of sources of knowledge and role of contingencies mostly remain unexplained puzzle. This study contributes to knowledge-innovation literature by examining the missing link between different sources of knowledge and FI and how the moderation of technology and market turbulence strengthen/weaken this relationship. Authors believe that it also helps to comprehend FI's enabling factors through which firms can capitalize upon, and solve the pressing sustainable and social issues.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Innovations and lessons learned from the Canterbury earthquakes : Emergency department staff narratives
|
[
"Disasters",
"Emergency response",
"Thematic analysis",
"Nursing",
"Allied health"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In September 2010, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake occurred in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand (NZ). As part of the subsequent aftershock sequence, a 6.3 quake followed on 22 February 2011 (Stevenson et al., 2011). While the September event presented a higher rating on the Richter scale, it was the February occurrence that caused major loss of life, and compounded the structural damage that had already occurred. This represented a significant event in a country that has a history of seismic episodes, and where considerable effort has been made to ensure that damage is limited through strict building codes and public education. Prior to this, the Canterbury region was not considered an area of high risk (Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission, 2012).\nBackground: The September 2010 earthquake caused significant damage to infrastructure, buildings and roads, yet there was a surprisingly light injury burden, and no direct fatalities from this event (Ardagh et al., 2012). This was viewed by many as a fortunate escape, particularly in comparison to the Haiti earthquake of the same magnitude which occurred shortly afterwards (Ardagh et al., 2012; Lee and Tenny, 2010). In Canterbury, the September event was seen as a \"learning\" experience which had limited consequences in terms of injury; however, it was also perceived that the \"worst\" had now happened, that nothing could be this bad again (Canterbury Initiative, 2011).\nDesign: This study developed from the experiences of the authors, who were present and worked in the ED during the February earthquake. The significance of the event and of the individuals who were part of this was recognised, and the decision made to capture the experience. A phenomenological approach seeking to expose the lived experience of individuals was identified as the most appropriate design. In order to facilitate this, individual, open-ended interviews were undertaken, commencing two weeks after the event and carrying on intermittently over the following eight months. Narratives from individuals who were associated with the Christchurch Hospital ED response were recorded and analysed. Ethical approval to conduct the study was granted from the Multi-Region Ethics Committee.\nFindings and discussion: The depth of information gathered is more than can be encompassed in a single paper and for this reason only a selection of the findings is able to be presented. The aims of the study included identifying and acknowledging the feelings and responses of individuals. The focus was on those who were part of the initial response within the ED, whether this was their usual place of work or not. Many of the staff had been at work at the time of the earthquake, while others came in from home or elsewhere in the hospital.\nResearch limitations: This study presents a range of perceptions and experiences, and while commonalities are apparent within these, it must be remembered that these are also unique and individual. As such, generalisation cannot be assumed, but a clearer understanding of the nature of such experiences is possible. The circumstances surrounding the interviews were traumatic for many, and these occurred across an extended time period after the initial event. It is likely that objectivity and accuracy of recall were affected, but the intention is not to identify a strict hierarchy of events, but rather to explore the subjective and contextual responses that occurred.\nImplications: The findings from this study have the potential to inform other crisis situations, and to guide the development of targeted support measures in response to such events. The impact of disaster experiences on individuals and groups such as those working in the Christchurch event need to be captured.\nConclusion: The individual, as well as the organisational responses to the earthquake events are significant, and need to be considered in relation to future planning and responses. In particular, the importance of encouraging and supporting a culture which values individuals and encourages responsiveness was identified. While the specific, practical responses to the earthquake disaster have previously been identified, there is also a need to acknowledge the experiences of individuals. By understanding the range of responses, perceptions and interpretation of crisis events, it is possible to develop systems that will support a resilient workforce culture.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify innovations and lessons learned from interviews with members of the multidisciplinary healthcare team who participated in the response to the 22 February earthquake, affecting the Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Narratives from individual staff members who were associated with the Christchurch Hospital Emergency Department response were recorded and analysed. This data, together with other contextual documents have been used to identify the responses of healthcare workers to an unexpected natural disaster. Perspectives were sought from a range of individuals, including allied health professionals, social workers, Maori health workers, orderlies, medical and nursing staff.\nFindings: The individual as well as the organisational responses to the earthquake events are significant, and need to be considered in relation to future planning and responses. In particular, the importance of encouraging and supporting a culture which values innovation and responsiveness was identified. While specific, practical responses to the earthquake disaster are noted, it is also important to acknowledge the implication for individuals of an acute, unanticipated event.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings from this study have the potential to illuminate possible responses in other crisis situations, and to guide the development of targeted support measures in response to disaster events.\nOriginality/value: Little documentation has occurred to date relating the experiences of health care responders who are not only reacting to a natural disaster, but are also part of it. This is a unique and valuable perspective that has relevance within a number of settings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Determinants of corporate debt maturity in Latin America
|
[
"Debts",
"Capital structure",
"Data analysis",
"South America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The breakthrough work of Modigliani and Miller (1958, henceforth MM) laid the basis for what is conventionally regarded as the modern corporate finance. In their influential paper and the ones that followed (Miller and Modigliani, 1961; Modigliani and Miller, 1963; Miller, 1977), these authors laid down the conditions under which the firm would be largely indifferent to the sources of its financing. In the past 50 years, several papers have explored both theoretically and empirically the implications of their famous Propositions I, II and III. Capital structure and dividend policy are perhaps the most studied issues in corporate finance. Much less attention however has been devoted to the maturity structure of the firm's financing.The financial turmoil that began in mid-2007 and scaled up in late 2008 has spread worldwide. Its consequences over the credit and liquidity of firms are being felt in developed and emerging countries alike. Indeed, Campello et al. (2009) document that the immediate effects of the financial crises has made financially constrained firms from the USA, Europe, and Japan to burn through cash reserves, to run on their bank credit lines, cut back on capital investment, employment, research and development spending, marketing expenditures, and dividends, and to sell assets to obtain cash. Although no such survey has been published so far focusing firms in emerging markets, it is well known that they face generally harsher financial constrains than similar firms in developed markets. So, it is fair to conjecture that the dire effects of this crisis may be even more pronounced in these countries. In such context, understanding how firms manage their debt becomes thus more than an academic question to become a real-world problem for practicing managers.This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge in several ways. Here, I test a few theories of debt-maturity structure in a multi-country framework, in an attempt to understand country-specific differences. I focus on a sample of developing countries that have so far been ignored in empirical studies. Moreover, I do so by employing empirical techniques that account properly for cross-section and time series variation. Also, the model allows for dynamic effects that have seldom been considered in previous research. Finally, I compare my results for Latin American countries to a sample of firms from the USA.My main findings are that there is a substantial dynamic component in the determination of a firm's maturity structure, firms face moderate adjustment costs towards its optimal maturity, and the determinants of maturity structure and their effects are similar between Latin American countries and the USA, despite obvious differences in the financial and business environments of these countries. The study also finds some empirical evidence for each theoretical hypothesis tested, although no theoretical proposition alone is able to explain the maturity decision.The remaining of the paper is structured as follows: the next section presents the theoretical framework, while Section 3 details the methodology, presents the data sources, and describes the variables used in the empirical model. Section 4 reports and comments the estimation results. Section 5 concludes the paper.\n2 Theoretical framework: A number of explanations for the maturity structure of corporate debt have been put forward. The main criticism that can be made of this body of literature is that it does not emerge from a general equilibrium theory, but as a set of partial explanations that have not been unified into one single theory. I do not intend to tackle such an ambitious task in this paper. However, in order to concisely understand the many and disperse theoretical contributions to the question of an optimal maturity, I classify the literature into four major groups: the tradeoff hypothesis, the agency hypothesis, the signaling hypothesis, and the maturity-matching hypothesis. Of course, such simplification is open to criticism, but my classification is ample enough to encompass most theoretical work done so far, yet discriminating enough to point out the fundamental differences between each group of hypotheses.Theoretical explanations for the choice of corporate debt maturity are already implied in MM's original paper, but are eventually formalized by Stiglitz (1974). MM's paper does not consider a multi-period setting, and Stiglitz (1974) provides a rigorous analysis of the MM model in such circumstances. His conclusions are that, under a fairly general set of conditions (absence of taxation, transaction costs, bankruptcy costs, and other frictions), the maturity choice of the firm is irrelevant, just as MM's findings regarding the firm's leverage ratio under the same conditions. Of course, once one departs from the ideal world of the financial economists[1], such frictions matter, and therefore the maturity decision would influence the firm's valuation just as would the set of other financial policies. A large family of hypotheses explores the tax-based, bankruptcy costs and transaction costs approaches in order to offer an explanation for the maturity choice.Arguments for the tradeoff hypothesis are based on the proposition that the optimal maturity of debt is determined by the tradeoff between the costs to rollover short-term debt vis-a-vis the usually higher interest rate bore by long-term debt. In many senses, the arguments rely on explicit transaction costs of different kinds of debt such as flotation and rollover costs as well as tax-shield benefits and implicit bankruptcy costs. The tax-based explanation suggested by Brick and Abraham Ravid (1985) and Brick and Abraham Ravid (1991) are perhaps the best known examples.Another whole family of hypotheses derives from the asymmetric information problem formalized by Jensen and Meckling (1976) and extended by Myers (1977). In this case, the maturity structure is yet another instrument that firms can use in order to solve the agency problems faced by the various stakeholders of the firm. The agency hypothesis suggests that firms choose the optimal debt maturity in order to solve the information asymmetry that gives rise to the underinvestment (Myers, 1977; Myers and Majluf, 1984) and/or overinvestment (Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Jensen, 1986) problems. Barnea et al. (1980) offer an explanation for the debt-maturity choice - as well as for complex financial contracting - based on market failure in resolving agency problems costlessly.Also within the asymmetric information mindset, the maturity structure can also be regarded as a means of overcoming the adverse selection problem (Akerlof, 1970) in terms of providing a credible signal to the market, alongside the general lines suggested by Ross (1977). The signaling hypothesis is therefore also rooted on information asymmetry arguments, but suggests that the maturity choice - as for a number of other publicly known corporate decisions - is used by managers as a way to convey information to the market thus reducing the firm's cost of capital. Within this group is situated Flannery's (1986) proposition that risky debt maturity is a valid signal if transaction costs are positive, because high-quality firms can signal their true quality.Finally, there is the textbook rule-of-thumb that firms should match the maturity of their liabilities to the maturity of their assets. This intuitive recommendation seems to have emerged from the practitioners' experience before it had been rationalized into theory, relying mainly on liquidity risks, inefficient liquidation, and goods market cycle arguments. An argument combining the agency and signaling hypotheses can be used in order to explain why the maturity of liabilities should match the maturity of assets. Indeed, several finance textbooks allude to this rule when discussing the investment and financing decisions (Ross et al., 2002; Brealey and Myers, 2003). Hart and Moore (1994) propose one explanation based on the asymmetry of information regarding the entrepreneur's true intentions. Maturity matching in this case would signal the entrepreneur's commitment to abide by his intentions. Alternatively, firms would match the maturity of their liabilities to that of their claims in order to avoid a liquidity problem that would trigger inefficient liquidation of the firm. Excess liquidity, on the other hand, has a high opportunity cost and is also inefficient in the firm's perspective. Diamond (1991) proposes a model of maturity choice in which highly and poorly rated firms choose short-term debt while middle-rated firms choose to match the maturity of their debt to the timing of their operating cash flows. In Diamond's (1991) model, poorly rated firms have no choice other than expose themselves to premature liquidation because of moral hazard concerns from the lenders, while highly rated firms choose to borrow short-term because they expect good news to arrive and therefore obtain better long-term financing deals. The maturity-matching hypothesis is also supported by Emery's (2001) insightful paper, which argues that firms match the maturity of their assets and liabilities as a means to avoid the term premium in interest rates. His arguments are based on the demand cycle in the goods market and the reduction in the firm's long-run marginal costs achieved by optimal use of short-term debt.The predictions of these various theories regarding the effects of each determinant of maturity structure are summarized in Table I. It is clear that discriminating amongst the hypotheses is difficult, because in many aspects they lead to the same prediction, and in many cases the hypotheses are silent about the effect of a particular variable.Most empirical studies have concentrated on the USA. Mitchell's (1991) and Morris' (1992) pioneer studies have taken different empirical approaches to the problem. While Morris (1992) investigates the maturity structure of the firm's total indebtedness, Mitchell (1991) focuses on the maturity of single-bond issues. These are the two most common empirical approaches in the literature. The first approach is followed by Easterwood and Kadapakkam (1994), Barclay and Smith (1995, 1996), Stohs and Mauer (1996), Johnson (1997), Scherr and Hulburt (2001) and Lyandres and Zhdanov (2007). The second approach is preferred by Mitchell (1993), Guedes and Opler (1996) and Gottesman and Roberts (2004), the latter investigating the maturity of bank loans. Baker et al. (2003) also investigate bond issues, and in the aggregate, find evidence of market timing of bond issues.Table II summarizes the empirical literature and their main findings. As can be seen, a great deal of conflicting evidence has been found on this issue. In general, very little support has been found for the tradeoff hypothesis. There is a considerable amount of controversy regarding the agency costs and signaling hypotheses, while convincing evidence has been found for the maturity-matching hypothesis.Few studies investigate debt maturity in an international setting. Schiantarelli and Sembenelli (1997) investigate the maturity structure of 604 non-financial firms from the UK and 750 non-financial firms from Italy and find support for the maturity-matching hypothesis. Their results are in line with those of Ozkan (2000) who investigates the maturity issue for 429 non-financial British firms in the period 1983-1996 and Heyman et al. (2008) who investigate the maturity of 1,132 Belgian small firms. Antoniou et al. (2006) study the determinants of debt maturity for a sample of 358 French, 582 German, and 2,423 British non-financial firms and find that debt maturity depends on both firm-specific and country-specific factors, opening the question of the degree of influence of each group of factors on the maturity structure.Larger sets of countries are studied by Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (1999) who explored the hypothesis that the financial development of a country determines the maturity of its firms' debt. The authors investigate 9,649 non-financial firms from 30 countries including developing ones in the period 1980-1991. They find support for the hypothesis that legal and institutional differences among countries explain a large part of the leverage and debt-maturity choices of firms. Fan et al. (2008) also study the subject for 11 industries in 39 countries in the period 1991-2006. Their results largely support Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic's (1999) findings.To the best of my knowledge, so far, the only study that focused specifically on developing countries is Erol (2004), who analyzed the strategic content of debt maturity in a sample of 15 manufacturing sectors from Turkey during the period 1990-2000. The author's findings are that long-term debt is strategic while short-term debt, despite being devoid of strategic content, is associated with financial constraint. In the next section, I describe the methods, variables, and data I employ in order to investigate the debt-maturity structure of non-financial firms in the seven biggest economies of Latin America.\n3 Data, variables, and research methods: 3.1 Data and variables\n4 Empirical results: 4.1 Preliminary specification tests\n5 Summary and concluding remarks: This paper investigates the determinants of debt maturity for a sample of 1,693 non-financial firms from the seven biggest economies of Latin America and from the US over a 16-year period. Employing dynamic panel data analysis, I test some of the best-known explanatory hypotheses in the theory, including agency costs, signaling, tradeoff, and maturity matching arguments.My findings indicate that:* there is a substantial dynamic component in the determination of the firm's maturity structure, and such effect is common to Latin America and the US;* firms face moderate adjustment costs towards its optimal maturity;* the determinants of maturity structure and their effects seem mostly similar between Latin American countries and the US, despite obvious differences in the financial and business environments of these regions; and* although no theoretical proposition alone clearly finds strong empirical support in this study, all four of them find at least partial empirical support.Of course, the study presented here has its shortcomings: as mentioned before, there may be systematic effects induced by the nature of ownership of the firm, an omitted variable here. The quality of the measurement of the variables is also an issue. As noted, accounting standards, financial market depth, and the degree of supervision on financial reporting may vary largely across countries.The main conclusion of this study is that the present theoretical framework does not provide a complete and general explanation of the maturity decision of the firm. As a matter of fact, the \"theory\" is not more than a collection of partial explanations for this phenomenon. The gap in theoretical research in this case becomes evident in the empirical results where many hypotheses are at best only partially supported.On the one hand, it is frustrating not being able to provide a straight answer to the question \"how do firms choose debt maturity?\" On the other hand, it is reassuring to observe that most factors that affect this kind of firm's decision in developed capital markets behave similarly in emerging markets. It suggests that the determinants of debt maturity may be relatively independent of each country's business and financial environment, which opens room for the development of general theories. Such theories become even more important in periods of financial turmoil such as those observed from 2007 on.Directions for future empirical research include the joint estimation of the leverage and maturity decisions through a system of simultaneous equations, which seems a reasonable theoretical approximation to real-life decision-making. Also, cross-country variation in maturity structure can be explored further using financial development and business condition indicators for these countries, along Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic's (1999) lines such as shareholder rights index, stock market capitalization to GDP, stock market turnover, bank financing to GDP, etc. These shall be my next steps.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to test the main theories of corporate debt maturity in a multi-country framework, in an attempt to understand country-specific constraints.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Dynamic panel data analysis estimated by the generalized method of moments, techniques that account properly for cross-section and time series variation allowing for dynamic effects.\nFindings: - There is a substantial dynamic component in the determination of a firm's maturity structure; firms face moderate adjustment costs towards its optimal maturity, and the determinants of maturity structure and their effects are similar between Latin American countries and the USA; and there is a partial empirical support for each of the theoretical hypotheses tested.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Firm ownership, accounting standards, financial market depth, and the degree of supervision on financial reporting may vary across countries, which may affect the quality and consistency of some variables.\nPractical implications: - Firms face costs in adjusting the maturity of their debt, which gives such decision a long-term character, and the determinants of debt maturity do not seem very sensitive to a country's business and financial environment.\nOriginality/value: - The paper focuses on a sample of developing countries that have so far been ignored in empirical studies, employs empirical techniques that account properly for cross-section and time series variation, and the model allows for dynamic effects that have seldom been considered in previous research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Communicative interaction as an instrument for integration and coordination in an aerospace supply chain
|
[
"Supply chain management",
"Communication",
"Risk sharing",
"Innovation",
"Aerospace industry"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the paper a global aerospace supply chain is investigated in terms of its integration efforts. Closer integration of the firms is sought in order to develop practices serving a common purpose for the supply chain as a whole. The intention of which is to create innovative solutions for enhancing competitive advantage.Integration and coordination of inter-firm activities are essential to supply chain existence. The integration of flow of information and materials between customers, manufacturers and suppliers defines the concept of a supply chain (Samaranyake, 2005). However, aerospace supply chains are characterised by different practices of integration and coordination. This defines different supply chain forms. As the industry is a conservative one, the changes to supply chain forms in the past are characterised by slow adaptation of practices from other industries (Rose-Anderssen et al., 2009). With the fiercer global competition more proactive responses to the change in the market is needed. Such a response is to integrate the airframe manufacturer and certain selected high technology suppliers into risk-sharing partnerships. The idea is to bring together companies that have both the technological expertise to develop innovative solutions and have the financial capacity to invest in change and development (Rose-Anderssen et al., 2008).This paper addresses the integration and coordination processes of risk-sharing partnerships for one specific supply chain. The paper argument or hypothesis is that communicative interaction enhances the coordination and therefore the integration of the supply chain. The object of the partnership becomes clearer through frequent communicative interaction. The object is the vision that gives the collective direction to a working relationship. The argument is that a clearer collective object definition is necessary for efficient coordination of practices within the supply chain. The paper therefore sets out to explore the effects of communicative interaction on integration and coordination of this specific aerospace supply chain.Risk-sharing partnerships between two firms are not something new in the commercial aerospace industry. It is, however, new to bring together all the 1st tier suppliers needed for producing an aircraft into a network of risk-sharing partners. In this case the purpose is to produce a conceptually new aircraft.In the paper it is argued that developmental processes within supply chains are characterised by multi-voiced interactions (Engestrom, 2001). These developmental processes are approached by viewing single firms as work activities and supply chains as networks of work activities. In this context activity theory is applied for analysing the processes of integration, coordination and communicative interaction. Cultural-historical activity theory was founded by L. Vygotsky, A.N. Leont'ev and A.A. Luria in Moscow in the 1920-1930s. The theory is a philosophical framework for studying different forms of human practices and their transformation.The paper first presents the complexity of supply chain integration, coordination and communicative interaction. Then it focuses on supply chains as networks of work activities. These networks are discussed in terms of integration, coordination, and communicative interaction. This basis is used to produce a complex systems model of these processes. Following this the method of data collection is presented and justified. The case, based on interview data, is then discussed in terms of the model.\n2. Risk-sharing partnerships for integration of aerospace supply chains: The levels of supply chain integration are characterised by whether business conditions are complex or simple (Van Donk and Van der Vaart, 2004). Complex conditions are represented by low volume production, high product variety, small batches, make-to-order, long delivery time, and flexible suppliers. Aerospace supply chains belong to the complex conditions category. They are characterised by a high variety of systems and parts that make up an airplane and long delivery time.Mattson (2003) argues that supply chain management in the global environment may have positive synergetic effects if the differences of expertise are coordinated efficiently through dynamic exchange relationships of co-controlled resources in common activities. The co-control of activities in supply chains is meant to reduce the risk of unexpected changes affecting the chain. Supply chain resilience to changing conditions can be improved by frequent communication between tiers (Christopher and Peck, 2004).Peck (2006) argues that risk drawn from the principles of best practice gives a convenient but incomplete picture of supply chain vulnerability. Her suggestion is to apply a multi-level network-based approach. This should recognise the emergent properties of complex systems of all communities involved in influencing the supply chain. These evolutionary complex systems are governed partly by invisible effects of the actions of individuals having a diverse set of interests and perceptions of reality (Rose-Anderssen et al., 2005).The risk-sharing partnership investigated in this paper is an instrument with a twofold mission. First, the co-controlled effort may improve the resilience of the supply chain as such. Second, the integration and coordination of high technology expertise may enhance innovation.The paper tells a story about a supply chain that is subject to the pressure of constant change and adaptation to the environment. In that context, Barrett et al. (1995) contended that conversations are the core of change processes. Similarly, Frahm and Brown (2006) emphasise communicative competencies as essential for managing change in organisations. This paper supports the above arguments (see Table I).\n3. Supply chains as networks of work activities: In this paper supply chains are viewed as networks of multiple work activities. A work activity can be defined as a developmental process connecting the individual and social levels through the human artefacts and the object orientation of the process (Engestrom, 2001). This multifaceted interaction of elements influencing each other within work activities makes work activities evolutionary complex systems (Rose-Anderssen and Allen, 2008).The theoretical concepts developed in this section will be applied to the framework of Figure 1.3.1 Integration and coordination of work activities\n4. Method of data collection: Data were collected for a three-year research project on the evolution of commercial aerospace supply chains. This paper is a part outcome of this project.Data collection took place in two steps: first, by literature research and second, by semi-structured interviews. The research started off by conducting literature research on supply chains in general; on aerospace supply chains specifically; historical accounts of aircraft production, literature on evolution, learning, knowledge and change, and data from company internet sources. The treatment of data involved systematic coding of categories identified in the texts. It meant a process of continuous comparison and recoding of categories. This lead to a classification system of changing practices of the past. Based on the knowledge thus developed, interviews with key actors in the industry were conducted in order to verify past practices and validate present and emerging practices.Interviewees were presented a set of key questions in relation to certain issues, in the form of a list, identified from the secondary data. Initially the interviewees were encouraged to work themselves through the list of questions. The questions were as follows:1. Key questions:* How is the evolution of your company's supply chain represented in terms of supply chain practices and supply chain forms?* How have key practices changed and been introduced along the life cycle of an aircraft model and from aircraft model to aircraft model?2. Key questions discussed in terms of issues of:* Types of supplier selection.* Types of relationships with customers and suppliers.* Coordination and integration.* Training, learning and development - how people learn and therefore change practices.* Quality assurance.* Risk.* Lean/agile production.* Costs.* Offsets.* Technology.* Future scenarios.Each interview lasted between one hour and one-hour-and-a-half. A total of 19 interviews took place in Europe, Japan and the USA at one airframe manufacturer and six of its 1st tier suppliers. The interviews were conducted innine companies with senior managers and directors in each company. These companies are all high profile companies in global aircraft production and belong to the same supply chain. It was essential to limit the interviews to companies that are involved in the fierce global competition of producing large commercial airplanes. For comparative reasons, the companies also had to belong to the same supply chain. These companies happened to be risk-sharing partners. Each interview session was recorded on tape for later transcription. All the interviewees had to have first hand influence on their company's supply chain management.This paper focuses on the coordination, integration and communication issues elicited from the interview data.\n5. A case of integration, coordination and communicative interaction: This case is used to illustrate the integration of an aerospace supply chain. For the theoretical analysis, these companies are brought into an activity network of risk-sharing partners (Figure 5). Individuals of this new supply chain community are coordinated through their common object. The object emerges through communicative interaction as individuals use language to discuss and inform each other. In that sense communicative interaction becomes and instrument for change.The effects of communicative interaction on integration and coordination are analysed according to the model in Figure 4.5.1 Integration and the facilitation of a common purpose\n6. Communicative interactions for common meaning construction in the supply chain: The paper set out to explore the effects of communicative interaction on the integration and coordination of a supply chain. This was done using a complex framework of supply chain integration, coordination and communicative interaction. Within this framework a case of one supply chain was analysed using activity theory.The paper confirms the position taken by Barrett et al. (1995) that communicative interactions are the core of organisational change processes. In the change process explored in this paper, there is a regime change from the single voice of one dominant actor to a regime of the multi-voiced interaction between risk-sharing partners.An IT system is excellent for transmitting established knowledge. However, in the context of agility and creativity, like Christopher and Peck (2004) argue, interactions in terms of dialogue are needed to ensure the resilience of the supply chain.Despite the islands of negative experiences here and there on the global map of the supply chain, the risk-sharing partnership as a whole, in line with Engestrom (2001) and Vygotsky (1934, 1978) arguments, due to the multi-voiced interaction of different expertise, exploration and learning moved the chain beyond what the airframe manufacturer could have achieved alone. The partners thereby exhibited their potential for expansive transformation through producing a conceptually new aircraft model.Integration of a supply chain into risk-sharing partnerships is a contractual task. To make the partnership function is a developmental process of coordinating multiple activities. This is characterised by communicative interaction between key individuals in complex activity networks, constructing meaning through their object formation process. The case confirms the Bakthinian approach of orientation towards listeners and their conceptual horizon for co-construction of meaning.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to explore the effects of communicative interaction on integration and coordination of a commercial aerospace supply chain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A perspective of supply chains as complex activity networks is used for data analysis based on in-depth interviews in a global setting. Themes for interviews were identified through literature research.\nFindings: - The paper finds that integration through risk-sharing partnerships is chosen for co-developing expertise and innovative capacity. Practices of integration and coordination through communicative interaction are emerging while they are producing innovative solutions and competitive advantage. The multi-voiced interaction between partners in the supply chain is assisting in moving the product beyond what the airframe manufacturer could have created alone.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides evidence of changing interactive practices in commercial aerospace supply chains. By applying concepts of supply chains as he interaction of multiple work activities this assists in comprehending the forces of change. Communicative interaction within the supply chain is used for co-construction of meaning to enhance change and development.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Borderless education: some implications for management
|
[
"Higher education",
"Globalization",
"Teaching",
"Curricula"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Heightened competition, complex environmental influences and persistent economic impacts continue to create constant change conditions in many organisations. This turbulence frequently requires organisations to focus on strategies for organisational survival (i.e. re-structuring, outsourcing and downsizing). Nowhere are these forces more pronounced than in the post-secondary education sector, where arguments have reached a fevered pitch. Governments, bureaucrats, university administrators and technology salespeople alike have suggested the death of one era (that of the traditional university sector) and the birth of another (that of the global and potentially virtual higher education business).The present paper examines some views about the \"business of borderless education\" (BBE) drawing on wide ranging research, predominantly from the USA (including corporate and \"for profit\" examples), the UK and Australia as this is where most such research has been undertaken. The paper looks at some major global trends and issues in higher education and identifies their implications, with specific reference to management education where appropriate.\nTrends and issues in higher education: In 1997, Australia's Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) undertook an intensive examination of the rhetoric and reality of borderless education through the so-called \"New Media and Borderless Education\" project. Subsequent projects (\"The Business of Borderless Education\", 2000 and the \"Business of Borderless Education: 2001 Report\") considered the lessons that could be learnt in the corporate and post-secondary sector from organisations acknowledged internationally as delivering exemplar education and training that satisfied all stakeholders (i.e. staff, students and employers). While some have suggested that the initial project was aimed at striking fear into the hearts of paranoid professors in their ivy towers, the research in fact addressed three elements that continue to be significant influences in higher education; namely globalisation, virtualisation and borderlessness.Globalisation\nImplications for higher education: These three trends will have far-reaching effects in many education areas. Here, their impacts in three key areas (curriculum, teaching and administration) are explored.Curriculum\nConclusions: The present paper outlined some significant trends that are impacting on international education and has outlined their implications for curriculum, teaching and administration. Despite the sectoral challenges of increased competition, decreased public funding and the like, there are clear opportunities for educational institutions that understand their own strengths and the markets within which they operate. What is clear is that educational institutions are operating in very different markets than they did even a decade ago and that their overall success or failure is likely to be determined by how well they make the transition from local to regional to global players, while not losing sight of their educational objectives and their roles as developers and disseminators of knowledge and wisdom.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - There is a considerable competition within the global education marketplace, as can be seen by the growing number of higher education providers. Significant changes to information and communication technologies (ICTs) have also supported dramatic opportunities for distance and online education. This transformation, in combination with a growing demand for continuing professional education and strengthened demands by employers for tailored education and training, has caused significant shifts in higher education. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of three relevant trends within higher education. The paper explores: the significant changes in ICTs and their support for enhanced distance and online learning opportunities; the growing demand for continuing professional management education; and the strengthened demand by employers for tailored education and training.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper reviews current literature on higher education trends in the areas of globalisation, virtualisation and borderlessness. The impact of these trends is specifically examined relative to management education.\nFindings: - The paper discusses the implications of higher education trends on curriculum, teaching and administration in management education.\nOriginality/value: - This paper brings together a significant amount of information from various sources to provide a coherent resource about management education trends and the implication of these trends on the future provision of management education.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Assessment of household food waste in Hungary
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Food waste",
"Sustainable consumption",
"Consumer survey",
"Household income"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations estimation, the consumers are primarily responsible for the food waste generation in economically developed regions (Food and Agricultural Organisation, 2011). One of the most relevant European Studies, the BIO Intelligence Service (BIOIS, 2011) report, concludes that a considerable proportion - approximately 42 per cent - of the total food waste is generated by households in Europe. The estimated amount of food waste is 76 kg per capita in Europe. The experts of the Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimising Waste Prevention Strategies (FUSIONS) project - as a follow-up of the BIO Intelligence Service (BIOIS) study, based on a slightly different methodology - presented even more worrying results in regard of the extent of household food waste: 92 kg per capita examining the EU-28 (FUSIONS, 2016). The calculated results published in this study are based on EUROSTAT database on general animal and vegetal waste production, officially reported by countries. In many cases, the authors of the mentioned studies could also identify relevant national research reports and used them to refine the statistically derived numbers. An important finding of these two studies was that due to lack of research standards, comparability and coherency of the national-level studies are fairly limited (Brautigam et al., 2014).\nData and methodology: Examined types of food waste\nResults: Quantity of food waste\nConclusions: Based on the primary data collected from 100 Hungarian households during a week's period in November 2016, we found that the most significant part (55.26 per cent) of household waste derived from foodstuffs. The estimated amount of total food waste (including liquid waste) is 68.04 kg per capita annually. Comparing our results with the most recent estimation published in the BIOIS study, we found remarkably higher values than the 39 kg/capita/year, which were reported for Hungarian consumers in this report (BIOIS, 2011). Although, it is important to emphasise that BIOIS's estimation did not cover the liquid food waste and neither those materials which do not appear in municipal waste stream (for instance, fed to animals or composted). During our study, we gathered a very detailed data set, thus calculation based upon the BIOIS methodology could be done. According to BIOIS criteria, we subtracted liquid food waste and waste that was used to feed animals or was composted from the total food waste. By this way, our data show only 34.89 kg/capita/year.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine and quantify the most dominant types of food waste in Hungarian households and to analyse the effect of demographic background and income as influencing factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data related to solid and liquid food waste were recorded from 100 households for one week. The study primarily focussed on avoidable food waste, however, unavoidable and potentially avoidable food waste were also measured. Appropriate tools and manual were provided to the households to ensure data consistency.\nFindings: Estimated quantity of total food waste (including liquid waste) per capita is 68.04 kg/year. In all, 48.70 per cent of total food waste would have been avoidable (equals to 33.14 kg/capita/year). Most frequently wasted food categories were meals and bakery products. In case of some demographic categories, different wastage levels were observed. It was also confirmed that income has effect on food waste production that varies by foodstuff categories: bakery product waste was mainly dominant for middle income consumers and fresh fruits were typically wasted by more affluent households. Apart from that, higher income resulted in higher food waste production in general.\nPractical implications: This primary data set about avoidable food waste in Hungary contributes with relevant information to the refining of international estimates. Having specific data on food wastage and the most affected target groups, as well as information on the impact of the income can be applied in planning awareness raising campaigns.\nOriginality/value: The research is based on measurement of food waste categories in households resulting in detailed data sets. This study is one of the first investigations based on primary data collection from the eastern part of Central Europe and the very first related to Hungary. The study draws attention also to the influence that household income exerts on the issue of food waste.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Investigating failures in information seeking episodes
|
[
"Information seeking",
"Strategies",
"Barriers",
"Failures",
"Information seeking in context",
"Tasks"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Information seeking is an essential element of individuals' everyday lives. Individuals may use many different strategies to seek information that accomplishes different goals. Their queries are generally heterogeneous, though there are areas in which people have information needs more frequently than others (Savolainen, 1995). Among the factors that influence people's information needs and information seeking strategies (ISSs) are task complexity (Bystrom and Jarvelin, 1995), familiarity with information sources (Savolainen, 1995), temporal factors (Savolainen, 2006), and convenience (Connaway et al., 2011). While individuals' information seeking behaviors and the factors that influence their behaviors, such as barriers, have gained considerable attention, people's experiences of information seeking failures (hereafter ISFs) and reasons for these failures have been understudied. Among the limited amount of such studies, most focus on one aspect, tool, or method of information seeking, such as web searching (e.g. Mansourian and Ford, 2007b).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Information seeking barriers\n3. Methods: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Results: 4.1 Expected failures\n5. Discussion: Although participants seemed to have a good idea of the factors behind most of their ISFs, the extents to which they could explain their failures were wide-ranging. Some participants provided concrete reasons - such as the information was not officially released, documented, or indexed by the information sources (e.g. organizations) - that explained their failures. Some participants were able to logically speculate to make sense of their failures, while others only provided their observations (e.g. not enough research done in the field) rather than explanations. In the third type of scenario, it was not determined if the information really was available/unavailable, or if the participants were pessimistic/overconfident in their information seeking skills. Ford and Mansourian (2006) defined this as cognitive invisibility (i.e. the invisibility was perceived by participants, and did not necessarily correspond to the reality of whether the information was available).\n6. Conclusion: The work reported in this paper drew on multiple theoretical frameworks to examine and demonstrate a variety of people's ISFs in a holistic way. Failures were nearly evenly distributed into expected failures where individuals assumed the non-existence of their desired information and unexpected failures where they believed that they failed to find existing information. In general, people were found to be more inclined to attribute their failures to purely external causes or a combination of external and internal causes. Their information needs were often very situational and contextual. However, the information they found was sometimes not specific or personalized enough, and this problem was intensified by other factors, such as time constraints, that were beyond people's control. People's information needs were generated by tasks covering all types of characteristic and topic. In particular, tasks that required decision making and tasks which people performed for the first time presented unique challenges. Difficult tasks subsequently led to not being aware of relevant sources (particularly human sources) as participants frequently reported on using Google as the only channel for information. Also, there may be a gap between people's perceptions of information availability and actual available information. The exploratory work described here provided interesting insights into how people perceive and address challenges in information seeking, and possible support that could be facilitated to address those challenges and failures. In addition, this research contributes to a methodology and a set of frameworks that can be used to study information seeking barriers and failures in the larger context of tasks and various search strategies. It adds to existing information seeking literature by considering both online and offline environments.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: People face barriers and failures in various kinds of information seeking experiences. These are often attributed to either the information seeker or the system/service they use. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why individuals fail to fulfill their information needs in all contexts and situations. It addresses the limitations of existing studies in examining the context of the task and information seeker's strategy and seeks to gain a holistic understanding of information seeking barriers and failures.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The primary method used for this investigation is a qualitative survey, in which 63 participants provided 208 real life examples of failures in information seeking. After analyzing the survey data, ten semi-structured interviews with another group of participants were conducted to further examine the survey findings. Data were analyzed using various theoretical frameworks of tasks, strategies, and barriers.\nFindings: A careful examination of aspects of tasks, barriers, and strategies identified from the examples revealed that a wide range of external and internal factors caused people's failures. These factors were also caused or affected by multiple aspects of information seekers' tasks and strategies. People's information needs were often too contextual and specific to be fulfilled by the information retrieved. Other barriers, such as time constraint and institutional restrictions, also intensified the problem.\nOriginality/value: This paper highlights the importance of considering the information seeking episodes in which individuals fail to fulfill their needs in a holistic approach by analyzing their tasks, information needs, strategies, and obstacles. The modified theoretical frameworks and the coding methods used could also be instrumental for future research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Sharing a powerful IDEA: learning organizations collaborating to innovate and design engaging applications in STEM education
|
[
"STEM",
"Professional development workshops",
"International collaboration",
"Curriculum alignment",
