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A study of contingency relationships between supplier involvement, absorptive capacity and agile product innovation
|
[
"Absorptive capacity",
"Agile product innovation",
"Agility",
"Supplier involvement"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Running a sustainable business and making it future-proof in the increasingly turbulent business environment of today requires certain capabilities, including operating in an agile and proactive manner so as to respond to market needs and changes (Brown and Bessant, 2003; Narasimhan et al., 2006). In the same context, achieving agile characteristics to create sustainable competitive advantage through innovation and product diversification has become increasingly dependent on supply chain (Qi et al., 2011). Firms need to align their supply chain strategies with their competitive strategies through proactively seeking efficient linkages or integration among internal functions, as well as with the suppliers and customers which comprise their supply chain (Qi et al., 2011; Narasimhan and Kim, 2002). Despite a large body of research on suppliers' involvement and integration in the firm's innovation and diversification strategies, the literature remains inconsistent. A lack of consensus exists on supplier involvement (SI) and its impacts on product development, innovation process and performance, and company capabilities (Faems et al., 2005; Nieto and Santamaria, 2007; Tsai, 2009; Belderbos et al., 2004). Such inconsistency may be associated with factors such as the perspective adopted by researchers, the context of study, and the approach, method and measures applied in the research. In particular, it is evident that contingent situations contribute to the mixed results reported (Wong et al., 2011), which highlights the importance of attention to conditions in market and business environment, supply chain structure and operations, and firm's internal processes and competencies.\n2 Theoretical background and research hypotheses: The concept and process of PI, has been influenced and evolved over the past two decades. Such evolutions can be found in emerged concepts such as dynamic capabilities to include responsiveness and agility (Narasimhan and Kim, 2002). As Teece et al. (1997) projected, capabilities such as timely responsiveness, rapid and flexible PI, and effective coordination and redeployment of internal and external competences are going to win markets for firms in the new global marketplace. PI to succeed should therefore be pursued in a flexible process involving continuous reconfiguration of products in an agile (responsive or proactive) manner by reliance on external sources, particularly suppliers, as well as internal capabilities (Ismail and Sharifi, 2006). Three elements can be signified in this perspective:\n3 Method: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4 Analysis: 4.1 Reliability, validity, and descriptive statistics\n5 Discussion: The key objective of this research was to investigate the contingency relationships between SI, AC, and API performance. The findings of this study are labelled in three categories as follows.\n6 Conclusion, limitation and future research: The research has been a successful attempt to extend the existing literature on \"PI\", and its relationship with suppliers' involvement, as well as the firm's AC. Introduction of agility concept as a leading theory to explain dynamics and uncertainties in the business environment provided a new angle to existing perspectives on innovation in firms.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to employ agility concept to develop a contingency perspective of relationship between suppliers' involvement, absorptive capacity (AC) and product innovation ( PI ). While the moderating effect of AC on the relationship between supplier involvement and PI performance is investigated, a firm's agility in PI is entered as one dimension of the firm's performance to accommodate a multidimensional perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper formulates six hypotheses extracted from the relevant literature. The survey was conducted over the internet by using web-based questionnaire. A sampling frame of 1,200 manufacturing UK-based companies provided 233 usable responses. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to test a validity and reliability of constructs and further the paper employed hierarchical multiple regression to test the research hypotheses.\nFindings: The results while reaffirm some of the existing theories of the subject provide some differing view of the issues allowing projection of new insight on the approach to PI and involvement of suppliers. The results support the proposition of PI performance multidimensionality where achievements beyond financial and market-related factors play a critical role. Furthermore, research findings suggest AC as a competitive factor that can provide the grounds for proactively winning in the PI game through increasing agility capabilities.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study uses a random sample of UK manufacturing companies, which could be extended to firms from outside the UK too.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides a new insight into the existing literature on \"new product innovation\" and its relationship with suppliers' involvement as well as the firm's AC by employing agility perspective, as a leading theory to explain dynamics and uncertainties in the business environment.\n",
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] |
Contemporary issues in events, festivals and destination management
|
[
"Festivals",
"Events",
"Destination management",
"Destination planning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Fierce competition among destinations has forced them to revisit the means by which they are managed and marketed with more integrated and professional approaches to destination development increasingly necessary. New product, service and experience developments are eagerly being sought to achieve economic gain and enhance destinations' longer-term sustainability in the wider destination marketplace. One of the most significant trends for destinations seeking differentiation has been through the organization of events and festivals. For the most part, these have not, however, been part of integrated destination development strategies. Rather, they have been short-term opportunistic strategies with many destinations merely reacting to competitive pressures rather than evaluating what events are truly best for their own destinations and that best fit the existing infrastructure, markets and products. Given the fierce competition among tourism destinations to differentiate themselves from others, this special issue aims to challenge those old thought patterns, models, research methods and ideas. It also aims to identify contemporary issues in event and festival research and the means by which it can contribute more effectively to the future planning, marketing and management of tourism destinations.\nEmerging themes: The articles in the special issue contribute to the successful planning, marketing and management of destinations through events and festivals. It identifies the latest thematic trends in event management research as well as evaluates consumer satisfaction and community perceptions of events and festivals for destination sustainability. Event and festival research is often criticized for the lack of rigorous research methods being used and the generalizability of the results. The articles included in this special issue apply various research methods and analysis, indicating the growth and increase in rigor of event and festival research. These research themes, methods and analysis are highlighted below in the 11 articles of the special issue.\nConcluding thoughts: Destinations compete to provide excellent experiences and high-quality products for their visitors (van Niekerk, 2014). Events and festivals are used to reinvent value for tourists in a new and innovative way (Roxas and Chadee, 2013). The tourism destination should develop their event portfolio in such a way that it reinforces the brand of the destination and lures tourist to the area. Events and festivals should be demand-side driven, managed through a bottom-up approach in the destination, should have a balanced event portfolio and events should be created in an integrated and sustainable way (Getz, 2013). The articles included in this special issue are timely, relevant and insightful and should be well received by scholars, students and practicing managers in our field.\n",