"Hands-on learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nPurpose: Working with educational organizations that span continents, languages, and educational contexts provides the means to collaboratively work together to tackle challenges and find new opportunities to create, problem-solve, and learn together. Engaging students in important topics such as natural resource management and energy use is timely and relevant, and this work requires updated professional development. This study brought educators together from three universities in the United States and Pakistan in an effort to focus on economic growth and collaborative relationships between the US and Pakistan through a US State Department Grant, titled \"Innovating and Designing Engaged Applications in STEM Education (IDEA-STEM): Expanding the knowledge and Capacity of Pakistani Institutions.\" This work focused on expanding knowledge and capacity in middle schools in the Punjab region of Pakistan, with a particular focus on underrepresented students, and sought to improve middle grades instruction in areas such as coding, water and natural resource management, energy, and other critical STEM areas, by using hands-on projects and applications.\nLiterature: Teaching and learning in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is bolstered when teachers and educational leaders provide inquiry-based learning opportunities that allow for interdisciplinary collaboration, deeper thinking, and research applications both inside and outside the classroom (Buckner and Boyd, 2015). Through equipping teachers, this work can thus equip students to solve tomorrow's problems. Through a systemic \"STEM shift\" educators can reconsider how learning occurs in \"new learning environments, new structures, and new relationships\" (Myers and Berkowicz, 2015, p. 16). This work built upon prior research that occurred in rural part of the United States (Moallem et al., 2016) with the recognition that the Pakistani colleagues had an established curriculum that required thorough review in order to adapt the activities to the curriculum, not vice versa. Being cognizant of the curriculum and then identifying learning activities that aligned with the stated objectives were \"shaped to help the learners master the objective\" (Glatthorn et al., 2012, p. 245) of the Pakistani STEM curriculum.\nDesign: This work began with intense planning and alignment of learning activities with the established middle grades curriculum in Pakistan. This led to a four-day workshop in Lahore, Pakistan, co-facilitated by the team of US and Pakistani educators working closely with four identified middle schools that included under-served populations in Pakistan (including women and girls). The workshop was designed to show teachers how they could help students model abstract knowledge through simulation, testing, and experimentation in a complex learning system while providing them the tools to adapt variables, curricula, topics, and activities to the established curriculum (Moallem et al., 2016). The collaboration lasted beyond the week of professional development, and continued through the use of technologies that fostered an ongoing social collaborative presence. This effort was informed through the use of formative survey data gathered from the workshop participants throughout the course of the week.\nData and findings: The researchers conducted pre and post surveys of 22 participants that included the 16 middle school STEM teachers and 6 participating graduate students. This took the form of a group-administered survey \"completed by individual respondents assembled together\" and the researchers provided a \"standard introductory statement that express(ed) appreciated for their participation, describe(d) the steps of the survey\" (Check and Schutt, 2012, p. 173) as well as the institution's IRB procedures. Pre-workshop data was reviewed to better understand participants' perspectives, and to make needed adjustments. Post-workshop data was then gathered as well; all twenty-two participants provided post-survey feedback on Likert scale items (with 1 = Strongly Disagree; 2 = Disagree; 3 = Neither Agree nor Disagree; 4 = Agree; 5 = Strongly Agree) as follows: \"The workshop was at the appropriate level for me\" (4.52 out of 5); \"I have new knowledge and skills to bring to my work\" (4.68); \"the workshop content was presented in an engaging way\" (4.64); \"skill practice was enough\" (4.5); \"The workshop facilitated collaboration among STEM teachers\" (4.60); and \"The structure and format of the workshop was effective\" (4.64).\nFindings: Insights gained from this work to enhance STEM education can be viewed through work of Glatthorn et al. (2012), particularly through the lens of improving a field of study such as STEM middle grades education.\nResearch implications and limitations: This effort was meaningful in several ways. First, it brought together 11 educators from three learning organizations who had never worked together as a team; this team shared a mutual desire to foster engaging STEM teaching strategies in middle grades classrooms, and consisted of experts in fields such as school leadership, applied learning, instructional technology, project-based learning, engineering, teacher training, physics, math education, communication, and science education. Second, the collaborative effort relied heavily on virtual conferencing (via a web-based software) to plan and engage in professional development in STEM education while spanning continents, time zones, languages, and curriculum; this video-conferencing was put in place before, during, and after the week-long on-site training in Pakistan. Third, the effort involved travel for four members of the US-side team to Pakistan to collaborate with Punjab-region middle grades teachers in a hands-on way that incorporated new pedagogical methods, technology learning, and collaborating to engage students in technology rich problem-based learning activities.\nConclusion: This collaborative effort allowed the team to share and further a powerful idea of innovating and engaging new applications in STEM education, provided the opportunity to grow as reflective practitioners and researchers, and resulted in a robust multinational PLC. These topics are important across continents. Navigating time constraints and distance is feasible through communication, attention to objectives and clarity in goals, and a desire to learn outside of one's usual comfort zones. Collaborating to teach important STEM and PBL concepts has been a transformative opportunity for all members of the learning organizations. Listening and reflecting to collaborators using on-the-ground interactions and survey research methodology allows for a greater understanding of needs and perceptions. This effort creates and supports the notion of lifelong learning and innovation for both the students and the educators involved in this powerful effort.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study sought to better understand how to support and plan for a collaborative effort that brought educators together from three universities in the United States and Pakistan. This project sough to foster collaborative relationships between the two countries by expanding knowledge, collaboration, and capacity in middle schools in the Punjab region of Pakistan with a particular focus on underrepresented students and middle grades STEM instruction.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was informed through the use of formative survey data gathered from the workshop participants throughout the course of the week. The researchers conducted pre and post surveys of 22 participants using Likert scale items.\nFindings: This project provided insights regarding curriculum alignment, engaging communication, teacher-centered formative data. These findings offered insights on how to grow as reflective practitioners and researchers, and how to form a robust multi-national professional learning community.\nResearch limitations/implications: The survey data were gathered from participants who willingly sought professional development in one region of Pakistan. The sample was small (four participating middle schools and one local university) and thus the findings cannot be necessarily generalized to a greater population.\nPractical implications: This project provides practical insights of how teams can work together in regard to building a professional learning community. Teams can plan with intentionality, foster various modes of discussion, and empower both teachers and students to inquire, solve problems, and share their insights.\nSocial implications: The STEM topics in this study are important across continents. Navigating time constraints and distance is feasible through communication, attention to objectives and clarity in goals, and a desire to learn outside of one's usual comfort zones.\nOriginality/value: This project was unique in the time and space in which it was designed and implemented, yet it offers value in fostering ongoing collaboration through various modalities and in being intentional in the planning process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Food for thought: parents' perspectives of child influence
|
[
"Diet",
"Influence",
"Parents",
"Dependants"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Consumer socialisation refers to the process by which young people obtain skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to their functioning in the marketplace (Solomon, 1996; McNeal and Yeh, 2003). Children learn about consumption by watching their parents' behaviour and imitating it (Solomon, 1996). Parents also provide children with money to spend and teach them how to spend it while in the supermarket (McNeal and Yeh, 2003). In the view of Warwick et al. (1999) the diet of any individual, whether child or adult, is the result of a range of factors, many of which are complex and conflicting. This complexity increases when the focus is on young people who are at the stage of development described as turbulent and characterised by major physical and psychological changes (Foxall, 1990). Owen (1997) points out that eating habits learned in childhood tend to continue into adulthood. Children's food preferences are manipulated by other influences besides the tastes of their parents. Exposure to the opinions of peers and persuasive advertising will shape the eating behaviour of children (Donkin et al. 1993). Dixon and Banwell (2004) examined recent changes in the family dynamic and reveal that children have had a growing influence on the family diet in recent years. According to studies such as Caruana and Vassallo (2003), children have an influence on family food buying when they shop with their parents. After the initial consumer socialization process many children develop their own opinions and tastes about food they wish to eat. This paper examines two particular themes addressed in a questionnaire concerning family food buying behaviour. The first broad theme is whether parents' perceive their children to have an influence on family shopping for food through pester power[1]. The latter is related to a secondary theme that explores family food consumption to uncover possible reasons why parents do not always purchase healthy food products, reasons which may have little to do with the influence of the child.\nLiterature review: The food preferences of children would appear to be motivated by a range of influential factors. Social factors influence food choice and eating habits (Warwick et al., 1999) and parents appear to be the most instrumental in teaching their children consumer behaviour through direct communication (Feltham, 1998; McNeal et al., 1998; Caruana and Vassallo, 2003). Parents have the opportunity to provide informational influence, as children perceive their parents to be knowledgeable and observe their consumer behaviour. However, parents seem to be losing control of the buying situation to their children, a fact supported by Schor (2006) who states that parents are findings it increasingly difficult to deny children due to advertising and marketing. This is due to the fact that they try to involve their children in most of the family decisions including food purchases (Gelperowic and Beharrell, 1998). Another factor that will give children leverage in the family is the growing number of divorces. This is supported by the Office for National Statistics (2002) who state that in 1999 in the UK, 147,721 children under the age of 16 years had parents that divorced, a figure which rose to 149,335 in 2002. This potentially could provide the child with a greater degree of independence to put pressure on parents to purchase the products they want (Anon, 2001).Economic factors\nMethodology: The method used to gather parents' views on their children's influence on family food buying was the distribution of a Likert style questionnaire. A Likert scale indicates the level of agreement with each statement. It allows respondents a certain degree of freedom in expressing their views in comparison to a group interview where the respondents may feel pressured into giving what is perceived as being the correct answer. It also allows the author to identify the strength of one respondent's view in relation to another. Cohen and Manion (1980, p. 76) described the ideal questionnaire as being \"brief, attractive, asks unambiguous questions, is interesting and easy to complete, can be analysed with little effort and interpreted without difficulty to provide clear and concise information on which to base decisions\". The main focus of this project is concerned with parents who have children under the age of 12 years, because this age group is more likely to be solely dependant on their parents for money, with their independent purchasing power limited. Therefore the questionnaire, rather than being mailed out to the parent, would be given in an envelope to the child at school for the parent to complete at home. It was assumed that parents were more likely to return a questionnaire which had been issued by the school. Questionnaires have become commonplace research tools for business and research projects. In a questionnaire survey, the main objective is to get standardised information by presenting everyone with the same stimulus: the questions presented in an identical way, so any diversity in the answers is a true reflection of the variety of views and circumstances among the respondents (Collis and Hussey, 2003).In comparison to other research methods, for example the group interview, it is believed that a mailed questionnaire is a less efficient method of data gathering, as many of the questionnaires that are sent out will not be returned (Kumar, 1996). This is the main reason for choosing to distribute the questionnaires via a school as there is a larger audience to target, which is relevant to the study, and might therefore receive a larger response rate. There is also anonymity which can be promised to the respondent. This will be valuable in obtaining information which the respondent may otherwise have been reluctant to provide (Collis and Hussey, 2003). A low response rate is a major disadvantage associated with mail based questionnaires, however there have been a number of factors included in this questionnaire which would aid in maximizing response rates, the simplicity of the design and layout, coupled with definite instructions boldly and attractively displayed throughout the questionnaire (Harper et al., 2003). Due to the questionnaire being distributed to a local primary school on a random basis, it is probable that the school children will not all live in the immediate area surrounding the school. Therefore there is a possibility of considering responses from people of different types of socio-economic backgrounds, however this was not the reasoning behind the school's selection.\nResults: Of the 301 questionnaires distributed, there were 143 responses, a response rate of 47.5 percent from one primary with a catchment area in Dundee. The main theme in this section was to identify if parents believed that their children influenced their food purchasing decisions when shopping. A further theme was to establish how parents viewed the influence of external factors, especially the role the media plays in prompting their children to pester them. Of the 143 parents questioned 86 (60 percent) agreed or strongly agreed that they gave in to their children's demands in the supermarket, when they wanted food products (see Table I).In answer to the question raised to determine parents' views on the influencing external factors including the media, peers and promotions in-store, 97(67 percent) parents either agreed or strongly agreed that their children were influenced by adverts on television (see Table I). This result was further analysed along with parents' responses to the question \"Do you feel you give in to your children's demands in the supermarket, when they want food products?\", to ascertain if there was a statistical relationship between these results. A combined total of 78 (55 percent) stated they agreed or strongly agreed they had conflicts when deciding what food was going to be purchased. Using the Pearson Correlation test, a positive weak correlation with r=0.242, p=0.004 was obtained at the 5 percent level and this provides evidence of a relationship between the influence of adverts on children and the pestering and giving in of parents in the supermarket.Although many parents thought that children were influenced by adverts, they did not feel that in-store promotions influenced their children to the same extent. Over half, 74 (52 percent) disagreed that in-store promotions influenced their children into pestering them for a particular product.Healthy eating\nDiscussion: At a time when there is media attention on children becoming obese at an early age (Anon, 2002) it is important to examine the effects children have on parents' purchasing decisions when shopping for food products. This paper has investigated the influence children have on parents' purchasing decisions; moreover it explored the reasons why some parents do not purchase healthy food products. The increased leverage children are reported to have in decision making in the family, for example (Anon, 2001) is supported by the sample of parents in this research. Of the 143 respondents, 86 parents believed their children influenced purchasing decisions when shopping. However, their feelings differed on the issue of giving in to their children's pestering, although they did admit that it was difficult to deny their children food products that contained their favourite cartoon characters or celebrities. It also emerged that parents strongly believed they are the people who teach their children about purchasing decisions and provide them with the skills and knowledge when shopping. Parents did, however, believe that their children were influenced by adverts on television. Analysis indicated a strong correlation between the parents feeling that their buying behaviour is influenced by their children and the perceived influence of television adverts on children.The findings agreed with the assertion by Jones (2003) that there is a growing awareness of the importance of eating healthy food. When questioned, 140 parents claimed they were reported to be aware of the health impact of sugary and fatty foods. When asked if they bought healthy or diet food products for themselves and their children again a majority asserted that they did. Further analysis again demonstrated a weak correlation between the parents' responses to these two questions.However a correlation between responses from another two questions illustrated that there may be occasions when many parents buy unhealthy food for their children. The majority of parents in the survey agreed that they spent less time with their children and this correlated with most of them agreeing that they would buy children treats if they had the money. Given that studies show, for example Horne et al. (1998) that children prefer unhealthy food, this may be one explanation why children are given unhealthy food by parents despite the latter's awareness of the implications on the health of their children. One limitation of this study was the omission of questions ascertaining to the income and socio-economic background of the respondents. This is an important factor (Davies and Worrall, 1998) and a theme which will be examined in future research.\nConclusion: The aim of this paper was to investigate themes about pester power and family food consumption taken from a broader study in the perceptions of a small sample of parents about healthy food buying behaviour. The findings indicate that some parents are in a quandary when buying food for the family, factors such as guilt and family income may prevent some parents buying healthy food for their children. Further research is needed in this area especially a closer examination of the changing family dynamic and its effect on buying unhealthy food. The theme of parents' guilt about spending less time with children could be further explored in future research. The working lifestyles of single and two parent families may impact on the type of food that is consumed by the modern family especially the children.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Aims to investigate the influence parents perceive their children have on family food-purchasing decisions and discuss the reasons why parents do not always purchase healthy food products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Quantitative analysis was conducted, using 301 questionnaires which were distributed to parents through a local primary school in Dundee. From this sample 143 were returned.\nFindings: - Most parents acknowledge that their children do influence their purchasing decisions, with 86 (60 percent) agreeing or strongly agreeing that they gave in to their children's demands; however, parents feel that they do not give in to pester power. Parents were aware of health issues and state that they regularly purchase healthy food products for their children. However, many parents admit to buying unhealthy food products for their children as treats.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This was an exploratory study and carries the limitation of generalisability as it was conducted solely in Dundee. Any further research should contrast perspectives from other UK cities and develop research into the family dynamics and parents' rationale for \"yielding\" to their children with regard to junk food.\nPractical implications: - It is suggested that parents \"give in\" to their children, which demonstrates the importance of \"getting\" the message across to children to eat more healthily. Further, the paper provides insight into influencing factors, suggesting that advertising can play a prominent role in influencing children's eating habits.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is helpful to both academics and practitioners in the field of healthy eating among children. The paper provides some insight into parental perspectives of healthy eating and their responses to pester power.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Malaria classroom corner: a school-based intervention to promote basic malaria awareness and common control practices among school-age children
|
[
"Malaria",
"Primary school-age children",
"Awareness",
"Control practices",
"Malaria classroom corner"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Malaria is a very devastating parasitic disease that is well known and endemic in the tropical regions of the world (WHO, 2019). Efforts are ongoing towards its control and eventual elimination, involving mainly preventing transmission through vector mosquito bites and effective management of infections. Common malaria preventive practices include environmental management, use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying (IRS) and intermittent preventive treatment (IPT), promoted through social as well as behaviour change communication. Practices for the management of infections, on the other hand, include prompt recognition and diagnosis by microscopy or rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and appropriate treatment with the recommended artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). Irrespective of the fact that these measures are proven to be effective in reducing malaria incidence (Sumari et al., 2016; WHO, 2016), the rate of malaria mortality and morbidity is still high in most poor endemic areas in sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2019). Countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as Nigeria bear the highest global burden of the disease. Nigeria is reported to account for 25% of global malaria burden and 19% of globally estimated deaths from the disease (WHO, 2018).Malaria is a common disease among school pupils in Nigeria and other tropical endemic countries. In fact, a previous study in Imo State, South Eastern Nigeria, had encountered as high as 83.1% rate of malaria parasitemia among children above six years of age (Austin et al., 2014). It is quite common for primary schools to record absenteeism of pupils and loss of school days due to malaria (Vorasan et al., 2015; Okwa and Ibidabo, 2010). However, malaria prevention and treatment intervention programmes at present less commonly focus on children of primary school age (those between the ages of 6 and 13 years). Most malaria control interventions for children only focus on the under-five children. This is despite the fact that children of primary school age are an important group that should also be essentially given priority attention in malaria control interventions (Walldorf et al., 2015).Evidence has shown that school pupils are powerful carriers of messages taught in schools (Vorasan et al., 2015). They openly share experiences and materials with their families, peers and the surrounding community. They serve as a medium of communication to their respective households and communities including health messages (WHO, 2014; Bobek and Tversky, 2016). They also tend to influence activities at home by practicing what they learnt at school.There are very limited studies accounting for malaria awareness, attitudes, behaviour and practices among children of this age group (Sumari et al., 2016). There are also no specific and deliberate strategies and programmes in primary schools in Nigeria and probably in other malaria endemic areas focussed on promoting basic malaria awareness and control practices among children of primary school age. This is despite the fact that a previous WHO report had observed that malaria education on knowledge communicated in schools has the potentials of permeating the community from pupils (WHO, 2014). Furthermore, school-based interventions have been used and judged successfully in child nutrition improvements (Maryam et al., 2015). It has been suggested that equipping children with appropriate basic awareness about health issues and common ways to control them could translate to getting them empowered to promote community healthy life using the approach they learned in schools (Makoge et al., 2013).This study therefore aimed to design and assess the effectiveness of a school-based intervention named malaria classroom corner (MCC) in promoting basic malaria awareness and common control practices among children of primary school age in Owerri, South Eastern Nigeria.\nMethods: Study design\nResults: Characteristics of study pupils\nDiscussion: Children of primary school age learn better from what they observe and participate in, compared with usual classroom teaching involving lectures, recitations or seatwork activitie (Bobek and Tversky, 2016). Knowledge and awareness at that age can translate to character/attitude/behaviour formation. This phenomenon could be applied to the control of infectious diseases such as malaria when children are empowered with the necessary basic awareness and knowledge about the disease and common ways to prevent and manage it. This could in turn translate to their participation in disease prevention and control in their households and communities through driving of conversations and influencing activities by applying or practicing what they learnt in school.The MCC aims to use this approach in promoting basic malaria awareness and common preventive and management practices among children of primary school age and subsequently make them contributors in the malaria control/elimination efforts in their homes and communities.In this study, all the pupils at both intervention and control primary schools were aware of the disease called malaria. This was not surprising since majority of them had experienced malaria in the past. High awareness about malaria has similarly been reported among children of this age category in a previous Nigerian study (Eko et al., 2013). However, knowledge about specific malaria issues and concepts was quite low among the pupils at baseline in both our intervention and control schools. For instance, many of the children could not properly identify the cause of malaria and the vector breeding sites and so on. It was, however, observed that there was an enhancement of knowledge about these specific concepts regarding malaria at post-intervention. Significant knowledge increase was found for both the intervention and control groups. This is not unexpected, since it is believed that school-based approaches such as health education are effective in instilling knowledge about diseases (Brooker et al., 2000; Ayi et al., 2010).Some of the pupils could not identify mosquito bite as the cause of malaria prior to the intervention. Some of them thought that exposure to sunlight, dirty environment and bites from cockroaches are some of the ways malaria could be transmitted. It has been reported that frequent experience with malaria could elicit different wrong perceptions about the disease, particularly among people that are not informed (Cox et al., 2018). This could likely be the case for these children who may not have thought that a sickness like malaria could be transmitted by the small mosquito. Similarly, despite the fact that majority of the pupils had suffered from malaria, a significant number still could not match the correct symptoms to malaria as well as its ability to be transmitted from person to person, prior to the intervention. The same pattern was also observed regarding the low awareness of the children on the ways to prevent and manage the disease including awareness about its prevention and ACTs as the recommended drug for treatment. Poor perception and misconception about malaria transmission, symptoms, prevention and management hinder efforts towards effective control and have been found to be influenced by the level of knowledge and awareness about the disease (Mathania et al., 2016; Debela, 2014). Knowledge and awareness translate to correct perceptions and elimination of misconceptions and encourage behaviour change necessary for effective control of the disease (Mathania et al., 2016). Our study found that after the introduction of the intervention, the general knowledge about malaria as well as awareness about basic aspects of the disease increased for both study groups. However, the children exposed to the MCC had a more significant increase in their basic awareness about malaria compared to those that just received health talk. This possibly implies that the MCC approach had more effect in instilling awareness about malaria in the children in the intervention group than the health talk did for those in the control group. The use of visual aids (drawings and posters), the participatory and interactive nature as well as the strategic classroom location of the intervention are likely contributors to this effect. Visual aids and participatory learning have been observed to be better ways of imbibing knowledge in children compared to lectures (Bobek and Tversky, 2016).There are common practices at home to at least reduce mosquito bites and manage malaria on time and appropriately that children can engage in. These include wearing of long sleeves and trousers to sleep, closing of doors and windows particularly at twilight and sleeping under bed nets if available. Others are immediate self-report to parents when the child feels ill and not hesitating to adhere to instructions concerning medications including completing their dosages and so on. A very significant number of our study children did not adhere to these common practices prior to the intervention. Specifically, many of the children did not care to sleep under ITNs even when they had them at home, many did not also self-report to their parents immediately when they felt sick, they would rather wait till it was serious while some would not report at all until the illness was noticed by their parents. Previous studies observed similar attitudes, particularly lack of interest in sleeping under ITNs and hesitation to take medications among children (Udonwa et al., 2010; Dress and Enquosellasie, 2000). Feeling of discomfort is likely to discourage children from sleeping under ITNs particularly in warm climates. Likewise, phobia for drugs due to their tastes may also discourage them from self-reporting to their parents when they feel sick. While it may be considered the responsibility of parents/guardians to make their children sleep under ITNs and be conscious enough to recognize when their children are ill to take prompt action, it is equally important to instil in the children the consciousness to do what they can at their age to protect themselves as well as to report to someone once they feel ill. These will help in the more timely management and effective control of malaria and other diseases in children. The consciousness to do these can be instilled through deliberate methods targeted at inculcating the awareness in the child that could encourage positive perceptions, behaviours and practices. In this study, the proportion of the study children who would use ITNs, wear trousers and long sleeves to sleep, self-report to their parents immediately they feel ill, adhere to instructions given to them concerning their medications including completion of their dosages increased significantly at post-intervention. These improvements were more prominent among the children exposed to the MCC than those who received the health talk alone. This corroborates the findings of a previous study in Zambia (Keating et al., 2012), which reported increase in the use of ITNs among school-age children due to a school-based campaign intervention promoting the use of ITNs.The limitation of this study was that actual behaviour change estimation was not accounted for at this point. This is because it did not fall within the scope of this phase of the study which aimed only at assessing the effect of the intervention on basic awareness and common practices to control malaria. Further studies will, however, focus on behaviour change due to this intervention as well as follow up to determine possible impact on the families and communities of primary school children exposed to the MCC.Conclusion\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study assessed the effectiveness of malaria classroom corner (MCC), school-based intervention in the promotion of basic malaria awareness and common control practices among children of primary school age.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quasi-experimental design was employed, involving 206 children of primary 5 and 6 classes from two randomly selected public primary schools in Owerri, South Eastern Nigeria. The MCC was designed and set up in the intervention school (with 103 children) while the control school (with 103 children) was offered malaria health talk. Structured pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect data pre- and post-intervention in both schools. Data was analysed using Statistical Package - Stata version 14.1 (Stata Corp, College Station, TX, USA).\nFindings: Results show that there was a significant enhancement of basic malaria awareness (p = 0.0003) and common preventive and management practices (p = 0.0202) among children in the intervention primary school compared to those in the control primary school.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study did not account for actual behaviour change, as its scope was within basic malaria awareness and common control practices.\nPractical implications: This approach could enhance awareness and proactiveness of school children towards malaria prevention and overall health consciousness.\nSocial implications: This could help in achieving a healthy population of school children with a positive effect on their school performance.\nOriginality/value: The MCC could provide a simple, participatory and effective approach for the promotion of basic malaria awareness and common control practices among primary school-age children in malaria endemic areas. Such children could, in turn, become malaria conversation drivers and behaviour change agents in their homes and communities, thereby contributing to the malaria elimination efforts.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Management development methods: How to get the right balance
|
[
"Management development",
"Training methods",
"Education",
"Competences"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Organizations have faced significant changes over the past decade brought about by trends such as globalization, the technology revolution, downsizing into business networks, and re-engineering. Amidst this continual change in the business environment it is not possible to manage successfully without the parallel development of managers. Management development (MD) has to be seen as developing and maintaining the full management and organizational capability of an organization.\nApproaches to MD: There are a variety of approaches to MD. The three main ones are:1. formal training and education;2. developmental activities (e.g. mentoring); and3. self-help activities (e.g. books, and interactive computer programs).In addition, MD methods can be categorized into on-the-job methods and off-the-job methods. On-the-job experiential methods include, for example, action learning, mentoring, job rotation and special projects/task forces. Whereas off-the-job methods include readings, short courses, seminars, educational programs, seminars, \"academies\", specialists packages, outdoor development, and customized approaches.\nRecent trends: The field of executive development has matured considerably over the past few decades. MD has become a major tool for revitalizing corporations and building learning-oriented competitiveness instead of being targeted to a select few individuals.There has been a shift away from business school-based development towards in-company programs; the content focus has shifted from functional knowledge to subjects such as strategic issues, change management and leadership; the programs have changed from teacher-centered to learner-centered; and there has been a trend toward shorter, large-scale, cascaded programs involving staff at multiple levels of the organization and not just at the top. There has also been a shift in perceptions away from programs and toward work experience-based methodologies involving job rotation, taskforces and project assignments, action learning, and mentoring.In order to be effective, MD should be a systematic process in an organization instead of an individually driven, occasional project. MD, as a whole, has so far predominantly focused on developing individuals. Nevertheless, management in organizations is more a team function than the function of individuals, and therefore the MD approach should include in the future both team skills and those of teams of managers.\nThe study: A quantitative survey study, which also benefits from qualitative data through open-ended questions, was distributed to 2,500 senior managers selected from the union register on the basis of their position in the organizational hierarchy.Such a method offers the possibility to handle larger amounts of respondents and to make some generalizations about the use of MD methods among senior managers, and in particular, their strengths and weaknesses. The data were collected through an internet survey.After the first mailing, 878 responses were received (a response rate of 35 percent), which is a relatively good response rate for an internet survey.\nCommon trends: The results from the survey confirm that training and education is still very well alive as a MD method. The reasons for this can be straightforward. It is still easy to organize for development professionals, whether it is in-company training or bought from outside providers. It is also relatively easy to comprehend for managers themselves. It is familiar as a development method, and does not normally demand to stick one's neck out, for example compared to mentoring. Nevertheless, the perceived effectiveness was distinctly higher among those managers who had participated in long-term training with supervised action learning periods.Regarding the perceived effectiveness of different developmental methods among managers, all the methods strongly referring to experiential learning received the highest ratings of effectiveness. International assignments, systematic career planning and job rotation also ranked highly. All these three methods refer very strongly to experiential, process-type and individual routes to developing management competencies. They stand in strong contrast to today's demands for short-term thinking.The survey also revealed that most of the perceived strengths concerned broadening of understanding, transformation and learning. On the other hand, many of the weaknesses had something to do with lack of time and acute job-related problems. It thus seems evident that there exist some serious contradictions between the strong drivers in MD.The first is the strong belief that experiential methods are more effective than the more traditional and didactic methods concerning effects on managerial competencies. The second driver is the pressure on cost-effectiveness and short-term planning in companies, which hinder, for example, long-term and individual career planning with job rotation, special assignments or international assignments. The third driver is the nature and tempo of managerial work, where there is a diminishing amount of space for intensive, long-term development. Among these motives, people on MD have to calculate their goals and resources and make decisions.\nFinding a balance: From a practical perspective, there needs to be an appropriate balance between effectiveness and efficiency when selecting MD methods and the overall extent of development activities.Overall, MD should be a very strategic activity that is clearly connected with strategic aims and related development needs of organizations in order to achieve its full potential. The results indicate that traditional, class-room based and short-term training activities are still most common while more in-depth learning experiences were reported among those involved in more long-term and in-depth training efforts. This also stresses the importance of utilizing such MD methods in order to succeed better with MD activities.Besides long-term programs, experiential learning methods received the highest ratings of learning effectiveness and thus elements such as job rotation, career planning, and international assignments should be considered more extensively when planning MD activities. Each method was found to possess different kinds of strengths and weaknesses. Thus, careful analysis comparing organizational and individual development needs should therefore be the foundation for all MD activities.\nComment: This is a review of \"Management development of senior executives: methods and their effectiveness\" by Vesa Suutari and Riitta Viitala. This article looks at the common trends within management development, as well as the effectiveness, strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. It provides useful information to organizations and experts about providing management development programs at the senior management level.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: - The paper finds that organizations have faced significant changes over the past decade brought about by trends such as globalization, the technology revolution, downsizing into business networks, and re-engineering. Amidst this continual change in the business environment it is not possible to manage successfully without the parallel development of managers. Management development has to be seen as developing and maintaining the full management and organizational capability of an organization.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A revision of Hofstede's model of national culture: old evidence and new data from 56 countries
|
[
"Masculinity",
"Hofstede’s cultural dimensions",
"Confucianism",
"Long-term orientation",
"Individualism and collectivism",
"Uncertainty avoidance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Geert Hofstede is the author of one of the most influential treatises on national culture (Kirkman et al., 2006), originally published in a short form (Hofstede, 1980), followed by an expanded version (Hofstede, 2001). According to Bond (2002), cross-cultural psychologists were \"held in thrall\" (p. 73) by Hofstede's intellectual achievement, whereas Peterson (2003) pointed out that Hofstede's first book shaped the basic themes, structures, and controversies of the cross-cultural field for over 20 years. Hofstede popularized the nomothetic approach to the study of culture, subsequently employed by other leading researchers (for instance Inglehart and Baker, 2000; House et al., 2004; Schwartz, 1994, 2008, etc.). Their studies have proven the utility of this approach. But how accurate is the product that it yielded in Hofstede's research? The answer to this question is long overdue. As the issue is complex and requires a lengthy analysis, a single paper cannot provide all answers. Yet, it can outline some general conclusions.\n2. Analysis of secondary data: The analysis of secondary data should shed some light on four basic questions that entail validity tests for any model in social science or psychology and are therefore relevant in this study:\n3. Analysis of primary data: The analysis of primary data focuses on the internal reliability of the two problematic dimensions: UA and MAS-FEM. It uses data from a new study of national culture and personality across nearly 53,000 respondents selected probabilistically from all main geographic regions and economic sectors of 56 countries, reflecting the ethnic, linguistic, and age structure of most countries quite adequately. In economically developed countries, the samples are also close to the national census in terms of educational-level differences, whereas the samples in developing countries consist predominantly of respondents with higher education. Nevertheless, in nearly each country in the second group there are at least 100 probabilistically selected respondents without higher education, thus allowing separate cross-national analyses of samples with and without higher education. This study excluded the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where the data were collected by phone, unlike all other countries. Details about the samples are freely available from Itim International (info@itim.org), an international cross-cultural management consultancy, licensed by Geert Hofstede.\n4. Discussion: Replication and validation studies can have three possible outcomes. First, the original model may be confirmed and validated. In that case, all is just well. Second, the replication and validation attempt may produce nonsensical findings. This would not necessarily invalidate the original model. It may be the case that the original is valid whereas the replication attempt is plagued by various methodological errors. This study is an example of the third possible outcome. The original model is not replicated and is not validated but the new findings are not nonsensical at all. They are underpinned by a very solid logic, which however differs from Hofstede's. This new logic is based on nationally representative studies, mostly the WVS and a survey of 53,000 people chosen probabilistically, reflecting the structure of the national census more or less closely in each of 56 nations, adequately representing the world's national cultures from all continents. Which of the two logics is stronger - the old or the new - is a question that is not hard to answer.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Hofstede's model of national culture has enjoyed enormous popularity but rests partly on faith. It has never been fully replicated and its predictive properties have been challenged. The purpose of this paper is to provide a test of the model's coherence and utility.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Analyses of secondary data, including the World Values Survey, and a new survey across 56 countries represented by nearly 53,000 probabilistically selected respondents.\nFindings: Improved operationalizations of individualism-collectivism (IDV-COLL) suggest it is a robust dimension of national culture. A modern IDV-COLL index supersedes Hofstede's 50 year-old original one. Power distance (PD) seems to be a logical facet of IDV-COLL, rather than an independent dimension. Uncertainty avoidance (UA) lacks internal reliability. Approval of restrictive societal rules and laws is a facet of COLL and is not associated with national anxiety or neuroticism. UA is not a predictor of any of its presumed main correlates: importance of job security, preference for a safe job, trust, racism and xenophobia, subjective well-being, innovation, and economic freedom. The dimension of masculinity-femininity (MAS-FEM) lacks coherence. MAS and FEM job goals and broader values are correlated positively, not negatively, and are not related to the MAS-FEM index. MAS-FEM is not a predictor of any of its presumed main correlates: achievement and competition orientation, help and compassion, preference for a workplace with likeable people, work orientation, religiousness, gender egalitarianism, foreign aid. After a radical reconceptualization and a new operationalization, the so-called \"fifth dimension\" (CWD or long-term orientation) becomes more coherent and useful. The new version, called flexibility-monumentalism (FLX-MON), explains the cultural differences between East Asian Confucian societies at one extreme and Latin America plus Africa at the other, and is the best predictor of national differences in educational achievement.\nResearch limitations/implications: Differences between subsidiaries of a multinational company, such as IBM around 1970, are not necessarily a good source of knowledge about broad cultural differences. A model of national culture must be validated across a large number of countries from all continents and its predictions should withstand various plausible controls. Much of Hofstede's model (UA, MAS-FEM) fails this test while the remaining part (IDV-COLL, PD, LTO) needs a serious revision.\nPractical implications: Consultancies and business schools still teach Hofstede's model uncritically. They need to be aware of its deficiencies.\nOriginality/value: As UA and MAS-FEM are apparently misleading artifacts of Hofstede's IBM data set, a thorough revision of Hofstede's model is proposed, reducing it to two dimensions: IDV-COLL and FLX-MON.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Musical flavor: the effect of background music and presentation order on taste
|
[
"Music",
"Taste",
"Presentation order",
"Primacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Imagine you are shopping at your local supermarket. The sound system is playing some of your favorite songs from the 1980s. You walk along the lanes, contentedly humming along with the background music, when a salesperson approaches you and asks you to sample some new brands of biscuits on sale. Because you were planning on buying biscuits, you agree. While you are tasting the first one and concentrating on its taste, your favorite song is playing. However, the song changes to one you dislike as you sample the second biscuit. Will your perception of the first and second biscuit be influenced by the two songs? Would it be different if the first biscuit were tasted with the disliked song in the background and the second with your favorite song?\nPretest: presentation order effects on taste: The aim of the pretest was to examine presentation order effects on the evaluation and preference of two identical products, in this case vanilla cookies. As mentioned above, studies focusing on presentation order effects on taste evaluation have yielded contrasting results, with some finding primacy effects (Biswas et al., 2014; Mantonakis et al., 2009), and others finding recency effects (O'Brian and Ellsworth, 2012), depending on stimulus features and presentation conditions. In the present study, the two cookies and their presentation, were identical.\nStudy 1: pleasant and unpleasant music: The aim of Study 1 was to examine whether the presentation order of two musical pieces, differing in pleasantness, would influence taste evaluation and preference of two identical cookies. As mentioned above, based on the literature, a main effect of music was hypothesized, leading to higher evaluations of the cookie tasted with pleasant music. Regarding the effect of presentation order, it was hypothesized that for the group tasting the first cookie with pleasant music, a primacy effect would occur, leading to a strong difference between the first and second cookie's evaluation. For the group tasting the first cookie with unpleasant music, preference for first items (Carney and Banaji, 2012) predicts that the difference between the two cookies would be smaller, whereas the idea of pair-wise comparisons (Bruine de Bruine and Keren, 2003) predicts that the difference would be as strong as that found for the first group. In other words, preference for first items predicts an interaction between music and presentation order, whereas pair-wise comparisons predict only a main effect of music.\nMethod: Participants\nResults: Cookie evaluation\nDiscussion: The main effect of music found in the present study is in line with previous findings showing the effect of music on the experience of taste (Crisinel et al., 2012) and its pleasantness (Crisinel and Spence, 2012a; Spence and Wang, 2015). It should be noted though that participants were not asked to rate the pleasure of the experience, but attributes of the cookies. Because the two cookies were in fact identical, the higher ratings of attributes of the cookie tasted with pleasant background music suggests that the experience of music was integrated into the actual experience of taste, in line with the cross-modal correspondence model (Spence, 2012).\nStudy 2: pleasant or unpleasant music: Results of Study 1 show that the presentation order of background music influences the experience of taste when pleasantness of the music changes. However, in most consumer contexts in which background music is present, the playlist consists of pieces of a similar style. These may be subjectively pleasant or unpleasant, but in principle the different musical pieces should not evoke radically different responses. The aim of Study 2 was to examine whether in such cases, the presentation order of the music would have an effect on taste evaluation and choice. In Study 2, four separate groups tasted two cookies each, with two groups tasting both cookies with two pleasant musical pieces, presented in different orders (Groups 1 and 2), while the remaining two groups tasted the cookies with two unpleasant musical pieces, presented in different orders (Groups 3 and 4).\nResults: For the tonal music groups (Group 1 and Group 2), Cronbach's alpha for the first cookie was 0.784 and 0.876 for the second cookie. For the atonal music groups (Group 3 and Group 4) Cronbach's alpha for the first cookie was 0.759, and 0.81 for the second cookie. A mean score for ratings of the first and second cookie were calculated for each participant. Table III presents the means and standard deviations of scores by group and presentation order.\nDiscussion: The first hypothesis, predicting a main effect of music, was not confirmed. Although ratings in the groups tasting the cookies with pleasant music were higher than those in the unpleasant music groups, this effect did not reach significance. Because the cookies used in the study were apparently rather tasty in themselves, it seems that when the pleasantness of the background music is stable and participants are exposed only to a single type of music, music's effect is not particularly strong.\nGeneral discussion: The effect of music on emotions and perception has been extensively studied, and marketing strategies frequently use music based on this influence (Garlin and Owen, 2006). Although in many everyday contexts, food is marketed, purchased and consumed while a succession of musical pieces is played in the background, no previous study has examined how varying musical background may influence taste and preference. The presented studies suggest that when the pleasantness of the background music is altered, its presentation order influences the experience of taste. However, when the different musical pieces are of similar pleasantness, a tendency to appreciate the first tasted item more occurs. The contribution of the present research to understanding how the presentation order of music and products affects evaluation and choice in consumers has practical implications for marketing. A discerning use of the combination of the two may maximize music's effect, or direct its use according to marketing needs.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: In many food marketing contexts products are sampled while music is played in the background. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether changing the pleasantness of background music while tasting two identical products in succession may influence the experience of taste and preference.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, 60 participants were asked to taste two identical cookies, one with pleasant and one with unpleasant background music, in differing orders. In Study 2, 60 participants tasted two cookies with two unpleasant musical pieces and 60 participants tasted two cookies with pleasant background music. Participants were asked to evaluate each cookie and indicate which cookie they preferred.\nFindings: In Study 1, a main effect of music was found, with cookies tasted with pleasant background music evaluated as better than those tasted with unpleasant background music. In addition, an interaction between presentation order and music was found, with a stronger difference in evaluation between the cookies when the first is tasted with pleasant background music. In Study 2, no main effect of music was found. A primacy effect was found, with higher evaluations for the first tasted cookie.\nResearch limitations/implications: The studies considered only one type of product, which in itself is pleasant-tasting. Further studies, using other products, are thus needed to allow generalization.\nPractical implications: A discerning use of background music in consumer settings involving sampling of a sequence of products may aid marketers in maximizing music's effect on product evaluation and choice.\nOriginality/value: Although the effect of music on taste has been previously studied, this is the first research to examine presentation order effects of music pleasantness on the experience of taste. The pleasantness of background music is integrated into the experience of taste, and food marketing strategies should take into account how the order in which different musical pieces are heard may influence consumers' evaluation and preference for sampled products.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Embedded ethics: how to build better IT mousetraps
|
[
"Ethics",
"Decision making"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: On March 1, 2005, Bank of America reported that it had \"lost\" data tapes containing account information on 1.2 million federal employees, including US Senators. On May 2, 2005, Time Warner reported that it had lost tapes with employment data on 600 employees. Contemporary banking would not be possible without information technology (IT), and yet IT also enables theft of account data.\nSubsumption ethics: The full definition of subsumption ethics is the process by which decisions become incorporated into the operation of technology and subsequently forgotten. Technological systems, by nature, repeat operations, even if those operations have unethical impacts. Ethics or not, systems will continue to execute embedded decisions anyway. Unlike a human operator, there is no point in the cycle where the machine pauses to ask, \"Should I do this?\"In most technology, small components are developed and tested, and once they are working reliably, they are subsumed into larger systems. Subsumption in general is the process of building larger components from smaller ones. In computer systems, small components, like the code that reads data from disk drives, are developed and tested, and once they are working reliably they are subsumed into larger systems. This is the enabling technique of object-oriented programming. It is why, in Microsoft Windows, browsing through files looks the same from every program.The larger systems, in turn, are subsumed into still larger systems. Once components, subsystems and applications are operating, the subsumed process becomes invisible and unavailable to the user, what Dartmouth Professor James Moor calls the \"invisibility factor.\"From binary storage to the structure of databases to the content of web pages, IT components are \"subsumed\" into larger and larger systems. Each component is forgotten as it is subsumed, and requires no further attention unless it fails. These components are called subsumed objects. Technological systems are built from such objects and, as a result, become enormous.\nMore than a set of instructions: To the layperson, technology seems as though it should be extremely malleable. People tend to think that changes to software should be easy because programming is merely a set of instructions, as opposed to a building made up of hard materials. However, the principle of subsumption makes it clear that changing base components is like moving building foundations. It can require changes to entire systems. The Y2K problem, for example, was a result of subsumed date processing: no one had thought way back that the systems would be around long enough to need four-digit dates.Technology is built over time, and so components - \"subsumed objects\" - may cause a major problem only much later and under certain circumstances. However, once something goes terribly wrong with technology, it usually cannot be undone. In the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, once subsumed errors manifested themselves, lives had already been lost. Retrospective analysis often shows the causes of problems, and we learn lessons to avoid repeat mistakes. But usually the problems turn out to have been subsumed well before their manifestation. In Challenger's case, the booster rockets were designed and manufactured years before they actually failed.Some failure is inevitable because we are pushing the envelope and dealing with complex, untested technologies - consequences are hard to predict without experience. But this explanation does not excuse decision-makers from responsibility for harmful outcomes. Indeed, as professionals, we are expected to know how technology will amplify our activities.\nQuick judgments become amplified: In the information age, business decisions reach farther than ever before. Business systems will flawlessly execute bad decisions indefinitely, because those decisions are codified into software programs. For example, a poorly designed chart of accounts can cause consistently misstated earnings. Quick judgments of line managers, programmers, consultants and salespeople can be amplified by technology to monster proportions.To be clear, ethics are \"built into\" subsumed objects and also describe the human and social implications larger systems. There are ethical outcomes in both cases. For instance, software that runs medical equipment has an immediate ethical character. Failure in the moment can even cause death as it did in the Therac-25 radiotherapy case: a faulty data entry screen ended up giving patients deadly doses of radiation. Furthermore, the company failed to immediately follow-up on the first reported injuries.Though the cause may be a faulty \"subsumed object,\" the ethics of the outcome will be system-wide. Furthermore, the \"system\" is greater than the machine itself: It includes the developers, the vendors and the health care providers using it.Subsumed decisions are cumulative - objects become subsumed more and more deeply. If we desire our technology to have integrity, reliability and maintainability, then we must consistently make good decisions about how to design and build it. This requires a new orientation on the part of all involved, from executive sponsors to engineers, something not so easy to do!The Greek word ethos, from which we derive \"ethics,\" can be translated as \"habit.\" Habit in general is a subsumption process. Aristotle pointed out that habits are the result of accumulated decisions. Good decisions lead to virtuous character. Therefore, ethos and subsumption are closely related, and Aristotle's ethics are easily applied to IT.Small design decisions lead to small elements within a system. These small elements become subsumed into larger system components, and so on, until the full system operates.Systems development\nIcons have determinant value: As an example, people tend to buy more items from the first computer screen that appears. If products, such as airline tickets, are presented alphabetically, then the system has a bias. The US Justice Department sued Microsoft in May 1998 in part because Microsoft insisted that its Windows 98 operating system initially display only Microsoft-approved icons - especially internet Explorer - strongly encouraging user bias toward IE and away from (at the time) Netscape.The icons are \"subsumed objects.\" They have determinate moral value, and they are the responsibility of the people who designed them. Microsoft countered the Justice Department by saying that it would be too complicated to remove internet Explorer from Windows.\nOrganizational policy drives IT development: There is a close relationship between computer systems and organizational policy. For example, in the 1990s some state motor vehicle registries sold toll-pass data to private companies which was used for marketing purposes. While IT enables the practice, the policy raises the ethical concerns.\nPolicies become subsumed: Because of subsumption ethics, such policies become subsumed into systems. Here is how it works:1. 1 IT enables a function that was not possible before (like marketing with detailed commuter data).2. 2 A policy decision is made to proceed with the practice (the data is sold).3. 3 Engineers and managers seek ways to implement the policy efficiently.4. 4 An automated process is set up that implements the policy (commuter data is transmitted automatically to buyers at regular intervals).5. 5 The process runs without user intervention. At this point, the policy has become a subsumed object, and it would take work to discontinue the practice. Once the original decision-makers, systems designers and developers move on to other projects, the subsumed process is largely forgotten as a matter of course. The process will be reviewed again only if problems or complaints arise.6. 6 The SO gets subsumed into other practices, such as the general databases of the registry data purchasers.7. 7 The process repeats.\nTools: Inattention to subsumption inevitably leads to \"projects from Hell.\" This is because bad decisions become subsumed, and are extremely difficult to undo, or even identify, later on. Tools are needed at the level of subsumed objects to ensure that they are developed to operate ethically within systems. Some of these tools already exist. At worst these tools prevent \"spaghetti code\" - systems whose objects are too convoluted to maintain. At best they result in high-performing systems.\nProject management: At a basic level, software development should be managed. Lack of such management leads to failed, unsatisfactory, late and over-budget projects. Because of these negative consequences, it is unethical to run software development projects with managing them properly. There are many methodologies available for software development.\nThe capability maturity model (CMM): Once basic project management procedures are established, developers should continuously improve their methodologies, knowledge and practices. The Software Engineering Institute's CMM describes how companies can build increasing quality into their development methodologies. It describes five levels of software development skill in its \"CMM.\" These levels are:1. 1 Initial (ad hoc).2. 2 Repeatable (stable, controlled, project management).3. 3 Defined (codified processes rigorously followed).4. 4 Managed (process measurement, quality targets).5. 5 Optimized (continuous process improvement).\nCodes of ethics: Codes of ethics provide proactive ethical content to development processes. In 1999, the Association of Computing Machinery and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society adopted a code of ethics to guide developers. Their so-called \"Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice\" provides a framework within which to plan and develop subsumed objects.\nSoftware development impact statement (SoDIS): The Software Development Research Foundation has a tool, called the SoDIS. SoDIS is a process that applies ethical criteria to software project management plans and work breakdown structures (WBS) to identify significant issues before software design is underway.As a development project is planned, it is broken down into tasks that are manageable and predictable, known generally as a WBS. This minimizes risk and enables scheduling and estimating. Each of these tasks has a number of data elements associated with it, such as due dates, human resources required and dependencies on other tasks.SoDIS adds an impact analysis process to project planning. It first helps the user identify the stakeholders - people and organizations that will be affected by the software - and asks a series of questions for each of the tasks, such as: \"Will this task cause harm to any stakeholder\" and \"Will execution of this task compromise data integrity?\" By running this analysis, developers can anticipate unwanted impacts early in the project, before objects become subsumed and difficult to change. In particular, SoDIS seeks early adjudication of issues that would require rework of the product after delivery.\nPractical applications: Outstanding technology projects - ones completed on time, within budget and with positive outcomes - are the result of good management first, technology second. They are characterized by high-performance teams, rigorous project management techniques and a focus on the human impacts that the technologies will have. Those people and groups with an interest in the outcomes, again, are the \"stakeholders\" in a project.Project stakeholders can be broadly defined to include those directly and indirectly affected by both the project and its products. They may not have a voice, e.g. members of a community in which a facility is located. Nevertheless, the consequences of subsumption in technology development should be assessed for each stakeholder.\nProfessionalism: In the USA, an embattled atmosphere pervades ICT departments. I started working with one company because it has had 100 percent turnover in its IT department for three years. Management and IT often speak different languages, and simply have difficulty understanding one another.Software failures continue unabated, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reported in 2002 that software bugs cost US users a stunning $59.5 billion per year.The costs of subsumed errors in software design and development increase as projects progress. By planning out the impact of activities and deliverables on stakeholders, unforeseen risks and problems can be identified and mitigated early. Such procedures reduce project risks, allowing limited resources to be deployed where they are most needed, improving quality in the long run.Even though techniques are available to bring software project management to a level of reliability where expectations and specifications can be consistently met, such as the CMM, most small business software projects today still take place at the ad-hoc level. Once organizations achieve higher levels of the CMM, the next change needed for widespread improvement of project outcomes will be rigorous stakeholder impact analysis.\nConclusion: Subsumption ethics pushes ethical considerations into the heart of all technology decisions. The Amish are a community that has taken such questions seriously.When Amish community member Michael Stoltzfus wanted to buy a phone in 1996, he raised a whole series of questions about the effect it would have on his community, family and psyche. Finally, his bishop allowed him to put a phone in a shed where he could not hear it ring. Writing for Inc., Jerry Useem reported, \"The Amish feel if they can hear a phone, it will govern their lives.\" Unlike Corporate America, \"the taboos on technology cultivate a bare-bones approach among the Amish.\" The Amish, it turns out, care about the ethics of even the simplest of machines. Most technology wizards in the USA feel that if they miss the latest technology release, they will be left behind. In the heart of the high-tech marketplace, they are certainly correct. Only, it is never enough. As with desire in general, satisfaction is short-lived.So on to the next conquest. The \"more is better\" mentality dominates, and the question, \"Should I really do this?\" typically falls by the wayside, a casualty of the need for more and more technological gratification. In all of this activity, attention to impact analysis is frequently lost.In a 1997 Boston Globe article, Ethicist Rushworth Kidder pointed out that in three crises - the Challenger disaster, the Orange County derivatives-induced bankruptcy and the collapse of Barings Bank - \"you find one or a handful of individuals making unethical decisions that get leveraged into immense issues.\" Technology amplifies the actions of individuals, and subsumption ethics further describes the complex impacts of poor judgments in each of these cases.The Challenger disaster and the Florida ValuJet crash in 1996 are examples of modern systems failures, but they are not easily attributed to an individual or to one particular, bad decision. They are instead a result of the subsumption of poor decisions in policy, design and implementation.Complex systems have always failed. Complexity itself makes such failures inevitable. And inattention to subsumption ethics makes them more likely. For those of us whose job it is to be technical experts, we must also consider the consequences that our decisions will have on real people. Especially when we are creating complex or self-replicating systems, we need to begin to pay attention in advance to the effects - the ethics - of the decisions we are embedding into our technologies.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To help the reader understand how the ethics of management decisions become embedded into technology systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The article explains better approaches based on a core principle known as \"Subsumption ethics.\" Using many sources, it explains the concepts and methods in order to help readers avoid unintended consequences in technology development.\nFindings: - Technology can be dramatically improved by attending to its ethics. There are particular tools available to help.\nPractical implications: - Ultimately, these principles will require a higher level of professionalism in technology deployment, and formal processes devoted to impact analysis.\nOriginality/value: - This paper represents a new way of looking at the technology development process that incorporates ethics in a cost-effective manner. Business and technology leaders will learn how to improve the outcomes of technology projects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Developing and implementing a stochastic decision-support model within an organizational context: The experience
|
[
"Risk management",
"Decision making",
"Modelling"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nExperiences: There has been real money behind the model since July 1999. Since then, the TAA team, which was established January 1, 1998, has grown from three to seven people. Up until today, the model has had two goals: To achieve excess return and to integrate new employees into the investment philosophy of the team. The results indicate success on both goals.Up until the second quarter of 2001, much emphasis was put on the latter goal, i.e. the building of the TAA team. This has been possible since the fund has been run as a separate portfolio within a larger portfolio, and the risk taken in the fund has not dominated the total risk taken. As the experience of the team grows, all emphasis will be put on the goal of generating excess return. The fund will also go public in the near future. In this section we start by discussing our experience with respect to integrating new employees into the investment style/philosophy of the team. Six to seven analysts are involved in the decision making. We discuss the decision-making process, including how consensus expectations are calibrated. These observations are put into the picture of organizational learning, before we present the track record of the fund.\nTraining and integrating employees: There exist many different investment styles or philosophies within equity, bond, TAA and other kinds of asset management. On the one extreme you have funds that are 100 percent dependent on one or a few star portfolio managers. On the other extreme there are funds that can be run almost without any investment/market competence, for instance by making use of mechanical trading rules based on empirical prices. Clearly, funds that completely rely on one or a few star portfolio managers and their personal investment styles are vulnerable.Asset managers compete for skilled labor and will most likely have a certain turnover. It is therefore essential to be able to replace human competence smoothly, i.e. to be efficient in the process of educating and integrating new employees. Our experience in building up the TAA team is that the modeling framework has been very valuable in this respect. New employees are introduced to an established structured process and will hopefully learn from the investment process and in particular from the processes of generating market expectations. After observing from the sideline for a period, a new employee is allocated a responsibility and is forced to quantify market expectations. Hopefully, and at least if the team has employed the right people, this creates motivation to develop a structured information collection and analyses process. Indeed, this is our experience.Different analysts will have different approaches in analyzing the markets. One extreme is the pure technician who base expectations on historical price movements and does not care about economic fundamentals. Another extreme does not consider technical analysis at all, and base expectations purely on fundamental analysis. In principle, the modeling framework we are describing does not exclude any analytical style. However, as a macro hedge fond we are based on fundamental analysis. The group has developed a common platform that all the analysts apply, but within this platform, there are many different approaches to analyzing the markets with differences in the emphasis on different factors. The group does not want to exclude any analysis style and we believe that a variety of styles is desirable. The fond has investments with different time horizons. The investments with long time horizons are very much based on fundamental analysis, while the investments with a shorter horizon often have a stronger tilt to technical analysis.\nThe decision-making process: Consensus decision making is in general a difficult task. The decision-making is not only about reaching a conclusion, but also a process where responsibilities have to be delegated and followed up in a dynamic world. To ensure high quality decisions, it is important that consensus decision making does not dilute responsibilities and remove possibilities for taking actions based individual knowledge in special situations.For consensus decision making in portfolio management, an asset management group must agree both on market expectations and the portfolio composition. As regards market expectations, the first step is to agree on what are the important factors that will influence the portfolio composition. Should for instance asymmetry or fat tales in the return distributions be considered and should a possible stock market crash be taken into account? Having agreed on what to agree on, consensus expectations should be established. Given consensus expectations, the next step is to agree on the portfolio composition.For the problems we are discussing in this paper, the portfolio construction itself is a high dimensional and continuous optimization problem. Finding the potential profit positions and potential hedges can be hard, and deciding the magnitude of each position is even harder. In general, the group consensus process is made more complicated by differences among team members in both experience and their personal risk attitude. Due to these difficulties it is very common that investment funds are not based on consensus decision-making. Instead, the funds are often split into several sub-funds, which are run by individual fund managers.We believe that the team consensus process is substantially simplified by using the modeling framework described in part 1 of this series of papers. Its very existence forces the team members to see the full picture, and they will all have to be concerned, not only about their own input, but also that of the others. The portfolio construction itself is done by the TAA model. Hence, the only consensus decisions are the market expectations. If there are disagreements about the quality of the portfolio, discussions will always have to revert to the data that produced the result. This way the model and the organization are set up to support each other.There are still challenges in the group consensus market expectation process. In particular, differences in experience and personal risk attitude can create imbalances in the expectation process. By the risk reward trade-off in the objective function of the TAA model, a common risk attitude function for the group as a whole is established. However, all analysts have a feel for how the portfolio is constructed relative to the expectations. Hence, a risk averse analyst will be careful in presenting expectations that are likely to lead to large positions within \"his\" asset classes, while less risk averse analysts are more likely to seek such positions. The personal risk aversion levels for the members of the group are functions of both personal attitudes and experience. Due to such differences, the group has put a lot of emphasis on the process of calibrating the expectations. The key is to obtain the right balance between the different model inputs, taking into account the expectations of each member of the group and the personal differences within the group.When calibrating the expectations, much attention is given to the key expectations, which are the expectations for the return on global cash, bonds, equity and commodities, in addition to the ranking of the different regions within each asset class. A potential danger in this calibration process is that the senior group members dominate. However, the group accepts that there are differences in experience, and seeks to obtain a balance between influence and experience.\nOrganizational learning: In portfolio management, we believe it is of great importance to document our views and learn from the mistakes and successes. Many traders use so called trading plotters, where the reasoning behind a trade and the profit and loss taking levels are documented. With its quantitative approach, the TAA team is naturally forced to do this documentation and all material from all TAA meetings, including the analyses and the actual expectations, are collected. This is used to evaluate the performance from month to month and also to make a more comprehensive evaluation at the end of the year. Our belief is that systematic evaluation sharpens and motivates the members of the team and that this improves the quality of the investment process.It may be useful to relate, briefly, the above discussions to organizational learning (for an overview, see Huber, 1991). First, the knowledge acquisition here is mostly through performance monitoring. The organization keeps track of all its decisions with respect to investments, including the bases for the decisions, and the financial results. That way, it is possible to understand, ex post, why a certain decision was made, and hopefully learn, irrespective of whether we are talking about a good or a bad outcome. In particular, this way of keeping records will help avoid hindsight taking the front seat in the learning process. It is a well-known phenomenon that, ex post, all humans seek to explain what happened. Fischhoff (1982) calls this \"creeping determinism\". It is hard to accept that an outcome was random, and that something else could have happened as well. In the same spirit, it is important to realize that a good decision can lead to a negative result, simply because of bad luck. Good records will not automatically overcome this problem, but it is a necessary basis for proper learning about random phenomena.When records are kept this way, also experimental learning is facilitated. By studying the past through the records, the chance is that an organization will learn about aspects of its performance not foreseen when the recording was decided.The model can also be seen as a computer-based form of organizational memory. This is so since its very structure shows the basis for decision-making in a way that is not fully dependent on human memory. This is what the organization uses to introduce new members into the team.A related theme to evaluation is the incentive structure. The team as a whole has a performance related bonus and a bonus based on qualitative aspects. In building the incentive structure we must take into account the incentives of the employees, clients, and the owners of the company. The main goal has been to make sure that the incentives of the asset managers are in line with the incentives of the clients and also in line with the longer-term goals of the asset management company.The performance related bonus is the biggest share of the total bonus and is directly linked to the total generated excess return relative to the total risk limits. The qualitative part of the bonus is based on activities that are not directly linked to the performance of the funds. It is up to the leader of the group to allocate the total bonus between the members of the team. This allocation is based on the quality of the input to the consensus group decisions, the performance of the discretionary traders, and also to the contribution to other tasks agreed upon in advance that are not directly linked to the asset management, like sales efforts and model development. This allocation is today done on a judgmental basis. The challenge is to motivate the individuals by giving them credit for good work, but at the same time making sure that the incentive system does not have a negative influence on the group decision process and create internal conflicts. We do recognize the construction of an adequate incentive structure as an interesting area for future research both from a practical and academic viewpoint.\nTrack record: Figure 1 shows the performance of the fund since the start up in July 1999. The accumulated excess return from startup to the end of October 2001 is 5.52 percent. The risk, measured by annualized ex post tracking error (one standard deviation of excess monthly returns) is 1.85 percent. This gives an average information ratio[1] of approximately 1.27 in each year.The risk limit for the fund has been 5 percent in tracking error. The fund has been run for Gjensidige NOR Spareforsiking and Gjensidige NOR Forsikring (the life and non-life insurance company), and the capital base has been 7.5 billion NOK, equivalent to more than 800 million USD, since May 2000.Recall that the fond applies a pure overlay strategy, meaning that only derivatives are used to construct the allocations. This implies that the underlying money that is put into the fund can be invested in any benchmark, like for instance S&P 500 or Norwegian money market. Hence, for measuring the performance of the fund, it does not matter which benchmark is chosen. The derivative activities generate an excess return. The total return for the client will be the return on the benchmark (whatever that is) plus the excess return generated from the derivative strategies[2].The risk profile of the fund has been modest relative to other funds with a similar macro hedge fund style. Since the fund has run the tactical asset allocation for the life and non-life company (both running a moderated balance risk), we have chosen to run the fund with a large capital base and low risk. It is the relative risk multiplied by the capital base that will be relevant for the results. For example, if the capital base had been defined to be 750 million NOK instead of 7.5 billion, the excess return and the tracking error would have been 55 percent and 18.5 percent respectively, instead of 5.5 percent and 1.85 percent. To evaluate the result we need to consider the information ratio and the shape of the actual return distribution. Figure 2 shows a histogram of the monthly returns since startup. Notice that the histogram is skewed to the right. The five highest monthly returns in absolute value are positive, and there are nine observations with a higher return than 0.5 percent, whereas only one observation with a lower return than -0.5 percent. Although the number of observations is low, it appears that the group is able to construct an asset allocation - which is consistent with the goal of optimization - to create a right skewed return distribution.\nConclusions: This series of papers describes the use of a stochastic programming based decision support model, which is the core of a macro hedge fund run by Gjensidige NOR asset management. The model is a result of a close cooperation between academic resources and the tactical asset allocation group in Gjensidige NOR Asset Management. We address the interaction between the model and the organization, both in the development and use of the model. We describe how the model was developed in line with the needs of the organization and also how the organization developed relative to the structure of the model.We illustrate how the model has influenced different parts of the investment process of the tactical asset allocation team. In particular, we discuss the experiences in using such methodology as a basis for group consensus decision-making. Although we believe that the methodology is very well suited for this, there are several challenges. Calibration of market expectations from the different group members is a hard task, and is complicated by the fact that different group members will have different experience and different personal risk attitudes.The methodology has proven successful in integrating new employees into the investment philosophy of the tactical asset allocation group. It has also proven successful in terms of a good track record for the hedge fond.It is well known from the decision analysis and operations research literature that models are often not used after being developed. A major reason for this is that the model and the organization are not aligned. Only when responsibilities and incentives are correctly set up can a model function well. This paper has shown how a model and an organization can be aligned to the benefit of all parties. For enterprise risk management to succeed, such alignments are crucial.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Discusses why it is necessary to align a mathematical model with the organization in order to achieve the desired results. The structure of a model's input must fit with the structure of data collection in the firm, and the output must be consistent with the decision structure. Otherwise, data collection will not be properly taken care of and the results of a model will not find their way to where decisions are made. Five years passed from the cooperation first started with the university until the model came on-line.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Parts 1 and 2 of this series of papers discussed the stochastic programming model itself and the relationship between the model and the organization. The results are now reported.\nFindings: - Reports on both organizational and financial results.\nPractical implications: - Shows that, although a lot of work is needed to implement a complicated stochastic programming model within an organization, it can be done and can lead to good results. However, it takes time to adjust an organization to a new way of thinking, as a model like this can never work unless supported by upper management as well as those who use the model daily.\nOriginality/value: - The main value is to demonstrate in rather large detail how a somewhat complicated model can be developed and used in an organization, which, originally, was not well aligned with the ideas of the modellers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Skills utilisation in Scotland: exploring the views of managers and employees
|
[
"Managers",
"Scotland",
"Employees",
"Skills utilization"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Interest in skills utilisation has recently been receiving more attention (Buchanan et al., 2010) and skills under-utilisation is now recognised as affecting more of the UK workforce than skills gaps or shortages (Wright and Sissons, 2012). However, while \"skills are central to employment [...] they are often poorly understood in theory and underdeveloped in practice\" (Grugulis, 2003, p. 3). Further, to date there have been few attempts made to define skills utilisation (Payne, 2010) and the evidence base on skills utilisation is relatively sparse (Findlay and Warhurst, 2012). Alongside this, skills utilisation has become an important public policy pre-occupation for the Scottish Government (Scottish Government, 2007a, 2010; Warhurst and Findlay, 2012). The two central aspects concerning Scottish skills policy are how skills are formed and acquired, and how they are then deployed and utilised in the workplace (Scottish Government, 2007a). This paper is mainly concerned with the utilisation of skills in Scotland, where attention is gradually turning to not only managers' viewpoints on employee skills utilisation but also to employees' viewpoints (Bates et al., 2009; Chillas, 2010; Kaifi and Selaiman, 2011). It has been highlighted that there is a dearth of empirical evidence from employees' perspectives, and comparing managers' and employees' views on skills utilisation, yet the need for moving beyond single source manager informants (Payne, 2010) to encompass employee views has been noted (Bates et al., 2009; Lloyd and Payne, 2006).\nSkills and skills utilisation: The term skill has become widely recognised as a focus for analytical research and contemporary policy intervention (Buchanan et al., 2010; Green, 2011), and yet the very meaning of skill(s) has become somewhat problematic (Bryson, 2010), as indicated in the introduction above. The problem may be largely attributable to significant expansion of the term over recent decades into a much broader application than historically when skill was concerned mainly with physical dexterity and technical ability (Green, 2011; Keep and Payne, 2004). Nowadays theoretical perspectives on skill tend to differ according to whether skill is seen to reside in the job, or is socially constructed and resident in the individual (Evans and Waite, 2010; Warhurst and Findlay, 2012).\nScottish policy context of skills utilisation: Skills policy throughout the UK's four home nations operates through separate frameworks which incorporate variations in the degree to which governance, policy development and subsequent application is devolved (Hay et al., 2011; Spilsbury et al., 2010). Among the home nations, Scotland appears to be leading the field in skills utilisation policy development and research through the Scottish Government's pronounced focus on utilisation activities and collaborations. In particular, in 2009 the Scottish Funding Council committed approximately PS2.9 m to 12 action research projects designed to explore the role that further and higher education providers could play in improving skills utilisation (Payne, 2011; Scottish Government, 2008; SFC/SDS, 2010). Skills utilisation has until recently received little attention in literature (Buchanan et al., 2010), with skills policy tending to focus mostly on the supply side (Knell et al., 2007).\nContemporary workplace context of skills utilisation: Findlay et al. (2011, p. 5) emphasise the importance of the workplace in skills utilisation in asserting that \"effective skills utilisation occurs where employees are able and willing to make the best use of their qualifications, skills and experience in the workplace\". Also important are \"management and workplace practices, processes and approaches\" (Findlay et al., 2011, p. 5) which, altogether, may create a particular workplace culture, a \"core issue for management\" (Thompson and McHugh, 2009, p. 158). This underscores the role of both employees and managers in effective skills utilisation as discussed earlier (Beaven et al., 2005; Scottish Government, 2009). Yet in workplaces in capitalist societies, the labour process of organising and controlling employment may, conversely, act to de-skill employees (Watson, 2012). Arguably, the division of labour among managers and employees is a persistent feature in all forms of contemporary, post-industrialised organisational forms (Watson, 2012). Among other implications, the corollary may be that different viewpoints between manager and employee groups are likely to co-exist in contemporary workplaces. Thus on the one hand employers may have a primary pre-occupation with limiting employee skills utilisation while, on the other hand, employees may be primarily concerned with seeking to increase their skills utilisation as an integral part of self-directing their careers in the twenty-first century (Pryor and Bright, 2011). As work organisation tends to afford management groups more influence in the very structure of work (Thompson and McHugh, 2009), it is arguably managers more than employees who may be able to bring about more effective skills utilisation, though there is little evidence of this in contemporary management practice as noted earlier (Warhurst and Findlay, 2012).\nResearch design: A mixed method approach was used to explore empirically manager and employee views on employees' skills utilisation. Questionnaires and three case studies provided the primary data. The questionnaires allow investigation of manager and employee viewpoints, in general, across a range of workplaces. The case studies afford investigation of these two viewpoints in the same workplace, in particular.\nFindings and analysis: The empirical findings are presented and analysed in the next section by questionnaire and case studies, in turn. The questionnaire results cover a direct comparison between the views of line managers and employees, drawing attention to key and statistically significant differences. Thereafter, a textual narrative of the case study findings is offered. Across both questionnaire and case study findings four aspects are examined, namely: the match of employee skills to their jobs (Felstead and Green, 2013); the extent of utilisation of employees' skills (Findlay and Warhurst, 2012); awareness of employees' skills (Warhurst and Findlay, 2012); and opportunities for and barriers to employees' skill utilisation (Felstead, 2007). Additionally, the meaning of skills and skills utilisation (Bryson, 2010) is explored in the case studies.\nConclusions: Effective skills utilisation can be regarded as both a lever for, and indicator of, economic growth, as explained by the Scottish Government (2010). Thus it is relevant to explore empirically manager and employee views on employees' skills utilisation in Scotland. This paper provides an overview of key aspects of the debates relating to skills utilisation, focusing particularly on the Scottish policy context where a key national objective is to create a \"smarter\" Scotland where the right skills are both available and utilised in the workplace (Scottish Government, 2007a, p. 4). The paper contributes to these debates by providing empirical data that further illuminates skills utilisation in the workplace from the often contrasting viewpoints of managers and employees.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically manager and employee views on employees' skills utilisation in organisations in Scotland.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Questionnaires to managers and employees, plus three case studies comprising manager interviews and employee focus groups.\nFindings: Highly significant differences are found between manager and employee views on: the match of employee skills to their current jobs; the extent of utilisation of employees' skills; and opportunities for promotion. The main difference in views is on the match of employee skills to their current jobs, with employees opining more than managers that employees' skills exceed the requirements of their job. Also, for managers and employees alike, the meaning of skills utilisation is obscure despite the language of skills being widely used in organisations.\nResearch limitations/implications: The scale of the empirical research is possibly limited. There is potential for manager and employee bias. A case study of a private sector organisation is not included.\nPractical implications: It is apparent that there is potential to increase employees' skills utilisation in organisations in Scotland. Managers are challenged with better utilising the skills within their workforces by using these skills to drive improvements in work processes and practices.\nOriginality/value: Previous commentary and research on skills utilisation mainly centres on policy and employer standpoints. This paper focuses on manager and employee viewpoints on employees' skills utilisation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
What influences consumers to purchase organic food in developing countries?
|
[
"Organic foods",
"Consumer behavior",
"Developing countries"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The consumption of organic foods is a new practice in many developing compared to developed countries. Accordingly, limited information exists on various aspects of organic foods purchase intention in developing nations. Most researches on consumers' attitudes and behaviors concerning purchase and consumption of organic foods based on developed countries' perspectives (Bartels and Reinders, 2010; Tarkiainen and Sundqvist, 2005; Magnusson et al., 2003; Dettmann and Dimitri, 2010; Hamzaoui Essoussi and Zahaf, 2009; De Magistris and Gracia, 2008; Padel and Foster, 2005; Irene Goetzke and Spiller, 2014; Vabo and Hansen, 2016). Organic food sales are recently also reported to take roots in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Willer and Lernoud, 2017). It is well known that the behavior of consumers is affected by a country's culture (Hofstede, 1984).From the African perspective, families typically consume unprocessed organic food from subsistence agriculture or home garden (Gakobo and Jere, 2016; Msuya et al., 2010). However, economic growth, urbanization and rising affluence in developing countries have increased the demand for convenient and processed foods (Wiggins and Keats, 2017). A growing number of families have shifted to conventional foods from supermarkets and local vendors (Wagner and Brath, 2012). The practice has later associated with rising incidences of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in developing countries (Wiggins and Keats, 2017; Wagner and Brath, 2012). As a result, the market for organic food has started to grow, owing to speculated concerns for food safety and health issues (Wekeza and Sibanda, 2019; Jain, 2019). Organic food does not use chemical pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics and growth hormones that consumers have perceived such food to be healthier than the conventionally produced food, which is assumed to be harmful to human health (Huber et al., 2011). The consumption of organic food is considered as a new lifestyle trend (Al-Taie et al., 2015), that promotes well-being and health (Chen, 2007; Goetzke et al., 2014).Limited studies are focusing on organic foods in developing countries; thus, determining that the behavior, which leads to consumers' purchase intention for organic foods in Tanzania, is vital.Therefore, the present study extends the theory of planned behavior (TPB) by mediating health consciousness and subjective knowledge in the TPB model. The study suggests that the inclusion of health consciousness and subjective knowledge constructs in the TPB model will improve the explanatory power in predicting the consumers' purchase intention toward organic food. Besides, the study intended to contribute to the TPB by involving knowledge and health consciousness.\nLiterature review: Organic food choices in the context of developing countries\nResearch methods: Questionnaire development\nResults: Demographic characteristics of the respondents\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study has reinforced our understanding that subjective norms and attitudes as behavior constructs affect consumers' purchase intention for organic foods by using TPB in developing countries. The study found a consistent relationship between subjective norms, attitude and consumers' purchase intention for organic foods in Tanzania, which is a developing country. These results suggest that subjective norms and attitudes affect the consumers' purchase intention for organic foods regardless of the level of development. The literature depicts that the TPB constructs influence each other (Ajzen, 1991). Therefore, the hypotheses H1 and H2 were supported both in the statistical analysis, as well as in the literature. Contrary to the study by Azam et al. (2012), this study did not find any direct effect of perceived behavior control on consumers' purchase intention. The implication can be as follows; most of the organic food in Tanzania is for export (Bakewell-Stone et al., 2008; Valerian et al., 2011), thus decreasing its availability in the local markets despite the demand. Therefore, the food industry in Tanzania must facilitate consumer access to organic products. Thus, the degree of PBC may increase when customers are exposed to a variety of organic food in the market.This study provided an important contribution to consumer preferences on organic foods where knowledge and health consciousness are mediators. To the best of our understanding, the mediating role of knowledge about organic foods and health consciousness was missing in emerging economies' literature, particularly in Tanzania. Earlier studies have shown that consumers were fascinated by processed inorganic food because of the cultural changes, which have transformed their lifestyle (Wiggins and Keats, 2017). However, increasing non-communicable diseases have influenced consumers to start purchasing organic food and their growing knowledge and health consciousness. This study found that the knowledge about organic foods and health consciousness correlated positively and mediated the relationships between subjective norms and consumers' organic foods purchase intention (Figure 1) partially. In the same manner, it was also found that the knowledge that consumers have about organic foods and health consciousness mediates the relationship between attitude and purchase attention partially. Thus, the knowledge about organic foods, which customers have, and the health consciousness account for some relationships, but not all of the relationships between the attitude, subjective norms and purchase intention. The partial mediation results depict that, although knowledge can be the underlying mechanism between behaviors (subjective norms and attitude) and purchase intention, there are other factors, which affect the relationship in emerging economies. Since the present study asked questions on organic foods' knowledge only, consumers were only providing their answers based on the current study questions provided. This might be the reason, which weakened the coefficients 'results in the present study.Nevertheless, this study has uniquely examined knowledge as a mediator between subjective norms, attitude and intention to purchase, different from other previous studies (Mesias Diaz et al., 2012; Testa et al.; Smith and Paladino, 2010), which used it in the direct relationship only. Furthermore, the partial mediation of health consciousness results depicts that, although consumers have an awareness of the healthy lifestyle (Chen, 2009; Kriwy and Mecking, 2012; Guido, 2009), their attitude toward organic foods purchases may be influenced by other factors as well. More likely, cultural differences have an important contribution to consumer welfare, an observation that awaits future studies. Based on the results found in this study, we suggest the campaign on knowledge of organic foods to all consumers based on their advocated health benefits (Lee et al., 2014; Zagata, 2012). Organic foods should be labeled with information regarding food safety and health information, which may convince consumers to purchase certified organic products. This strategy can help in increasing the local demand market for organic foods products.\nLimitations of the study: Despite the effort made by the current study, some limitations are worth considering for future research. First, since the research data were collected in two regions of Tanzania, future studies should be conducted encompassing more regions from many developing countries. Furthermore, this study presents only regular organic food consumers; hence, future studies should involve both regular and occasional organic foods consumers. Moreover, the present study used only mediators; therefore, future studies should include mediator and suppressor variables and combine with other theories and experimental approach. Future scholars should also empirically examine the role of cultural aspects of organic food purchases.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The behavior compelling the consumer's intention to purchase organic food has received little attention in developing countries. There is limited knowledge concerning the factors that impact consumer's intention to purchase organic food in these countries. The study empirically examined the impact of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control on the consumer intention to buy organic food. The study also aimed to explore whether knowledge about organic food and health consciousness has an indirect effect on the relationship between attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control and intention to buy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To accomplish the study's objectives, the questionnaires were administered to a convenience sample of 730 consumers using a traditional paper and pencil questionnaire interview (PAPI). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to validate the data, and the Structural equation model (SEM) was employed to test the hypotheses.\nFindings: The findings showed that subjective norms and attitudes were positively correlated, and they significantly impacted the purchase intention of organic food. The findings also showed that knowledge about organic food and health consciousness has an indirect effect on the relationship between attitude, subjective norms, and intention to buy.\nOriginality/value: The findings stimulate the momentum to the growing literature, particularly in the developing countries on consumer behaviors regarding organic foods. Also, they will help stakeholders to achieve the marketing strategy for the growth of this sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The impact of country connectedness and cultural values on the equity of a country's workforce: A cross-country investigation
|
[
"Globalization",
"Cultural values",
"Country connectedness",
"Country workforce equity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The world is becoming increasingly interdependent and more connected across economic, social and political dimensions. One prominent conceptualization and measure of the ongoing march of globalization estimates that it has increased by 44 percent in the 20 years between 1987 and 2007 (Dreher et al., 2008). Spurred on by improvements in communications, computing, transportation and manufacturing technologies, ever more complex global supply chains are beginning to form. One need only wander through a large retail store looking at the labels on products to see the tangible evidence of this trend.\nCountry connectedness, culture and labor costs: Firms are continually incented to reduce costs. They can do this by becoming more efficient or by externalizing costs. Princen (2002) uses the metaphor of the frontier to describe the socially and geographically distant ends of global supply chains where externalizing is easier because the externalized costs such as those placed on workers through low wages, unsafe conditions and unfair practices are shaded from view.\nCountry connectedness: The construct of country connectedness is defined as the ability of citizens and businesses of that country to leverage digital channels via information and communications technologies for local and global communications activities ranging across personal, social, commercial and government uses. It can be assessed via an assessment of social, economic and technical factors. After extensive evaluation of various data and measures available, we selected the most recently available e-readiness rankings developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the best indicator aligned with our conceptualization of country connectedness. The e-readiness measure is a weighted categorical measure based on nearly 100 qualitative and quantitative criteria indicating how amenable a country is to digital communications. The scale is published in a white paper jointly developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and IBM's Institute for Business Value who publish and provide e-readiness measures for a subset of the world's nations (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008).\nCultural values: The concept of culture has its roots in the work of nineteenth century humanists such as Matthew Arnold, but the work of anthropologist Edward Taylor (e.g. Taylor, 1871) that established culture as a universal human quality is considered the basis of the modern use of the term. Since this beginning, the term has gained many, often conflicting, definitions. For example, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) identifies 164 different definitions of the term culture at the time. Much of the debate over culture comes down to frame of reference. On one side, culture is viewed as something society has, on the other; it is viewed as something society is. For this research, we define culture as \"orientations to action\" and a \"general dispositions to act in certain ways in sets of situations\" (Eckstein, 1988, pp. 790-791). Culture is acquired by people through their actions in society where the norms are established and expectations of acceptable behavior defined.\nWorkforce equity: The dictionary definition of the term equity is that this is \"the quality of being equal or fair; fairness, impartiality; evenhanded dealing.\" It is derived from the Latin word aequitas meaning equal, and in its original form meant reasonableness and moderation in exercising one's own rights (Simpson and Weiner, 1991). It conveys a sense of parity and fairness between social actors and the idea that equity can be attained. It has compelling social overtones that align well with the notion of sustainability and fair globalization. Cowell notes (2000) that there are many dimensions of equity including equal treatment, social minimums, lifetime earning power, mobility in employment, economic inclusion, income share, income disparity/range, opportunity, global comparisons. Research on equity is far ranging, covering diverse topics that include income equity (Aigner and Heins, 2005), gender equity (McCann, 1994) and racial equity (Greene, 1989). However, within our focal area of workforce equity, little suitable research could be found. Proceeding in an exploratory manner, we follow the suggestion of Burchardt (2006) for considering workforce equity and address two critical questions: equity between whom, and equity of what?\nData and results: The data for the identified proxy measures for each of the constructs were collected at country level. Country connectedness was captured using the e-readiness (e-Readiness) measure for 2007. Due to the nature of the various data sets used, a single year of data was not available; instead the closest available data to 2007 was chosen. Thus, cultural values was captured by the 2006 World Values Survey national-level value scores on traditional/secular-rational (TradRat) values and survival/self-expression (ServSelf) extracted from the Survey's online database (World Values Survey, 2010). To capture the three aspects of workforce equity, we start with the first aspect of decent employment where we use the per capita GNIs based on purchasing power parities (GNIPPP) data for 2008 provided by the World Bank (2010a). The second aspect of workers' rights was captured by gender pay gap (WageEquity) by extracting same-job pay comparison data for 2007 from the World Bank's World Development Indicators (The World Bank, 2010). In addition, the measure of income inequality using the Gini-coefficient (GINI) was used. This was available via the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development report for Gini-coefficients for the year 2007 and is based on the ratio of incomes of the top 10 percent and bottom 10 percent of earners in a country (UNDP, 2010). Finally to capture the aspect of social protection the proxy measure of the prevalence of child labor (PerChLabor) by country was used. This is based on the reported prevalence of child labor as a percentage of the total population of children between the ages of 5 and 14 collected and reported by UNICEF (UNICEF, 2010). After combining the various data sets at the country level and removing countries with missing data, 37 countries remained in the analysis - see the Appendix. The resulting database provided good geographic and socio-economic dispersion and allowed for meaningful analysis and testing of the expected relationships among the three constructs of country connectedness, cultural values and workforce equity.\nDiscussion: We proposed a relationship between country connectedness, cultural values and workforce equity. Using measures from the economist e-readiness survey, the World Values Survey, the United Nations Development Program, UNICEF and World Bank we report that the equity of a country's workforce does appear to be strongly influenced by country connectivity. Firms competing on the global stage are continually incented to reduce costs, which they can do by becoming more efficient or by externalizing costs. At the socially and geographically distant ends of their global supply chains externalizing is easier because the externalized costs such as those placed on workers through low wages, unsafe conditions and unfair practices are shaded from view.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the impact that country connectedness and cultural values have on the equity afforded to a country's workforce in today's global economy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing upon a number of large international surveys of national-level metrics, e-readiness is identified as a proxy measure for country connectedness. Cultural variables are proxied by the World Values Survey's national-level scores on \"survival/self-expression\" and \"traditional/secular-rational\" values. Workforce equity is captured via three measures: per capita Gross National Income (GNI) based on purchasing power parity (PPP), a Gini-coefficient, and the prevalence of child labor. Stepwise regression analysis is employed to investigate expected relationships.\nFindings: Results suggest an interesting link between the constructs investigated. A negative and significant effect of e-readiness and a negative and significant effect of traditional/secular-rational values on workforce equity are reported. In addition, the impact of e-readiness appears to be absolutely larger while thee impact of survival/self-expression values on the workforce equity is not found to be significant.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is primarily exploratory in nature thereby providing a foundation but not an end product. Next, the data used in the research is aggregate-level data providing broad generalizations about each country. Does a country have a single culture? Is the connectivity of a country a valid measure of the regions within? The authors chose to use an analysis at a single point in time. A longitudinal study could provide more insight and thus help to highlight causality. The data utilized was repurposed from third-party sources. Finally, only 37 observations are used and a broader data set could help strengthen findings further.\nSocial implications: The rapid march of country connectedness across the globe is eroding firms' ability to shade their actions through the distance afforded by global supply chains. A country's culture values has a significant impact on workforce equity but country connectedness has a stronger impact, thus companies operating in more traditional and less developed countries will face significant impacts as these countries get connected. Rather than a threat, companies may see country connectedness and workforce equity as an opportunity. Firms that treat their workers well will see vast new markets open for them as evermore of the world's population becomes economically active.\nOriginality/value: Uses an innovative data capture methodology that allows the investigation of an interesting and unexplored research question.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The Healthy e-Elderly People Assessment (HEPA) application: An evaluation of health effects from smartphone and tablet usage among senior citizens in Thailand