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"content": "Purpose: This article aims to provide a critical review of the articles included in this special issue and highlight their findings and contribution to events, festivals and destination management research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The article critically reviews methodologies, findings, themes and conclusions offered by each article included in this special issue.\nFindings: The articles in the special issue identify the latest thematic trends in events, festivals and destination management research and propose conceptual frameworks for event and festival life cycle trajectories. They build on previous research confirming how accessible tourism and a balanced event portfolio can increase the sustainability and competitiveness of the destination. Based on sound methodologies, they offer specific theoretical and practical implication for the successful planning, marketing and management of events, festivals and destinations. They provide suggestions on how event innovation, participatory sport events, mega sport events, food and wine festivals and meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) can assist in the marketing and branding of the tourism destination.\nResearch limitations/implications: The articles in this special issue lay the foundation for future research in events, festivals and destination management. Articles in this special issue apply various research methods and analysis, indicating the growth of event and festival research. Research methods and analysis techniques used in the special issue include content/theme analysis, case studies, qualitative studies and questionnaires. The research articles and methodologies used in this issue should help both researchers and industry practitioners.\nOriginality/value: This study highlights key findings, theoretical and practical implications and contributions of the articles included in this special issue. It provides a holistic view of events, festivals and destination management research and suggests areas for future research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Identifying the hidden layers of cultural changes and pinpointing the contributing factors of cultural changes using the casual layered analysis
|
[
"Metaphors",
"Critical realism",
"Casual layered analysis",
"Cultural changes",
"Hidden layers",
"Worldviews"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As the word culture is an abstract concept, providing an integrated and comprehensive definition of culture is very difficult. \"Culture is the body of faith, beliefs, meaningful symbols and values in terms of which people describe their emotions and make their decisions\" (Geertz, 1957). It is \"a historically transferred template of interpretation embodied in symbols, a system of inherited perceptions declared in symbolic shape by means which individuals associate\" (Geertz, 1973, p. 89). It is the summation of cognition, comprehension, attitudes and customary behavior patterns shared and transferred by the individuals of a special society (Linton, R 1940). Culture can be defined in many ways, and it has effects on everything people do in their society regarding their thoughts, values, tendencies and normative or expected patterns of behavior. Culture is not spontaneously inherited and does not exist on its own, but it is consistently shared by individuals of a society (Hall, 1976). Culture is defined by Hofstede as \"the participatory scheduling of mind that separates the individuals of one society from another, and is transferred from generation to generation\" (Hofstede, 1980). The term \"culture\" has not always been applied in literary studies, and in fact the very concept denoted by the term is relatively new. \"Culture or Civilization\" wrote the influential anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in 1871, \"taken in its wide ethnographic sense, culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society\" (Tylor, 1871). The general definition of culture includes beliefs, values and civilization of a society. Between the years 1940s and 1950s, culture background was quite a functional concept. The aims of culture historiographers to record the growth of cultures in special places were met between the years 1920s and 1930s, and methods to do so were formalized. Likewise, when prior attempts were made to document specific cultural sequences, by the late 1940s and early 1950s, efforts were regularly made to explain the disclosed documentation of culture development, and different maxims were formalized to fulfill this mission. In a study of newly emerging results on the developmental histories of cultures in various areas, Betty J. Meggers presented the question, \"are the new ideas and interpretations scientific?\" She considered that different archaeologists operating in various areas on different subjects were applying \"the similar main cultural principles and have drawn similar common results from them\" (Meggers, 1955). The list of historical culture processes called upon by culture historians is tabulated in Table I.\n2. Literature review: CLA is a new futures research theory and method. It is being used to create transformative spaces for the creation of alternative futures. The challenge with this method is to do research that goes through its different layers of analysis and therefore is inclusive of various ways of knowing (Inayatullah, 2009). CLA starts with the litany - the official view of the future. This official view is almost always presented as empirical data, that is, empirical reality. Undoubtedly, one can argue that myths and metaphors are not empirical reality, but in CLA, the myth and metaphor dimension is related to and linked with the litany (Inayatullah, 2010).\n3. Casual layered analysis and its applications: CLA is a method put into practice in strategic foresight and futures studies to more effectively form the future (Inayatullah, 2014). The method was introduced by Sohail Inayatullah, a Pakistani-Australian futurist. CLA is one of the new method in futures studies and foresight areas. The advantage of the method is not in forecasting the future but in building flexible spaces for the formation of possible futures. CLA includes metaphorical dimension and links it to other layers of analysis. CLA is composed of four layers: the litany, social causes, discourse/worldview and myth/metaphor. The difficulty is to carry out a research that goes up and down these layers of analysis and thus covers various ways of knowing (Inayatullah, 1998). The first layer is called litany, which is the shallowest layer: this layer embodies obvious data and quantitative trends, and is routinely overstated and used for political purposes. The consequence maybe an impression of disinclination, inability, helplessness or projected action; this is the conventional level of futures research which can readily create a politics of fear (Inayatullah, 1998). The second layer is called social causes: cultural, economic, historical and political factors. The meanings and the results of litany layer are interpreted; the relevant meaning and description is allocated to quantitative data; this kind of analysis is frequently declared by policy communities and printed as editorial pieces in press or in not-completely educational journals. Providing one is fortunate afterward the accelerating action is sometimes analyzed (population growth and advances in medicine/health, e.g.). This layer is extremely good at pragmatic interpretations as well as educational analysis. The role of the state and other actors and shareholders is mostly investigated at this layer. The third layer is called the worldviews and the discourses, which validate and reinforce the structure. The purpose of this layer is to find out deeper cultural, linguistic, social structures that are actor-constant (not reliant on who are the actors). Comprehending deeper assumptions on the far side of the subject is significant here as are efforts to analyze the problem. Nevertheless, in this layer, one can detect how diverse worldviews/discourses (the social, the economic, the religious, the cultural, e.g.) perform more than cause or intercede the subject but shape it, and how the discourse we use to understand is complicit in our foundation of the subject. The fourth and deepest layer is called metaphor and myth. These are the deep-rooted narratives, the collective prototype and the unconscious aspects of the problem. This level prepares an intellectual/emotional level experience to the worldview under probing. The language utilized is less special, more linked to eliciting visual perspectives, bringing or recalling to the conscious mind, with being conscious of the heart or feeling the heart instead of reading the head.