|
[
"Smartphone",
"Tablet",
"Health effects",
"Senior citizens",
"Thailand"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There are many mobile communication devices used in Thailand, such as smartphones, tablets, desktops and laptop computers, of which smartphones and tablets are the more popular choices[1]. Smartphones are essentially cellular phones with built-in applications[2], and tablets are wireless portable personal computers with a touchscreen interface. User behaviors of smartphones and tablets are increasingly demonstrating patterns related to internet addiction[3]. Moreover, the increasing use and dependence of smartphones and tablets have become a prevalent issue in public health as reports of both positive and negative health effects from smartphone use increase.\nMaterials and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive approach was used in this study. This study was conducted in every region of Thailand. All the users who installed the Healthy e-Elderly People Assessment (HEPA) mobile application between March and July 2017 were included as participants in this study survey. Males or females older than 60 years old who were confirmed by their answer on users' age in the HEPA application were recruited into this study. If the users' age was less than 60 years old, the users were not allowed to access the other pages of the HEPA application. Other inclusion criteria were people who have applied to it for more than six months and who were literate. The total number of participants was 490 elderly people in this study. The HEPA application is a free mobile application developed in the Thai language by the researcher team and runs on the Google Android operating system. Elderly users can download and install the app via their own mobile phone at: https://play-google-com.pitt.idm.oclc.org/store/apps. The HEPA consists of a five-part questionnaire including: demographic characteristics, usage of mobile communication devices and applications, frequency and magnitude of health effects lasting three months during and after using smartphones or tablets based on participant's perception and judgment, knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding health effects of smartphone or tablet usage, and quality of life. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection throughout the HEPA application. The validity of the questionnaire in the HEPA application was evaluated by three experts in public health; the validity and reliability were deemed acceptable (IOC=0.85, Cronbach's a=0.75)[24]. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Review Committee for Research Involving Human Research Subjects, Health Sciences Group I, Chulalongkorn University (RECCU No. 146.2/59).\nResults: Based on responses to the questionnaire, the number of participants in this study was 490 including 267 (54.5 percent) females and 223 (45.5 percent) males. The average age was 64.9+-5.4 years old. Most (67.1 percent), participants were married and living together as a couple. In total, 223 (45.5 percent) of them graduated with a bachelor's degree or higher. Most of them (63.3 percent) had a current income. Almost (75.3 percent) had no chronic disease.\nDiscussion: The results of this study reported physical health effects such as eye symptoms, musculoskeletal symptoms, and nervous system symptoms similar to a previous study in Thailand that conducted a study among elderly users of mobile communication devices[24]. Moreover, these study results are consistent with the previous study in a 2012 survey among American people, which reported neck and shoulder pain, eye strain, dry eyes, blurred vision, and headache[12]. The previous studies among other age groups in India show that participants had redness in the eyes, fatigue, irritated eyes, dry eyes, eye strain, or double vision[15]. Screen glare can cause blurred vision. Bright backlight in the device's screen can cause eye redness or irritation when users used devices for long periods of time. Reduced blinking of eyes can cause dry eyes[13]. A suggestion to prevent eye symptoms is to adjust the brightness of devices and increase the text size on the screen[12]. The users' reported nervous system symptoms and musculoskeletal symptoms in this study were similar to another study in Korea[11]. When people use a smartphone, they usually flexed their neck downwards to stare at the lowered screen and maintained the head in a forward position for long periods of time which may cause musculoskeletal disorders[26-28]. In addition, these study results were similar to previous studies where adults had reported chronic headaches or dizziness[3, 14]. Due to periods of focusing on the screen, stresses to the eye muscle can occur. The resulting eye strain can cause headaches[13].\nConclusion: The elderly people in Thailand have increased the length of time they spend on mobile communication devices resulting in this growing group of the nation's population being at risk of several serious health effects. The potential gap in knowledge conceals some of the risk factors for the current health effects of using mobile communication devices. The HEPA application offers the potential to assess the effects of excessive use of mobile communication devices. Further communication interventions may be required to reduce health effects on elderly people.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate health effects and determine the factors associated with health effects from smartphone and tablet use among the elderly in Thailand.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was a cross-sectional descriptive study. The participants comprised 490 elderly people. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection via the Healthy e-Elderly People Assessment mobile application in the Android operating system by Google which consists of five parts of a questionnaire. The variables were analyzed using SPSS such as frequency, percentage, mean and binary logistic regression.\nFindings: Altogether, the participants were 223 males and 267 females; mean age=64.9+-5.4. The average time spent using a mobile device was 2.8+-1.9 h/day. Participants recorded that after use of either device, 59.0 percent experienced eye pain, 52.7 percent experienced dim eyes, 30.2 percent experienced tiredness, and 28.0 percent experienced moodiness. Socially, 26.8 percent recorded changes in social interaction. Periods of time using devices, time consumed in device usage (hours/day), the type of application, and the difference in times of use, place of usage and time spent in rest breaks from smartphone or tablet usage were significantly associated with health effects (p<0.05).\nOriginality/value: The elderly users may be at risk of several health effects from smartphone and tablet use. The potential gap in knowledge conceals some of the risk factors for the current health effects. Practical intervention to reduce health effects from the use of smartphones and tablets should be considered.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A three-fold framework for understanding HRM practices in South-Eastern European SMEs
|
[
"Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)",
"Human resource management",
"Internationalization",
"South-Eastern Europe",
"Organizational size",
"Sector"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs[1]) are considered to be the backbone of both developed and developing economies, with the potential to stimulate economic expansion and to act as stabilisers in downturns (Varum and Rocha, 2013). In the European Union (EU) there are approximately 20 million SMEs representing 99 per cent of all businesses and they represent key drivers for economic growth, innovation, employment and social integration (European Commission Enterprise and Industry, 2015). Because of this, SMEs attract a lot of attention in terms of policy development and implementation. There is still, however, only limited empirical research on how human resource management (HRM), in particular, is practiced in such organisations (Massey and Campbell, 2013; Messersmith and Wales, 2013; Parker and Verreynne, 2013; Varum and Rocha, 2013).\nResearch background: SMEs are widely known for their informal, emergent and reactive approach to managing HRM issues (Harney and Dundon, 2006; Kok and Uhlaner, 2001; Kotey and Slade, 2005; Marlow, 2000, 2002), partly because of the owner-manager's role in HRM decisions (Singh and Vohra, 2009). HRM in smaller organisations is differently applied than in larger organisations; and formality of HRM policies and practices increases with organisational size (Cardon and Stevens, 2004). It is, therefore, important to explore the factors affecting formalisation of HRM practices in SMEs if we are to understand the challenges they face.\nResearch methodology: Our study adopted an exploratory quantitative research design aiming at identifying the importance and degree of formality of HRM practices within SMEs in SEE and exploring the factors that influence it. An exploratory research design was appropriate because it involves a first investigation into a topic and is a valuable means of finding out what is happening in organisations in an under-researched area lacking prior knowledge (Saunders et al., 2012). Within this exploratory design we employed a quantitative research strategy because we wanted to collect a wider volume of data allowing a possible generalisation of outcomes for SEE as well as gaining a comparative overview of the issue in question. Our approach is similar to previously published exploratory quantitative studies in other areas which utilise a survey for exploring under-researched areas (e.g. Campos et al., 2012; Chell, 1985; Fernandes et al., 2014; Kraus et al., 2012; McMahon, 1996).\nResults: The presentation and analysis of the findings is structured in terms of the research objectives of the study.\nDiscussion: towards a threefold framework of HRM in SEE SMEs: Studies on this periphery (e.g. Psychogios et al., 2010; Psychogios, 2010) have shown that there are structural and organisational factors that need to be taken into account in order to understand the impact of management concepts. These factors include organisational size, business sector, degree of business growth, workforce skill-mix, organisational culture, management style, family culture, available resources and alliances with larger or multinational firms (Edwards and Ram, 2009; Harney and Dundon, 2006; Kok and Uhlaner, 2001). These features of the SEE periphery create pressures which either hold back or promote the sophistication of HRM implementation within SMEs. For example, a number of authors have looked at the degree of formality of HRM practices in SMEs and have described HRM practices in SMEs as informal, emergent, reactive, piecemeal and pragmatic (Harney and Dundon, 2006; Kok and Uhlaner, 2001; Kotey and Slade, 2005; Marlow, 2000, 2002; Singh and Vohra, 2009).\nConclusion: The past autarchic environment of state control in these countries means that entrepreneurial development has been slow and foreign MNC investment limited. Where MNCs operate they can influence local business practices by importing management thinking (Kahancova and van der Meer, 2006; Bogicevic Milikic et al., 2008; Zupan and Kase, 2005). Local businesses, however, particularly small ones, usually managed by the owner, develop their own informal way of working based on resources and expertise (Prouska and Kapsali, 2011). Unregulated informal economic activities are a common feature of the region (e.g. Cooke et al., 2011; Williams, 2010; Williams and Round, 2009).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study particular structural and organisational factors affecting the formality of human resource management (HRM) practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South-Eastern European (SEE) post-communist countries, in particular Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in order to understand the antecedents of formalization in such settings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Adopting a quantitative approach, this study analyses data gathered through a survey of 168 managers of SMEs from throughout the region.\nFindings: The results show that HRM in SMEs in the SEE region can be understood through a threefold framework which includes: degree of internationalisation of SMEs, sector of SMEs and organisational size of SMEs. These three factors positively affect the level of HRM formalisation in SEE SMEs. These findings are further attributed to the particular political and economic context of the post-communist SEE region.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although specific criteria were set for SME selection, the authors do not suggest that the study reflects a representative picture of the SEE region because the authors used a purposive sampling methodology.\nPractical implications: This paper provides useful insights into the factors which influence HRM in SMEs in a particular context. The findings can help business owners and managers understand how HRM can be applied in smaller organisations, particularly in post-communist SEE business contexts.\nOriginality/value: HRM in SMEs in this region has hardly been studied at all despite their importance. Therefore, this exploratory research seeks to expand knowledge relating to the application of HRM in SMEs in SEE countries which have their business environments dominated by different dynamics in comparison to Western European ones.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A survey of third party logistics in Mexico and a comparison with reports on Europe and USA
|
[
"Outsourcing",
"Operations management",
"Mexico"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Since, the signing of the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), trade has increased drastically among NAFTA partners, at an average rate of 9 per cent per year (Bradbury, 2002). In 2000, the trade between the USA and Mexico was $247 billion (US Department of Commerce, International Trade Administrator, 2001). Even Asian companies, e.g. Maytag Corp. are opening plants in Mexico to have access to one of the biggest consumer markets of the world (The Wall Street Journal, 2003). In 2003, Mexico's global competitiveness ranking was 47, six places higher than in 2002 (World Economic Forum, 2003). However, NAFTA was written as a trade policy without considering issues such as logistics, security and immigration (Milner, 1998). Among the efforts to provide the required logistics infrastructure, the Mexican government has promoted the development of transportation corridors, e.g. the NAFTA highway, the privatization of railways and foreign investment in inter-modal transportation.Global competition, the NAFTA agreement, and the economic recession of recent years force Mexican firms to be more competitive and to adopt efficient management practices.Supply chain management is recognized as a strategy for improving competitiveness by improving customer value and reducing cost (Mentzer, 2004). The logistics function is key for supporting supply chain integration and facilitating the flow of goods from producer to the final consumer. For example, the largest Mexican companies in the food sector rely on a network of more than one million small retailing stores for the distribution of 70 per cent of their sales (El Financiero, 2004a, b).In Mexico, logistics costs represent about 15 per cent of the GNP (Erosa and Arroyo, 2003). A Mexican company spends on average 12.6 per cent of its net sales on logistics activities (Transporte Siglo XXI, 2003) of which 60 per cent concern inventory management, warehousing, fleet management and transportation (Reforma, 2003). Given these costs and the customers' demands for shorter order cycles, some companies consider outsourcing these activities to third party logistics (3PL) providers.In contrast to other countries, 3PL does not appear common practice in Mexico. El Economista (2003) reports that only 32 per cent of Mexican firms use 3PL, which is significantly smaller than the percentages reported for Europe (67 per cent), USA (60 per cent) (Gooley, 1997) and for other Latin-American countries such as Chile (50 per cent), Brazil (50 per cent) and Argentina (46 per cent) (Transporte Siglo XXI, 2003). The limited use of 3PL in Mexico is attributed to the high cost of these services (El Financiero, 2003), and the shortage of reliable national suppliers (El Asesor de Mexico, 2004).It thus appears that, Mexican companies do not follow the global outsourcing trend. However, to date no thorough empirical investigation of this assumption has been published in the academic literature. There are only a few reports from local consultants and business media but these either only cover a specific function (e.g. transportation) or are based on the experiences of a single company. The main objective of this paper is to contribute to filling this knowledge gap by providing insight into the current status of 3PL in Mexico. The second, but related, objective is to investigate the feasibility of 3PL as a global, uniform strategy and practice, this against the background of the literature stressing the importance of a global strategy for operations and logistics (Fawcett and Birou, 1992; Fawcett et al., 1993) and its limitations (Cooper, 1993; Hertz and Alfredsson, 2003). More specifically, our research questions are the following:RQ1. What are the most commonly outsourced logistics functions in Mexico and what is the influence of firm size and foreign investment on the degree of outsourcing?\nLiterature review: The 3PL literature represents a variety of academic perspectives and research methods. For the purpose of this paper, we found it convenient to divide the literature into three broad categories, as shown in Table I.Category A papers describe 3PL practice in different parts of the world, most notably in developed regions such as the USA, Europe and Australia. Frequently outsourced functions include warehousing, transportation and distribution, but Lieb and Randall (1996), Van Hoek (2001) and Hertz and Alfredsson (2003) suggest that providers may expand their offerings with supplementary services, e.g. traditional transportation firms that also offer inventory management services. Rabinovich et al. (1999) find that firms can improve customer service and reduce costs by outsourcing packages of functions. The studies in category A suggest as the main benefits of 3PL: cost savings (most frequently mentioned), operational efficiency, flexibility and improved customer service. Firms mainly use desk research and information from providers' sales calls for provider selection. Important selection criteria are the demonstrated capacity to provide the required services, price, ability to cooperate and solve problems (Bradley, 1999; Van Laarhoven et al., 2000), IS and technological capabilities, and compatibility with company culture and philosophy (Boyson et al., 1999) making the selection of a 3PL service provider a multiple criteria decision (Barla, 2003; Choy and Lee, 2002). Critical success factors include well-defined requirements and performance measures, close relationship to the provider, top management involvement (Van Laarhoven et al., 2000), awareness of the logistics concept and adequate infrastructure (Hong et al. 2004).The papers in category B describe and/or prescribe (parts of) the logistics outsourcing process from the point of view of a single firm. Typically, these papers consider the processual side of 3PL rather than its content, i.e. they focus on the \"how\" rather than the \"what and why\" which are more typical for many papers in category A.Category C includes papers that discuss 3PL in the wider context of a firm's global strategy. Fawcett and Birou (1992), Fawcett et al. (1993) and Cooper (1993) stress the importance of global logistics strategies and the increasing importance of global 3PL service providers. Bolumole (2001) identifies factors that influence the decision to outsource and the implications of 3PL for supply chain management.This paper first and foremost aims to complement the literature in category A. While there are many reports about 3PL in developed regions such the USA and Europe, we still know little about 3PL in other, developing regions of the world. To our knowledge, only studies of Malaysia (Sohail and Sohal, 2003), China (Hong and Chin, 2004; Hong et al., 2004) and Ghana (Sohail et al., 2004) have been published. No studies are available for Mexico despite its increasing share in international trade, and the presence of many multinationals in the country. The research presented here aims to increase our insight into the 3PL practices in developing areas. More specifically, this study sheds light on the level of 3PL use in Mexico, the type of functions outsourced (RQ1), the perceived benefits and critical success factors of 3PL (RQ2) as well as information sources and decision methods used in provider selection (RQ3). This part of the research is primarily exploratory (Forza, 2002) and, therefore, not driven by specific propositions, except regarding the impact of firm size and foreign investment on the level of outsourcing, where, based on Hong and Chin (2004) and Sohail et al. (2004), we come to the following proposition:P1. The extent of use of 3PL by Mexican firms is positively correlated with firm size and level of foreign investment.\nMethodology: In this section we explain how the survey was designed and administered. The choice of a survey follows from the purpose of the research: to describe the state of 3PL in Mexico and to compare the results with existing data from prior 3PL surveys.Questionnaire design\nPresentation and discussion of the results of the Mexican survey: In this section we consider the level of 3PL use in Mexico, the level of outsourcing for particular logistics functions, perceived benefits, critical success factors, relevant attributes of 3PL service providers and information sources and decision methods used in the selection of these providers. In this way, we address RQ1-RQ3 and we evaluate P1.General level of 3PL use in the area of Toluca, Mexico\nComparing the Mexican data with studies about the USA and Europe: This section presents a comparison of the Mexican data with existing data on Europe and the USA. In this way, we address RQ4 and evaluate P2-P4. We recognize the studies we are using for comparison are not as recent as ours, but given that 3PL services market - especially in distribution - developed first in Europe then in USA (Lieb et al., 1993; Gooley, 1997), expectations are that Mexican outsourcing status is comparable to past situation in those regions.The level of outsourcing particular logistics functions in Mexico, Europe and USA\nConclusions and implications: In this section we first draw conclusions with regard to the first four research questions which considered the 3PL practice in Mexico and the differences between this practice and the practice in Europe and the USA. Next, based on these conclusions, we derive implications for both providers and buyers of logistics services, thereby addressing the final research question.Third party logistics in Mexico\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To investigate the status of third party logistics (3PL) in Mexico and the feasibility of 3PL as a global, uniform strategy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey among firms located in the central part of Mexico, followed by a comparison of the results with data from existing 3PL studies of Europe and the USA.\nFindings: - 3PL seems a common but \"low profile\" practice among large Mexican firms. Only a third outsources more than three functions, which are mostly supportive and operational. Compared to Mexico, 3PL use is higher in Europe and USA. Firms in Europe and USA focus more on tactical, integrated functions and cost reduction when using 3PL while Mexican firms aim for improved customer service and concentration on core activities. The lack of competitive local providers makes 3PL expensive and may favour larger, international providers.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The results warrant additional surveys of Mexico and other developing regions, preferably using a unique survey design and covering more SME's. Case studies are needed to further investigate how multinational firms manage the 3PL decision process on different organizational and regional levels.\nPractical implications: - Uniform, global 3PL strategies should be considered with care: what may work in Europe may not work in Mexico or the USA. Outsourcing should be seen as a means and not as an end. Mexican firms can use 3PL successfully yet achieve different ends than European firms. Mexico's large SME market offers opportunities for providers of 3PL services.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first thorough study about outsourcing logistics practices in Mexico, which adds a Latin-American perspective to the very few 3PL studies conducted in developing regions. In addition, the comparison of Mexican outsourcing practice with practices across the USA and Europe offers a cross-cultural view on 3PL and identifies the need for further mapping of expectations and conditions related to effective outsourcing of logistics in other regions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Consumer exposure to warmed-over flavour and their attitudes towards the use of natural antioxidants as preservatives in meat and meat products
|
[
"Antioxidants",
"Consumers",
"Health",
"Ready-to-eat meats"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Re-heating meat and meat products that have been pre-cooked and chill-stored results in the rapid development of distinctive off-flavours known as warmed-over flavour (WOF) (Byrne et al., 2002). Cooking or thermal treatment boosts oxidation by facilitating tissue separation, which releases iron, and causes protein denaturation, inactivating antioxidant enzymes (Rojas and Brewer, 2007; Amaral et al., 2018). The warmed-over flavour development is attributed to the auto-oxidation of meat lipids and has been commonly characterized as \"stale,\" \"wet,\" \"cardboardy,\" \"painty,\" \"grassy,\" or \"rancid\" (Rojas and Brewer, 2007). In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in consumer demand for pre-cooked, ready-to-eat meat due to their effortless and time-saving preparation (Silberbauer and Schmid, 2017). However, ready-to-eat meat products have been reported to be more susceptible to the development of WOF (Byrne et al., 2001; Johnston et al., 2005). Warmed-over flavour is not acceptable to consumers (Iulietto et al., 2015) and has been long recognized as a draw-back in the meat industry. Consequently, research on WOF development in meat has been of continuing interest to improve the quality of ready-to-eat meats and other convenience foods (Brondum et al., 2000; Jayathilakan et al., 2007; Kim et al., 2016).Over the years, to minimize warmed-over flavour development and extending shelf-life, antioxidants have been used in the meat industry on products, such as meat patties, burgers and sausages (McCarthy et al., 2001; Metsovas, 2013). The antioxidants being used are either derived from natural sources, such as plants, herbs and spices or synthetic sources, for example, Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) (Comert and Gokmen, 2018). Synthetic antioxidants have, however, been reported to have negative effects on consumer health (Kumar et al., 2015). Consequently, the search for more natural antioxidant sources has gained momentum in recent years (Shah et al., 2014).The overall aim of the meat industry is to satisfy and meet consumer needs and demands (Troy et al., 2016). When a product fails to satisfy consumer expectations, the damage to producers goes beyond product replacement; it also includes the loss of the producer's reputation and future acceptance of the product (Brewer and Decker, 1998; Brewer, 2010). The use of natural antioxidants in the meat industry is relatively unexplored. Given the increasing interest in healthier meat and meat products incorporated with functional ingredients, lower sodium, lower calories and lower fat (Arihara, 2006), there is potential for the use of natural antioxidants in meat processing not only to improve shelf-life stability or inhibit warmed-over flavour but to also create a healthier image of the product. In order to use natural antioxidants to solve the problem of warmed-over flavour, a combination of consumer perceptions on the use of natural antioxidants, and an understanding of the prevalence of warmed-over flavour to consumers is critical for the meat industry. There is, however, scarcity on research that focuses on studying consumer habits that expose them to warmed-over flavour, and their attitudes towards the adoption of natural antioxidants in reducing the development of WOF. A better understanding of consumer exposure to WOF may help improve the competitiveness of the meat industry concerning the improvement of shelf-life in the development of meat and meat products. Therefore, this study seeks to assess the level of consumer exposure to warmed-over flavour, their habits that lead to warmed-over exposure and last their take on the use of natural antioxidants as preservatives.\n2. Materials and methods: 2.1 Study site description\n3. Results: 3.1 Consumer demographic information\n4. Discussion: Findings from the current study showed that the majority of the respondents had experienced a warmed-over flavour before. This is in line with reports by Cross et al. (1987) and Byrene et al. (2001), who reported that warmed-over flavour development in pre-cooked meat was a major consumer concern. In support of the aforementioned, Lepper-Blilie et al. (2014) stated that consumer sensitivity to warmed-over flavour in pre-cooked beef is a major concern in the meat industry. The majority of the respondents in this study had a habit of purchasing pre-cooked, refrigerated heat-to-eat meat and meat products. The findings concur with recent reports stating that consumer demand for ready-to-eat or heat-to-eat pre-cooked meat products has increased (Byrne et al., 2001; Ottar Olsen et al., 2009; lepper-Blilie et al., 2014; Janssen et al., 2018). The patterns that were drawn from correspondence analysis further indicated that the majority of males and females that live alone were into the habit of purchasing pre-cooked meat compared to males and females that live with family. This could be attributed to convenience reasons as people who live alone may hardly prepare a home-cooked meal compared to those that live as families. According to some researchers, people who live alone may not be in the habit of cooking because there is no accountability to others; for males, the lack of interest or skills in cooking is a contributory factor to eating pre-cooked meals (Badore, 2015). This statement is in agreement with findings from this study, which showed that the majority of males and females living alone had a habit of storing pre-cooked meats under refrigeration for later reheating (Figure 5) a habit, which exposes the meats to warmed-over flavour.This study showed that most of the consumers attributed the habit of purchasing and storing pre-cooked meat and meat products to busy schedules and convenience reasons. The findings are in agreement with Bae et al. (2010), who reported that the biggest purchase motivator for pre-cooked ready-to-eat foods for most consumers was convenience. Reports by (Guthrie et al., 2002) also support the notion that there is an increased prevalence of out-of-home eating as a habit because it is deemed \"convenient\" in terms of reduced demands in cleaning and preparation time.Most of the consumers were not sure of how to define warmed-over flavour; this concurs with findings by Byrene et al. (2002), who reported that it is not clear how consumers detect warmed-over flavour. This calls for responsible consumer agencies to educate consumers on warmed-over flavour and how to detect them to avoid food poisoning, which is a critical food safety issue. Moreover, these are undesirable attributes that negatively affect consumer perception of a product. From the proportion that was able to describe the warmed-over flavour, the majority characterized it as stale, followed by cardboard-like and last painty. In previous researches, panelists have described warmed-over flavour as \"stale,\" \"wet,\" \"cardboardy,\" \"painty,\" \"grassy\" or \"rancid\" (Campo et al., 2006; Rojas and Brewer, 2007).Antioxidants have long been used in the meat industry to preserve meats to limit occurrences of meat deterioration, such as the development of warmed-over flavour. Regardless of this long known existence of antioxidants, findings from this study showed that more than half of the respondents were not aware of what antioxidants are and how they are used in meat preservation. The findings are in line with reports by Falowo (2015), who found that most consumers were not aware of the use of antioxidants as preservatives. This is further supported by Carocho et al. (2015), who stated that there is a lack of knowledge when it comes to distinguishing natural from synthetic compounds by the public. This lack of knowledge could be attributed to that the information about antioxidants is rarely conveyed to the public. The information that exists concerning antioxidants is usually found on the Internet, and not everyone has access to it. Moreover, antioxidants are not mentioned or advertised on meat labels (Venkatesh and Sood, 2011; Carocho et al., 2015), and hence, consumers are not aware of them. From the proportion of the respondents that were aware of what antioxidants were, more than half of them indicated that they were aware of the toxic effects of synthetic additives. This is in line with recent reports stating that consumers are becoming health-conscious (Hoffman and Wiklund, 2006; Gramza-Michalowska et al., 2016). There is, however, still a need to further raise consumer awareness on different classes of antioxidants, their uses and health effects because the majority is still not aware. This is in agreement with conclusions by Legesse et al. (2016), who mentioned that there is still a lack of knowledge among consumers concerning the health effects of food additives, which calls for more awareness activities in this regard. Unexpectedly, findings from this study had a greater proportion of consumers indicating that the meat industry should use more natural antioxidants. When informally asked why they would prefer natural antioxidants regardless of their knowledge of antioxidants some of the consumers stated that \"I just saw the word natural, anything natural is good.\" This again confirms the current indications from research, which show that consumers are now demanding naturally produced meat products (Karre et al., 2013; Gonzalez and Angeles, 2017) because most consumers have become health conscious. This is further supported by Carocho et al. (2014), who stated that normally, consumers would choose food without additives, but if it is not available, the same consumer may opt for food incorporated with natural additives over synthetic ones.Various natural antioxidants have shown potential in limiting the development of warmed-over flavour in meat and this gives them the potential to be used in the meat industry to meet consumer demands of a healthy product.\n5. Conclusions: The warmed-over flavour has long been recognized as a challenge in the meat industry and is still a problem to-date. This has been worsened by the increased number of consumers who are into convenience foods. These pre-cooked convenience meats are more susceptible to the development of warmed-over flavour. Most of the consumers relate their busy schedules and convenience to their habits of purchasing pre-cooked meat and meat products. The conclusions of this study must be interpreted bearing in mind that the studied group was limited to a university population, which was mainly made up of young, unemployed and highly educated people. Therefore, the results cannot be equated to what could have been found if the study was conducted in an area that encompasses the general public. From the patterns of consumers, it is quite evident that consumers are likely to experience warmed-over flavour in their day to day routines. The warmed-over flavour is a characteristic that is not acceptable to consumers. For ensuring the sustainability and competitiveness of the meat and meat processing industry in the development of healthy ready-to-eat pre-cooked meats and meat products, which meet consumer demands, it is the mandatory for the meat industry to continue exploring for more natural antioxidants. Consumers still need to be educated on the effects of synthetic antioxidants and the potential health benefits of natural antioxidants in meat preservation. The application of natural antioxidants in meat and meat products will not solely depend on the consumer decisions, but also relies on the combination of research output on the effectiveness of different potential natural antioxidants at different inclusion levels and the consumer acceptance of the final flavour of the product that has been preserved with natural antioxidants. This combination is a good start to reaching a consensus on how natural antioxidants can be practically adopted by the meat industry to meet the consumer demands for a healthy product.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The objective of the study was to assess consumer exposure to warmed-over flavour, their eating habits with respect to pre-cooked stored meats, awareness of antioxidants and attitudes towards the use of natural antioxidants as preservatives in meat and meat products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 238 Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) design questionnaires were used to gather information from the University of Fort Hare community in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.\nFindings: The majority of the respondents had been exposed to warmed-over flavour before. More than half of the respondents did not know about antioxidants. Respondents were in support of the use of natural antioxidants in meat and meat products.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study mainly captured consumer habits based on living arrangements. Age influence could not be extrapolated due to the nature of the population, which was being studied. The population was limited to the University community, which is mainly made up of not so widely spread age groups and more or less similar levels of education. As a result, the findings and conclusions may not be a true reflection of the general public consumers in terms of age, level of education and employment status.\nOriginality/value: This research presents an original insight into consumer habits concerning the purchasing and storage of pre-cooked meat and meat products. The study revealed that most consumers nowadays prefer ready-to-eat or pre-cooked meat and meat products due to convenience. The warmed-over flavour is common in pre-cooked meats. The findings suggests that the meat industry has to improve the shelf-life of pre-cooked foods such that warmed-over flavour development is delayed to fit into the current consumer habits. In recent years there has been a growing interest in the use of natural antioxidants to improve shelf-life of muscle foods. However, there is a dearth of information on consumer attitudes towards the use of natural antioxidants as preservatives. This study reveals that consumers are willing to try products formulated using natural antioxidants.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Retail operations strategies: Empirical evidence of role, competitive contribution and life cycle
|
[
"Retailing",
"Strategic planning",
"Production planning and control"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This research aims to establish the degree to which retail firms in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors use identifiable operations strategies; whether they contribute to positioning and performance; and, if these strategies are used, whether they display any particular life cycle in terms of that contribution.It is argued that an operations strategy is a vital ingredient for the success of many retailers. As such, the initial objectives of the research were to establish the stated aims and objectives of these organisations as articulated in the form of a desired competitive positioning. Establishing this positioning does offer a benchmark by which to judge the subsequent success of any strategies evident.Existing empirical research has established that operations strategies can be classified and are used across a wide range of commercial sectors; some having clear preferences for type (Lowson, 2002a). This paper will endeavour to show that retailers also heavily rely upon such strategies and that they provide a substantial contribution to the positioning that these firms seek as part of their strategic aims. It will also be argued that the dynamics and complexity of the retail sector place heavy operational burdens upon this type of organisation, underscoring the need for adopting a strategic perspective concerning future operational activities.Having ascertained the use of these strategies, the business aims, objectives and positioning sought and the desired contribution a strategy might make to these objectives, the actual performance of these strategies is scrutinised. It subsequently became clear that performance was more complex than expected and subject to degrees of variation. A life cycle model was conceived, and when this theoretical development was tested during a longitudinal investigation, clear and dramatic temporal variations in the ability of these strategies to support strategic and operational objectives were observed. These findings extend and develop earlier research by exploring the process of strategic change over time and the forces responsible for any alternations in direction.These findings also stress the need for retail organisations to place a greater emphasis upon a strategic \"vision\"; one that is vital to operational management in complex sectors. Yet, it seems that a great deal of empirical research, and subsequent publications in the form of strategic literature and conceptual models, ignore long-term consideration of operational capabilities and their contribution to achieving future competitive edge; the role of the operations strategy. This is somewhat paradoxical as the dynamism and complexity of the retail environment provides a clear indication that any competitive success must be closely linked to operational planning. Despite the importance, however, it is submitted that the contribution of these strategies and the processes involved is not well understood and is in need of more attention in both research and practitioner communities. Unfortunately, there is also an inherent reluctance in many such organisations to discuss these strategies, in whatever form.In summary, the work seeks to ascertain:1. the wider business objectives of the retailers involved and how this translates into a desired competitive positioning;2. whether operations strategies are in fact used, if so, are they identifiable, and what positioning are they intended to address;3. what are the basic reasons for adopting these strategies;4. do these strategies substantially contribute to strategic positioning; and5. if there is a contribution, is it temporally variable, will it be affected by environmental conditions that cause these strategies to exhibit a performance life cycle?The paper is divided into four sections. First, as part of a literature review and theoretical development, the dynamics and complexities of the FMCG retail sector are discussed in order to better appreciate the nature and role of an operations strategy and the trends that may influence its evolution. Section two introduces the research study; the objectives, methods and methodology. The results of this study are then discussed in part three. Here, the notion of an operations strategy having a distinct life cycle is introduced as well as its impact upon business performance. At the same time, an attempt is made to better understand the forces that shape these strategies and their subsequent competitive capabilities. Finally, a detailed conclusion is provided and a discussion offered regarding the importance of the findings, significant managerial insights and theoretical corrections.\nRetailing and an operations strategy: theory and literature: As part of a literature review, the dynamics of the retail sector are examined in order to highlight possible causality between retail trends and the evolving nature of these strategies.The dynamics of the retail sector\nResearch methods and methodology: The research forms one of the concluding stages of a four-year project, partly sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust, whose principle aims are to better understand demand and the operational ability of retailers and their manufacturing suppliers in FMCG sectors.Research methods\nResults from the study: The results are presented in four sub-sections. First, a background to the firms involved, including their business aims and objectives, type of operations strategy used, if any, and the strategic positioning such a strategy might support. In the second part the competitive contribution of these strategies is examined in terms of operational effectiveness and strategic positioning. Finally in sections three and four, the concept of a strategic life cycle is explored as well as the possible influences leading to stages of evolution, growth and decline.Background\nDiscussion and conclusions: Based upon the findings of this exploratory research, there are a number of insights, managerial perspectives and possible theoretical extensions that can be suggested.The paper began by establishing two main strands. First, the underlying dynamics of retail sectors in most developed economies. A number of structural challenges face these organisations, including the relentless pressures for growth, internationalisation and externalisation that combine with the seemingly insatiable demands of consumers, often driven by retailers themselves, for variety and individuality. The complexities of trade in such an environment offer some interesting challenges for operational management disciplines; not least, longer-term planning in the form of an operations strategy. Second, the role, nature and locus of an operations strategy. This was seen as a direct contributor to the aims and objectives of such organisations, their performance, or any variation therein.The results of the research then began the task of uniting these dual perspectives. The business aims and objectives were initially established in order to appreciate the strategic imperatives for these enterprises. Thereafter, the use and type of an operations strategy was elucidated for 74 per cent of the sample (RQ1). This enabled the discovery that some strategies were limited to particular sectors and others combined well together. It seems that choices may be made concerning any strategy to suit particular industry or sector peculiarities in terms of supply and demand. This empirical finding extends the contribution of Fisher (1997) who speculated that operational activities in a supply chain should reflect the nature of demand. This research develops his theoretical speculation into the strategic domain. Not only should supply chains reflect the exigencies of demand behaviour, customer whim and product dynamism and complexity, more importantly, but also should strategies; especially those that are operational.Table I described the main objectives of these firms in terms of competitive positioning, and Tables II and III show that desired competitive positioning might be supported by a particular operations strategy. These findings began to show how links can be forged between type of sector, the strategy used and the positioning sought. This was confirmed in Table III with the reasons for adopting these strategies shown to be predominantly in support of business and competitive positioning (RQ2).At this point, the research sought to ascertain the actual as opposed to desired contribution of these strategies. In Figure 1 the degree to which these strategies had affected positioning was explored. At this point, the results started to indicate anomalies.The discovery that these strategies could have low, medium and high contribution to an organisation will come as little surprise. Of more interest perhaps, was the fact that at some point these strategies may have a neutral or detrimental effects and that some are in a state of transition. These findings prompted further probing into possible performance categories as part of the longitudinal study (Table IV). From this work, generic classifications were developed in order to capture the contributors' perspectives as to how these strategies would perform. This led to a conceptual debate as to whether or not the same strategy might display different performance levels at different times; a life cycle similar to many already witnessed in the literature with a progression through distinct phases of growth and development.It seems clear that if performance of these strategies does in fact vary, certain factors will act as an influence upon the strategy and its subsequent contribution to competitive positioning. Some will certainly be internal, but likely to be individual to the firm. Others, however, would be external and affect wider cohorts within the sample. These findings also confirm and extend the contribution of Ward et al. (1995) in their suggestion that environmental factors have a substantial impact on the operations strategy of Singapore manufacturers. Good performers adopt different strategies in response to environmental stimuli, than do poor performers. In this study, the findings are extended to a wider and possibly more mature business community. In addition, a temporal dimension is introduced as the detailed influences of this task environment upon these strategies begins to become apparent over an extended time period. These findings also augment those of Dess et al. (1990) in showing that environmental variables generally provide effective multiple industry controls because similar environmental settings are shared within the same industry. The fit between environment and organisational capabilities is seen as a central tenet in strategic management literature but has received little attention in extant operations strategy research.Table V described the type of domain influence, the degree to which each was felt and whether positive or negative. The various environmental agencies witnessed here were dyadic in that they altered the competitive ability of the operations strategy; as well as affecting the business aims and objectives (of the type described in Tables I and II).These findings prompted a revision of the operations strategy life cycle (Figure 3) and its practical implications. The strong environmental forces have repercussions not initially realised. It can now be suggested that these environmental task forces within a particular domain are unpredictable in both their power and timing. Thus, the strategies may not have stable growth, maturity and decline patterns. A sudden, unexpected and radical change in direction may occur; a bifurcation point where the performance of the strategy takes a completely new direction - either up or down.Finally, as a result of this research, a further contribution to the theoretical debate is possible. It has been established (by this and other studies) that organisations can use a number of operations strategies. These strategies it is postulated, exhibit a pattern of punctuated equilibria; a method to cope with the complexities of their trading and task environment. This complexity is often quoted as path dependence or non-linearity. Organisations are complex adaptive systems that exist in an environment that may, to a degree, be deterministic but is certainly non-linear; small changes produce dramatic effects and vice versa. In such domains, the chances of one strategy being successful over time will be low. Thus, it can now be suggested that populations of strategies are developed that will range, as Kauffman (1995) describes, across a constantly evolving fitness landscape. These landscapes can take various shapes, depending on the complexity, dynamism and degree of competition in any particular environment. They are roamed by protean business strategies each randomly seeking different paths to the highest and most successful peaks. Unfortunately, however, as with prediction, any vision of the future is far from certain. It is not possible to see in advance whether a particular path will lead to the highest overall peak or merely a position of being stranded on a \"poor, high energy local minimum\" - an improved position, but one that is still sub-optimal compared with the other surrounding peaks. In addition, as with most business environments, the terrain changes constantly and a high peak today may not be so tomorrow. In such hostile territory, as with genetic evolution, the chances of success are increased by simultaneously exploring more than one route to success (multiple strategies).It is hoped that the findings established in this new and evolving field of managerial study, may well be of some importance. In view of this contemporary nature, however, further research is certainly necessary. In particular, a stronger quantitative link ought to be established between the use of the operations strategy and direct benefits or possible disadvantages. Here, it might be possible to compare these with the various factor influences in the environment. Further research will also enable the identification of direct causal relationships between the influences described and any particular indicators of operational effectiveness. In similar vein, it is also crucial to examine the various influences upon these strategies and to isolate the degree to which founding factors, as opposed to sporadic factors, will affect these strategies and their design. In addition, why are some strategies applied in particular industries and what are the reasons for so doing; could these decisions be closely connected to various types of demand? Constructive suggestions from academicians as well as practitioners in these respects are most welcome.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to examine the role and contribution of an operations strategy for the retailer.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The methodology is mainly qualitative empirical research.\nFindings: - Analyses of the data collected reveals that the respondent organisations had a number of strategic aspirations and these objectives could be isolated, described and classified. It became apparent that the development and deployment of an operations strategy was closely related to these longer-term business aims. The research was able to establish clear correlations between the application of these strategies and the achievement of both strategic and tactical objectives over a period of time.\nOriginality/value: - The work demonstrates support for the contention that the use of an operations strategy is important to fuel the success of these organisations. It also questions the lack of emphasis given to this aspect in the strategic literature and most conceptual models of strategy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Developing ethical competence in healthcare management
|
[
"Workplace learning",
"Healthcare managers",
"Conflicts of interest",
"Rational emotions",
"Ethical competence"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Much research during the past decades has reported increased ethical demands in healthcare (Hoglund, 2005; Kalvemark Sporrong et al., 2007). To meet this development, ethical codes and principles have been developed to guide action in medical practice. Furthermore, ethical rounds (Svantesson et al., 2008) and moral case deliberation (Widdershoven et al., 2009) are methods that have been applied to increase the agents' competence in dealing with ethical challenges in healthcare. The implementation of ethical rounds (Kalvemark Sporrong et al., 2007) and ethical committees (Forde et al., 2007) has also been examined. Research on ethical competence in healthcare has primarily focused on nursing staff and medical practice. Also, organisational learning in relation to healthcare ethics and practical wisdom has been examined (Carrol and Edmondson, 2002; Rowley and Gibbs, 2008). However, ethical competence in relation to the healthcare manager task is less often studied.\nConceptual framework: Healthcare managers' identification and handling of COI actualise the concept of competence. In recent research on workplace learning, competence appears as a central concept, although somewhat ambiguously defined. Mulder, et al. (2007) discuss competence as a multidimensional concept, depending on the context of the users. The authors state that the traditional cognitive approach within this field of research should be extended to also encompass social and emotional aspects. Consequently, they propose the following definition of the concept of competence:\nDesign and method: The study had an explorative qualitative design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten healthcare managers (heads of department) with varying background in education and care specialisation in the Stockholm region, Sweden. Nine of them were interviewed twice, as one manager could not be reached for the second round of interviews about one year later. To prepare the managers prior to the first interview, they were asked to reflect on a specific COI that they had experienced at work and considered important in the healthcare context. During the first part of the first interview, the managers were asked to tell their story as concretely and detailed as possible. What was the COI about, which values and interests were at stake and how did they handle the COI in practice? This part of the interview lasted for about 45 minutes, and the interviewer only asked questions of clarification during this phase. The purpose was to develop a concrete, clear and rich picture. During the second part of the first interview, which also lasted for about 45 minutes, a semi-structured interview guide was used to ensure that we got all the information we needed to answer our research questions. A semi-structured interview guide was also used in the second round of interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.\nResults: The analysis revealed a wide range of COI that the healthcare managers encountered in their daily work. Different ways in which the managers handled them were also identified.\nDiscussion and conclusion: The findings showed that different kinds of COI were frequently present in the healthcare managers' work, and that their ethical competence was often not sufficient for the task of handling COI. However, the analysis revealed both strengths and shortcomings regarding ethical competence. The managers tended to handle the COI in both active and passive ways, many times adjusting their actions in a more or less instrumental way.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to explore what kind of ethical competence healthcare managers need in handling conflicts of interest (COI). The aim is also to highlight essential learning processes to develop healthcare managers' ethical competence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative study was performed. Semi-structured interviews with ten Swedish healthcare managers from different care providers were carried out twice and analysed through step-wise categorisation.\nFindings: Four categories of COI were revealed and two ways (passive and active) in which COI were handled. Ethical guidelines did not help the healthcare managers to handle the COI, and none of the managers made use of any sort of systematic ethical analysis. However, certain ethical competence was of great importance to identify and handle COI, consisting of contextual understanding, rational emotions, some theoretical knowledge and a suitable language. Organising work so that ethical analysis can be carried out is of great importance, and top management needs to clearly express the importance of ethical competence and allocate resources to allow adequate learning processes.\nOriginality/value: This paper highlights the management level and focuses on how work-integrated learning-processes can enable ethical competence. Ethical competence at the management level is essential both to comply with the constitution and legal requirements regarding healthcare, and so that managers are able to analyse COI and justify their decisions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Do consumers care about antioxidants in wine? The role of naturally resveratrol-enhanced wines in potential health-conscious drinkers' preferences
|
[
"Tannins",
"Healthier wines",
"Wine consumer",
"Wine information"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Consumer attention of healthy food is progressively growing (Barreiro-Hurle et al., 2010; Di Vita et al., 2016) and healthy food issues have recently gained interest among academics and scholars in several academic disciplines in addition to many products, such as bread, cured meats, olive oil and wine (Di Vita et al., 2016; Di Vita, Blanc, Brun, Bracco and D'Amico, 2019; Carrillo et al., 2014; Annunziata et al., 2016b).\n2. Literature review on health perception of wine: This section is a critical examination of studies that have drawn on the context and objectives of our study. For this reason, the review identifies the main contributions of these studies on naturalness and health perception of wines. The results of this literature review are summarized in the following three groups: the naturalness and health consciousness in wine consumers, the role of labels as health and nutritional information driver and the role of healthy compounds in wine consumption pattern: resveratrol and color.\n3. Procedure: A quantitative study was conducted in the metropolitan area of Catania in Sicily (Italy) in 2018. Catania is a medium size town and it has previously been deemed as representative of Italian metropolitan cities, due to the food purchasing attitudes of its population, as reported by previous studies (Caracciolo et al., 2016; D'Amico et al., 2016; Di Vita, Pappalardo, Chinnici, La Via and D'Amico, 2019). With the purpose of assessing which attributes affect the consumption of resveratrol-enhanced wines, a structured questionnaire was administered through face-to-face interviews with a sample of 250 regular wine consumers.\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive analysis\n5. Discussion and conclusion: This study aimed at verifying consumers' propensity for naturally resveratrol-enhanced wine by assessing the role of resveratrol in consumer's preferences. In particular, the goal of this paper was to detect and analyze how different attributes influence the consumption of wine with a higher natural content of resveratrol. Our results reflect the current strand of literature on natural and healthy wines, since by tracing back existing contributions on wine consumer behavior, all the variables analyzed so far can be reasonably grouped in two main typologies: healthy compounds (such as red color and polyphenols) and healthy and information claims (organic label, nutritional label and brand).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The initial hypothesis of the exploratory paper lies in the fact that there exists a demand for healthier wines due to the higher presence of natural compound which potentially bring benefits to the consumer's health. To satisfy this hypothesis, the research questions that paper tried to answer are the following: Do there exist a demand for naturally resveratrol-enhanced wine? What variables do influence the preference of consumers toward a naturally resveratrol-enhanced wine? As a consequence, the purpose of this paper is to explore what variables naturally influence resveratrol-enhanced wine consumption.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A structured questionnaire was administered through face-to-face interviews to a sample of 250 regular wine consumers which were randomly selected to achieve balanced socio-demographic characteristics. Subsequently, an econometric analysis was performed to estimate the effects that selected attributes, extrapolated from the literature, have on resveratrol-enriched wine consumption. With this aim, a logistic regression model was developed through the assessment of willingness to consume naturally resveratrol-enhanced wine.\nFindings: The findings of this paper suggest that respondents consider wine as source of beneficial and healthy properties and they are willing to consume enriched-resveratrol wine. The study found a direct correlation between resveratrol and wine extrinsic attributes (organic label, brand) as well as any intrinsic attributes (tannins content). In addition, solely female consumers expressed to consider label information in their preference for resveratrol-enhanced wine. Among socio-demographic factors, only age and gender have an interaction effect on the consumption of these wines.\nResearch limitations/implications: Since this study has some limitations due to the limited number of observations and to the specific regional geographical context, the findings should be generalized in theoretical terms with a certain caution. Before to extend the results to all Italian consumers, future research should test the robustness of the findings by assessing the effect of the attributes that the authors have examined in this study in other environmental contexts, e.g. in other wine regions.\nPractical implications: The results have important implications for wine producers, since the adoption of production practices explicitly related to the higher natural content of resveratrol can lead to a value augmentation and enhance business income of companies. Moreover, there exists implication also for wine managers, given the knowledge of factors affecting consumers' attitudes toward naturally resveratrol-enhanced wines can lead to an increase in wine demand that should allow to reach a focused differentiation strategy in specified market segments. This suggests the need to indicate on the label the content of resveratrol as a distinctive signal of the \"additional health information\" of a wine.\nOriginality/value: While a substantial body of research has analyzed the healthy attributes that affect purchasing process of wine, no other known study has examined the effects of attributes on consumers' willingness to purchase naturally resveratrol-enhanced wine. The study is the first that explores the consumers' willingness to buy wine naturally enriched with resveratrol. Previous works took into account only resveratrol-enriched wines. The authors believe that in the eye of consumers there are significant differences between a natural enhancement and a simply technological enrichment, since the concepts and the technological aspects behind the two processes are strongly different. To fill this gap, the authors explored for the first time what variables can influence the preference of a naturally resveratrol-enhanced wine.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Evaluating entrepreneurs' perception of success : Development of a measurement scale
|
[
"Entrepreneurship",
"Success",
"Entrepreneurs",
"Scale development",
"Entrepreneurial success",
"Founding entrepreneurs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite much being known about the economic, individual, and environmental factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success, its exact constituents, how it can be measured, and indicators for its achievement are not generally agreed in the extant literature. Baron and Henry (2011) suggest this lack of clarity in this core concept is an issue for entrepreneurship scholars and one worthy of detailed investigation.\nLiterature review: The word \"success\" is defined as the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors (\"Dictionary.Com\", n.d.). However, what is considered favorable to one individual may not be to another, and similarly an indicator for the achievement of prosperity will vary across domains, metrics, and viewpoints. Thus, the achievement of any form of success can be both subjectively and objectively determined.\nStudy 1 - Conceptualizing entrepreneurial success: Key aspects of case study methodology (Huberman and Miles, 2002b; Saunders et al., 2007; Yin, 2003) were used to explore the construct. Due to the potential for researcher bias when interpreting data, it has been recognized that credible results are difficult to achieve. To mitigate this, the data has been treated methodically and transparently, and the evidence provided by informants has been adhered to (Yin, 2011). Case study using in-depth interviewing is the ideal method for our research because the construct is complex, and potential exists for another construct to emerge as part of the explanatory process (Huberman and Miles, 2002a; Yin, 2003). Therefore, this research used in-depth interviewing with open-ended questions, providing the opportunity to capture the \"thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and assumptive worlds\" resulting from the lived experiences of individual entrepreneurs (Marshall and Rossman, 2006).\nStudy 2 - measuring entrepreneurial success: In Study 2, a measure for entrepreneurial success was further developed and tested on a sample of 213 Australian founding entrepreneurs. The aim of the study was to test if factor for entrepreneurial success, as identified by entrepreneurs, could be established from the nine items developed in Study 1.\nDiscussion and conclusion: Entrepreneurial success is often discussed in literature and business press. Through these anecdotes we observe the phenomenon is ongoing, does not necessarily occur at a particular point, and may even be iterative in nature. A review of the literature did not identify a consistent and accepted definition, nor benchmark for attainment, of entrepreneurial success. Rather, entrepreneurial success is typically understood through the context in which it is found, and from the differing perspectives of the academic, the policy maker, the commentator and the entrepreneur. In order to advance theory and discussion of entrepreneurial success, we first need a common understanding of what is meant by the phenomenon. We are then able to develop a defensible construct to capture it. Understanding of the phenomenon should be informed by practitioners to avoid discrepancies between scholarly interest and entrepreneurial practice (Achtenhagen et al., 2010).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the insights of founding entrepreneurs to understand what they consider as indicators for achieving entrepreneurial success. Using this information, the construct entrepreneurial success was conceptualized and a scale developed for use in subsequent testable models.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Through qualitative research, the concept of entrepreneurial success was explored with ten founding entrepreneurs. Themes emerged from this enquiry process which informed the development of nine indicators. The indicators were subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in a subsequent study, comprising 213 founding entrepreneurs. The result is an early attempt to produce a measurement scale for entrepreneurial success, as perceived by the entrepreneur.\nFindings: Entrepreneurs perceive entrepreneurial success as the presence of both personal and macro level variables. This research supports theorizing that suggests entrepreneurial success is a multidimensional construct best captured by more than financial and economic indicators.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research is limited by the size of the sample, the qualitative context of the research that conceptualized the construct, and the self-report nature of the quantitative study that was used to develop the measurement scale.\nPractical implications: The development of a scale provides researchers with the opportunity to include entrepreneurial success, as perceived by entrepreneurs, in future testable models.\nOriginality/value: This research responds to a call for investigation into entrepreneurial success. It is an early attempt to conceptualize a relevant construct and to develop a scale for use in empirical testing. It is distinguished by using the perceptions of successful entrepreneurs to develop the construct and to validate it.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Leadership development: learning from best practices
|
[
"Leadership development",
"Best practice",
"Management strategy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Leadership development is becoming an increasingly critical and strategic imperative for organizations in the current business environment. Recent historical events and emerging trends emphasize the need to invest in the active development of leaders. Despite the fact that executives are increasingly expressing the need to focus on such initiatives, few are actively growing organizational leaders as part of their business strategy. These findings are apparent in one study that found that while almost all of the organizations surveyed indicated the need to develop leaders, only 44 percent actually had a formalized process to do so (Giber et al., 2000). As a result, these organizations may not be adequately prepared to compete in the ever-changing business environment. IBM learned this lesson the hard way and associated their loss in market leadership with the fact that they stopped focusing on leadership development in the 1980s (Ready and Conger, 2003). It is evident that organizations with a passion for growing the right leaders, appropriate organizational structures and culture, and a strategic plan to implement leadership programs will be better prepared for future challenges (Fulmer, 1997; Miller et al., 2001). The key purpose of this paper is to systematically review the literature on leadership development and offer organizational leaders practical advice on effective approaches to this issue.Recent tragic events such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and the Asian tsunami disaster have shed light on the fact that the contributions of organizational leaders can be quickly terminated and organizations must be in a position to appoint replacement leaders for the organization to continue to move forward. Many organizations lost key executives who were on the planes or who worked out of New York's World Trade Center at the time of the terrorist attack, including Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, Oracle and AON Insurance. Cantor Fitzgerald, a bond-trading firm, lost about 700 out of its 1,000 World Trade Center workers, including many top executives (Davis and Lucchetti, 2004; Greengard, 2001). The New York Fire Department lost over 350 of its employees, but its leadership succession plan helped it to replace many of its top leaders within days. In a less dramatic instance, McDonald's Corporation faced related challenges when they were forced to replace their CEO twice within seven months due to sudden death and illness. Fortunately, successors had been groomed enabling the business to continue with minimal impact (Business Week, 2005). However, ensuring leaders are in place in the event of a tragedy is by no means the only reason to focus on developing organizational leaders and investing in \"leadership insurance\". It is inevitable that leaders will retire and/or move out to other organizations at which time their role may need to be replaced. In fact, a recent study by Drake Beam Morin (2000) found CEO turnover to be on the rise, reinforcing the need to ensure well-trained successors.Organizations will also face increasing difficulties in filling leadership vacancies with qualified candidates externally due to anticipated skill shortages in North America and Europe. For instance, in Canada, it is anticipated that up to two-thirds of the workforce will retire within the next two decades, with one-thirds projected to retire in just the next few years (Brieger, 2004). In addition, the targeted age group (35-44 years of age) for senior leaders has a projected fifteen percent decline and this does not even address the predicted premature burnout that will further shrink this candidate pool (Giganti, 2003). In the USA, the number of older workers (age 55 and up) is rising as baby boomers approach retiring; this figure is projected to reach 15.2 percent by 2010. Furthermore, the 35-44 age group is expected to decline by approximately 13 percent in the next decade (US Dept. of Labor Statistics, 2005)Moreover, increased competition, both local and global, is forcing organizations to be more adaptable and deliver quality products and services in a timely and unique fashion. As a result, teams are more prominent and organizational structures are flatter demanding stronger leadership skills at more levels within the organization (Giber et al., 2000; Hernez-Broome and Hughes, 2004). Consequently, the increased presence of teams in the workplace emphasizes empowerment resulting in a completely different management role and an altered leadership style. Other changes contributing to a new style of leadership include the increased need for strategic thinking to avoid complacency, as well as coping with anticipated changes in the needs of the new workforce (Brieger, 2004; Hatfield, 2002). Younger generations are inspired by growth and development opportunities. Striving for a work-life balance, they typically have with a less intensive focus on work than the preceding generations demanding a different kind of leader (Hatfield, 2002). These changes point to a need for internal processes and practices to ensure the required leadership skill-sets are built within an organization.Whatever the reasons for leadership development - in preparation of turnover, in response to the increased number of jobs requiring leadership and/or in response to the changing leadership style driven by competition, altered organizational structures and changing demographics - organizations should be adequately prepared for such an undertaking. While there is some literature pertaining to effective leadership development methods, practices, processes, and systems (for instance, see Giber et al., 2000; Hernez-Broome and Hughes, 2004), there is a need to consolidate these into a comprehensive framework of best practices that can be applied and adapted to fit organizational needs.Thus, the main objective of this paper is to identify the best practices, processes and systems in leadership development discussed in the literature through a comprehensive analysis of publications pertaining to practices that could be described as \"best\" in the leadership development area. Essentially, a \"best practice\" is considered to be one that has resulted in positive outcomes for the organization and is recognized by independent analysts as contributing to the organization's performance. This paper offers human resource management stakeholders, especially practitioners, action-oriented advice that is based on the experience of other organizations, and for which there is support in theory.\nLearning from best practices: a review of the literature: There are differing models and perspectives regarding the constituents of best practices in leadership development. However, an extensive review of the literature on best practices in organizations reveals six key areas of importance: a thorough needs assessment, the selection of a suitable audience, the design of an appropriate infrastructure to support the initiative, the design and implementation of an entire learning system, an evaluation system, and corresponding actions to reward success and improve on deficiencies.Best-practice organizations included in this paper were previously identified in the literature as such. Essentially, we conducted an extensive literature review (by searching texts and business databases (such as ABIInform/Proquest) for \"leadership development best practices\". Once an organization was identified, we generally used the following criteria to decide whether it would be included in this study: independent analysts classified the practice as \"best\" in the leadership development area; leaders were \"made\" through integrated, multi-mode programs that included top management support, systematic training, and action learning (Tichy, 1997); and, the adoption and implementation of the best practice resulted in positive organizational outcomes.As mentioned above, six key areas were identified in these organizations as constituting best practices, and they will be presented in a step-by-step manner that may facilitate easier implementation by organizations. It is also important to note that the best practices are firmly grounded in theory, strategic, behavioural, and learning-based, and these will be integrated in the discussion.1. Needs assessment\nConclusion: The organization of the existing literature into the six key areas defined above provides a new consolidated step-by-step approach in leadership development. These are the formal processes best practice organizations have in place to successfully grow organizational leaders. They provide a simple yet meaningful approach for developing leadership capability within any organization. Within each stage, details of the best-practices have been further researched and reported along with specific organizational examples. It is critical to ensure the appropriate program objectives and organizational leadership requirements are jointly defined and a targeted audience and supporting infrastructure are aligned with the development and implementation of an entire learning system. Furthermore, an evaluation process to monitor effectiveness and corresponding action to reward success and improve on deficiencies will lead to a well-refined initiative, aligned with the specific needs of the organization.Future research should focus on the size issue, since there is not much research pertaining to the differences in leadership development initiatives between different sizes of organizations. Most of the best practices organizations in terms of leadership development programs appear to be large organizations that typically have more capital to invest in these programs. However, small organizations need to develop leaders as well. In fact, it could be argued that since smaller organizations typically require employees to perform broader roles, the requirement for leadership throughout the organization is accentuated. The cost of the existing programs illustrated through the literature may not be practical for all sizes of organizations. More in-depth reviews of how small and medium size organizations effectively develop their leaders at a lower cost may prove to be very valuable. Furthermore, much of the literature and research conducted focuses on an overview of practices and the perceptions from the perspective of the Human Resources department. Participant viewpoints and perspectives from the organizational leaders need to be incorporated into future research in order to gather a more rounded viewpoint from all stakeholders.Leadership development will continue to be a key organizational issue in the future. An opportunity exists for organizations to employ the best practices explored in this paper and develop a competitive advantage through leadership. Organizations that are able to survive and compete in the ever-changing marketplace will be those that have proactively and strategically prepared themselves for future challenges through effective leadership development programs, practices, and systems.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The main purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic review of the literature on best practices and propose a series of steps or practices that practitioners can use in developing and assessing their leadership development strategies and programs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This is a review paper. An extensive literature review was conducted (by searching texts and business databases, such as ABIInform/Proquest, for \"leadership development best practices\"). Once an organization was identified, several criteria were used to decide whether it would be included in this study: independent analysts classified the practice as \"best\" in the leadership development area; leaders were \"made\" through integrated, multi-mode programs that included top management support, systematic training, etc.\nFindings: - Six key factors were found to be vital for effective leadership development: a thorough needs assessment, the selection of a suitable audience, the design of an appropriate infrastructure to support the initiative, the design and implementation of an entire learning system, an evaluation system, and corresponding actions to reward success and improve on deficiencies.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper identified \"best practice organizations\" by reviewing the literature. While this is an acceptable method, it resulted in wide range of determining criteria.\nPractical implications: - The most important implication of this paper is practical in nature. Essentially, organizations can use the six stages identified in the paper to help them develop and implement effective leadership development strategies.\nOriginality/value: - Leadership development has become a key strategic issue for contemporary organizations. There is considerable evidence to suggest that organizations that do not have properly structured leadership development processes compete in the marketplace at their own peril. Several organizations have reported successes with particular approaches, yet an examination of the literature reveals that the lessons emanating from these success stories are generally not presented in a holistic manner. This is the need that we address in this paper.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Finance equity, student achievement, and justice : A five state analysis of equality of opportunity
|
[
"Educational policy",
"Accountability",
"Equity",
"Equality of opportunity",
"Achievement",
"Education law",
"Education finance",
"Adequacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The concepts of equity, adequacy, and equality of opportunity and the role of the state in providing an education to the citizenry have been part of the national political discourse since the founding of the republic. Wagoner (1990) stated that Thomas Jefferson may well have been the first \"education president\" in large part because of his belief in the need for an enlightened society. Jefferson reasoned that in order for individuals to understand and maintain their inalienable rights, ignorance, and deception must be removed. According to Jefferson, only an educated citizenry could know the truth and thus, be free; only a free people could create a just society in which all persons would have the right and opportunity to live their lives to the fullest. He did not believe in absolute equality; rather his beliefs on equality were founded on the notion that man had a \"moral sense\" that endowed them with a sense of right and wrong. This was, to Jefferson, the foundation for man's sense of social justice, and therefore the foundation of equality (Wagoner, 1990). One's station in life should be determined by one's industry, however, the provision of opportunity was an imperative to Jefferson. He wrote, \"the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government is providing for the education of the people\" (pp. 25-26).\nEquality of educational opportunity: Betts and Roemer (2005) provided a theoretical framework for the understanding of equality of educational opportunity. They reasoned that opportunity is comprised of five components: circumstances, type, effort, objective, and instrument. Type includes the set of individuals with the same circumstances and objective refers to the actual condition that is to be equalized. Student demographics are an example of circumstances; students in similar circumstances are then grouped into types. The instrument, or state finance distribution model, is the intervention or policy used to equalize the condition. As a result of equalization, effort, or the willingness to fully fund an adequate education would then determine the objective, which is student outcomes. Outcomes may be unequal, yet they cannot be the result of the state's unwillingness to adequately fund public education. Conversely, unequal outcomes may be permissible if all students achieve at or above proficiency. Indeed, one goal of education finance policy is to equalize opportunities for students, yet different definitions of \"what\" is to be equalized may result in different conceptions of finance policy and equality of educational opportunity.\nJustice and judicial interpretations in education finance: In most instances, school finance-related courts and advocates have based their arguments for equality of educational opportunity on notions of equity and adequacy. Court decisions have identified the need for all students, regardless of their economic backgrounds, to have access to sufficient resources that give them the same opportunities to achieve academic proficiency. In the literature on school finance, equality of educational opportunity is characterized as adequacy or vertical equity (King et al., 2003). Houck and Eom (2013) assessed the degree to which Korea guaranteed equality of opportunity by conducting a vertical equity analysis. The authors concluded that despite various interpretations of equality of opportunity, \"the notion that the right to equal education cannot be guaranteed without providing adequate educational resources at a minimum level\" (p. 46). Ladd (2008) argued that adequacy is not just about differential treatment, but also sufficiency of resources. Courts have called for finance systems to provide additional funding for students living in unique circumstances, such as varying intensities of special education services and Limited English Proficiency. However, court interpretations of how states achieve adequacy differs on a state-by-state basis, impacting how they remedy state systems to attain equality of educational opportunity, equality of outcomes, or in some cases, both.\nImpact of finance litigation: Relying on previous work by Murray et al. (1998), Springer et al. (2009) studied changes to state finance systems as a result of cases that were premised on equity and those that were argued on the grounds of adequacy. In their study, they found significantly decreased within-state revenue disparities in states where the finance system was overturned based on an equity challenge. Similarly, they found significantly less within-state revenue disparities in states where the finance system was overturned based adequacy challenges as compared to states where the state finance system was upheld. However, these decreases in horizontal equity were not as substantial as those found in states with an equity challenge. Lastly, the researchers found that adequacy challenges did not result in increased revenues for disadvantaged children. Terming this phenomenon the \"right kind of inequity,\" the authors found no evidence to support findings that would suggest that resource allocation patterns have changed to meet the needs of children in underrepresented populations. Studies of consequential accountability policy suggest that there are gains in measures of student achievement (Kress et al., 2011). However, one questions the impact on opportunity given persistent achievement gaps and the finding that additional resources were not allocated to children in underrepresented populations.\nMethod: In order to attain a holistic understanding of the equity of each state finance system, a four-step process was conducted to include:\nFindings and contextualization of the states: Because the findings and interpretations for each state's equity of finance and student performance were guided by judicial and policy language, this section highlights the specific components for each state and provides the findings from the equity measures. Included in the analysis are the state's constitutional provisions, information about their landmark adequacy-based cases, and subsequent statistics. Relying on Betts and Roemer's (2005) framework for equality of opportunity, reviews of judicial and policy-related interpretations along with the equity statistics provided grounds for the researchers to discern the degree to which states used the instrument of the state finance distribution model to achieve the objective of equality of educational opportunity as measured by student outcomes. A summary of the findings for each state is presented in Table I.\nDiscussion and conclusions: Educational opportunity is a concept that has emerged from the very founding of the republic and continues to be a goal of educational systems around the world due to linkages between an educated citizenry and economic development. In the USA, the duty to provide opportunity through a system of public education has been interpreted through class action suits in the states under examination in this study with each state court concluding that opportunity can be measured through an examination of student performance. Using Betts and Roemer's (2005) framework for equality of opportunity, our analysis was focussed on the degree to which states used the instrument, or state finance distribution model, to achieve equitable student performance outcomes. Our analysis revealed an interesting theme across the states that framed the basis for our findings. Regardless of the constitutional language in each state, the courts interpreted that language to mean outcome standards and relied on the state accountability model to discern the degree to which equality of opportunity had been achieved. Student performance was seen as the condition to be equalized and each court made attempts to quantify either the cost of the educational program or the required resources to reach proficiency targets. The requirement of sufficient resources aligned with mandated learner outcomes framed the high court decision in each state.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the connections between state education finance distribution models and student achievement. To date, lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of state finance systems have been heard in 45 states; the judicial interpretation of the requirement to provide equality of educational opportunity has led to changes in finance distribution models as well as the implementation of accountability policy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study included district level finance and achievement data from five states. Researchers reviewed the relevant judicial interpretation of the finance system, the accountability policy, and the finance distribution system. Next, researchers calculated the equity of both the finance distribution model and measures of student achievement. Finally, an equity ratio was developed and calculated to discern the degree to which state distribution models resulted in equitable measures of student achievement.\nFindings: Findings reveal that no state has both an equitable system of finance and equitable measures of student achievement. The way that states define proficiency significantly impacts the percentage of students that reach proficiency. This impacts the provision of equality of opportunity.\nOriginality/value: Traditionally, the measurement of equity has only been applied to finance distribution systems. The authors of this paper have applied these concepts to measures of student achievement and aligned the two concepts with the equity ratio. Since states are charged with providing sufficient resources to enable students to reach proficiency, an understanding of the interaction between resources and achievement is a critical tool in analyzing the provision of equal opportunity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The role of HR in leadership development
|
[
"Leadership development",
"Human resources",
"HR development",
"HR learning",
"Role of human resources"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The role of human resources (HR) has evolved considerably in its strategic impact and complexity because of the changing business dynamics, new customer and workforce contracts, digital disruption, and leadership gaps (Ulrich and Beatty, 2001). It has evolved from being a strategic partner, administrative expert, employee champion, and change agent (Ulrich, 1998) to a leadership proponent. Davenport (2015) cites building leadership capacity as one of the significant areas for HR, but this remains a concern for HR to deliver in line with the strategic agenda. While leadership theories allude to experiences, context, and situation for effective leadership, the role of HR becomes significantly enhanced in supporting perceived behaviors and critical performance to develop organization-wide leadership depth (Ulrich and Dulebohn, 2015). The challenge remains as to how HR facilitates or impedes the development of leaders. Though the impact of HR processes on organizations is known, studies examining the interlinkages of HR and leadership development are rare (Davenport, 2015; Markush-Hallman, 2015). The purpose of this study is to examine the role of HR in leadership development.\nTheoretical framework: Leadership development is the process of enhancing the collective leadership capability of an organization through the engagement of its members in leadership processes (Day and Dragoni, 2015). It is every form of development that assists the expansion of knowledge and expertise required to optimize one's leadership potential. Greater success is achieved by the integration of HR into leadership development. Given that, Ulrich's (1998) accepted model of HR roles strategic partner; administrative expert; employee advocate; and change agent is used as the theoretical construct.\nMethodology: The qualitative study is based on the case of an Indian engineering family-owned organization undergoing people, process, and technology transformation. In 2016, 14 middle-management (vertical heads) employees from manufacturing, engineering, sales, finance, and HR, being groomed for higher positions, participated in a nine-month leadership development program. Post the program, they, along with 15 industry and organization HR experts (2 HR heads; 10 HR managers; and 3 HR consultants), participated in this study. Purposive sampling was used for respondent selection because of their understanding of leadership development as participants, facilitators, and sponsors. All the respondents were male, above 35 years of age, with an engineering/management qualification. In-person (25) and telephonic (14) semi-structured interviews were conducted for 30-45 min. The questions asked were: What do you understand by leadership development? What is the objective of adopting this? What is your experience with the program? Which is the best development tool and why? What areas of the program did you find the least useful? What other components should be added to the program? Any additional support you needed? A response of 100 per cent was obtained using pen and paper. No recording was done and no data was transcribed. An inductive approach was used to arrive at coding, i.e. \"manager nomination,\" \"leadership pipeline planning,\" \"HR facilitation,\" \"leadership strategy,\" \"next level opportunity,\" and \"organization needs.\" The analysis was conducted, and common themes were generated, given the theoretical construct and practitioner insights.\nResults: Findings indicate key perspectives concerning the program experience and the role of HR. These relate to career planning, selection process, HR support, program alignment to individual and organizational needs, HR processes, etc. Respondents indicated the need for leadership development and affirmed that their organization invests adequate resources and efforts. HR practitioner said, \"Our role is to encourage the potential homegrown employees, to take higher positions in the organization, due to the dearth of quality talent in the market.\" However, participants expressed concern on a formal leadership strategy by HR: \"Leadership development is about developing an individual, but there is no formal articulation of leadership development strategy by HR.\" HR indicated their involvement and support in the development journey, whereas participants felt that HR's role was limited to facilitation, program coordination, obtaining feedback, and individual-development planning. Someone said, \"The program should give visibility on what are the experiences that I am preparing for, that would give clear motivation on why and how I should develop myself.\" Gaps in terms of expectations of career opportunities, robust HR processes, and HR and leadership support emerged in responses. As cited, \"Leadership support was not strongly evident through the entire journey. Also, HR seemed more of a coordinator than a facilitator\"; Leadership journey should be aligned with certain key outcomes such as readiness for a role and a sharply defined individual development plan. The need for HR to institutionalize HR processes, i.e. career progression, recognition, and opportunities for new leaders, emerged. As cited, \"Role and career growth are important aspects to me\"; Exchange and network opportunities for participants should exist. Expectations on HR's involvement in creating buy-in and organizational mandate for leadership development also emerged, \"There should be monitoring and feedback by HR to ensure that the development of the individual does not stop with the closure of the program\".\nImplications for practitioners: In view of the evolving role of HR, from transactional to strategic, there is a need for HR to play a more critical role in leadership development. Results indicate that there exists an opportunity for HR practitioners to rethink their contribution to leadership development. In this direction, we propose the HR \"PACE\" model:\nConclusion: HR is a key contributor to leadership development through the design of HR programs that support development and opportunities that enable the practice of lessons learnt. By partnering and championing the leadership agenda, HR can amplify the shaping of collective leadership behavior in tune with the organization's goal. Leadership development thus requires HR to move beyond traditional approaches and actively envision, support, anchor, and champion leadership development, in turn playing a key role in building leaders.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Business environments have become more complex, dynamic, and uncertain in the past few decades. To navigate this complexity, organizations need to enhance their competitiveness, improve performance, and build leadership. Though leadership contributes to strategic advantage, the challenge for human resources (HR) to build the next generation of leaders remains. This has sparked the need for practitioners to understand the role of HR in enhancing leadership capability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using qualitative analysis and practitioner insights, this paper contributes to the understanding of the role of HR in leadership development.\nFindings: The study proposes the HR PACE model for the role of HR in leadership development.\nPractical implications: This study has potentially significant implications for HR, leadership development scholars, and practitioners while designing and implementing leadership development in organizations.\nOriginality/value: While empirical studies on how HR practices of recruitment, performance management, training, and development impact organizations exist, there are rare studies assessing the role of HR in leadership development. This study examines the role of HR in leadership development.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The digital divide in Latin America: a case study
|
[
"Argentina",
"Libraries",
"Communication technologies",
"Knowledge management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In this paper I will try to give a brief overview of what is called by many the \"digital or educational divide\" that is affecting so many citizens worldwide. I will then focus on what the professionals at the Max von Buch Library, Universidad de San Andres, have attempted in an effort to overcome this barrier and to offer the kind of academic services the University's faculty and students needs.\nDefinition: The \"digital divide\" (and I would add information divide) has been defined as the deficiency and the lack of technological access or ownership (computers, software, connection). A gap, which tends to deepen, is produced between those individuals that can access new information and communication tools such as phones, TV or the internet, and those who are too poor to get them. In other words, it is the gap between the haves and the have nots.To fill this gap whether it is for racial, gender, physical, geographic or economic reasons, at the local, national or international level does not just mean providing computers to people who need them. It means that we also train them in the use of computers, and most importantly, and here's where we librarians have a role, it means that we teach them how to access information. Access includes not only knowing where to locate information, but also how to understand it, and how to use it wisely. IFLA indicates that in order to fill the information divide it is necessary to create in libraries and information centers an environment that allows for a free and fair access to information as well as freedom of expression and participation in the knowledge society (Raseroka, 2003). We need to understand that the existing gap in information literacy (the information divide) in the different societies that compose our present world is critical for our age.This is not only a Third World or underdeveloped countries' problem, as many want us to believe. This is a global problem. It is an endemic problem that humanity has been suffering for centuries and is amplified in our \"information age\", as Castells defines it. It is an information gap between the educated and the uneducated, among different social classes and also globally, between industrialized and less developed countries. What we don't know yet, what we can only guess is the impact it will ultimately have on our society.We need to understand that one of IFLA's objectives, and it also should be ours, is to understand and apply the concept of lifelong literacy to the society as a whole and to our pressing problems.Let's meditate for a second on United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan's words (Annan, 2003) about the importance of having daily access to news and education: \"timely access to news and information can promote trade, education, employment, health and wealth ... Crucial ingredient of democracy\"According to an estimate survey held by NUA Internet Surveys (www.nua.ie/surveys/), in September 2002 there were 605.5 million people connected to internet:Africa 6.31 million;\nLatin American overview: If we carefully observe some Latin American countries, we can see a marked growth in internet connection and use in the last years, as NUA Internet Surveys shows in its pages devoted to each country (www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/s_america.html).We will mention just a few examples:* Argentina: from 0.85 percent (330,000) of the total population in December 1998 to 10.38 percent (3.88 million) in July 2001.* Brazil: from 1.4 percent (2.35 millions) in December 1998 to 6.84 percent (11.94 million) in July 2001.* Chile: from 1.30 percent (200,000) in June 1997 to 20.02 percent (3.1 million) in December 2001.* Mexico: from 0.38 percent (370,000) in November 1997 to 3.36 percent (3.42 million) in July 2001.* Peru: from 0.12 percent (31,000) in October 1997 to 10.73 percent (3 million) in December 2001.* Uruguay: from 0.27 percent (9,000) in October 1997 to 13.61 percent (400,000) in December 2001.The Yankee Group (2003) estimated that by the end of 2003 there would be around 1.2 million subscriptions to ADSL services in Latin America, with Brazil leading the region (61 percent of subscriptions) and Mexico tripling its own subscriptions from previous years. Meanwhile, in the cable modem market, the second most-used option, Mexico would lead with a 30 percent increase in subscriptions in the region.Let's not forget - these are just estimates! Let's not forget that just 10 percent of the world population is online! (Sharma, 2003)There is a 2003 study by Alvarez and Ibarra (2003) on the AmericasPATH (AMPATH) project on network connectivity in Latin America and the Caribbean, aimed at collaborating, bringing together and strengthening ties among research and academic communities from the USA and other countries. Since June 2001, AMPATH has connected four national education and research networks:1. REACCIUN in Venezuela;2. Retina in Argentina;3. REUNA in Chile; and4. RNP in Brazil.They are also working on the connectivity of academic networks for Colombia, Panama, Peru, and the Virgin Islands (USA).According to their report, there were great disparities between the bandwidth available from abroad and the actual use made by the academic community in the countries studied, due to a bottleneck in the countries themselves. Therefore, researchers have not enough access to maintain a fluid communication with their colleagues in other countries.\nArgentina and the case of Biblioteca Max von Buch: We all know and understand that scientific and academic research is and must be collaborative among institutions and countries. Our researchers need to obtain adequate and timely information for their research projects. We librarians understand, as well as they do, that the value of information is measured in terms of quality, quantity, and the speed at which we acquire and adapt to it.Libraries and librarians have the tools to diminish the information divide in our countries. According to the American Library Association, public, school, and academic libraries are the ones that presently have the structure and programs needed to attempt solving certain aspects of the divide already existing in our communities.But we must face some problems:* Big corporations regard information as a \"commodity\", thus the access to certain kinds of information is restricted and out of the reach for the public, unlike printed books on our libraries' shelves. For this kind of information the library must pay, and this means the information divide widens again.* Most information is in English, which is the prevalent language on the Internet (Global Reach, 2004).* Content of most web sites is provided by the USA and European countries.Argentine academic libraries have become aware of the obstacles they have to face, both at the individual and the national level. We know that our researchers are pressed to publish and that they must and want to do it in refereed international journals. To do so, they need to have access to research published by their peers in the main countries of the world. They want their research work to appear in well-known academic publications; that's why many times they end up relinquishing their intellectual property rights at the hands of commercial companies, and this leads to the problem, we deal with today, which is the excessively high prices of several academic publications.One of the duties of an academic library is to make sure that the collections it builds are accessible to its immediate and future patrons. The advent of the internet brought a change in the concept of \"collection development\" in the academic library. Today we must make decisions about whether to physically own materials or acquire them in electronic format, and, therefore, renounce ownership. In other words, we have to choose between access to information vs ownership.The Biblioteca Max von Buch had to face this situation in an early stage of its development. It took certain steps at that time that could have been considered risky, because they weren't in line with the actions of other academic libraries in the country. The library opened up its mind to the world: it looked, observed, studied, analyzed, and made the decisions it thought would most benefit its present and future users. The library made a conscious decision not stay isolated from world trends. The library director and staff agreed that there was an opportunity and decided to seize the opportunity to embark in a new direction.The library's mission, similar to that of any university library, is to serve researchers, professors, undergraduate and graduate students, by \"giving access to information resources\", thus contributing to students' education, as well as \"promoting academic research\". Having this mission in mind, and taking into consideration the existing budgetary restrictions for developing a collection that would provide the academic background needed for research and teaching, a courageous decision was made to reassign an important portion of the budget available to enter the world of intangible information, of cooperation, of virtual consortia; in other words, the world of hybrid libraries.But what does it mean to have access to information for an academic institution such as the Universidad de San Andres, where the pressure to publish is very strong for its researchers, where many classes are taught in English, and a good percentage of the bibliography used in courses is also in English? It means to have access to information without geographic constraints; it means the possibility of obtaining information 24 hours a day, either from campus or from home. For the library it is the right thing to do in order to fulfil its mission, and it's easier said than done.To achieve these goals was a hard task for the librarians, and it meant a great deal of change. Without basic power infrastructure, access to Retina academic network, or an adequate building to house the needed hardware and software, this wouldn't have been possible. At the same time equipment, connectivity, and the information products selected would have been useless without a trained library staff. Training meant acknowledging the need for international standards and its immediate application; it meant keeping current with new academic and library trends in the country and abroad; it meant understanding and foreseeing the needs of present and future patrons. Only then was it possible to share original resources with different academic and public libraries throughout the world by joining the OCLC consortium (Online Computer Library Center). The library developed one of the first web pages in the country, aimed at patrons as well as fellow librarians or other external visitors. It was at this point that the library showed that it was mature, trustworthy, and efficient, that it could enter and actively participate in projects such as LAMP (Latin American Microform Project), LAPTOC (Latin American Periodicals Tables of Contents), or HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index), or integrate PAIS' (Public Affairs Information Centers) advising committee. The library lacked a retrospective serials collection, due to its short life; it was thanks to its perseverance in dealing with document services providers that it got access to academic databases such as JSTOR, Project Muse or EbscoHost. Having access to such resources made researchers and students alike feel they were not marginalized; at the same time, the library created a program of bibliographic instruction, a basic tool for improving the use of such virtual resources.\nConclusion: I understand that cooperation among our institutions, both at the national and the international level, is of the utmost importance for trying to overcome the barriers to information access, and thus reduce the educational and information divide within each country. But we must not forget that there are certain basic, essential requirements - economic, social, political, and cultural - that must be taken into account to gain access to information.I believe the Biblioteca Max von Buch's case is a clear example of what can be achieved with creativity, tenacity, training, and boldness, in spite of meagre resources. The Biblioteca Max von Buch could participate and be part of local and international undertakings, thus minimizing the information divide for its patrons. I hope others can follow its example. Feel free to contact its staff which is always eager to help and provide information to colleagues from Argentina and from around world.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Sets out to discuss the concept of the digital divide and its impact in Latin American libraries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Provides an overview of the situation in the region.\nFindings: - The digital divide is a global problem that is amplified in the information age, a time in which groups and individuals in society are being denied access to technology. Provides an example by showing how the library of the Universidad de San Andres has dealt with this situation.\nOriginality/value: - The importance of cooperation among various institutions is highlighted as a way to overcome the barriers to information access.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Does compliance with corporate governance code hinder corporate entrepreneurship? Evidence from the UK