\n4. Critical realism and digging the deeper layers of cultural changes: However, the various definitions of the word \"culture\" should be examined to see what shape the culture is and what its functions are, and on what basis it rests. One of the main causes for the evolution of the view that is labeled critical realism is the critique of the positivist method that has influenced many of the social sciences since the 1930s (Danermark et al., 2001). Critical realism is progressively being affiliated with the British philosopher Roy Bhaskar. Therefore, this is correct, as he is the philosopher who has donated critical realism a relevant philosophical language and has promoted the development of the philosophic tradition. when he brought up the first perfect explanation, A Realist Theory of Science (Bhaskar, 1978); he was forcefully encouraged by his teacher, Rom Harre, who in his book The Principles of Scientific Thinking (Harre,1970) had established the cornerstones with his pervasive criticism of positivism. Bhaskar's major plan was to debate that reality has depth, and that comprehension can pierce more or less deeply into reality, without ever touching the lowest point. Intransitively, real level-abstracted transfactual causal mechanisms will be instantiated whenever the corresponding entities exist, but the causation of any actual (multilayered) event will be the result of the combined effects of a number of such mechanisms operating at the different levels included in the event. It is precisely because \"the [actual] ordinary phenomena of the world\" are inherently multilayered, that we need to bring to bear different [real] single-layered causal mechanisms to explain different aspects of them. Bhaskar believes that reality is composed of different layers. Futurists especially the epistemologist believe that the first level of the observation of reality (empirical observations) is always misleading; therefore, professional futurists in thinking about future scenarios, see the deeper layers of reality and those that others are not able to see them. In fact, they find out the roots and hidden aspects of reality that are not visible and understood through superficial thinking. So as to achieve an integrated idea in this context, cultural changes, we should find the underlying reality in semantic, social, political, cultural and technological structures. The aim of this paper is not to determine the desirable cultural changes in the future, but to analyze and identify the shaping/contributing factors.\n5. Conclusions: In this paper, first, we investigated various studies that had been carried out to discover the causes of cultural changes; it is notable that nearly all these studies probed the cultural changes from one dimension instead of probing it as a multidimensional reality. Afterward, we presented CLA as an applied methodology to identify the significant factors in each layer, which could have a strong impact in forming other layers' factors. In addition, we explained the hidden layers of cultural changes (litany, social systems, dominant worldviews/discourses and metaphors), which can bring about the cultural changes; we also tried to answer the questions of \"how to identify the main factors in each layer based on CLA which could have a strong impact in shaping other layers' factors? What are the dominant metaphors and worldviews that human beings are telling themselves about our universe and the future influencing the cultural changes?\" This paper showed that, there have been some contributing factors such as economy, technology, politics, society, environment, mass media, globalization and migration at the second-layer \"social systems layer,\" which could trigger cultural changes in the first layer \"litany\"; consequently, in the third and deeper layer, two dominant worldviews materialist/secular worldview and religious worldview affecting the contributing factors have been identified. They, in turn, are based on metaphor or perfect stories/myths at the deepest layer, which supported those worldviews. It could be concluded that because the cultural changes - as a reality - is composed of different layers, it is important to dig into different layers of reality to comprehend the significant shaping factors of that reality to visualize and make the better future. Furthermore, as an example of CLA application, underlying reasons of increase in divorce rate as a symbol of cultural changes was examined using the CLA method.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: Various theoretical studies were carried out which attempted to identify impacting factors of cultural changes; however, these studies ignored the correlation among other affecting factors all together. In this paper, the authors aim not only to discuss the hidden layers that trigger the cultural changes but also to answer the questions of how to identify the main factors in each layer based on casual layered analysis (CLA), which could have a strong impact in shaping other layers' factors? What are the dominant metaphors and worldviews that human beings are telling themselves about our universe that influences the future cultural changes?\nDesign/methodology/approach: To answer the questions of \"how to identify the main factors in each layer,\" the CLA methodology was used to investigate the underlying reasons. CLA takes into account four layers (litany, social systems, dominant discourse and worldviews and metaphors), which could be a tremendous help in identifying the mentioned factors.\nFindings: The analysis shows that there are some contributing factors such as economy, technology, politics, society, environment, mass media, globalization and migration at the second layer - \"social systems layer\" - which may trigger cultural changes in first layer \"litany\"; in addition, in the third and deeper layer two dominant worldviews - materialist/secular and religious affecting the contributing factors in the second layer - were identified. Such worldviews are, in turn, supported by metaphors or perfect stories/myths of the deepest layer.\nOriginality/value: It can be concluded that because the cultural changes as a reality is composed of different layers, it is important to dig into different layers of reality to comprehend the significant shaping factors of that reality to visualize and make the better future.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Impact of high-performance work systems on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to quit in Canadian organizations
|
[
"Employee attitudes",
"Human resource management",
"Employee turnover",
"Working practices",
"Skills shortages"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: One of the most critical issues facing Canadian organizations today is how to retain their highly knowledgeable and skilled employees (Fang, 2009). This preoccupation is explained notably by the important costs that must be incurred in order to replace employees that leave the organization (Hausknecht and Trevor, 2011) and by a mounting problem in attracting and recruiting new employees. Now, in many countries, a large number of employers are simply not able to fill certain vacancies, or do so with great difficulty (Conen et al., 2012), thus constituting a drawback to their development. In such a context, an employer's human resource management (HRM) practices are of paramount importance because many such practices could help in reducing the rate of employee turnover.\n2. Theoretical background: Employee retention is an issue of strategic importance for contemporary organizations. Not only is it very costly to replace employees that leave the organization (Hausknecht and Trevor, 2011) but human capital is presently recognized as a necessary component in the development of a competitive advantage (Wright et al., 2001).\n3. Method: 3.1. Research model\n4. Results: Table I presents the descriptive statistics and correlation matrix of the research variables. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the research model, using Bentler and Weeks' (1980) approach as implemented in the EQS computer program (Bentler, 1995). As recommended by Anderson and Gerbing (1988), the data were analyzed in two steps. First, the validity of the research constructs was assessed from a separate estimation of the measurement model by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Second, the research model was tested by the simultaneous estimation of the measurement and theoretical (or structural) models.\n5. Discussion and implications: The results of this study are broadly in line with the hypotheses formulated in the research model by demonstrating the existence of significant links between HRM practices, JS, OC and intention to quit. In this regard, our results help fill a research gap (Allen et al., 2003) and provide empirical evidence of the effect of HPWS upon an individual's decision to quit the organization that employs him or her. These results also allow us to better understand how the effects of HPWS are exerted on the intention to quit by highlighting the mediating role played by JS and OC. In addition, this study is one of the few that demonstrates the synergistic effect that can be attributed to HPWS.\n6. Limitations and conclusion: Results of this research should naturally be considered in the light of certain limitations. First, the cross-sectional nature of the study prevents us from inferring true causality between HRM practices (or HPWS) and the attitudes and behaviors of employees. Only a longitudinal study measuring levels of JS, OC and QI before and after implementation of such practices would establish such causality. Second, this study did not take into account other factors that may contribute to the retention of an employee such as the state of the labor market, the size of the organization or the \"embedded\" relationships developed through the job with the employee's work colleagues, friends or community. Third, measuring all variables through a self-administered questionnaire may pose a risk of common method bias and lead to an overestimation of the relationships between attitudinal and behavioral constructs, entailing that basic precautions must be taken to minimize this risk (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Thus, the questionnaire was designed to be anonymous, giving the respondents all the latitude needed to express their true perceptions, attitudes and intentions. Robust measurement scales were used, with the independent and dependent variables being placed in different sections of the questionnaire. Different question formats were used for each set of variables, that is, for HRM practices, JS, OC and QI. The fact that these constructs are clearly distinct both conceptually and in terms of their underlying factors also contributes to reduce the risk attributable to common method bias (Brannick et al., 2010). Moreover, we used the latent method factor approach recommended by Podsdakoff et al. (2003) to further examine this issue. Hence we conducted a CFA, using EQS, in which an unmeasured latent method construct (ULMC) was added to the measurement model, the nine measures being allowed to load on this construct as well as on their theoretical construct. The CFA allowed us to break down the variance of the measures into theoretical, method and random error components (Williams et al., 1989). The results showed that 59 percent of the variance was explained by the four theoretical constructs and only 14 percent by the ULMC, the remaining 27 percent being explained by random errors. Moreover, this model did not fit the data better (kh2/df=4.4, NFI=0.97, GFI=0.97, CFI=0.98, RMR=0.130, RMSEA=0.068) than a second CFA model in which the latent method construct was removed (kh2/df=4.2, NFI=0.97, GFI=0.97, CFI=0.98, RMR=0.134, RMSEA=0.066), further suggesting that common method bias is not a major threat in this study.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of the influence of high-performance work systems (HPWS) upon job satisfaction (JS), organizational commitment (OC) and intention to quit (QI).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data come from a questionnaire administered to 730 employees in different organizations. All questionnaires were administered \"live,\" in the presence of one or more members of the research team, with the ability to answer any of the respondents' clarification questions.\nFindings: The results of this study allow the authors to better understand how the effects of HPWS are exerted on the intention to quit by highlighting the mediating role played by JS and OC. In addition, the results demonstrate a synergistic effect of HPWS, meaning that the combined effects of three sets of HR practices (skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing and opportunity-enhancing practices) is greater than the sum of each set taken individually.\nResearch limitations/implications: The cross-sectional nature of the study prevents the authors from inferring true causality between human resource management (HRM) practices and the attitudes and behaviors of employees. Only a longitudinal study measuring levels of JS, OC and quit intention before and after implementation of such practices would establish such causality.\nPractical implications: For leaders and managers of organizations seeking to reduce the rate of employee turnover, the results are eloquent: increased investment in a HPWS can significantly improve JS, helping to increase OC and reduce intention to quit. In the prevailing context of \"talent war,\" organizations that are the most proactive in the implementation of HRM systems, that is, systems designed to improve the skills of employees, to motivate them to use these skills and to empower them in their decision making at work, will be the employers that are more likely to retain skilled employees.\nOriginality/value: This paper focusses on the complementary rather than aggregate effects of three sets of HRM practices, thus contributing to the discussion on the notion of complementarity among HRM practices, a notion that has been called into question in certain studies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Service research: progress toward interdisciplinary collaboration
|
[
"Service quality",
"Service recovery",
"Frontline service employees",
"Self-service technology",
"Co-creation",
"Artificial intelligence"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The growth of services is one of the most impactful recent trends in the global economy. Across an expanding range of industries, services contribute an estimated 69 per cent of global GDP, up from 63 per cent in 1997. This increase is reflected in the USA, where services account for approximately 78.9 per cent of GDP, up from 74.7 per cent in 1997, while professional and business services only account for 14 per cent (Buckley and Majumdar, 2018). Other industries accounting for large portions of the US 2017 GDP ($13.1tn) include real estate rental and leasing (15 per cent) and educational services, health care and social assistance (10 per cent). Increasing researcher attention on services has generally paralleled these trends. However, the complexity of research questions prioritized by researchers and practitioners require a broader view of service domain (Ostrom et al., 2010, 2015). In particular, the future of service research requires broadening conceptual frameworks via interdisciplinary collaboration.\nConceptual development in service research: Despite calls for interdisciplinary work remaining largely unanswered (Bowen, 1990; Ostrom et al., 2015; Parasuraman, 2007; Rust, 1998, 2004), there is reason to be optimistic about future collaboration in service research. Recent conceptual contributions demonstrate the work needed to promote collaborative service research that integrates insights from multiple disciplines (e.g. revised conceptual frameworks and clarified construct definitions). For example, Dong and Sivakumar (2017) distinguish co-creation of value from other concepts that have been \"stacked\" upon one another (coproduction, customer participation, and customer engagement). This disentanglement of stacked constructs is essential to enabling future work across disciplines to be possible (Gustafsson et al., 2016).\nResearch agenda: Based on the conceptual advances in the abovementioned research areas, the following research agenda is presented that encompasses two parts. The first component is a framework that outlines approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration in service research. The framework details considerations service researchers must acknowledge and explore to broaden the scope of service research in a meaningful manner. The second component highlights promising avenues that should be addressed by service researchers who are interested in exploring novel areas in the service domain.\nConclusion: A substantial increase in interdisciplinary collaboration in service research appears to be within reach because conceptual advances have begun to loosen constraints on such work. Ostrom et al. (2015) suggest that a dramatic turn of events suddenly resulting in interdisciplinarity throughout the field is unlikely and that a gradual process is more probable. This process is now underway and service researchers are well positioned to, \"move away from their traditional disciplinary silos and design and conduct research involving multidisciplinary partnerships.\" (Ostrom et al., 2015, p. 132).\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to promote a broadened view of service research and to demonstrate a path for integrating interdisciplinary perspectives with services marketing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two major streams of service literature are reviewed, highlighting key conceptual developments in each. Through synthesis of prior literature, a research framework and agenda are developed.\nFindings: The findings indicate that major service research areas have been extensively explored, yet service literature is fragmented on key concepts. This can make it challenging to collaborate across disciplines. This work develops a framework for integrating concepts across disciplines to foster more impactful work.\nOriginality/value: This work presents a unique framework for integrating interdisciplinary perspectives with services marketing. Moreover, a research agenda for the specific purpose of promoting collaboration across disciplines is presented.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Evaluation of scheduling using triangular whitenization functions
|
[
"Scheduling",
"Grey systems theory",
"Learning curve",