|
[
"Performance management",
"Corporate governance",
"Organizational performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Too much attention has been paid to corporate governance (CG) since the latest financial crisis (Moxey and Berendt, 2008). CG deals with the ways in which suppliers of finance to corporations assure themselves of getting a return on their investment (Shleifer and Vishny, 1997). CG reforms have been proposed to safeguard shareholders' rights and reinstate investors' confidence in the capital market. These reforms have significantly contributed to the evolution of a number of CG mechanisms to mitigate agency conflicts resulting from the separation of ownership from control (Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Dey, 2008; Adams et al., 2010). However, the recurring and cyclic nature of these crises raised concerns over the efficacy of these reforms in controlling management behaviour, as well as motivating their entrepreneurial behaviour towards improving performance (Keasey et al., 2005). Therefore, there is a need for a wider perspective of CG that addresses the accountability and enterprise aspects of governance.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Corporate governance\n3. Contingency model and hypotheses development: This study develops a contingency model, which assumes that business success is a function of the interaction between accountability and enterprise (Short et al., 1999). To attain a better performance, the company needs to use a set of CG mechanisms to ensure accountability (Connell, 2004; Keay and Loughrey, 2015). In parallel, it should engage in entrepreneurial activities that contribute to value creation (Zahra, 1996). Following Gerdin and Greve's (2004), a Cartesian-contingency-mediation form of fit is used in this study.\n4. Research method: This study adopted a cross-sectional survey methodology, which is very common in the CG and CE literature. This methodology permits collecting a large amount of data from a considerable population economically and allows more control over the research process to reach generalizable findings (Saunders et al., 2015).\n5. Empirical results: 5.1 Descriptive statistics\n6. Discussion: The significant association between agency conflicts and CG (H1) is consistent with the agency theory argument that resolving agency conflicts require monitoring management (Denis, 2001) through selecting suitable monitoring and bonding control methods to align interests and optimise performance (Jones and Butler, 1992). It is also in line with the findings of the survey conducted by Shleifer and Vishny (1997) and the evidence provided by Dey (2008) on a positive association between agency conflicts and CG mechanisms. However, the insignificant association between agency conflicts and CE (H2) does not support the view that agency conflicts cause agency costs, consume a company's resources and limit CE (Miller, 2011). Possibly, the negative effect of agency conflicts on CE has been ameliorated by the CG mechanisms that mitigate agency conflicts. This highlights the importance of examining the effect of both agency conflicts and CG mechanisms at the same time on CE. Also, the relationship between agency conflicts and CE was well articulated at the theoretical level in the agency theory literature. However, there is no enough empirical evidence to support this relationship, the area which needs further investigation.\n7. Conclusion: This study analysed the possible trade-off between accountability and enterprise in the context of comply or explain governance, where the regulatory framework emphasises the need for a CG system to address both accountability and enterprise (Short et al., 1999). The results could not provide evidence of conflict or tension between CG and CE, which imply that compliance with CGC does not hinder companies to pursue their entrepreneurial orientation in the comply or explain governance context.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the possible trade-off between accountability and enterprise in the context of comply or explain governance. The issue was addressed through examining the effect of compliance with the corporate governance code (CGC) on corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and organisational performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on cross-sectional survey and content analysis of annual reports, the level of CE and compliance with the CGC were measured in the large and medium-listed companies in the UK during 2010. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used for data analysis.\nFindings: The results suggest no conflict between compliance with the CGC and CE in the UK, which can be attributed to the flexibility of the \"comply or explain\" approach. This implies that no trade-off between accountability and enterprise in the context of comply or explain governance.\nPractical implications: The study provides evidence in support of the regulatory governance framework in the UK and the comply or explain approach at large. This evidence contributes to the debate on the rules-based or principles-based governance, which may affect future CG regulations. It can also guide the directors to achieve the balance between their conformance and performance roles.\nOriginality/value: The study bridges the gap between CG and CE disciplines through developing a theoretical model that integrate contingency and agency theories lenses. Adopting a holistic approach provides insights into the relationships between CG and CE, rather than investigating the effect of each of these practices separately on organisational performance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Internet and prevalence of relative thinking
|
[
"Economics of information",
"Relative thinking",
"Weber-Fechner law",
"Scope neglect",
"Search costs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: References to consumers willing to trade time to save money on purchases are pervasive in marketing and pricing research. Consider the following scenarios:\nRelative thinking - A theoretical framework: The psychophysics of relative thinking\nEmpirical analysis: Two studies were conducted to test whether individuals display relative thinking when shopping across stores vs online and how they perceive search and time spent in pursuing savings. Both studies are adaptations of the classic jacket-and-calculator scenario study (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). The first study compares the extent of relative thinking in online vs brick-and-mortar stores. The second study examines the role of perceived search costs in online vs brick-and-mortar stores and how these perceived search costs affect relative thinking.\nStudy 1: Procedure, participants and stimuli\nStudy 2: Diagnosing perceived search costs: This study was not intended to demonstrate differential relative thinking across the internet vs store conditions. This is already established by the results of Study 1. Instead, we attempted to examine whether search costs are perceived to be different between physical stores and online stores. We hypothesize greater perceptions of search costs of time when shopping across traditional retail formats compared to when shopping online.\nMethod, participants and procedure: Participants were 252 business undergraduate students at a west coast university. As this was a separate study, a different group of participants were recruited for this study. The experiment was conducted as a brief online survey. The experiment was a 2 (shopping format - store vs internet) x 2 (relative savings - high vs low) design. Participants were randomly assigned into one of these four conditions of a between-subjects design. The key decision question read:\nResults: Manipulation check - Relative savings\nDiscussion: Study 1 results show that consumers do not display relative thinking when shopping online. In contrast to shopping across stores where consumers travel to other destinations for better prices only when relative savings are high, consumers shopping online visit other websites for a better price when relative savings are both high and low. Specifically, virtues of lower costs of search in terms of time on the internet facilitate better price search for low relative savings. Study 2 shows that consumers perceive that it takes more time to travel to another store when the relative saving is low than when it is high.\nManagerial implications: Results of this study have important and significant implications for managers. The location of a retail store can affect its costs and sales. The experimental evidence presented in this paper lends support to Huff's (1963) hypothesis that the probability of a consumer to patronize a retail facility is inversely related to the time involved in traveling to said facility. In addition, relative thinking implies that in the context of brick-and-mortar stores, a firm selling low-priced items is more able to benefit from the price reduction resulting from less costly remote locations than would a firm selling expensive items because of the effect of relative savings on the willingness to travel (Azar, 2004). Thus, this study has important implications for retail providers of inexpensive goods.\nLimitations and future research: One limitation of this research is the homogeneous nature of the participants in the experiments. While it is established that search costs on the internet are low, the perception of these costs could vary across consumers. The increase or decrease of perceived search costs in the online context depends on experience (Shih, 2012), importance of the internet in a person's life and the length of time a consumer has used the internet (Jepsen, 2007). Specifically, these factors vary according to characteristics such as age and education (Jepsen, 2007). As all the participants in this study were young business students at a west coast university, would the results of this study hold for older, less educated subjects or subjects with lesser experience with the internet? This is a question worth exploring to test the generalizability of our findings.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Research demonstrates that individuals display relative thinking - the tendency to consider relative savings rather than just absolute savings in their decisions to search for a deal or purchase an item. This paper aims to review empirical and analytical literature on relative thinking, perceived search costs and price savings to propose and test a conceptual model of relative thinking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Through two studies, the paper tests whether individuals display relative thinking when shopping across stores vs online and how they perceive search and time spent in pursuing savings. Both studies are adaptations of the classic jacket-and-calculator scenario study (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981).\nFindings: Results show attenuation of the robust relative thinking phenomenon over the internet compared to shopping across stores. Individuals exhibit increased price sensitivity for both low and high relative savings conditions on the internet but demonstrate price sensitivity only in the high relative savings condition in the store shopping contexts. Diagnostic measures pertaining to the attractiveness of savings and the perceptions of search costs corroborate the support for relative thinking across stores but not over the internet.\nOriginality/value: These results lend weight to the central claim in this paper that the internet marks a new boundary condition for the relative thinking phenomenon in marketing literature. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings, the limitations of the studies and future research opportunities are discussed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Role of innovative institutional structures in integrated governance: A case study of integrating health and nutrition programs in Chhattisgarh, India
|
[
"Integration",
"Governance",
"Health",
"Nutrition",
"Public institutions",
"Public systems",
"Innovation",
"Community participation",
"Decentralisation",
"Convergence",
"Organisational structure",
"India"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: What is integrated governance?\nMethodology: Despite the growing enthusiasm for integrated governance, information related to implementing and evaluating integration-related initiatives is dispersed and not easily accessible. A systematic review conducted by the World Health Organization (2007) found that there are more examples of policies in favour of integrated services than examples of actual implementation. The current case study is an attempt to contribute towards this body of practice-based knowledge.To build the present case study, mixed methodology was used. Detailed document analysis was undertaken by the researchers to understand the history and process of establishing the State Health Resource Centre (SHRC). The documents included internally published reports (www.shsrc.org) as well as unpublished material in the form of proposals and concept notes. While most of the data for the case study was derived from document analysis, interviews and discussions with core team members were conducted to supplement the data. These two sources contributed to understanding the strategies employed in the process of integration.The integrated governance project was implemented in 23 blocks (out of a total of 147 blocks) in Chhattisgarh. These blocks were selected on the basis of the level of performance of the Mitanin Program as measured by the management information system and internal evaluation of the program. Since the current initiatives were aimed to demonstrate future trajectories and integration of the health and nutrition systems, only better performing blocks were selected for intervention. The assumption behind this selection was that the health system, including community based health personnel, was well established and had the capacity to support integration of nutrition systems.To understand the impact of integrated governance on service delivery, processes and human resource functioning, surveys were conducted with seven Poshan Fellows, 111 auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), 445 Anganwadi workers (AWWs) and 441 Mitanins. For sampling, seven blocks (30 per cent of the total 23 blocks) were randomly selected. All the seven Poshan Fellows (block level personnel) from these blocks were selected. Out of a total of 221 ANMs, 894 Anganwadis and 912 hamlets in these seven blocks, 66 ANMs, 300 AWWs and 286 Mitanins (approximately 30 per cent) were selected through non-replacement random sampling. For comparison of data from the intervention areas, five non-intervention blocks were matched with the seven selected intervention blocks, on the basis of a priori and propensity score matching techniques. Out of a total of 157 ANMs, 486 Anganwadis and 526 hamlets in these five matched blocks, 45 ANMs, 145 AWWs and 155 Mitanins (approximately 30 per cent) were selected through non-replacement random sampling (Figure 2).While the qualitative data was analysed according to pre-determined themes to study the SHRC and integration as processes in organisational management, the quantitative data from surveys was compared with comparison areas (matched geographies without focused interventions). Regression analysis was conducted to detect significant differences between services and human resources in the two areas, if any, at 0.05 confidence interval.\nIntegrated governance in Chhattisgarh - a case study: Building effective, accountable formal institutions in poor countries has proved much harder than many people expected. In under-resourced settings where states are relatively new and governance systems are not well established, existing models of institutional structures, mostly tried out in OECD countries, are not always applicable. It therefore, seems worth investigating whether innovative arrangements that build on existing interests and relationships might offer a better way forward than strategies that seek to disrupt or change them in preconceived ways. Diversity between and within countries, especially in India, require multiple possible paths towards creating effective mechanisms and structures to implement integrated governance. This underlines the need to focus on the function not the form of institutions, to be open to novel arrangements and unexpected outcomes, and to look for ways of better understanding and explaining diversity.In Chhattisgarh, the purpose of the integrated governance initiative was to address the gaps in service delivery and human resource performance by bringing about horizontal and vertical convergence between the health and nutrition program structures. A mix of strategies was used to bring about this integration - creation of innovative formal institutions, involvement of non-state actors, integration of human resources, and decentralisation and community participation.Creation of innovative formal institutions - the State Health Resource Centre\nFindings and discussion - outcome of integrated governance: One of the principles of integration in health systems, identified through systematic reviews, is the presence or creation of a governance structure that brings together different organisations and departments into an integrated system (Suter et al., 2009a; Hawkins, 1998). Governance needs to be diversified, ensuring representation from a variety of stakehokder groups, including community participation (Coddington, 2001; Shortell et al., 2000). Studies by Hurst et al. (2002) and Marriott and Mable (2000), in fact, recommend a very similar structure to that of the SHRC, where the institution leading the integration process is independent of, but accountable to, the government. Further they have also found that strategic alliances with external stakeholders (such as civil society and activist networks in this case), the government (through their MoU), and the community (through focused community participation and empowerment initiatives) are essential requirements for effective integration in health contexts.Bringing together different cultures of the two government departments demanded committed and visible leadership to promote the new vision and mission of integration among their staff and help take ownership of the process. The SHRC successfully provided this leadership to the process of integration between health and nutrition. Similar experiences have also been reported by other studies (Hunter, 1999; Wilson et al., 2003; Friedman and Goes, 2001; Miller, 2000; Shortell et al., 2000; Hurst et al., 2002).While the SHRC was conceptualised and set up as a rational choice institution, emphasising the role of strategic interaction between the health and nutrition sectors towards specific outcomes (Hall and Taylor, 1996), its presence over the years have had a \"spill over\" effect, creating a more sociological idea of integrated governance - a situation in which a given action, related to a specific goal, creates a situation in which the original goal can be assured only by taking further actions, which in turn create a further condition and a need for more action, and so forth (Lindberg, 1963). Results from the surveys conducted as a part of this case study show that presence of such an integrated governance structure led to actor-socialisation, i.e. the process whereby the \"participants in the policy-making process, from interest groups to bureaucrats and statesmen, begin to develop new perspectives, loyalties, and identifications as a result of their mutual interactions,\" and feedback, which refers to the impact of outputs on the attitudes and behaviour of the public at large (Haas, 1961). The involvement of diverse actors, ranging from bureaucrats, health personnel, activist networks and civil society groups towards a common goal of improving child nutrition was a result these integration efforts.Integration in the present case was a means to achieve improved service delivery within the ICDS and the public health system; convergence among the three frontline workers - Mitanin, AWW and ANM; and greater awareness in the community regarding child health and nutrition. The above-mentioned strategies of creating innovative institutional structures, mobilising communities, decentralisation and human resource integration were all aimed towards these main outcomes.The data from surveys conducted with health and nutrition personnel was analysed to indicate the outcome on these three areas.Human resource convergence\nPolicy and programming implications: In summary, integration can be an effective mechanism in bringing about policy and program reforms. However, for integration to be \"real\", sustainable and effective, it is important for policy makers to develop two skills: - to switch their attention away from perceiving integration as the destination, and recognising that it is a means to achieve better governance; and non-formal institutional mechanisms - community participation, decentralised human resource convergences and involvement of non-state actors are as important, if not more, as formal institutional structures in implementing integration. It is only through complex, long-term interaction between state and society, public and private actors, formal and informal institutions that integration can be translated into practice and transacted in programs.Due to the complex nature of institutions - both in state and civil society spaces, integration becomes a dynamic process influenced by wider socio-political, economic and cultural contexts. Hence, while the interventions to effect non-formal institutional structures need to evolve according to contextual and local realities, more formal institutional structures to facilitate and guide them are universally essential.For policymakers, these findings are potentially actionable. There may be things that can be done in the short-to-medium term to help shift incentives and increase productive dialogue between public and non-state actors, as well as invest in community mobilisation and participation. While community monitoring sponsored by the government is contradictory to its very purpose, support from the government towards this and instituting structures to provide spaces for such developments should clearly be government's priorities. Thus the state's role seen to be effective in integrated governance is more facilitative and decentralised than prescriptive and controlling.Another important skill for policy makers is to identify areas where integrated governance is appropriate and can add value to already existing ways of independent operations (Bruner et al., 1992). Integration in the true sense requires a commitment of resources and investment of time as all participants in the process have to learn to trust each other. Decentralisation and eliciting community monitoring, or establishing innovative institutional structures (both formal and informal) require a shift in orientation and thinking in most conventional government bureaucracies. Therefore, integrated governance is most suitable in areas that require the provision of flexible and comprehensive public services, and issues that are shaped largely by contexts and complex determinants at individual and social levels. Child health and nutrition, the \"integrated\" issues in the current case study, are two such areas that can benefit significantly (as has also been shown by the findings of the study above) from integrated governance. Based on the experience in Chhattisgarh, India use of selected learnings or replication of the model is highly recommended for other states in India, or regions with other similar contexts across the world.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to highlight the significance of integrated governance in bringing about community participation, improved service delivery, accountability of public systems and human resource rationalisation. It discusses the strategies of innovative institutional structures in translating such integration in the areas of public health and nutrition for poor communities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws on experience of initiating integrated governance through innovations in health and nutrition programming in the resource-poor state of Chhattisgarh, India, at different levels of governance structures - hamlets, villages, clusters, blocks, districts and at the state. The study uses mixed methods - i.e. document analysis, interviews, discussions and quantitative data from facilities surveys - to present a case study analyzing the process and outcome of integration.\nFindings: - The data indicate that integrated governance initiatives improved convergence between health and nutrition departments of the state at all levels. Also, innovative structures are important to implement the idea of integration, especially in contexts that do not have historical experience of such partnerships. Integration also contributed towards improved participation of communities in self-governance, community monitoring of government programs, and therefore, better services.\nPractical implications: - As governments across the world, especially in developing countries, struggle towards achieving better governance, integration can serve as a desirable process to address this. Integration can affect the decentralisation of power, inclusion, efficiency, accountability and improved service quality in government programs. The institutional structures detailed in this paper can provide models for replication in other similar contexts for translating and sustaining the idea of integrated governance.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is one of the few to investigate innovative public institutions of a particularly vulnerable and poor region in India, and is unique in that it uses the lenses of governance and community mobilisation to explore this important, and under-researched, topic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Responding to global business critical issues: A source of innovation and transformation for FTSE 350 companies?
|
[
"Organizational restructuring",
"Innovation",
"Social responsibility"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Can you think beyond new products and new services to entirely new business concepts - ones that meet deep customer needs in unconventional ways? Can you think of unconventional ways of recharging an existing business concept? (Gary Hamel, 2000).Changing environments\nMethodology: To test its hypothesis, Article 13 conducted a wide-ranging review into the history and prospects for the practice of sustainability-focused approaches to innovation. The first work phase reviewed the academic and business literature and press coverage for the major themes in innovation and social entrepreneurship.This survey provided the basis for a round table visioning session with a number of business practitioners and specialists from the environmental, ethics, community-engagement and innovation fields to identify the key challenges facing the world - issues that provide a source of risk (and opportunity) for business in the next 20 years. The 14 issues business-critical global issues identified at the round-table are outlined in Table I.Independent data from SERM Rating Agency was analyzed for the FTSE-350 companies (excluding the investment trusts) for evidence of management systems and business programs that sought to address a sample of eight of the 14 business-critical global issues that were identified at the round table: climate change; community; governance; health; sustainable production; technology; waste; and water.From the c. 300 companies (FTSE 350 less investment trusts), 40 leading organizations were then identified for an intensive case study review - a set of companies shown by the SERM Rating Agency research to be amongst the \"most active\" in demonstrating their response to the eight business-critical global issues.Of the 40 companies, ten were featured in the final report, each of which demonstrated evidence of business transformation (or incremental innovation towards transformation) as a direct result of the companies' response to these global issues. The companies featured were: Anglo American; BP; BT; Centrica; GlaxoSmithKline; Kingfisher; Scottish Power; Tesco; Unilever; and Waste Recycling Group.\nResults: Literature review and roundtable visioning\nThe emerging model - summarizing the Article 13 review: The Article 13 review illuminates an emerging model of innovation - a source of business transformation driven by the growing significance of world issues to implementing corporate strategy and delivering sustainable profit.Current corporate responses to these business-critical issues are frequently limited to complying with legal obligations and other immediate stakeholder pressures. But a vanguard of companies is demonstrating significant evidence of innovating towards business transformation.These strategic breakthroughs encompass innovations in product and service, the creation of new routes to market through partnerships and informal networks, and innovations in technology and business process - all backed-up by new strategic tools and measures to support forward-planning and measure progress.Most approaches are currently characterized by a wide-ranging series of incremental changes, with no convincing examples yet existing of transformation implemented across the entirety of the company's operations. Hints of this radical direction, however, are evident from the vision statements of several organizations.Partnerships are significant in building the credibility of many innovations, and can also be essential in providing the skills and networks required to deliver the innovation effectively. Other success factors for implementation include new strategic tools and measures to support planning and calibrate progress in previously unmeasured issues and themes. A collective approach to the measurement of these intangibles can have the knock-on effect of fostering a shared vision of transformation and delivering a demonstrable approach to risk identification and management.It is Article 13's belief that the 14 business-critical world issues identified in its visioning exercise tie in with a growing recognition across society that commercial operations have an effect upon the natural and social world that impacts us all - as customers, investors, employees and members of local and global communities.These social and environmental impacts have economic implications - from rising insurance premiums due to the effects of climate change to the shortage and increasing price of key resources such as fossil fuels, fish and timber, and to the shortage of landfill sites in the UK leading to tax and waste disposal costs.And the economic effects are sharpening the awareness and investigation of how companies can use innovation to rethink their business and transform it for future success.The early agents of change identified in the Article 13 research are straining beyond the immediate concerns of their business operations, carefully and imaginatively assessing the possible routes to creating value over the next ten to 20 years.They face serious limitations - distrust and skepticism extending from the boardroom to the shop floor, from the stock market to town halls and parliaments. Yet these companies are seeking to overcome skepticism with practical results - they are daring to think the unthinkable, work with the unexpected and create the unknown.These pioneering companies (and the entrepreneurial individuals within them) have grasped the notion that the risk of staying the same is greater than the risk of changing - signs of innovation at work.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The main aim of this research was to review which FTSE 350 companies were responding to social, ethical and environmental business-critical global issues such as climate change, governance and technology. If they were, did this response result in innovation and transformation? The 14 issues were identified by a range of business practitioners and experts through a visioning exercise.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Independent data analysis of the companies, excluding around 50 investment trusts, by SERM Rating Agency provided a sector review of how companies were innovating or transforming their business as a response to the 14 issues. This review identified 40 companies as being most active in demonstrating their response. Of these 40, further analysis identified ten companies that showed signs of innovation or transformation.\nFindings: - The identified ten companies demonstrated evidence of pilot business transformation (or incremental innovation towards transformation) as a direct result of responding to the issues. For example, a mining company's HIV treatment program for its workers in South Africa. Most approaches were characterized by a wide-ranging series of incremental changes, with no convincing examples yet existing of transformation implemented across the entirety of the company's operations. Hints of this radical direction, however, are evident from the vision statements of several organizations.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research methodology is dependent on publicly available evidence. However, the implication of the research findings is that the 14 issues identified can be viewed as opportunities rather than obligations. Realizing the opportunity relies on integrating the issues in the core strategy of the organization.\nPractical implications: - This paper provides insight for business strategists and practitioners into potential new ways of working by companies. It illuminates an emerging source of innovation and ultimately business transformation driven by the growing significance of world issues to implementing corporate strategy and delivering sustainable profit.\nOriginality/value: - The value of this paper is in the insight it provides on how companies are finding a source of innovation through responding to global issues.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Policy dialogues: facilitators' perceived role and influence
|
[
"Public health",
"Evidence-based practice",
"Leadership",
"Health policy",
"Governance structures",
"Training"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: The Evidence-informed Policy Network (EVIPNet)\nMethods: This is a qualitative, exploratory study based on semi-structured key-informant interviews to gather an in-depth understanding on the informants' views on the PD facilitator's role and influence on a PD's success. Informed by harnessing the combination of facilitators' tacit and explicit knowledge acquired in their role as facilitators of PDs, this paper outlines facilitators' skills, attributes, attitudes, knowledge and how these can be used to influence a PD's success.\nResults: The following section presents the results of the study, structured by theme. Tables II and III summarize the classification of the main findings.\nDiscussion: Key findings\nConclusions: PD facilitators play a crucial role in evidence-informed policy-making processes. They \"make or break\" a PD's success. Not only are their skills, attitudes, attributes and knowledge important to influence the PD, but also their involvement in the PD's preparatory and follow-up activities - in particular in terms of engaging with stakeholders. Capacity building and participation in PDs are vital to improve facilitator's performance and hence their influence on a PD's success.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to better understand facilitators' perceived role and influence on a policy dialogue's (PD) process and impact. PDs enable interactions between policy makers, researchers and other stakeholders - one of the factors associated with promoting evidence-informed policy making.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is an exploratory study based on semi-structured interviews with ten key informants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North and South America. Participants were purposefully sampled based on their experience in facilitating or observing PDs organized by the WHO's Evidence-informed Policy Network. Data were analyzed using a constant comparative method.\nFindings: A successful PD relies on a structured process used to catalyze impact. Facilitators contribute to a successful PD through their facilitation skills, for example, helping to get to an informed judgment; knowledge, for example, about the health system; attitudes, for example, valuing the PD process over its outcomes; and personal attributes, for example, credibility. Facilitators' involvement in preparatory and follow-up actions are equally paramount for a PD's success. Challenges in implementing PDs can be prevented/attenuated, for example, through stakeholder analysis to identify suitable PD participants, and anticipate power constellations or potential conflicts.\nResearch limitations/implications: Research should focus on the overall process of a PD - especially on preparation and follow-up activities and their influence on a PD's success.\nOriginality/value: Informed by harnessing practical experiences, this paper outlines facilitators' skills, attributes, attitudes, knowledge and how these can be used to influence a PD's success.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Deloitte University develops the leaders of the future: ... and keeps employees at the leading edge in their fields
|
[
"Women",
"Leadership development",
"Coaching",
"Equal opportunities",
"Corporate universities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A global financial consultancy with more than 200,000 experts across the world has launched a university to help staff in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to navigate market changes and remain at the leading edge in their fields.\nRedefining inclusion in the twenty-first century workplace: Learning programs delivered at Deloitte University, Texas, increased the company's investment in learning and development by 40 per cent.\nImportance of diversity: Companies with diversity at the highest levels perform better than those without. Deloitte, therefore, focuses its leadership development and succession planning on preparing future leaders, high-potential partners and principals - with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences - for the next step in their careers.\nCareer sponsorship critical to success: Career sponsorship is considered critical to success. Those who reach the top can almost always point to someone else - a sponsor - who took a vested interest in them along the way and advocated on their behalf.\nPreparing women for leadership: The goal of Leading to Win, an 18-month program, is to prepare experienced women partners, principals and directors for leadership. Participants create their own leadership action plan for the program, under which they meet once a month with an executive coach, receive feedback from senior leaders and peers and shadow key leaders who act as their sponsors and provide them with development opportunities.\nThe development of emerging leaders: Deloitte's emerging leaders' development program is designed to prepare high-performing managers and senior managers from ethnic and other minorities for the next stage in their careers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to observes how global financial consultancy Deloitte is training its future leaders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The background to the various programs, the form they take and the results they are achieving have been explained.\nFindings: This study describes the functioning of Deloitte University in Texas, USA, and explains that a similar institution recently opened in Belgium for prospective Deloitte managers from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In addition, it reveals how coaching works at Deloitte and details a number of programs aimed at increasing the chances of women and people from ethnic and other minorities to reach the top jobs.\nPractical implications: The fact that competition for talent in the coming years will be challenging has been emphasized and that Deloitte University helps the organization to attract and retain talent by distinguishing the company from its competitors.\nSocial implications: This study reveals that Deloitte is keen to develop leaders of the future from a wide range of backgrounds.\nOriginality/value: A range of leadership development initiatives at a key global company has been detailed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Subjective experience or objective process: Understanding the gap between values and practice for involving patients in designing patient-centred care
|
[
"Organizational culture",
"Quality",
"Involvement",
"Qualitative research",
"Patient-focused care"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is increasing emphasis globally on making healthcare services \"patient-centred\", on measuring patient satisfaction or assessing quality using patient experience data to redress the balance from emphasis on cost containment or clinical outcomes (Institute of Medicine, 2001), and on involving patients in the (re)design of services. Intuitively, it is easier to see the role of patients at a micro-level in the health system - engaging and contributing to decisions about their own care, or that of loved ones - and much of the literature and policy focuses on this level (Coulter et al., 2008). A recent Cochrane review of interventions for providers to promote a patient-centred approach in clinical consultations identified three \"behaviours\" that constituted patient-centred care: \"shared control of the consultation, decisions about interventions or the management of health problems with the patient and/or a focus in the consultation on the patient as a whole person who has individual preferences situated within social contexts\" (Lewin et al., 2009, p. 16). However, there is a strong case also for involvement of patients at meso and macro levels, to ensure that organisations and whole health systems are patient-centred.\nBackground and literature: The project\nMethodology: This project was part of a broader mixed methods study of service redesign at three Acute Trusts in England. A major theme of this work was to understand the way that organisational culture shapes redesign efforts within the Trusts and we focused our efforts around, what we termed within the project, three \"domains of culture\" - patients, people and place. This paper draws on analysis undertaken in the \"patients\" domain. We employed a qualitative methodology, collecting individuals' accounts of the approach to service redesign at their Trust. This was intended to access subjective accounts of actions and behaviours, as well as the values and habits that underpin them (that can be reflective or pre-reflective). Through the analysis, we wanted to describe these values and habits, and unpick interpretively the basic cultural assumptions in which these more visible layers of culture are embedded (Schein, 2010). In explaining how these accounts have been formed, we aim to identify at a more theoretical level what it is about the organisational culture that produces the behaviours that we can observe. The truism, \"Every system is perfectly designed to achieve exactly the results that it achieves\" is clearly relevant for cultural systems.\nFindings: The perceived importance and practical role of patients in service redesign was an important theme in the accounts given by those in strategic positions in the Trusts, however, the picture was not straightforward. Concepts of patient-centred care and patient involvement were frequently evoked by participants as representing a core value, but accounts of successful translation of these values into practice were much less forthcoming. Interviewees often provided accounts of contextual or attitudinal factors that were either explicitly or implicitly obstacles to the implementation of these values.\nDiscussion and limitations: There is an underlying tension in these data between the recognition of the centrality of the patient to the aims of redesigning services to be more patient-centred, with ambivalence about the role that patients could usefully play in the redesign process. Our findings certainly support the argument elsewhere in the literature that there is great variation in the meaning of patient-centred care (i.e. Florin and Dixon, 2004). We add to that literature by exploring empirically the way the concept is perceived and used by those in strategic roles in acute Trusts, and argue that this can help explain some of the problems in implementing change that involves patients in a meaningful way. We have observed that those with strategic responsibilities to the organisation, tend to emphasise the objective processes over the subjective experience of patients, and those embedded in specific professional value systems tend to emphasise the value of their professional knowledge (clinical outcomes) over patient-identified outcomes. These specific findings can be generalized by the observation that the variation in definitions can be accounted for by critically examining positionality (Walt et al., 2008), i.e. the social location and goals of the individual or organisation doing the defining.\nImplications: There are implications of this study both for practice and policy. The concepts of subjective experience and objective process have a clarity and pleasing simplicity to them which is easy to convey to policy makers, managers, clinicians and the public. This clarity makes them a useful way to start critical and open conversations in a variety of health and care arenas where problems are identified by any stakeholders in terms of creating patient-centred services. Discussions could be facilitated using the following model of simple starting questions:\nConclusions: While those involved in strategic decisions in these three hospital Trusts articulated values that emphasised the importance of redesigning services to be patient-centred and supporting patient involvement in those processes, the emphasis in their accounts was much more on the patient as an object within an organisational process, rather than as an active independent subject with control and ownership over their experience. We have argued that a mismatch between the needs of the organisation and the needs of the patient creates a dissonance between objective processes and subjective experience, which needs addressing. This dissonance can also be explained by the persistence of habitual action (for non-involvement) by those in the health system and basic assumptions about power and responsibility (clinician- and management-centred) built into the structure of the health system. Future redesign initiatives to make services more patient-centred need to consider how to redress this balance, in order to give more weight and value to the subjective experience of patients. Part of redressing the balance involves rethinking the methods of assessing patient experience because encouraging narrative accounts of experience could be more valid and meaningful to those with the power to make changes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Patient-centred care and patient involvement are increasingly central concepts in health policy in the UK and elsewhere. However, there is little consensus regarding their definition or how to achieve \"patient-centred\" care in everyday practice or how to involve patients in service redesign initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to explore these issues from the perspective of key stakeholders within National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the UK.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews, covering a range of topics related to service redesign, were conducted with 77 key stakeholders across three NHS Trusts in the West Midlands. In total, 20 of these stakeholders were re-interviewed 18 months later. Data were managed and analysed using the Framework Method.\nFindings: While patient-centred care and patient involvement were regularly cited as important to the stakeholders, a gap persisted between values and reported practice. This gap is explained through close examination of the ways in which the concepts were used by stakeholders, and identifying the way in which they were adapted to fit other organisational priorities. The value placed on positive subjective experience changed to concerns about objective measurement of the patients as they move through the system.\nResearch limitations/implications: Increased awareness and reflection on the conceptual tensions between objective processes and subjective experiences could highlight reasons why patient-centred values fail to translate into improved practice.\nOriginality/value: The paper describes and explains a previously unarticulated tension in health organisations between values and practice in patient centred care and patient involvement in service redesign.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Dual careers: the new norm for Gen Y professionals?
|
[
"Balance",
"Challenge",
"Gen Y",
"Dual careers",
"Kaleidoscope career"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: More than 30 years ago Hall and Hall (1978) raised the issue of how dual career couples were managing the challenges of demanding jobs, caring for families and negotiating sometimes competing career goals. Since then much has changed in industrialised societies. In many countries female participation in higher education now exceeds male participation (Rusconi and Solga, 2008), female participation in the workforce has increased steadily (Blyton and Dastmalchian, 2006) and well-educated women have far greater career opportunities across a broad range of traditionally male domains (Valcour and Tolbert, 2003). As a consequence there are now significantly more dual income households and more dual career couples, particularly among professionals (Pixley, 2008). Yet, despite major demographic changes dual careers continue to pose the same question - is it possible for both partners to have meaningful and rewarding careers, bring up a family and still achieve a satisfactory work-life balance (Gatrell et al., 2013)? Furthermore, is it really possible to follow dual career paths or in reality does one career tend to dominate the other?\nThe research study: The sample comprised 18 couples, aged between 23 and 34 years who were in a long-term relationship (see Table I). All participants lived in an Australian capital city. All had tertiary qualifications ranging from a bachelor degree to a postgraduate qualification and worked in professions such as law, medicine, accounting and education. Three couples had two children, three couples had one child and were expecting another, one couple had one child and five couples were expecting their first child. Six couples had no children. Participants were recruited through purposeful sampling using snowball or chain sampling (Patton, 1990). The value of snowball sampling is that it enables the researcher to identify \"cases of interest from people who know people who know what cases are information rich\" (Miles and Huberman, 1994, p. 28). Beginning with friends and work colleagues, couples were invited to participate in the study and asked if they could suggest other couples who met the research criteria.\nNegotiating dual careers: Trying to have it all\nDiscussion and conclusions: The purpose of this paper was to explore dual careers from the perspective of Gen Y professional couples and to identify the career choices and decisions that enable them to pursue successful careers as individuals and as a couple. Dual careers, in the purest sense, would still appear to be elusive. Even among highly qualified professionals there is recognition that it is difficult to \"have it all\" but rather than giving up, they are looking for careers that match their needs, values and professional aspirations and exploring ways to have these things on their terms. In other words, it would appear that within this generation and this particular cohort \"new\" career patterns are evolving (Lyons et al., 2015) to reflect changes at a societal and demographic level as well as individual agency in how careers are enacted for \"lifestyle and family\" reasons as well as work and career reasons (Arthur, 2008, p. 170).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use the kaleidoscope career model as a lens through which to explore the career choices and decisions of young professional couples and the strategies that they use to facilitate successful dual careers while attempting to balance their work and non-work lives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were gathered through face-to-face interviews with 18 couples. Couples were interviewed separately to explore how individual career values and choices shape decisions in partnership. Template analysis was used to identify career patterns as defined by the kaleidoscope career model.\nFindings: Gender-based patterns suggested by the kaleidoscope career model appear to be giving way to different patterns based on individual career aspirations, earning capacity and motivation within a dual career (as opposed to simply dual income) household. For some young professionals challenge and balance are equally important and so unlike the original interpretation of the KCM their careers reflect dual priorities not challenge followed by balance as their careers evolve.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample size is small and participants were recruited through purposeful sampling which may have resulted in a more homogeneous cohort than would have been achieved through random sampling.\nPractical implications: Changing demographic profiles and emerging social norms are changing the way Gen Y approach work and careers. Organisations and professional bodies need to respond to these changes through implementation of appropriate HR policies within supportive organisational cultures if they are to attract and retain young professionals.\nSocial implications: This research is important because there is clearly a gap between changes at a societal level and the way in which organisations are responding to those changes. The paper provides insights into how public policy and organisational practices can be designed and implemented to meet the needs and expectations of Gen Y professionals.\nOriginality/value: This study provides an insight into the way Gen Y professionals are navigating dual careers as opposed to dual incomes. It builds on and expands the kaleidoscope career model by showing that Gen Y professionals are less constrained by gender stereotypes than previous generations in their quest for challenge and balance and that some couples are determined to have both challenge and balance, not either/or.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Game-based structural debriefing: How can teachers design game-based curricula for systems thinking?