"Time study"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Job processing times are assumed to be fixed and known in traditional scheduling problems. However, recent empirical studies in several industries have verified that unit costs decline as firms produce more of a product and gain knowledge or experience. For instance, Biskup (1999) pointed out that repeated processing of similar tasks improves worker skills; workers are able to perform setup, to deal with machine operations and software, or to handle raw materials and components at a greater pace.\n2. A practical example in Electrogen Company: Electrogen Company is one of the biggest induction electromotor manufacturers in the Middle East. The company was established in Iran in 1988. The company includes pressing, die casting, winding, machining, rubber injection, and assembling shops. Table I shows the list of Electrogen company products.\n3. Solving the practical example: A time study involves observing and timing activities, and then recapping the observed times into usable time standards. Traditionally, a stopwatch is used to make observations. Observed times are written on a data sheet. Later, back in the office, the data sheet are analysed and recapped.\n4. Conclusion: We have determined the standard time using the traditional time study. The repeated processing of similar task improves the worker skills. LC is a mathematical representation to estimate the time of tasks which occurs repeatedly. Then, the problem has been solved by LC model. The results show that the time required for a certain task to be performed normally reduces on its frequent completion, as more units are produced over time, we, thus, expect to have an increase in the total worker's output performance. The parameter prediction is considered a major disadvantage from which LC suffers. Scheduling problems are complex and uncertain, and it is very rare for such systems to be exactly determined in all their complexity. According to grey systems theory, the job processing time can be considered as the object that extension is definite but intension is uncertain.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The time required for a certain task to be performed normally reduces on its frequent completion, as more units are produced over time, it is expected to have an increase in the total worker's output performance. Learning curve (LC) is a mathematical representation to estimate the time of tasks which occurs repeatedly. The parameter prediction is considered a major disadvantage from which LC suffers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate grey systems theory as a method for the standard time.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The proposed method starts with data which are obtained by traditional time study and then, models LC for an assembling activity of Electrogen Company. The paper studies the grey evaluation method based on triangular whitenization weight functions which includes two classes: endpoint triangular whitenization functions and center-point triangular whitenization functions. The grey system results are compared with those of the LC.\nFindings: The results show that the standard time given by grey systems theory is closer than the standard time given by LC to standard time with 100 per cent performance level.\nOriginality/value: Scheduling problems are complex and uncertain, and it is very rare for such systems to be exactly determined in all their complexity. According to grey systems theory, the job processing time can be considered as the object that extension is definite but intension is uncertain. Consequently, grey systems theory with its focus on the uncertainty problems of small samples and incomplete information is proposed in the paper.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Work time and well-being for workers at home: evidence from the American Time Use Survey
|
[
"Telework",
"American time use survey",
"Instantaneous well-being",
"Market work time"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In this paper, we analyze the amount of time spent in market work during working days, the timing of market work, and the instant enjoyment experienced during market work activities, of male and female US teleworkers (i.e. workers who do not commute to/from work), in comparison with their commuter counterparts. Although telework was banned in some US industries from the 1940s to the 1990s, the practice of teleworking has increased in recent decades, with 20m individuals in the US reporting working from home at least once a week, and this number is growing rapidly (Oettinger, 2011). Underlying the increase in the practice of telework, its benefits in terms of flexibility, control over the timing of work, work-life balance and workers well-being (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007; Allen et al., 2013; Anderson et al., 2015; Dockery and Bawa, 2018) are well documented, even though analyses of such benefits are scarce and conclusions are mixed.\n2. Literature review: The literature has linked teleworking to several benefits, including environmental advantages for society as a whole, including reductions in agglomeration and traffic congestion, air pollution, population centrality and energy consumption (Sampath et al., 1996; Safirova, 2002; White et al., 2007; Rhee, 2008). Telework is also considered a useful management approach for firms to improve organization and profitability and reduce attrition rates and office costs (Golden, 2006, Sardeshmukh et al., 2012; Duxbury and Halinski, 2014). However, these effects appear to vary across sectors, with little empirical evidence providing convincing results (Bloom et al., 2015).\n3. Data and variables: We use the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from years 2003 to 2015 to develop the empirical analyses. The ATUS provides us with information on individual time use, based on diaries in which respondents report their activities throughout the 24 hours of the day (from 4 a.m. to 4 a.m. of the next day). We pool all the years, so that we have enough observations for robust analyses.\n4. Telework and the allocation of time: We analyze the amount of time that male and female teleworkers spend in market work activities, in comparison to workers who commute to/from work. We also consider differences in the timing of these activities. We first estimate OLS models on the total time devoted to market work[5]. For a given individual i, we estimate the following equation:(1)\n5. Telework and well-being while working: We analyze the well-being of workers in their job tasks, comparing teleworkers and commuters. The ATUS conducted a Well-being Module in the years 2012 and 2013, aimed at measuring the instantaneous well-being experienced by individuals throughout the diary day (Kahneman et al., 2004; Kahneman and Krueger, 2006). Respondents fill out their diaries, and on the post-diary day individuals provide information about their feelings while doing three randomly chosen activities from among all the episodes of the diary day. These feelings are pain, happiness, sadness, fatigue, and stress, and take values on a seven-point scale, from 0 (\"did not experience the feeling at all\") to 6 (\"feeling was extremely strong\").\n6. Discussion of results: One of the hypothesized benefits of telework is that of a better work-life balance (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007; Allen et al., 2013: Chung and van der Horst, 2018). One aspect in which telework may be linked to a better work-life balance is that telework may allow workers to have more flexibility in their working hours, which may be similar to the channel used for self-employed mothers (Gimenez-Nadal et al., 2012). In this sense, teleworkers spend more time in non-market work and leisure activities during standard work hours (see Figure A1) and leave market work responsibilities to non-standard work hours (6 p.m. onwards). If parents must be available for children, they should, ideally, be available early in the morning and in the central hours of the day. Instead of working, teleworking parents can be doing non-market work (e.g. childcare) early in the morning and in the central hours of the day, leaving market work responsibilities for later in the day.\n7. Conclusions: In this paper, we first analyze how male and female teleworkers, defined as employees who do not spend time commuting to/from work, spend their time in market work, non-market work and leisure activities, in contrast to those who commute to a workplace. Our results indicate that teleworkers work fewer hours than do commuters during their working days, and specifically during the central hours of the day. Scheduled work hours, full-time employment rates, job characteristics and wages do not explain these differences for males or females. Our results contrast with Bloom et al. (2015), who find that those working from home work more hours in comparison to office-based workers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the time-allocation decisions of individuals who work from home (i.e. teleworkers), and compare them with their commuter counterparts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using data from the American Time Use Survey for the years 2003-2015, the authors analyze the time spent working, and the timing of work, of both commuters and teleworkers.\nFindings: Results show that teleworkers devote 40 percent less time to market work activities than do commuters, and less than 60 percent of teleworkers work at \"regular hours,\" vs around 80 percent of their commuter counterparts. Using information from the Well-being Module for the years 2012 and 2013, the authors find that male teleworkers experience lower levels of negative feelings while working than do commuters.\nOriginality/value: This paper addresses the timing of work of workers working from home; and the instant well-being experienced, exploiting information at diary level.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Let's talk about wine: does Twitter have value?
|
[
"Twitter",
"Value",
"Wines",
"Social media",
"Micro‐blogs",
"Brand engagement",
"Netnography",
"Brands",
"Consumer behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Early publications during the 1990s and 2000s on the use of digital communication and specifically social media were little more than descriptive and practitioner led. How social media and micro-blogs can be used to benefit wine businesses is just beginning to be acknowledged by fractions of the marketing industry, for example how social networking helps brand recognition. www.socialmediatoday.com, recently published an article on how American wineries were using social media to extend their PR impact. In addition, varietal tastings via Twitter exist and can attract over several hundred participants (Vincenzini, 2010). There exists a limited cadre of academic publications combining the wine environment and the digital economy, with the exception of work by Quinton and Harridge-March (2008, 2006) on UK consumers perceptions of risk and trust in online wine purchasing, Bruwer's work on Australian online wine purchasing (Bruwer and Wood, 2005), Thach's (2009) work on winery adoption of web 2.0, a recent paper by Reyneke et al. (2011) who considered how social media made luxury wine brands more visible and Taylor et al. (2011) who discussed approaches to engaging the wine consumer through e-commerce, and the barriers to adoption.The aims of this paper are twofold:* first to provide insight into how wine is being talked about through social media; and* second to determine whether the constructs of value can be demonstrated within Twitter content.The authors propose that Twitter may contain value and therefore that there is benefit in the use of Twitter for the wine industry and that the benefit comes from the different types of value, both soft and hard, that Twitter can create. By connecting the practice of Twitter with the potential of value creation for the wine community a significant contribution will be made at a time when wine businesses feel they should engage with social media and micro-blogging but do not understand the role or value of such media.Historically, articles on wine were restricted to discussions on the intrinsic quality of wine according to the opinions of select experts (Van Kirk and Schaller, 1988; Scudamore-Smith, 1992). These experts acted as proxy peer-leaders for interested wine consumers. Consumers typically had neither the knowledge nor much experience to feel confident in selecting from the myriad of wine options available. Accordingly, the role of the critic was to act as a risk reducer, to help give the consumer confidence in wine selection (Mitchell and Greatorex, 1988; Spawton and Bourqui, 1997). The expertise of these individuals has been highly sought after by wine businesses searching for an opportunity to generate consumer demand. Through the use of mass and specialised media, such experts have been highly influential in the communication and sale of wine. Accordingly, wineries value wine reviews as an important part of an on-going communication strategy. The mandate for wine businesses thus became about identifying the right critic, then providing them with samples for review. In addition to the promotion of awards won on the wine show circuit, these two methods of promotion represented the established promotional tools used by wine producers (Dunphy and Lockshin, 1998).In recent years, wine has become a topic of regular discussion in both the mass media and social media. With the evidence of wine critics' influence on wine sales perceived to be declining (Horverak, 2009), and the tried and traditional method of medal acquisition of lesser value in the growing markets of South-East Asia, wine businesses are having to consider new ways to court their potential customer (Sutanonpaiboon and Atkin, 2012). With a dearth of funds allocated to marketing budgets, the loss of these traditional methods of generating interest could have left small wine businesses at a distinct disadvantage. However, social media now provides a platform for all wine businesses to reach and influence new audiences. Rowan Gormley, owner of \"Naked Wines\" concludes that \"the single most exciting thing about social media is the [...] emphasis on talented producers and away from big companies\" (Woods, 2011, p. 29).Social media's emergence\nFindings and discussion: This paper now outlines the initial findings which are of interest to both academics and wine industry practitioners, subsequent detailed findings are the subject of a further paper.Wine is being talked about daily and hourly by an international and diverse tweeting population. Interest in wine, the consumption of wine, types of wine consumed, the anticipation of enjoyment of wine and the connection of wine to socialisation are clearly evident. There is no distinction on Twitter between what is important in a subject and what is a popular topic (Coeckelbergh, 2011) and the range of tweets on the subject of wine reflected this spectrum. The tweet content reflected the need to share information and opinions and to connect with other people (Java et al., 2007; Chen, 2011). The constraints of Twitter in terms of being limited to 140 characters deters certain aspects of reviewing and reflection (Coeckelbergh, 2011) within wine communication. For example, the immediate sharing of tasting notes is not possible, though tweets can direct a community member to the location of the notes. A finding of note was that tweets about wine did not exist in isolation but were frequently referring to other promotional activities such as offline wine tastings, competitions and blog pages indicating a level of integration with other offline and online media with which community members were familiar.The type of wine tweets and the output of the different types of wine tweeters will now be discussed followed by whether the data provided evidence that the constructs of value were apparent (Table II).Wine brand\nLimitations, suggestions for further research and management implications: This paper's limitations comprise that the data collection period was only one month, though the quantity of data was sizeable. Thus, it is not known if the tweets gathered over this time period were reflective of Twitter \"wine\" content throughout the rest of the year. In addition, Twitter is only one form of social media and thus the content and the profiles of those who tweet may not be representative of other social media environments. It is assumed that wine is discussed in many languages yet only English language tweets were investigated for this piece of exploratory research.Further directions for research would include a more focused enquiry into the applications of Twitter to create hard value for a wine business through marketing communications. It may be worthwhile to consider the process of awareness, interest, desire and action (AIDA) in relation to promotional tweets to determine whether or not this model remains relevant to consumers who participate in social media and whether any \"action\" may include evidence of hard value constructs such as direct sales or relationship management. A sample of case studies of wine retailers with a social media presence combined with consumer tweet content may provide valuable insight into the level of conversion from awareness to action. As yet, it is currently unknown to what extent awareness may be turned into hard value.As the wine industry grapples with the emerging social media platforms and the growing number of consumers who interact across those platforms to discuss wine, it is necessary to gain