|
[
"Systems thinking",
"STEM",
"System dynamics",
"Game-based learning",
"Design-based research",
"Video games",
"Causal diagrams",
"Structural debriefing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: The benefits of digital games as a vehicle to support student learning have been well documented. In a meta-analysis study, Clark et al. (2016) reported that compared to nongame conditions, digital games had a moderate to strong effect in terms of overall learning outcomes including cognitive and interpersonal skills. Similarly, a literature review by Boyle et al. (2016) found that games are beneficial for learning of various outcomes such as knowledge acquisition, affect, behavior change, perception, and cognition. Numerous studies also reported academic domain-specific benefits of games for learning including science (Li, 2013; National Research Council, 2011; Danish et al., 2017; Puttick and Tucker-Raymond, 2018) and math (Kebritchi et al., 2010; Divjak and Tomic, 2011; Starkey, 2013). Games are well suited as instructional tools not only for children but also for adults in cases where adults need to be educated about complex policy issues, such as the climate change (Wu and Lee, 2015).\nGames for systems thinking: Systems thinking (ST) skills have been recognized as part of the core science literacy, and more recently, as critical twenty-first century skills. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) reflect this perspective by explicitly infusing systems thinking concepts across the standards. While this is a significant step forward, it poses imminent practical challenges for teachers in terms of how to teach ST skills.\nGame-based structural debriefing: The majority of educational research that deals with systems thinking and complex systems uses agent-based modeling (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2015; Yoon et al., 2016; Hmelo-Silver et al., 2017). However, there is a distinct systems modeling approach called system dynamics, which was invented by Jay Forrester at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s to address problems in management (Forrester, 1958). Unlike agent-based simulations that create artificial agents and model their interactions, system dynamics models are computer representations of systems at the population level (Scholl, 2001; Schieritz, 2002). Mathematically, system dynamics models are systems of continuous partial differential equations (Morecroft, 2007; Maani and Cavana, 2007). One of the fundamental tenets of system dynamics is that system structure determines system behavior (Richardson and Pugh, 1981, pp. 15-16; Grossler et al., 2008). Now, system dynamics is an academic discipline with an academic society, conferences, a peer-reviewed publication (System Dynamics Review), and graduate academic programs (Davidsen et al., 2014; Pavlov et al., 2014; Schaffernicht and Groesser, 2016).\nResearch method: Food fight game\nDesign process and products: First iteration of the game-based structural debriefing framework\nImplementations of the curriculum: The unit was implemented by the three teachers who participated in the co-design workshops (Table I). The implementations confirmed the flexibility of the unit because teachers created additional instructional materials that supplemented the protocol and addressed the unique limitations and needs of their classrooms. For example, Teachers 1 and 2 covered the material in five consecutive days, but Teacher 3 extended the unit to 10 non-consecutive days that spanned two months, which was because of the winter school break and the fact that he had the same students in his classroom only once a week. In this section, we describe lesson implementations and how each teacher further modified the lesson plans based on their students' needs.\nFindings: This project aimed to develop a new framework called GBSD for teaching systems thinking with video games within the STEM curriculum. The teachers appreciated the utility of GBSD as a concrete framework to incorporate systems thinking in their regular curriculum. They felt that GBSD allowed them to elevate the level of discussion in an ecosystem unit. One teacher commented that he felt that systems thinking, in particular the feedback loops, was a powerful framework that he wanted to use more in the classroom. Teacher 2 said:\nDiscussion: This article makes a unique contribution to the educational literature by introducing the GBSD, which is a set of debriefing activities that use visualization tools from the academic discipline called system dynamics to support systems thinking as a distinct goal of gameplay and learning. GBSD facilitates the classroom exploration of the structure of complex systems by helping students to identify system variables and visualize causal webs as well as feedback loops between the variables. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study attempted to create curriculum that combines an off-the-shelf educational game with tools of system dynamics (see Appendix for a brief review of system dynamics tools).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The authors developed a pedagogical framework called the game-based structural debriefing (GBSD) to leverage the affordances of video games for teaching systems thinking. By integrating system dynamics visualization tools within a set of debriefing activities, GBSD helps teachers make systems thinking an explicit goal of the gameplay and learning when they use available educational games in the classroom.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses a design-based research methodology with the goals of validating GBSD and investigating the utility of GBSD across different contexts as a design source to develop game-based curriculum. Over the course of 12 months, the authors conducted one focus group interview and three design workshops with participating teachers and master teachers. Between the workshops, the team rapidly iterated the framework, as well as curricular materials, in collaboration with the teachers.\nFindings: The authors developed a curriculum unit that integrates systems dynamics visualization tools and a video game for middle school life science ecosystem curriculum. The unit was implemented by the three teachers who participated in the co-design. The implementations confirmed the flexibility of the unit because teachers created additional instructional materials that supplemented the GBSD protocol and addressed the unique limitations and needs of their classrooms.\nOriginality/value: GBSD builds on system dynamics, which is a distinct academic discipline and methodology, and it uses its visualization tools, which are not widely used in the systems thinking educational literature. GBSD is also unique, in that it applies these tools within the debriefing activities developed for an off-the-shelf educational game. This paper illustrates how a design framework can be used to support teachers' thoughtful integration of games in curriculum development.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Specialty food retailing: The role of purchase frequency and determinants of customer satisfaction and loyalty
|
[
"Loyalty",
"Satisfaction",
"Food products",
"Purchase frequency",
"Specialty food retailing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The retail food industry has been experiencing significant change in the past few decades, becoming a highly challenging and competitive industry as new retail formats develop. Food retailing presents great challenges to understand consumer behaviour, given the changing consumption patterns and trends, the shifting consumer attitudes, interests or lifestyles, the demand for choice, quality and specialty products, which have contributed immensely to the growth of new retailing format typologies such as convenience stores, discount stores and specialty retailers (Prasad and Reddy, 2007). However, despite specialty food retailers have experienced a great growth in the past decade; research on grocery retailing has traditionally focussed on large mainstream retailers, rather than specialty retailers.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Specialty food purchase frequency\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Sampling and fieldwork\n4. Results discussion: 4.1 Measurement model\n5. Conclusions: Identifying how consumers behave throughout the purchasing process would help food retailers determine what consumers actually need, and translate this into product offering to meet their demands. However, only few studies have explored the influence of customer purchase frequency. In this context, our main goal is to provide a deeper understanding on the influence of purchase frequency on consumer satisfaction and loyalty towards specialty food retailers. For this purpose, the present study proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model integrating one customer-based attribute - the purchase frequency - focussing on one specific retailer type - the specialty food retailers - to explore the creation of customer satisfaction and loyalty.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: \"Does purchase frequency influence consumer behaviour in the specialty food retailing setting?\", since purchase frequency is a consumer-based undertaken variable. For this purpose, the authors provide and empirically test a conceptual model focussed on specialty food retailing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected through a structured questionnaire in the USA, gathering 592 valid responses and analysis was developed through structural equation modelling.\nFindings: Findings indicate that satisfaction and loyalty towards specialty food stores are strongly influenced by consumers' purchase frequency of specialty food products. Additionally, the findings support the moderating role of purchase frequency on the relationship between store service and satisfaction, as well as on the link store environment satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: Specialty food retailers should carry out marketing strategies focussing on consumer behaviour and segmentation could be developed considering purchase frequency.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Countering method bias in questionnaire-based user studies
|
[
"Research methods",
"Tests and testing",
"Variance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Much research in information science entails the study of human perceptions and behaviour. Often, data concerning behaviour are sought using questionnaires in which respondents are asked to report their perceptions, preferences, attitudes or behaviour. Lau and Coiera (2008), for example, studied the effects of searchers' levels of self-reported perceived confidence on the accuracy of answers to health questions obtained through web searching, and on their susceptibility to changing their views in the light of feedback from others. Mansourian (2008) used an inventory to measure end-users' perceptions of \"information visibility\" on the web and of \"success\" and \"failure\" in web searching. Questionnaires are also a much-used tool more generally in the social sciences and related fields, having particular advantages in terms of low expense, wide potential reach, and ease of administration.Despite widespread use, the use of questionnaires is not without problems. In particular, this approach may be susceptible to \"common method variance\" (CMV) bias. This occurs when respondents' answers to a questionnaire do not purely reflect their (intrinsic) thoughts about the phenomenon being asked about, but are influenced by the way in which the questions are asked - by (extrinsic) features relating to the design or administration of the questionnaire. Research has illustrated a variety of ways in which data obtained using questionnaires may be compromised in this way (e.g. Podsakoff et al., 2003). Such bias must be carefully considered in interpreting research data.This paper addresses problems associated with CMV bias in relationship to questionnaire-based studies. After considering the nature of such bias, and ways of identifying and controlling it, the paper presents an illustrative case study relating to a study of metacognition and web searching. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 outlines the ways in which method bias can be inadvertently introduced into a questionnaire-based study. Section 3 goes on to outline existing thinking with regards to measuring and eliminating it. In section 4 we introduce a case study to illustrate the problems and possible solutions associated with method bias, based on a study investigating the role of metacognition in web searching.\n2. Implicit assumptions and method bias: An important stage of any research is to identify any potential unintended contingent dependencies - particularly any untested assumptions. Dervin notes the problems associated with \"tautological research methodologies in which a priori assumptions at best remain untested and at worst are simply reinforced\". As Ford (2004, pp. 1173-4) notes, Dervin warns against:research methodology that is ultimately tautological to the extent that, as a perspective, it may constitute an a priori assumption that is not tested within the research. That is, it is not explicitly challenged; indeed, it may not be formulated in terms of a challengeable proposition within the research design.and recommends:the exploitation of contingent dependencies by making them the explicit focus of new research questions [...] the intention is to covert assumptions from biases to empirically testable questions.Such dependencies may lead to uncertainties in the form of factors, which may be potentially important in explaining the phenomenon under investigation, remaining unaccounted for in both the analysis and interpretation of data.Such uncertainties may arise if we assume that:* we can accurately measure subjects' viewpoints via questionnaires (uncertainty at the level of method);* subjects' behaviour and perceptions will not be altered by the process of observation (uncertainty at the level of subject/researcher interaction); and* subjects' self-reports of their own behaviour describe their actual behaviour (uncertainty at the level of interpretation).There has been considerable research focus on ways in which, regardless of topic, the questionnaire approach may be prone to inaccuracy. As noted previously, common method variance (CMV) refers to the situation where the method of data gathering itself introduces a bias, leading to spuriously elevated correlations between the concepts being measured. Thus, if a questionnaire measures stress and headache using the same instrument, method bias could account for an apparent correlation. The questionnaire approach is subject to accusations of CMV, and Podsakoff et al. (2003) provide an exposition of the ways in which a questionnaire can produce a biased response (see Table I).Cronbach's coefficient alpha statistic (Cronbach, 1951) is often used as an indicator of the reliability of a questionnaire, demonstrating that subjects show the same response pattern over the duration of the questionnaire and, where results span several sessions, over time (test-retest reliability). Alpha indicates the extent of the correlation between items. However, as noted previously, biases in the way subjects respond to questionnaires (CMV) may artificially inflate this coefficient alpha. Thus observed correlations may to some (unknown) extent be accounted for by CMV bias rather than representing meaningful relationships in the data. Where questionnaire-based research uses coefficient alpha and does not address the matter of CMV, there is arguably cause for concern. We suggest that where a questionnaire is at risk, but is not demonstrably free from CMV, a high coefficient alpha be treated with suspicion. This paper discusses a number of strategies to assess this risk, and to control the effects of such bias.A substantial body of research has investigated the variation of CMV across different fields. Certain themes emerge. Crampton and Wagner (1994) show that method effects vary between research domains. Cote and Buckley (1987) found that method variance differed greatly across disciplines: 15.8 per cent in marketing, 23.8 per cent in other business areas (mainly management), 28.9 per cent in psychology and sociology, and 30.5 per cent in education. Abstract items were found to be more prone to CMV than concrete ones. Where measures are difficult or ambiguous, respondents tend to interpret them in a subjective manner, increasing:random responding or [...] the probability that respondents' own systematic response tendencies (e.g. implicit theories, affectivity, central tendency and leniency biases) may come into play (Podsakoff et al., 2003, p. 883).Cote and Buckley (1987) showed that relatively concrete constructs such as satisfaction and performance were less associated with method effects (22.5 per cent method variance) than were abstract constructs such as attitudes (40.7 per cent method variance). Doty and Glick (1998) also present a large metastudy showing varying extents of CMV across studies.Lindell and Whitney (2001) further suggest that a lengthy and repetitive study may be more prone to CMV since bored subjects may look for shortcuts in their answering strategy.\n3. Strategies to assess and overcome these problems: It is important to seek to produce reliable research findings in the face of these obstacles. As researchers, we can:* assess the extent of the uncertainty;* design our studies to minimise the problems; and* take care in our interpretation of the results to restrict ourselves to what we can know.In this section we examine current thinking regarding how we can assess the extent of method bias and mitigate its impact in each of the areas of uncertainty outlined previously. This section provides the necessary information to form judgements about the study presented in section 5.3.1 Multimethod studies\n4. Case study: an investigation of metacognition in web searching: In this section we present a case study based on our own previously reported questionnaire-based study into the role of metacognition in web searching (Gorrell et al., 2008a, b). Metacognition, or \"thinking about thinking\", describes, in essence, an awareness of one's own mental processes (Flavell, 1979; Brown, 1987; Metcalfe and Shimamura, 1994). It might include not only knowing what one is thinking, but, evaluating the effectiveness of a thought process and potentially choosing to change it. It is clearly a highly abstract constructMetacognition has been increasingly a focus for interest and research since the 1970s, having been implicated in a range of information processing tasks. Research has shown that it is a powerful tool in a range of learning tasks (Hill and Hannafin, 1997; Alexander and Judy, 1988; Brown et al., 1983). It has also focused on ways in which metacognition can be encouraged and facilitated - for example, through the use of \"scaffolding\" (Hannafin et al., 1999).Our own work took place in the context of an AHRC project investigating the role of metacognition in web searching. In keeping with a number of investigations into metacognition (e.g. O'Neil and Abedi, 1996; Schraw and Dennison, 1994; Cetinkaya and Ertkin, 2002), we conducted a questionnaire-based study.Previous investigations have by no means always taken CMV into account. O'Neil and Abedi (1996), in their questionnaire-based study of metacognition, make no mention of the possibility that CMV could be present in their data. Similarly, Schraw and Dennison (1994), in testing their metacognitive awareness inventory (MAI), do not consider the possibility of CMV. Self-reporting in the area of metacognition requires some very specific mental skills. The act of describing one's own mental processes is a manifestation of metacognition in itself. Therefore, to ask subjects to say whether they use metacognition is to assume a priori that they have metacognitive skills to a certain extent. In this way, the questionnaire methodology is immediately open to potential bias. To pick a concrete example from the AHRC project, which follows, if subjects are asked whether they plan their web searches, it is difficult to infer from a positive response whether they have good introspective skills and do plan their searches, or whether they have poor introspective skills and may or may not plan their searches.4.1 Outline of the study\n5. Discussion and conclusions: CMV has been shown to be a problem to varying degrees in different disciplines across social and information science (Cote and Buckley, 1987). Where questionnaire items are more abstract, CMV has been found to be more of a problem.This paper has discussed the advantages and disadvantages of several methods of quantifying CMV. We find the widely-used \"Harman's single factor test\" to be without foundation. We conclude that where only one method has been used to collect data in a study (i.e. a questionnaire alone), the marker variable approach (Lindell and Whitney, 2001) is a better option for quantifying and excluding CMV. Options exist for applying the technique post-hoc. We draw attention to the fact that it is not valid to choose a marker variable pair from existing questionnaire items on the basis that that pair is found to have a low correlation, or if one or both items are unusually concrete compared with the rest of the questionnaire (e.g. age).We ask the question, does a high coefficient alpha score really mean anything in the absence of an estimate of CMV? Where bias dominates the results, a high coefficient alpha score may do no more than indicate that the questionnaire consistently allows participants to accede to their biases.Implications for future work are as follows:* Questionnaire-based work investigating abstract constructs (such as metacognition) should be assumed to carry a high likelihood of CMV, and therefore should either take pains to avoid it and demonstrate the degree of success in this regard, or else assume CMV in the interpretation of the results and avoid focusing on correlations with pervasive factors.* Coefficient alpha should be used in conjunction with an estimate of CMV.* \"Harman's single factor test\" should not be used.* Where only one method has been used to collect data in a study (i.e. a questionnaire alone), the marker variable approach is a good option for quantifying and excluding CMV.* Options exist for applying the technique post-hoc.* Care should be exercised when choosing marker variables post-hoc. A marker variable pair should not be drawn from existing questionnaire items on the basis of a low correlation, or if one or both items are unusually concrete compared with the rest of the questionnaire.* Where possible, precautions against CMV should be built into a study's research design from the beginning. Where appropriate, for example, during pilot testing, it may be useful to gather data from respondents on their perceptions of the questionnaire itself. Consideration should be given to the use of different data gathering methods in order to achieve a degree of triangulation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to discuss reliability problems associated with questionnaires, commonly employed in library and information science. It aims to focus on the effects of \"common method variance\" (CMV), which is a form of bias, and ways of countering these effects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper critically reviews the use of existing tools for demonstrating reliability in questionnaire-based studies. In particular, it focuses on Cronbach's alpha, \"Harman's single factor test\" and Lindell and Whitney's \"marker variable\" approach. The paper introduces an illustrative case study based on the work on metacognition and web searching. It goes on to make recommendations for researchers considering using a questionnaire-based approach.\nFindings: - CMV is a problem affecting questionnaire-based studies in different disciplines across social and information science. Where questionnaire items are more abstract, CMV has been found to be more of a problem. The widely used Cronbach alpha measure, of the reliability of a questionnaire, may often be affected by CMV. Where method bias dominates the results, a high alpha score may do no more than indicate that the questionnaire consistently allows participants to accede to their biases. \"Harman's single factor test\" is criticised as lacking sufficient foundation, and it is concluded that it should not be used. The marker variable approach is a useful option but must be applied with caution.\nPractical implications: - A number of practical implications for researchers are drawn. Questionnaire-based work investigating abstract constructs should be assumed to carry a high likelihood of CMV, and therefore should attempt to avoid it and demonstrate the degree of success in this regard. Otherwise, interpretation of the results should assume CMV. A number of approaches to assessing and isolating CMV are discussed.\nOriginality/value: - The paper draws attention to a problem that is arguably often overlooked in questionnaire-based studies, namely method bias. It discusses a number of approaches whereby it may be identified and controlled.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analysis of project delivery systems in Chinese construction industry with data envelopment analysis (DEA)
|
[
"Construction industry",
"Project management",
"Project systems",
"Data analysis",
"China"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Project delivery system (PDS) defines the management functions of the owner in project execution, and reflects the roles, responsibilities, and risk allocation of project participants in a certain project and how the owner pays for the services. Effective management is necessary for the success of a project. An appropriate delivery system and contract strategy will enhance the owner's ability to manage a project effectively (Anderson and Oyetunji, 2003).Selecting an appropriate PDS is one of the most important success factors for building projects (Chan et al. 2001). A research conducted by Kumaraswamy and Dissanayaka in 2001 found correlations between appropriateness of PDSs and project delay and cost overrun. PDS has great impact on project schedule, cost, quality, and contract management. An appropriate project delivery system may greatly improve the efficiency of a project (Oyetunji and Anderson, 2006) and reduce the transaction cost of a project (Mahdi and Alreshaid, 2005). Owners should pay attention to the selection of proper PDSs (Al Khalil, 2002). Zhang and He (2003) reviewed the empirical study of DB in the USA and found that the adopting design-build could improve project efficiency in terms of schedule, cost and quality. The statistics and prediction of Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) on the main PDSs in non-residential market show that in 2005 DBB accounted for 50 per cent, DB accounted for 40 per cent and CM accounted for the other 10 per cent. DBIA is also anticipated that in 2010, the proportion of DBB will decrease to 45 per cent, the proportion of DB will increase to 45 per cent, and the proportion of CM will remain the same.In recent years, with the rapid economic development in China, capital investment has increased greatly. From 2003 to 2008, capital investment in China grew from 3.7213 trillion Yuan to 17.2291 trillion Yuan, with the average annual growth rate of 25.40 per cent (Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China). While project is a vector for the achievement of fixed assets investment, PDS is one of the important factors for the success of a project. However, Chinese owners have not recognized the importance of selecting a proper project delivery system. Research on the selection of project delivery system has not been thoroughly conducted in the settings of Mainland China.\nLiterature review: Extensive research has been conducted on PDSs and selection methods. The most common selection methods as observed are analytic hierarchy process (AHP), multi-attribute utility method and case based reasoning (CBR).Researches on PDSs\nResearch objective: First of all, the literature review shows plenty of work has been done. However, the current method is not perfect (as shown in the last section), also project delivery systems, project objectives and selection indications in Chinese construction industry may be different from the findings in previous researches. This research investigates the application status of the PDSs in Mainland China, and identifies common project objectives of Chinese projects and indicators that influence the selection of PDSs. A simplified, practical and new method for selecting PDSs is provided and intends to overcome the inadequacy of the existing methods.\nData envelopment analysis and model selection: Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a method to study the efficiency of input and output (Charnes et al., 1978). Since DEA does not need pre-estimated parameters, it has advantage of avoiding subjective factors, simplifying calculation, and reducing errors. Simos and Maroulis (2007) applied DEA to calculate the efficiency of DBB, DB, CM and DBM in road projects. In this paper, DEA is applied to analyze projects under different PDSs, thus to provide guidance for PDS selection. The selection indicators of PDSs are used as the input indicators while project objectives are used as the output indicators.DEA method sorts decision-making units (DMUs) based on the results of efficiency evaluation (Simos and Maroulis, 2007). Because the numbers of pre-designed input indicators and output indicators in traditional DEA-CCR-I model are small, it only classifies DMUs into two categories (effective units and non-effective units). For models with a large number of input and output indicators, any indicator with a value higher than other DMU's always has efficiency of 1. In this case, the CCR model is not able to sort the effective units. Andersen and Petersen (1993) proposed a \"super-efficiency\" DEA (SE-DEA) model which can be used to compare the efficiency of the effective DMUs. This research applies a robust model (SE-DEA-CCR-I model) in selecting project delivery system to achieve higher efficiency.\nSelection of project objectives: The questionnaire has three sections: the first part is about the types and numbers of PDSs, to identify currently used PDSs; the second part is about project objectives,to determine output indicators of the SE-DEA-CCR-I model; the third part is about the selection factors of PDSs, to determine the input indicators of the SE-DEA-CCR-I model.Project objectives set parameters for project success. Research (Songer and Molenaar, 1997) shows the following aspects should be considered in evaluating the success of design build projects: whether the project is completed at or under the contracted cost; whether the project is completed on or before the contracted completion date; whether the completed project meets or exceeds all the technical performance specifications provided by the owner; whether the completed project meets or exceeds the user's envisioned functional goals; whether the completed project meets or exceeds the contracted standards of workmanship in all areas; whether the construction process unduly burden the owner's project management staff. It was also argued that the criteria for project success of a DB project may include objective criteria and subjective criteria (Chan et al., 2002). Objective criteria include schedule, cost, quality, safety, etc; subjective criteria include meeting specifications/employer's requirements, conformance to expectation of project team members, satisfaction of project team members, functionality, aesthetics, reduction in dispute, etc. Ling et al., 2004 found the performance of DBB and DB projects can be evaluated by 11 criteria, which are classified into four categories: cost, schedule, quality and others. Cost includes unit cost, cost growth and intensity; schedule includes construction speed, delivery speed and schedule growth; quality includes turnover quality, system quality and equipment quality; others include owner's satisfaction and owner's administration burden.In summary, common project objectives as proposed above are schedule, cost, quality, safety and owner's satisfaction. However, owner's attitude towards risk, confidentiality requirements of projects, environment protection requirements, etc. are seldom considered. This paper puts forward a framework of project objectives in six categories: cost, schedule, safety, quality, contract/business and others, as shown in Table I. A five-point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire. Respondents are expected to rate the significance of each project objective according to the PDS they have chosen. Score 1-5 respectively means the project objective is very important, somewhat important, uncertain, somewhat unimportant and quite unimportant to the success of a project.\nSelection indicators: A total of 20 indicators influencing the selection of PDSs from 16 literatures are listed in Table II. They fall into five categories of attributes:1. schedule;2. cost;3. owners and contractors;4. project; and5. external environment.Quality was not included as an indicator in this research because project quality is difficult to quantify.Eight selection indicators as shown in Table II (with a) may change towards two directions as in the case of increase/decrease. In this research, these indicators were split into pairs of forward and backward indicators, to provide accurate descriptions of their nature. Total number of the indicators increased to 28 because of this. The respondents were expected to choose at least 15 indicators that they believe have great impact on the selection of PDSs from the 28 given indicators, and then rank them according to their significances (1 represents the most important indicator, and so on). Selection of a forward indicator and its corresponding backward indicator renders this part of the questionnaire invalid.\nData analysis: A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed to project managers of the Top 100 construction companies, project owners with investment over 50 million Yuan and other project participants in Mainland China. 92 valid responses were collected. Of the respondents, 70 per cent were contractors, 7.8 per cent were owners, 11.1 per cent were consultants, and 11.1 per cent were others such as equipment suppliers, etc. Among the projects covered by the responses, industrial projects (including metallurgy, oil, petrochemical, thermal power, nuclear power, communication, etc.) account for 64.4 per cent, infrastructure projects (including highways, railways, bridges, water conservancy, municipal, etc.) account for 26.7 per cent, and building projects account for the rest 8.9 per cent.PDSs currently in use\nConclusions: This research found that DBB, DBB+PM, DB/EPC, Turnkey, multi-stage DB/EPC and EP+C are commonly used in the Chinese construction industry while CM and PMC are less than commonly seen. A total of 14 project objectives and 28 selection indicators of PDSs are generalized through literature review. Relative weights of project objectives were calculated for all PDSs with data obtained through a survey. It was verified through a K-S Z test that the differences between DBB and DBB+PM and the differences between DB/EPC and Turnkey are not significant in the Chinese market.Current literature shows that a number of methods have been attempted in evaluating the performance of PDSs in meeting project objectives, however, most of them are with deficiencies. SE-DEA-CCR-I model was adopted in this research to address known issues of existing methods. SE-DEA-CCR-I model is built on empirical project data and does not require predictions of any parameters. It has the advantage of avoiding subjective factors, simplifying calculation and decreasing error rate. Therefore, it has high operability. The observations derived from the SE-DEA-CCR-I model are largely in consistence with common perception. The industry practitioners, clients can select the appropriate PDS with the results of this paper.However, the SE-DEA-CCR-I model in its current state does not give owners a comprehensive guide and an applicable tool in assisting them with selecting PDSs. Further researches are needed to improve the accuracy of the model and expand the scope of data collecting.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Selecting a proper project delivery system is one of the critical issues for the success of a project. This paper discusses the application of project delivery systems in China and the existing project delivery system selection methods, analyzes project objectives and indicators influencing the selection of project delivery systems, and aims at finding an appropriate method to select project delivery systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey was conducted by postal questionnaire and Multivariate Statistical Analysis was applied to analyze the project data. A robust model was developed to analyze the selection of project delivery systems.\nFindings: - The results of survey and analysis show that design-bid-build (DBB)/project management (DBB+PM), design-build (DB)/engineering, procurement and construction (EPC)/Turnkey, multi-stage DB/EPC and EP+C are commonly used in China. The differences between DBB and DBB+PM, and differences between DB/EPC and Turnkey in China are not significant. Weights of project objectives in each project delivery system and the ranking of indicators influencing the selection of project delivery systems are acquired.\nOriginality/value: - Analysis was conducted with a robust model instead of traditional model in consideration of efficiency. This research may assist owners in Mainland China in selecting project delivery systems, improve project performance, and encourage efficiency in project delivery process.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Strategic market orientation and business performance: The study of food and beverages organisations in Nigeria
|
[
"Market orientation",
"Customer orientation",
"Competitors",
"Business performance",
"Food and drink products",
"Nigeria"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The implementation of the marketing concept of market orientation is one of the major research streams in strategic marketing to be developed during the last decade (Sin et al., 2003, p. 910; Guo, 2002, p. 1154). It defines the set of activities developed by organizations to permanently monitor, analyze and respond to market changes such as consumer preferences, faster technological growth, and growing competitive rivalry (Maydeu-Olivares and Lado, 2003, p. 284). Market orientation is a popular term used by marketing practitioners as an indicator of the extent to which an organization implements the \"marketing concept\" (Agarwal et al., 2003, p. 68). The marketing concept, in turn, holds that the key to achieving organizational goals - such as market share, sales growth and profitability - depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors. A market-oriented organization is presumed to have superior market-sensing and customer-linking capabilities, and these capabilities are presumed to assure them higher profits in comparison with organizations that are less market-oriented (Agarwal et al., 2003).This commentary seeks to contribute to the knowledge concerning marketing orientation and business performance by applying the established orientation model to food and beverage organizations in Nigeria.Marketing concept and market orientation\nDiscussion: In general, there is no strong relationship between the market orientation of food and beverages organizations and their performance. Each market orientation component does not contribute to at least one of the three performance measure examined, although their relative influences vary according to the specific performance dimension. This could be possible with the available evidence from chairmen's statements in their annual reports of the various moderating elements that impinge on their total performance. These variables are shown in Figure 2. Figure 2 shows a modified market orientation-business performance relationship using food and beverage organizations as a case study. The dotted lines indicate that customer focus, competitor focus and inter-functional co-ordination have a weak relationship with profitability and market share, and the straight line indicates a strong relationship with sales growth. Our paper reveals that the result of the weak relationship between market orientation and business performance is because of moderating variables. Managers have to consider their performance effectiveness and efficiencies through a thorough understanding of the moderating variables.As can be seen from Figure 2, the most significant predictor of the customer based performance measure (profitability) is inter-functional coordination. Furthermore, there are implications regarding possible linkages amongst the three performance measures utilized. These tentative results do not lend credence to the propositions advanced by both scholars and practitioners that there is a relationship between customer retention, sales growth and profit margin (Bigne et al., 2003, p. 74). Customer philosophy is conceived as the key component underlying the relationship between one of the three performance measures in this commentary. This commentary identifies a weak association between market orientation and business performance.In essence, this reinforces the need for food and beverage organizations in Nigeria to emphasize the nurturing of a sound market orientation if they are to benefit fully from increased business performance rates. Finally, the dimension of market orientation which appears to contribute least to business performance in relation to food and beverage organizations in Nigeria is market focus. Our commentary is not only contrary to the conclusions of Steinman et al. (2000) and Guo (2002), but is rather surprising as this dimension articulates the need to deliver a sound new product development process as well as encourage a high level of marketing integration and control across all the major marketing functions. This point is highlighted by Steinman et al. (2000), who found that a strong, market-driven new-product process with thorough execution of the required stages positively impacts on new product outcomes. The limited attention seemingly being paid to the development of new products by food and beverage organizations is a reflection, perhaps, on the short-term tactical nature of decision-making exhibited by some of the traditional players in their ever more difficult battle for customers in a highly competitive market. A possible reason for the apparent ineffectiveness of marketing orientation is the likelihood that some organizations might accept that importance of this market orientation dimension in principle without practicing its basic tenets effectively, thereby reducing the significance of the effect of an integrated marketing organization on performance.\nConclusions and recommendations: This commentary has sought to contribute further to knowledge concerning market orientation and business performance by applying the established market orientation model to food and beverage organizations in Nigeria under somewhat unique circumstances. However, in furtherance to the realization of set objectives, we make the following recommendations:*there should be performance measurement systems in place to detect the impact of investment in market orientation with the aim of learning how the firm works;*the Nigerian Government should ensure a stable economy and make economic policies that will enhance existing business development in the country;*management must consistently motivate the sales team so that it will analyze customers' needs, seek to satisfy them, and try to adapt the products to these needs, and react to competitors' actions and responses; and*management should also work in collaboration with other workers in the company and share information about customers and competitors with these workers.Research efforts in the future may wish to consider certain themes and issues that have emerged from this commentary. In line with this, attention could be devoted to the issue of how the moderating variables in Figure 2 affect the nature of the association between market orientation and business performance. Even though studies have examined environmental variables as a moderator in the market orientation-business performance relationship, the role of business environment (moderators) in the market orientation-business performance relationship must be investigated to improve understanding in the Nigerian context.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which market orientation impacts the business performance of an organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - While much empirical work has centered on market orientation, the generalizability of its impact on the performance of food and beverages organizations in the Nigerian context has been under-researched. The commentary adopts a triangulation approach by examining the theoretical and researched issues on market orientation and their influence on the business performance of food and beverages organizations in Nigeria.\nFindings: - The commentary validates earlier instruments but does not find any strong association between market orientation and business performance in the Nigerian context using food and beverages organizations. The reasons underlying the weak relationship between the market orientation and business performance of food and beverages organizations include government policies, new product development, diversification, innovation and devaluation of the Nigerian currency.\nResearch limitations/implications: - One important contribution of this paper is that market orientation leads to business performance through some moderating variables. The commentary recommends that the Nigerian Government should ensure a stable economy and implement economic policies that will enhance existing business development in the country. Also, organizations should have performance measurement systems to detect the impact of investment on market orientation with the aim of learning how the organizations work.\nOriginality/value: - The paper significantly refines the body of knowledge concerning the impact of market orientation on the performance of organizations, and thereby offers a model of market orientation and business performance in the Nigerian context for marketing scholars and practitioners. This model will, no doubt, contribute to the body of existing literature on market orientation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Marketing effectiveness and its precursors
|
[
"Vietnam",
"Transformational leadership",
"Transactional leadership",
"Organizational trust",
"Marketing effectiveness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Leaders' \"traits\" matter significantly and do have a significant impact on \"trustworthiness\" (Zeffane, 2010). Leaders' behaviors shape and sustain trust (Bennis, 2002; DePree, 2002). Trust is apparently determined largely by the behavior of the leader's communicative and supportive behaviors (Gimbel, 2001; Tschannen-Moran and Hoy, 1998). Leaders' communication practices in terms of strategy-based role and organisation influence employees' trust in the leader. Simons (1999) theorized that behavioral integrity, the perceived degree of congruence between espoused and enacted values, is crucial for the development of employees' trust in managers. The type of leader and his or her perceived effectiveness is linked to levels of team trust (Plotnick et al., 2008). The construct of servant leadership is found by Sendjaya and Pekerti (2010) as a significant predictor of trust with covenantal relationship, responsible morality and transforming impact as the key servant leadership behaviors significantly contributing to followers' trust in their leaders. A positive and direct relationship was also discerned between transformational leadership and trust (Asgari et al., 2008).The focal magnitude of trust for sustaining organisational effectiveness is incrementally being recognised (Dirks and Ferrin, 2001). Employees' trust towards their leaders has been associated with a range of productivity-related processes and outcomes (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). Trust in leaders is also a major contributor to team performance (Dirks, 1999, 2000), bottom line indicators of organisational performance, such as sales levels and net profits (Davis et al., 2000; Rich, 1997), and organisational competitiveness since it cannot be easily imitated or replicated (Jones and George, 1998).Marketing effectiveness is the concept which has also been extensively discussed due to its strong link with several precious organisational outcomes, such as stable, long-term growth, enhanced customer satisfaction, a competitive advantage, and a strong marketing orientation (Kotler, 1977; Norburn et al., 1990). It has been seen in numerous organizations in Vietnam that marketing activities are not effective since employees do not perform with their full competence as well as creativity. Their low intellectual contribution to marketing performance of an organization results from their low level of trust, which defines the comparative amount of contribution against the financial measurement and compensation of the organization. Leadership, which highlights task fulfilment rather than encouraging innovative tactics to augment brand awareness, also does not activate creative contributions to marketing activities of the organization. In view of the magnitude of and interest in these three constructs, it comes as a surprise that some studies looked at only dual relationships between leadership and trust, or between leadership or trust and organizational outcomes Kotler (1977) and Norburn et al. (1990) refer to, but no published research has yet empirically investigated the interconnections among leadership, trust, and marketing effectiveness, especially in emerging markets such as Vietnam. The aims of this study are to construct an integrative framework linking leadership, trust, and marketing effectiveness, and test that framework in Vietnam - a developing country service business environment. The research question guiding this study are:RQ1. Are there the linkages among leadership, trust, and marketing effectiveness? If such linkages exist, what are the direction and degree of these linkages?This prologue of the paper is followed by the review of the perspectives and researches on the variables of the current inquiry. This literature review serves as the underpinning for building the conceptual framework for which the data are then analyzed. The paper ends with some practical implications and feasible research avenues relevant to the concept \"marketing effectiveness\" and its independent variables.\n2 Literature review: 2.1 Leadership\n3 Hypotheses development: As the review of literature depicts, the two constructs \"leadership\" and \"trust\" refer to interactions among people, in which leadership refers to interactions between the leader and subordinates whereas trust refers to interactions among organizational members including the leader. This section will scan through the existing literature for discussions or empirical proofs on the influence of these two constructs on the effectiveness of marketing actions, thereby building hypotheses of the research.Transformational leaders influence employees to be customer oriented in their interaction with customers to align the values of the customer-oriented culture (Narver et al., 1998), so transformational leadership presumably relates to identity-based trust with the sharing of values as its essential aspect (Lewicki and Bunker, 1995). Hitt et al. (1997), furthermore, portrayed a linkage between companies' market diversity or innovation and information exchange. Trust associated with knowledge and information, therefore, relates to transformational leadership with its inherent innovativeness (Tucker and Russell, 2004) as posited in the following hypothesis:H1a. Transformational leadership is positively associated with identity-based trust.H1b. Transformational leadership is positively associated with knowledge-based trust.Calculus-based trust is trust that emerges when the trustor perceives that the trustee intends to perform an action that is beneficial (Rousseau et al., 1998). Thus, transactional leadership, which increases employee performance and satisfaction by linking job performance to valued rewards (McShane and Von Glinow, 2008), tends to be associated with calculus-based trust. Transactional leadership is a form of leader-member exchange, which was found to be positively associated with calculus-based trust, which involves calculative exchanges (Scandura and Pellegrini, 2008). The ensuing hypotheses are accordingly proposed:H1c. Transactional leadership is positively associated with calculus-based trust.A business is regarded to possess a high level of marketing effectiveness if it has a close relationship with customers, which is differentiated by a service orientation, a thrust towards innovation and a broad view of the organisation from the customer's standpoint (Norburn et al., 1990). Narver et al. (1998) found that transformational leadership can form powerful guiding coalition to determine customer orientation, create and communicate a vision of customer orientation, and empower others to act on the vision.Krishnan's (2001) research also found that the values of transformational leaders and transactional leaders differ - the former characterized by a focus on change orientated values, and the latter oriented to the routine and competence values. Whereas transformational leadership guides employees to exceed expectations, transactional leadership ensures that employees perform according to expectations (Masi and Cooke, 2000). In other words, transformational leaders are innovative in nature (Tucker and Russell, 2004). Therefore, transformational leadership behaviors would be more likely to advocate the innovative orientation toward market changes.In view of the four components constituting transformational leadership, \"idealized influence\" is associated with the notion of \"universal brotherhood\" (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999, p. 187), which connotes the magnitude of member bonding built on shared philosophy, vision, and mission. Idealized influence is the emotional component of leaders' behavior that moves members from their self-interest to a major goal (Thomson, 2007, p. 5). Therefore, \"idealized influence\", whether in inherent attributes or exposed through behaviors, indicates the close bonding among members at different levels of the organization, so produces smooth coordination of marketing activities or strong marketing infrastructure. This universal brotherhood notion in \"idealized influence\" also orientates marketers toward marketing sustainability by synergizing their intellectual strengths in building marketing strategy, marketing creative as well as marketing execution. This synergy strength also helps discern external forces and navigate marketing strategy in the direction of external forces if they are favorable or divert it if they are unfavorable. Consequently, \"idealized influence\" reinforces factors driving the high level of marketing effectiveness (Nwokah, 2006, p. 26; Nwokah and Ahiauzu, 2008, p. 863) as posited in the following hypothesis:H2a. A greater level of \"idealized influence\" component in transformational leadership leads to a higher level of marketing effectiveness.As an intangible behavior that impresses confidence to reach the unreachable (Thomson, 2007, p. 5), the \"inspirational motivation\" component of transformational leadership implies the development of shared high expectations (Bass, 1990b, p. 22) and interests rather than high individual expectations and interests, so marketing strategy, marketing creative, or marketing execution address interests of external stakeholders including customers and community, who not merely buy or stimulate buying actions in others, but also activate the spread of brand impression and flow of constructive feedback back to the company. \"Inspirational motivation\" thus drives marketers close to and more proactively decipher as well as control exogenous factors based on market orientation philosophy and sharing of marketing knowledge. The ensuing hypothesis consequently emerges:H2b. A greater level of \"inspirational motivation\" component in transformational leadership leads to a higher level of marketing effectiveness.The third component of transformational leadership, \"individualized consideration\", implies the responsiveness to the unique, subjective needs of subordinates, and ensures that leaders become coaches and counselors to their subordinates (Bryant, 2003), so under transformational leadership, subordinates are prone to become affiliated with the company and build strong marketing infrastructure. From this strong marketing infrastructure, subordinates do not find marketing strategy \"none of their business\" but instead, from customer- and stakeholder-oriented philosophy, \"translate\" it into effective marketing tactics and initiate the execution of such marketing tactics for increased marketing effectiveness, paving the path for the following hypothesis:H2c. A greater level of \"individualized consideration\" component in transformational leadership leads to a higher level of marketing effectiveness.The last component of transformational leadership - \"intellectual stimulation\" - is what makes leaders challenge the status quo and influences the intellect of the subordinates (Thomson, 2007, p. 5). Intellectual stimulation highlights creativity in the search for ideals, which not purely produces dynamic marketing strategy in proactive response to exogenous factors of the marketplace but also creatively execute the marketing strategy, especially in the dynamic evolution of the market. The subsequent hypothesis is consequently proposed:H2d. A greater level of \"intellectual stimulation\" component in transformational leadership leads to a higher level of marketing effectiveness.The study of transactional leadership was introduced by James MacGregor Burns in 1978. The basis of this theory is the relationship between leaders and subordinates, which is supported by exchanges or contingent rewards defined by the leader to praise accomplishments (Whittington, 2004).In view of the components composing transactional leadership, \"contingent reward\" implies that individual rewards given by the leader will be conditional upon the enactment of certain task or behaviors by the subordinates. Therefore, contingent reward presumably reduces the coordination of marketing activities since it involves marketers in economic exchange for their individual interests in their marketing activities rather than contributing to interests of customers and community as important external stakeholders. Individual rewards may stimulate marketing creative and increase marketing execution, but not to look at long-term marketing strategy, which addresses interests of customers and community as well as tackles exogenous factors of the market environment.\"Management-by-exception\" component of transactional leadership denotes that punishment will be implemented by the leader if subodinates fail to demonstrate expected behaviors or accomplish certain roles or tasks. This component leads to subordinates' evasion of errors or risks; subordinates, therefore, are not encouraged to get immersed in marketing creative. They are also reactive rather than proactive in response to movements in the market, and evade revamping a stale marketing strategy. Based on the nature of these components of transactional leadership and the characteristics of marketing effectiveness, the ensuing hypotheses are proposed:H2e. A greater level of \"contingent reward\" component in transactional leadership leads to a lower level of marketing effectiveness.H2f. A greater level of \"management-by-exception\" component in transactional leadership leads to a lower level of marketing effectiveness.The rendezvous between knowledge-based trust and marketing effectiveness is the information resources based on which managers design profitable strategies (Kotler, 1977, 1997) and based on which employees design their plan of commitment to the organisation. High level of marketing effectiveness, furthermore, is attained if a business is driven by a shared set of values within the organisation (Norburn et al., 1990), so marketing effectiveness tends to relate to identity-based trust, which underscores the sharing of values. Consequently, the following hypotheses are formulated:H3a. A greater degree of identity-based trust corresponds to a higher level of marketing effectiveness.H3b. A greater degree of knowledge-based trust corresponds to a higher level of marketing effectiveness.Calculus-based trust is characterized by short-term expectations and circumstantial contingencies. The relationships are fragile and recalculated based on violations. The parties trust each other as long as their respective interests are served (Lewicki and Bunker, 1995). This is the trust driven by their respective interests rather than by a common set of values within the organisation oriented toward its markets. The subsequent hypotheses thus ensued:H3c. A greater degree of calculus-based trust corresponds to a lower level of marketing effectiveness.Figure 1 shows the hypothesized relationships among leadership styles, organisational trust, and marketing effectiveness.\n4 Methodology: 4.1 Sample and procedure\n5 Findings and discussion: 5.1 Findings from ANOVAs\n6 Concluding thoughts: The hypothesized framework shown in Figure 1 was passably supported by the findings. Transactional leadership, within expectation, is associated with calculus-based trust. On the other hand, transformational leadership cultivates identity-based trust and knowledge-based trust, which in turn positively influence marketing effectiveness. A direct bridge between transformational leadership and marketing effectiveness is discerned as well. As these findings suggest, to enhance marketing effectiveness, managers could consider changing their leadership styles to synergize with the organisational trust, or initiate changes to the trust itself. In other words, managers must self-train or be trained to be transformational leaders as Barling et al. (1996) and Bass and Avolio (1997) suggest that it is potential to train transformational leadership dimensions.Nonetheless, the findings from empirical questionnaire survey must be further tested due to such limitations of the current study as its cross-sectional nature and the use of perceptual measures. Parrott et al.'s (2010) study demonstrated a significant disparity between perceived marketing effectiveness and actual practices recorded at interviews. Another limitation is that the causal direction of the relationships among the variables has been partially established. By controlling the impact of past performance on the perceptions of leadership style and organisational trust, the study can argue that leadership and trust have an effect on marketing effectiveness. One though has to acknowledge that the question of causality can be more thoroughly addressed by longitudinal research designs in which all the variables are measured at different points in time (Wilderom et al., 2000).A path for future research is the retesting of the research model on healthcare service and hotel service separately to find the differences between them. The research model, moreover, can be tested in other service industries such as banking, insurance, and education. Another avenue for further research is the exploration of the mediating role of such constructs as organisational learning as suggested in Vera and Crossan's (2004) study on the relationship between organisational learning and leadership. Specific knowledge components - tacit and explicit knowledge - should also be examined in the relationship with marketing effectiveness as suggested by Abeson and Taku (2009). An mediating role can also be played by balanced performance measurement as an amalgam of financial and non-financial metrics, the latter of which highlights the customer dimension, leading to higher levels of customer orientation and marketing effectiveness.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the linkages between leadership, organisational trust, and marketing effectiveness, in service businesses within three service categories (health care, hotel, and resort) in Vietnam.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research utilizes ANOVAs and structural equation model.\nFindings: - The findings revealed that transactional leadership is associated with calculus-based trust. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, cultivates knowledge-based trust and identity-based trust, which in turn positively influence marketing effectiveness. A direct relationship between transformational leadership and marketing effectiveness is also examined.\nOriginality/value: - The research offers insight into the role that leadership and trust play in determining marketing effectiveness in service businesses in Vietnam.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Disinterested agents or mismatched plans? : Public administration capacities and climate change responses in the least developing countries