a clearer understanding of consumer activity in social media and the relationship to wine. By providing insight into how wine is talked (tweeted) about this paper enlightens the wine industry and in particular those with wine marketing responsibilities to reflect upon what communication tools and tone may be the most appropriate to use in order to engage with the expanding numbers of wine tweeters. For organisations, a consistent approach in developing Twitter strategy and practice is suggested that is congruent with their brand identity and target audience (Burton and Saboleva, 2011). The growth in Twitter as a mechanism for communication and engagement signals to wine businesses that they should enter the same digital space that their consumers currently occupy or in practitioner terms \"go to where the market is\" (Rheingold, 1993). The embracing of social media moves wine businesses beyond engaging with consumers through winery visits, email or direct mail marketing campaigns and offline tastings and into the social realm of connecting, sharing and extending audiences through social media. Thus, the business adoption of digital communication technology would facilitate one of the basic tenants of wine, the aspect of socialisation.From the research it is evident that wine producers and retailers are not yet engaging with their consumers via Twitter. Opportunities for relationship development, co-creation and brand strengthening, all of which create value for an organisation, are being lost as a result of not conducting and learning from content and sentiment analysis of social media outputs (Greenberg, 2010). Consumers are tweeting about wine and wine businesses should consider \"how\" and \"with what tone\" to enter these conversations rather than \"should we involve ourselves in Twitter at all?\" It is possible to include Twitter in the strategic marketing of a wine business with the benefit of connecting with current consumers and also those who are actively interested in wine who express themselves via Twitter.To conclude, this paper has demonstrated that Twitter has value within its content and connectivity for wine businesses. Whilst there might be those involved in the wine industry who are skeptical of the value of Twitter and its potential return (see Lockshin (2010) and the counter argument from Mooney (2011)) activity on Twitter can be tracked and analysed to determine any creation of soft and hard value. In an era when marketing is required to be more accountable the researchers suggest that embedding Twitter within the marketing strategy would be a practical approach to measuring social media's effectiveness. Early findings from this research have indicated that soft value is created via Twitter and that hard value may follow as the medium matures.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this exploratory research paper is twofold. First, to identify how wine is being talked about within the Twitter environment and second to examine whether the constructs of soft and hard value can be demonstrated within the social media, Twitter content. The overall aim is to establish whether Twitter can create value for wine stakeholders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A netnographic approach has been adopted through the collection of 1,500 English language tweets on the subject of wine which were analysed using Nvivo qualitative data analysis software against the constructs of value found in the literature.\nFindings: - The early findings suggest that Twitter can create soft value for wine focused businesses but that hard value is not yet strongly evident. Wine marketers need to be more aware of both the content of wine tweets and the profiles of those who tweet.\nPractical implications: - The use of social media within wine businesses is in its infancy. Wine focused businesses are currently not optimising value creation through Twitter. Whilst Twitter does exhibit value, wine marketers, wine brands and wine retailers are not engaging with consumers who are talking about wine via Twitter.\nOriginality/value: - This paper has provided evidence that there is value within social media, specifically Twitter. The contribution of this paper lies in identifying not only the types of value that wine businesses could develop by embracing Twitter but also how the different profiles use Twitter differently.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Measuring, evaluating and improving hospital quality parameters/dimensions - an integrated healthcare quality approach
|
[
"Healthcare",
"Patient‐staff relationship",
"Customer satisfaction",
"Quality management",
"Kazakhstan",
"Egypt",
"Jordan",
"Patients",
"Customer services quality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Healthcare satisfaction has gained greater importance, especially in developing countries. It is both a service quality indicator and a quality component. Strong healthcare systems enable healthcare providers to deliver better quality and value to patients (Radhika et al., 2007). Improved health status and patient satisfaction measures are ongoing concerns for hospital staff as quantitative and qualitative techniques are applied in continuous process improvement cycles (Deitrick et al., 2005). People are dying daily following uncontrollable events such as automobile accidents or chronic disease, but deaths following medical errors are preventable and a nation's healthcare system must reach the point where no patient will ever be a victim (Radhika et al., 2007).Competitiveness among healthcare organizations depends on patient satisfaction, which is created by responding to patient views and needs, continuous healthcare service improvement and overall doctor-patient relationship (Zineldin, 2006). The challenges achieving healthcare excellence are many and difficult. Trusko et al.(2007), for example, report how errors are difficult to measure for several reasons such as inadequate reporting and varied definitions. Further complications arise because most errors are not a single act but a chain of events. There are structure, personality, patient and provider problems to consider. Demographic changes, political environment, healthcare quality social perceptions and information technology can dramatically change healthcare. All this creates a complex situation in which we assess healthcare by analyzing patient satisfaction - what is valued by patients, how they perceive service quality and how these can be improved.Our aim in this article is to examine the major factors affecting patients' perception of cumulative summation. The factors included in this summation include: technical; functional; infrastructure; interaction and atmosphere in Almaty hospitals, adopted from previous research (Zineldin, 2006) in Jordanian and Egyptian hospitals. This research contributes to previous academic healthcare sector studies and quality management in two ways: Zineldin's (2006) model, including patient-physician relationship behavioural dimensions and patient satisfaction, will be reviewed and analyzed; and we empirically examine major factors affecting cumulative satisfaction to address whether Kazakhstan patients evaluate healthcare quality similarly or differently than Egypt and Jordan patients. Results can be used by staff to improve healthcare quality and patient satisfaction by setting healthcare quality strategies.