|
[
"Agriculture",
"Nepal",
"Donors",
"Public administration",
"Forestry",
"Climate change adaptation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: At the Copenhagen Conference of Parties (COP15) in 2009, developed countries committed to funding (by 2020) climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries to the tune of US$100bn annually. While the modalities of climate finance are still being worked out - there are debates about the relative amounts of funds which should come out of the public and private sectors and about the relative amounts which should be spent on adaptation and low-carbon development - the least developed countries (LDCs) have already started receiving substantially increased flows.\n2. Conceptual approaches to investigating institutional and organizational capabilities for climate change adaptation: 2.1 Spheres of adaptation action: a focus on livelihoods\n3. Methodology: As our objective is to provide a structural-institutional perspective on the organizational performance for managing climate challenges in Nepal, we study the effects both of formal rules and regulations, and of organizational structures and organizational capacities on decision-making in communities and administrative agencies. In our study, we make a distinction between organizations and institutions. We treat the former as constellations of agents with both a common purpose and individual interests, while we approach institutions as the formal and informal, written and customary rules and ways of behavior which guide decisions in defined arenas. Thus, unlike many other scholars, our approach classifies the various ministries as organizations because we are more focused on their interests and motivations, while we treat the community forest users groups (CFUGs) described below as an institution because we are more interested in how rules affect the decisions taken within them. This is also consistent with the approach in Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD) framework. This framework allows researchers to organize \"diagnostic and prescriptive inquiry\" by identifying the major types of structural variables in a multi-tier conceptual map (Ostrom, 2011, 2007). IAD, in particular, developed the concept of an action arena - consisting of an action situation and actors - within which the researcher can study the way relevant variables interact to determine actors' decisions and the outcomes which result. It has been used in a variety of resource-use settings ranging from fisheries management (Imperial and Yandle, 2005; Rudd, 2004) and land-use planning (Pethe et al., 2012) to co-management (Whaley and Weatherhead, 2014).\n4. Arenas for climate change adaptation action: Here, we discuss the critical institutional and organizational dynamics we found in the selected action arenas and make some concluding observations which indicate the areas of particular concern to climate adaptation interventions. The aggregate table of IAD findings using its formal terminology is presented below and followed by a discussion of the salient observations. This table and the discussions following clearly show that authority and aggregation rules are oriented toward validating processes rather than developing livelihood-based solutions to addressing climate challenges (Table II).\n5. Discussion: the state and adaptation capabilities in Nepal: In this study, we focused on the effects of formal and informal rules and of organizational capacities on decision-making in communities and in the front lines of administrative agencies in Nepal. In our interviews with both community members and administrative staff, we asked detailed questions about climate change impacts and responses, and we found that overall both groups of actors possessed detailed knowledge about climate vulnerabilities. We also reviewed Nepal's major climate policy documents, including NAPA, LAPA, Forest Sector Strategies, etc., and found them to be comprehensive and detailed. Indeed, many analysts (Ford et al., 2013) consider Nepal's adaptation policies among the best in the world. Yet, despite this field level knowledge, comprehensive policies and the emergence of a growing epistemic community dedicated to responding to climate change, we found in our investigation of forests and agriculture in Nepal that implementation of climate adaptation strategies is superficial, uneven and inadequate.\n6. Conclusions: The reliance of LDCs on donor financing for climate change adaptation has introduced several distortions which derive principally from:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Developed countries agreed at COP15 to pay US$100bn annually for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. This paper aims to evaluate how prepared are donors and recipients to spend this money well by analyzing institutional and organizational capabilities for climate change adaptation in least developed country (LDC) administrations using the case of Nepal, a country which can be considered to be an archetypal LDC.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors conducted over 100 in-depth structured qualitative interviews with government officials from across the organizational chain in the ministries concerned with climate change, ranging from the lowest-ranked employee to just under the ministerial ranks. This was supplemented with detailed surveys of three representative communities from different ecological zones in Nepal. Data were analyzed using Ostrom's IAD framework.\nFindings: Local administrations are more motivated and capable than are given credit for by donors but nevertheless face critical barriers in being able to function autonomously and confront climate change challenges. These barriers create three interrelated challenges: An organizational challenge to create intrinsic incentives which empower and grant autonomy to front line agents, an institutional challenge to go beyond accountability-focused process validation and a policy-choice challenge which avoids the temptation to write aspirational policies without clear and feasible strategies to obtain the resources necessary for their implementation.\nPractical implications: The findings point to ways climate assistance can be restructured for more reach and effectiveness.\nOriginality/value: This paper fills a gap in the literature because community structures and institutions have been extensively analyzed in the context of adaptation, but despite being criticized, administrative structures have rarely been directly studied.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Causal relationships between table game players' perceptions of service quality, perceived winning, and game spending: Moderating effects of demographic factors
|
[
"Casinos",
"Betting",
"Customer services quality",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Hospitality management",
"Table game player",
"Perceived winning",
"Game spending"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The US casino industry has grown exponentially since the passage of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. According to Shoemaker and Zemke (2005), casinos are available within a four-hour radius of most major cities in the US As of 2011, there were 438 commercially owned and 456 Native American owned casinos in the US (AGA, 2011). The rapid expansion of the casino industry has dramatically increased industry competition to attract both slot machine and table game players.Since casino games are almost identical across casinos, offering superior service quality plays a critical role in the success of a casino in the highly competitive marketplace. However, despite its importance, casino service quality has received little attention from researchers. Many researchers and practitioners have suggested that service quality plays a critical role in customer satisfaction and loyalty and thus in firm performance (e.g. Han and Hyun, 2012; Han et al., 2011; Parasuraman et al., 1988). Delivering services of superior quality can serve as an important source of sustainable competitive advantage (Shemwell et al., 1998).One more important issue in the casino industry is that the likelihood of winning (perceived winning) has been identified as one of the most important factors influencing individuals' participation in gambling activities (Richard and Adrian, 1996; Mayer et al., 1998; Lucas, 2003; Lam, 2005). Previous studies have verified that perceived winning is positively related to overall satisfaction with the casino experience (Lucas, 2003). However, few studies have examined whether casino visitors' perceived winning actually influences their gaming behavior (e.g. satisfaction, loyalty, and affect).Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to examine the roles of five drivers of service quality - tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy - and perceived winning in the gaming behavior of casino visitors. More specifically, this study examines how casino visitors' perceptions of these five dimensions of service quality and their perceived winning influence their satisfaction, affect, and game spending. This study also examines the moderating effects of casino visitors' demographic and situational factors (gender, education level, parenting status, and proximity to a casino).\nUnit of analysis - table game players: When examining casino visitors' behavior, it should be noted that casino visitors are comprised of two different groups: slot game players and table game players (Titz et al., 2001). Although both table game players and slot game players seek pleasurable gaming experiences, they differ in terms of their service expectations and levels of game involvement (Abt et al., 1985). According to Titz et al. (2001), table game players are likely to be more involved in the games and more aware of game details than are slot machine players. Table game players are less likely to be impulsive and tend to exercise greater self-control. Differences in perceived winning also exist between table game and slot machine players. Since these two visitor groups show different behaviors, it is not appropriate to target both of the groups in a single research study.Approximately half of all casino visitors report that their favorite casino activity is table games such as blackjack, craps, and roulette (AGA, 2011; Dandurand, 1982). Table games generate approximately 37.0 percent of the gaming revenue in the state of Nevada in the USA (AGA, 2012), and table game players are often considered \"high rollers\", i.e. heavy gamblers that place large bets (Wyld, 2008). Therefore, attracting, satisfying, and retaining table game players by providing superior services to this segment are essential to the success of casinos. Considering the economic impact of table gamers in the casino industry, this research selected table game players as the unit of analysis.\nLiterature review: Service quality\nProposed model: In the previous section, we proposed 13 hypotheses based on a review of theoretical and empirical studies. Integrating these hypotheses, we propose the conceptual model in Figure 1.\nMethodology: Measurement\nData analysis: Descriptive statistics\nPractical implications: This study examined the extent to which five drivers of service quality (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) and perceived winning influence the behavior of table game players. More specifically, this study assessed how table game players' perceptions of the five dimensions and their perceived winning influence their satisfaction, brand affect, and game spending. In addition, the moderating effects of table game players' demographic characteristics (gender, education level, parenting status, and proximity to a casino) were examined.Previous studies have identified gamblers' perceived winning as one of the most important factors influencing their decisions to engage in gambling activities (Mayer et al., 1998; Lucas, 2003; Lam, 2005). Lucas (2003) addressed that winning is an important factor influencing gamblers' overall satisfaction. The results of the present study indicate that perceived winning is most likely to enhance table game satisfaction, which is consistent with the findings of previous studies (Mayer et al., 1998; Lucas, 2003; Lam, 2005). Although casino operators can easily increase perceived winning for slot machines by programming small but frequent payouts, manipulating perceived winning is more difficult in table games because the games are staffed by human dealers. Therefore, casino operators should develop various ways to increase perceived winning for table games, including promotions, advertising, and events that make table game players feel lucky. Offering giveaways such as free casino cash through a slogan such as \"we give and you play\" and offering frequent prizes designed only for table game players (such as spa packages, hotel rooms, meal packages, tickets to shows or sports events, and luxury cars/upscale accommodations specifically for high rollers) may help to improve perceived winning. In addition, table game players who spend a certain amount of money playing table games and are members of a loyalty program can be offered double points for each dollar spent in an effort to enhance the perceived value of gaming.Lovelock and Wirtz (2007) suggested that supplementary services such as the \"place\" (Rosenbaum, 2006) and interpersonal interactions may be more important than core services in some situations. Among the five dimensions of service quality, tangibles were found to be most likely to enhance table gamers' satisfaction (Table IV). Casino operators may consider enhancing table game satisfaction by offering a wide range of state-of-the-art gaming equipment, clean game areas, and attractive physical surroundings. In addition, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy (intangible dimensions of service quality) have considerable influence on table gamers' satisfaction (Table IV). Responsiveness refers to prompt customer service and willingness to help customers, while assurance refers to knowledgeable, well-trained, experienced casino employees. Empathy is defined as casino employees treating players as special/valued customers and consistently displaying courtesy. These results suggest that facilitating intimate interpersonal interactions between players and casino employees in the service delivery process may play a critical role in achieving customer satisfaction. Unlike slot machine players, table game players interact with casino employees continually. Therefore, casino operators should provide casino employees with ongoing training opportunities so that they may provide optimal table game experiences through superior knowledge and friendliness.This study considered four potential moderators (gender, education level, parenting status, and proximity to a casino). Previous studies have generally found differences in consumer behavior between females and males (Bryant and Cha, 1996; Mittal and Kamakura, 2001; Homburg and Giering, 2001). The results of this study indicate that gender moderated the relationship between empathy and table game satisfaction (H5a), which implies that casino operators should train employees to pay more individualized attention to female players and to provide them with special treatment (caring).In addition, education level moderated the relationship between perceived winning and table game satisfaction (H6a). As discussed earlier, individuals with high levels of education tend to take a more rational approach to their decision making (Capon and Bruke, 1980), and to show a weaker satisfaction-retention relationship than those with less education (Mittal and Kamakura, 2001). This indicates that table game players with high levels of education may take a more rational approach to perceiving the likelihood of winning. Therefore, casino operators should find diverse ways to make the table game experience more entertaining and pleasant for those players with high levels of education. Parenting status moderated the relationship between table gamers' satisfaction and game spending (H7a). As expected, players with children were less likely to show loyalty to a casino even when they were satisfied. This may be in part because most casinos are not perceived as family-friendly establishments. As such, when appropriate, casinos should be nested within complexes that the entire family can enjoy (e.g. those offering amusement parks, camping facilities, and activities for children).Finally, proximity to a casino moderated the relationship between table gamers' satisfaction and game spending (H7b). Previous studies have demonstrated that the distance to a given destination can impose a major constraint on consumer behavior regardless of improvements in transportation systems (Lee et al., 2011). Therefore, casino operators should offer special packages/free shuttle bus transportation to non-local players to mitigate this limitation.Billions of dollars are expended into casino development, and competition between casinos has greatly intensified (Balfour, 2007). Casino operators have attempted to gain a competitive advantage by going \"big\" and offering a greater number and variety of games (Hashimoto, 2008). However, game offerings are a necessary but not exhaustive precondition for service satisfaction. The success of a casino performance still depends primarily on understanding and satisfying what customers want and need. Therefore, casino operators should employ the results of this study to better understand the relationships between the tangible/intangible service attributes that they can manipulate and the casino experiences that they plan to provide.\nTheoretical implications: From a theoretical perspective, the current study extends the extant body of literature in several ways. First, with regard to the link between service quality and satisfaction, a number of studies have suggested that service quality is an important antecedent of customer satisfaction (e.g. Antony et al., 2004; Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Dutta et al., 2007; Hoare and Butcher, 2008; Nadiri and Hussain, 2005; Tsang, 2000), but few have addressed the moderating role of gender. A recent study conducted by Wieseke et al. (2012) highlights the critical role of empathy in customer-employee interactions; thus, our finding that gender intervenes in the relationship between empathy and satisfaction is germane to the development of this research stream.With regard to the link between quality and satisfaction, it is noteworthy that reliability had no significant effect on table gamers' satisfaction. From the perspective of theory development, this finding suggests that SERVPERF is setting-specific. That is, the service sector is composed of myriad service industries and the drivers of customer service quality ratings can vary significantly according to industry. Reliability, for example, might receive heightened consumer attention in a more technically-oriented service setting such as healthcare.The link between winning perception and satisfaction found in this study adds to existing theory because previous findings surrounding winning perceptions are piecemeal and fragmented. For instance, the Mayer et al. (1998) study that discusses winning perceptions and \"looseness\" of gaming machines is a qualitative study that offers only preliminary insight into the topic, while Lucas's (2003) study is quantitative but is limited to examining consumers' perceptions of slot machine gaming. Thus, the present study extends our current understanding in this area by finding a significant relationship between winning perception and table game players' satisfaction.This study also extends our understanding of consumer gaming psychology by demonstrating that overall table game players' satisfaction has direct and indirect effects on game spending. It was found that table game satisfaction was most likely to increase game spending, providing support for the positive relationship between customer satisfaction and the financial performance of a casino (Anderson et al., 1994; Hyun, 2009; Reichheld and Sasser, 1990). An increase in table game players' satisfaction was also found to induce a positive psychological reaction (i.e. brand affect) in players, facilitating table game players' favorable attitudes toward a casino (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). Furthermore, brand affect (a positive psychological response) was determined to have a positive effect on game spending, a finding that is valuable to current theory development in service-related industries because emerging studies emphasize the importance of salient brand images/brand personalities (Hwang and Hyun, 2012; Hyun and Han, 2012; Hyun and Kim, 2011; Hyun et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2012; Uen et al., 2012).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the roles of five drivers of service quality (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) and perceived winning in the gaming behavior of table game players; and second, to test the moderating effects of table game players' demographic and situational factors (gender, education level, parenting status, and proximity to a casino).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A review of the current literature in the above-mentioned areas revealed 13 theoretical hypotheses, from which the authors derived a structural model. The model was tested utilizing data collected from 383 US casino patrons that primarily played table games during visits to casinos. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were utilized to test the proposed theoretical relationships.\nFindings: - The results indicate that various dimensions of perceived service quality (including tangibles, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy) in casinos, as well as casino patrons' perceived winning have considerable influence on their satisfaction. Brand affect and game spending were found to be influenced by the patron satisfaction with table games. The relationship between perceived empathy and table game satisfaction was stronger for females than for males; the relationship between perceived winning and table game satisfaction was stronger for those with lower levels of formal education; and the relationship between table game satisfaction and game spending was stronger for table game players without children and for those residing near a casino.\nOriginality/value: - This study provides an empirical analysis of the effects of perceived service quality at table games and perceived winning on table game players' satisfaction, brand affect, and game spending. The results of this study may be utilized to aid casino operators to better tailor their marketing efforts and improve returns on investments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Construction of China's low-carbon competitiveness evaluation system: A study based on provincial cross-section data
|
[
"Low-carbon competitiveness",
"Obstacle factor diagnosis",
"Catastrophe progression method",
"Spatial autocorrelation",
"China"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The development of a low-carbon economy is currently a worldwide goal. In particular, developed countries are fostering low-carbon economies to powerfully heighten national competitive advantages, as they strive to develop low-carbon industries and technologies. With the accelerating pace of China's urbanization, industrialization, agricultural modernization and information technology development, economic and social development continues to confront serious resource and environmental problems, such as the shortage of water resources, poor air quality standards and low energy efficiency. Therefore, China's \"Twelfth Five-Year Plan\" clearly identifies scientific development as its main focus. Hastening the transformation of patterns of economic development is the plan's main initiative with the goal of building a resource-saving and environmental-friendly society. In 2015, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed that China should adhere to the path of green development, affluent living and better ecology. In addition, China should promote the establishment of a green, low-carbon and circular development industrial system; the construction of a modern low-carbon energy system that is safe and efficient; and the formation of an intensive resources perspective that focuses on saving and recycling resources. Thus, enhancing the competitiveness of low-carbon will help China achieve sustainable development and the construction of an ecological civilization.\n2. Materials and methods: 2.1 Catastrophe progression method\n3. Constitution of the index system: In reference to the existing papers on the low-carbon economy (Jin and Shouhu, 2013; Feng, 2011; Cheng et al., 2015; Li et al., 2015), 25 indices are selected from the four sub-systems of economy, society, environment and policy; therefore, the low-carbon competitiveness evaluation system is established to accurately appraise the low-carbon competitiveness status of 31 Chinese provinces. The specific index system is shown in Table I.\n4. Results analysis: 4.1 Low-carbon competitiveness of China\n5. Conclusions and suggestions: 5.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: As the contradiction between economic development, resource and environment has become increasingly prominent, low-carbon competitiveness has received worldwide focus. This study aims to examine low-carbon competitiveness in 31 provinces (cities and regions) of China.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An evaluation index system for low-carbon competitiveness in China has been constructed, which is composed of 25 economic, social, environmental and policy indicators. To study the state of low-carbon competitiveness and resistance to China' development of low-carbon competitiveness, this study uses a combination of the catastrophe progression model, the spatial autocorrelation model and the barrier method.\nFindings: China' low-carbon competitiveness gradually decreases from coastal to inland areas: the Tibet and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions are the least competitive regions, while the Shandong and Jiangsu provinces are the most competitive areas. The spatial correlation of the 31 provinces' low-carbon competitiveness is very low and lacks regional cooperation. This study finds that the proportion of a region' wetland area, the proportion of tertiary industries represented in its GDP and afforestation areas are the main factors in the development of low-carbon competitiveness. China should become the leader of carbon competitiveness by playing the leading role in the Eastern Region, optimizing the industrial structure, improving government supervision and strengthening environmental protection.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides a quantitative reference for evaluating China' low-carbon competitiveness, which is beneficial for environmental policymaking. In addition, the evaluation and analysis methods offer relevant implications for developing countries.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Enhancing internal communication to build social capital amongst hospitality employees - the role of social media
|
[
"Qualitative research",
"Employees",
"Internal communication",
"Social capital theory"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The hospitality industry is a labor-intensive industry that often operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making it challenging to communicate and engage with employees, particularly considering the mobility requirements of their jobs (i.e. their time at a computer is very limited). Nonetheless, informed employees are considered critical to realize hospitality service excellence (King, 2010). Frontline employees play a key role in customer satisfaction (Slatten and Mehmetoglu, 2011), making effective internal communication (IC) crucial in the current competitive environment (Wan, 2010). Despite such a need, research regarding effective communication practices in the dynamic hospitality workplace is lacking. Given the integral role employees play in facilitating the customer's experience, how to facilitate effective communication needs to be addressed.\nLiterature review: Social capital theory\nResearch design: When seeking rich descriptions of a complex phenomenon, the perspectives of an underrepresented group in the literature and/or the need to conduct exploratory work to inform theory and hypothesis development, qualitative research methods are advanced (Sofaer, 1999). Although the IC literature is often informed from a management perspective and social media is predominantly examined as an external marketing channel targeted at consumers, limited consideration has been given to the employees' perspective. For these reasons, a qualitative method was adopted to address the research objective. Specifically, a single case study was utilized, and data were collected via in-depth interviews. The case study method was chosen given its ability to control for contextual traits (Yin, 1994). As all employees work for the same organization, their responses have been shaped or influenced by the same organizational context, and, therefore, different organizational practices do not confound the interpretation of the findings (King and Grace, 2006).\nResults and discussion: The findings of the research indicated that all employees were exposed to various IC channels, and that the majority understood what the role of IC was, identifying several benefits that they believed were the result of effective IC practices. However, to successfully realize these benefits, a greater depth of understanding was required with respect to current practices used by the organization and what motivates employees to engage in certain IC channels. Having reflected on this, the concept of social media was introduced as a potential IC channel, whereby the majority of participants indicated that this innovative channel has the potential to address some of the limitations of existing channels. For ease of reference, Table II provides an overview of the themes that were identified and the frequency of mentions.\nConclusions: The hospitality industry has a high dependency on human resources to satisfy organizational goals. To do so, effective IC is essential. In this regard, this study explored the effects of existing IC practices and social media on the relationship between employees, the organization and their performance in accordance with SCT. To appreciate the relevance of social media as an IC channel, this study identified the characteristics and benefits of effective IC having identified the limitations of current practices. Based on the results of 20 semi-structured interviews and a comprehensive literature review, this study presented a conceptual framework of the IC process which afforded insight into how social media can augment traditional IC channels to enhance effective communication.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Adopting a social capital theoretical (SCT) lens, this study aims to propose a conceptual framework of effective internal communication (IC) for the hospitality industry. The study explores how to enhance current practices and the suitability of social media as an augmentation to traditional IC channels.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative research methodology, consisting of 20 semi-structured interviews with hospitality employees, was adopted. Following a \"reduction\" and \"interpretation\" process, 16 themes related to effective IC were identified which informed a conceptual framework.\nFindings: Characteristics of effective IC were identified in addition to IC benefits at both employee and organizational levels. Considering the limitations of current practices, the applicability of social media was explored. Requirements of effective IC suggest that new channels (e.g. social media) should be adopted to build social capital.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study informs SCT from a meso-level (process) perspective. The articulation of an IC framework informs how social capital can be built through effective IC, providing a foundation for further empirical examination as to the impact of various channels on the IC process. Adoption of a case study design suggests that results and implications can only be generalized to similar environments.\nPractical implications: The study details the characteristics of effective IC and its subsequent benefits, highlighting how social media can augment current IC practices in a hospitality organization.\nOriginality/value: Being a 24/7 labor-intensive operation makes employee communication to ensure service excellence challenging in the hospitality industry. Through the application of SCT and the exploration of social media in a workplace setting to enhance IC, significant theoretical and practical insights are realized.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Reducing transphobia: comparing the efficacy of direct and indirect contact
|
[
"Transgender",
"Intergroup contact theory",
"Direct contact",
"Indirect contact"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Many organisations today recognise the need to create a diverse workplace. Most research and discussion on creating gender equality focuses on women. While recent research has focused on issues faced by lesbians and gays, transgenders remain largely excluded from these discussions (Bowen and Blackmon, 2003; Wright et al., 2006). Researchers have observed that these minorities have even been overlooked by legislation that protects against discrimination and harassment (Correia and Kleiner, 2001). The word \"transgender\" - or \"trans\" - denotes people whose gender does not match the sex assigned to them at birth. They are often grouped as part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.\nLiterature review: Current perceptions\nMethod: A total of 159 students enroled in undergraduate courses at a prominent university in India were invited to participate in the study. The students were invited through an e-mail send out by a research associate who was not involved in instruction to the class. Therefore, they were not subject to any coercion. Following the completion of baseline assessment measures, the students were randomly divided into two batches. For students in batch 1 (78 students), the direct-contact intervention was applied. For the second batch of students (81 students), indirect-contact intervention was applied.\nResults: Two-way mixed ANOVA was employed to test the hypotheses. Two-way mixed ANOVA compares the mean differences between groups that have been split on two independent variables. The primary purpose of carrying out two-way mixed ANOVA is to understand if there is a two-way interaction (i.e. an interaction between the between-subjects and within-subjects factors). This ascertains whether the effect of one of the factors is dependent on the value of the other factor.\nDiscussion: Participants in both interventions had only moderate levels of transphobia at baseline. Both interventions reported significant reductions in transphobia at the post intervention stage. The direct contact intervention caused greater reduction in transphobia than the indirect contact intervention at the post intervention and follow-up stage. Further, the effects of direct contact lasted for a month after the intervention whereas the effects of indirect contact did not sustain till one month post intervention.\nPractical implications: The results of this study may benefit HR practitioners and policy makers in designing workplace initiatives and policies in creating an inclusive workplace.\nConclusion: This study is one of the first to investigate Indian students' perceptions of transgenders. It improves on earlier studies using similar interventions in two main ways. First, this study includes a follow-up assessment, which was not performed in most studies. Second, random assignment of participants to one of two conditions improves the reliability of the findings. This study provides a strong theoretical argument that interventions utilising interpersonal contact with transgender individuals can cause significant reductions in transphobia. This study examines the difference between direct and indirect contact in reducing transphobia. Results indicate that both direct and indirect contact cause a significant immediate decrease in transphobia at the post intervention stage. However, only direct contact caused significant reduction at the follow-up stage (one month after the intervention). Direct contact also effected a greater reduction in transphobia than indirect contact.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The transgender community faces prejudice and stigma and is one of the most ostracised groups in society. One of the ways to reduce prejudice is through intergroup contact. This may be achieved through direct or indirect contact. The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of direct and indirect contact on reducing transphobia.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Direct contact was achieved through a transgender speaker panel and indirect contact involved a video presentation. In total, 159 students enroled in undergraduate courses at a prominent university in India were enlisted for this study. Perceptions regarding transgenders were measured using the genderism and transphobia scale. Perceptions were measured at three different time points - before the contact, immediately after the contact and one month post contact.\nFindings: Results indicate that both direct and indirect contact cause a significant immediate decrease in transphobia at the post intervention stage. However, only direct contact caused significant reduction at the follow-up stage (one month after the intervention). Direct contact also effected a greater reduction in transphobia than indirect contact.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study extends previous research that shows that speaker panels involving sexual minority speakers can result in reducing stigma (e.g. Croteau and Kusek, 1992). The present study shows that such speaker panels can also be useful for reducing stigma against transgender individuals. Another important outcome of this study is the relative effectiveness of direct contact in reducing transphobia compared to indirect contact. Direct contact resulted in greater reduction in transphobia both at the post-test and follow-up stages compared to indirect contact.\nPractical implications: The results of this study may benefit HR practitioners and policy makers in designing workplace initiatives and policies in creating an inclusive workplace. This study shows that meaningful interaction with transgenders would be a key step in reducing stigmatisation. Since direct contact is rarely expensive or time consuming, it can be a valuable tool to improve the integration of transgender individuals within society. Therefore, students and employees may be encouraged to interact with transgender individuals through panel discussions and workshops. Indirect contact may be used as a preliminary intervention in certain cases where direct contact may be difficult to organise.\nSocial implications: The stigma faced by transgender individuals has a significant negative impact on their quality of life (Grant et al., 2014; Reisner and Juntunen, 2015). It is, therefore, necessary to recognise and reduce prejudice against transgenders at both the college and school levels as well as in work organisations. Educators and managers have a significant role to play in this societal change. This study shows that stigma reduction can be achieved in a fairly simple way through contact theory.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the first to investigate Indian students' perceptions of transgenders. It improves on earlier studies using similar interventions in two main ways. First, this study includes a follow-up assessment, which was not performed in most studies. Second, random assignment of participants to one of two conditions improves the reliability of the findings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
TFP growth, technological progress and efficiencies change: Empirical evidence from Canadian manufacturing industries
|
[
"Canada",
"Manufacturing industries",
"Productivity rate",
"Innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: In the productivity literature, total factor productivity (TFP) growth is most commonly computed via the growth accounting framework or the growth regression approach. In the first case, TFP growth is derived residually as a measure of output growth that cannot be accounted for by inputs growth. In the second case, parametric approaches are applied by relating economic growth to a list of potential explanatory variables to obtain direct measure of TFP growth. Neither methodology decomposes TFP growth into its components.However, Aigner et al. (1977) and Meeusen and van den Broeck (1977) simultaneously proposed a stochastic Frontier production model that allows decomposing TFP growth into two components: technological progress (TP) and change in technical efficiency (TE). The former reflects the improvement stemming from innovation and the diffusion of new knowledge and technologies, while the latter measures the movement of production towards the Frontier. A notable advantage of the stochastic Frontier is the fact that the restrictive assumptions about firms operating with full efficiency are relaxed. Studies that assume that firms operate with full efficiency ignore the potential contribution of efficiency changes to TFP growth, which leads to biased and misleading results. Hence, the analysis conducted in this paper overcomes this assumption.The stochastic Frontier model has been intensively used to decompose TFP growth at the firm, industry, state and even more at the national levels. Although a vast number of empirical applications have contributed to identify the source of TFP growth by focusing on its decompositions, representative studies are Nishimizu and Page (1982), Kumbhakar (1990), Fecher and Perelman (1992), Domazlicky and Weber (1998), to mention only a few. Some studies have extended their analysis to deal with issues such as scale effects and allocative efficiency change (AEC). By applying a flexible stochastic translog function, Kumbhakar and Lovell (2000), Kim and Han (2001) and Sharma et al. (2007) decompose TFP growth into its components: TP, changes in TE, changes in allocative efficiency and scale effects.Following the aforementioned studies, the objective of this paper is to decompose TFP growth in the Canadian manufacturing industries using the stochastic Frontier approach. Having a detailed panel data set of 18 three-digit manufacturing industries from 1990 to 2005, we break down TFP growth in Canadian manufacturing industries into its components. To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing studies for Canadian manufacturing has decomposed the TFP growth. However, decomposing the TFP growth into TP and efficiency changes is important to better understand whether gains in industry productivity levels are achieved through the efficient use of inputs or through TP. From this perspective, we argue that the decomposition carried out in this study may be very helpful to elicit the correct diagnosis of Canada's productivity problem and develop effective policies to reverse the situation, thereby reducing Canada's lagging productivity gap.The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the methodology; following this, data variables are presented. Section 4 presents the empirical results. Section 5 contains some concluding remarks.\n2 Methodology: Stochastic Frontier model was pioneered by Aigner et al. (1977) and Meeusen and van den Broeck (1977) and extended by Pitt and Lee (1981), Schmidt and Sickles (1984), Kumbhakar (1990) and Battese and Coelli (1992a, b, 1995) to allow for panel data estimation, in which TE and TP vary over time and across production units. In this section, however, we describe the methodology used in the efficiency literature for estimating stochastic Frontier production and the decomposition of TFP growth. In line with Bauer (1990), Kumbhakar et al. (1991) and Huang and Liu (1994), we begin with a stochastic Frontier model which can be estimated with panel data, in which inefficiency effects can be expressed as a specific function of explanatory variables: Equation 1 where yit denotes the output produced by industry i in year t; xit is the corresponding matrix of explanatory variables; b is a vector of parameters to be estimated. The vit's are random errors assumed to be independent and identically distributed with mean zero and variance sv2. The uit are non-negative random variables associated with technical inefficiency of production, which are assumed to be independently distributed, such that uit are obtained by truncation at zero of the normal distribution with mean zit d and variance su2. Thus, the technical inefficiency effects uit in the stochastic Frontier model (1) can be specified as follows: Equation 2 where zit is the matrix of explanatory variables associated with the technical inefficiency effects of industry i in year t; d is a vector of unknown parameters to be estimated and wit are defined by truncation of the normal distribution with zero mean and variance s2. Given the specification of technical inefficiency effects in equation (2), the TE of production of unit i at time t is then defined as[1]: Equation 3 Note that the TE index varies between 0 and 1. A measure equal to 1 indicates that a firm operates with full efficiency given combinations of inputs and the state of technology. TE below 1 means the production process is not optimal.Nevertheless, when using the parametric method to estimate the production efficiency, the functional form for the production function should be specified. This study chooses a translog specification for the production Frontier in equation (1). A great advantage of using this specification is that it does not require imposing general restrictions on parameters, and second, it allows us to evaluate the contribution of scale change (SC) and allocative efficiency to TFP. The translog stochastic Frontier production function can be written in terms of logarithms as follows: Equation 4 In equation (4), kit is the stock of capital, lit is labour input and t is the time trend. The stochastic Frontier production, defined by equation (4), and the technical inefficiency effects, specified by equation (2), can be jointly estimated by the maximum-likelihood estimation. Once the stochastic Frontier is estimated, then an index of TP can be easily evaluated by deriving equation (4) with respect to time, yielding: Equation 5 and the associated output elasticites for capital and labour can be estimated empirically based on the following equations[2]: Equation 6 Next, to estimate TFP growth, we begin by fully differentiating the stochastic part of equation (1) with respect to time: Equation 7 Equation (7) can be rewritten in the following form: Equation 8 where gy denotes the growth rate of aggregate output, gk denotes the growth rate of the stock of capital, gl is the growth rate of labour and ek,el are as defined previously.We also know from Solow (1957) that TFP growth can be obtained by subtracting the weighted growth of factor inputs from the growth rate of output: Equation 9 The characters sk and sl are the capital and labour inputs share in production costs, respectively. Substituting equation (8) into (9) and after some algebraic manipulations, we get: Equation 10 where e denotes the measurement of returns to scale and ej=ej/e, j=k,l. Equation (10) is the decomposition of TFP growth (Kumbhakar and Lovell, 2000). Now, from equation (10), we can see easily that TFP growth is split into four components: TP, the change in TE, the change in the scale of production, the change in allocative efficiency (the last term in square brackets). If the assumption of constant returns to scale holds, the third term on the right-hand side cancels out, and if there are increasing returns to scale, changes in the quantity of inputs contribute positively to the growth of TFP. In the case of decreasing returns to scale, the reasoning is straightforward. As mentioned above, the last term on the right-hand side of equation (10) represents the change in allocative efficiency; with specific measures of inputs shares, it is possible to determine the contribution of factor allocation into the TFP growth.\n3 Data: The data used in this empirical analysis were obtained mainly from Statistics Canada. The data cover 18 manufacturing industries over a span of 16 years. We assembled time series of gross domestic product at basic price in 1997 Canadian dollars, capital stock in 1997 dollars and we utilized hours worked as a labour input. The research and development (R&D) expenditure data are taken from the science, innovation and electronic information division of Statistics Canada, information and communications technology (ICT) capital stock series in 1997 dollars and the machinery and equipment (M&E) are from the investment and capital stock division of Statistics Canada. The trade data as well as share of hours worked by workers with a university degree are collected from industry Canada. And nominal interest rates series from the Bank of Canada.\n4 Empirical results: 4.1 Tests of hypotheses\n5 Concluding remarks: Many commentators in Canadian academic and policy circles argue that to better understand productivity trends and to design guidelines to promote productivity performance over long periods of time, it is crucial to identify the sources of productivity growth. In this paper, we apply a stochastic Frontier production model to Canadian manufacturing industries to investigate the sources of TFP growth. Our results sum as follows. First, the decomposition results reveal that during the period under study, TP has been the main driving force of productivity growth, while negative efficiency changes observed in certain industries have contributed to pulling productivity down. Second, the empirical results show that R&D expenditure and ICT investment as well as trade openness exert a positive impact on economic growth by channel of efficiency gains. Third, the result shows that there is no positive relationship between M&E intensity and efficiency gains. Furthermore, we find that an increase in the share of hours worked by workers with a university degree does not enhance TE of an industry.Finally, the rate of TP (the most relevant component in the TFP growth decomposition), changes in TE, changes in allocative efficiency and scale effects are all important in determining the improvement of TFP growth.Thus, we speculate that the decomposition undertakes in this study provides more insights into the better understanding of the contribution of TP and efficiency changes to the enhancement of economic performance and facilitate the way policy makers implement industrial policies.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to apply a stochastic Frontier production model to Canadian manufacturing industries, to investigate the sources of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. As productivity (growth) appears to be the single most important determinant of a nation's living standard or its level of real income over long periods of time, it is important to better understand the sources of productivity growth. In Canada, TFP growth is the major contributing factor (relative to changes in capital intensity) to labour productivity growth, particularly in manufacturing sector. However, the TFP gap is also the main source of labour productivity gap between Canada and other industrialized (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in recent years.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this paper, a stochastic Frontier production model is applied to Canadian manufacturing industries to investigate the sources of TFP growth. Using a comprehensive panel data set of 18 industries over the period 1990-2005 and the approach proposed by Kumbhakar et al. and Kumbhakar and Lovell, TFP growth is decomposed into technological progress (TP), changes in technical efficiency, changes in allocative efficiency and scale effects.\nFindings: - The decomposition reveals that during the period under study, TP has been the main driving force of productivity growth, while negative efficiency changes observed in certain industries have contributed to reduce average productivity growth. In addition, the empirical results show that research and development expenditure, information and communications technology investment, as well as trade openness exert a positive impact on productivity growth through the channel of efficiency gains.\nOriginality/value: - The author argues that the decomposition carried out in this study may be very helpful to elicit the correct diagnosis of Canada's productivity problem and develop effective policies to reverse the situation, thereby reducing Canada's lagging productivity gap.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.