\nKazakhstan healthcare: Kazakhstan is an independent, central-Asian republic. It neighbours Russia, which has a long border to the north, China to the east and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the south. The population was estimated as 14.8 million in 2002 (UNDP, 2002). The main population is diverse:* Kazakhs (52 percent);* Russians (31 percent);* Ukrainians (4 percent);* Germans (2 percent); and* 11 percent others (UNDP, 1997).The Kazakhstan population has decreased during the 1990s owing to lower birth rate (UNDP, 1997) and migration.Kazakhstan possesses enormous fossil fuel, mineral and metal reserves. The country enjoyed strong economic growth owing to the booming energy industry (Euromonitor International, 2007). Industrial sector managers hope to develop these natural resources, while new trade ties are being sought with markets outside the former Soviet Union. Kazakhstan has a promising economic prospect, given its vast natural resources (Kulzhanov and Healy, 1999). Economic growth led to rising consumer incomes, which consumers them to buy expensive over-the-counter healthcare products (Euromonitor International, 2007).Kazakhstan's health indices, since the 1950s, generally improved, but have deteriorated since the 1980s (McKee et al., 1998). In 1996, over 30 percent of the Kazakhstan population had incomes below the poverty line according to a World Bank funded National Living Standards Survey (UNDP, 1997). Life expectancy fell against a continuing rise in EU countries. However, life expectancy is higher compared to lower middle-income countries such as neighboring Turkey (Kulzhanov and Healy, 1999).An extensive healthcare system developed during the Soviet era was state-owned and centrally planned. The key principles were that services should be accessible to everyone and free (Kulzhanov and Healy, 1999). Before independence, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health administered Moscow policy through a centrally organized hierarchical structure, from the republic level to oblast/city administrations, then to the subordinate level (World Health Organization, 1994). In the 1980s, the system began to deteriorate and its management problems became apparent. The health sector traditionally had been assigned low priority compared to other \"productive\" economies. As budgets became tighter, healthcare services could not meet demand and facilities were forced to unofficially transfer costs to the population as user charges (Kulzhanov and Healy, 1999). The Committee of Health lacked capacity and power to implement a comprehensive national health strategy. Messages from President Nur Sultan Nazarbayev set out broad goals such as \"Kazakhstan 2030 and Health of the Nation\". The Kulzhanov and Healy (1999) report concluded that service quality improvements are not evident especially since retraining healthcare professionals has only just begun, with healthcare staff still experiencing poor working conditions and low salaries that are not conducive to raising standards.Currently the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is working with the Ministry of Health to revise health service clinical practice guidelines to meet international standards. Primary healthcare doctors are being trained in family medicine and small groups from academic institutions are being prepared as family medicine teachers for medical and nursing schools. The USAID quality improvement efforts are continuing by training healthcare staff to improve clinical practices focusing on maternal and newborn services, family planning and disease management (United States Agency of International Development, 2007).\n5Qs model: Service quality in the literature is commonly attributed to two dimensions: technical and functional (Gronroos, 2000). Technical quality is what the customer buys and whether services fulfill their technical specifications and standards. Functional quality describes how service products were delivered; i.e. service-customer relationships. The SERVQUAL model is multidimensional and its operationalization means that many variables have to be considered (Zineldin, 2006). However, the 5Qs model is an instrument that assures reasonable relevance, validity and reliability, while being explicitly change oriented. The interaction process between service provider and receiver is influenced by specific environmental atmospheres where both operate (Ford et al., 1998; Zineldin, 2000, 2004; Robicheaux and El-Ansary, 1975). This is applicable in a hospital, medical center or private medical clinics where patients and healthcare staff work (Zineldin, 2006). The atmosphere can affect perceived service quality by improving or by making it worse, which affects health. Healthcare service quality depends on staff, buildings, waiting rooms, technical apparatus, etc. Healthcare quality and patient satisfaction are more involved than just dividing service quality into technical and functional. Zineldin (2000) expanded technical-functional and SERVQUAL quality models into a five quality dimensions (5Qs) framework:Q1. Object - technical quality (what customers receive), which measures treatment; the main reason why patients visit hospitals.Q2. Processes - functional quality (how healthcare staff provides core services). It measures how well healthcare activities are implemented.Q3. Infrastructure - basic resources needed to perform healthcare services.Q4. Interaction - information exchange (e.g. percentage patients told when to return for check-ups, time spent by physicians or nurses understanding patient needs), financial and social exchange.Q5. Atmosphere - relationship and interaction process between parties are influenced by specific environments where they operate. In developing countries, unfriendly atmosphere explains poor care. Consequently, atmosphere indicators should be considered critically.\nMethod: Our aim was to examine the major factors affecting patients' perception of cumulative summation. We tried to figure out whether there is any similarity among Kazakhstan, Egyptian and Jordanian patients. This study concerns Kazakhstan inpatients. A questionnaire, adapted from Zineldin (2006), was distributed. Our questionnaire contained 39 attributes about five newly developed dimensions (5Qs), felt to be most relevant to hospitals. The questionnaire was translated into Russian to provide a better understanding, increase response rates and improve data quality. The sample size was 250, enough for statistical analysis. In total 195 usable questionnaires were received. We used frequency distribution, factor and reliability analysis to analyze our data. One variable (expressed as percentages) was considered at a time to obtain responses associated with different values. As frequency distributions are a descriptive, we show how respondents perceive each attribute related to healthcare quality. WE used factor analysis to transform original into new, correlated variables called factors (Malhotra, 2007), which are used to identify key points emerging from questionnaires. Factor analysis is an interdependent technique where all independent relationships are examined. It identifies how patients perceive hospital quality and major points where hospital staff need to improve. Reliability tests were used to examine the extent to which scales produce consistent results if measurements are repeated. Reliability tests were applied to all 39 attributes. In short, factor analysis discovers which 5Qs dimensions are perceived important in Kazakhstan.\nAnalysis and results: Our questionnaire had a good reliability score (Cronbach a=95.7). Factor analysis reduced 39 variables associated with the 5Qs model as attributes to nine new, salient variables. Factors with Eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained. The resulting component factor matrix is given in Table I. Table II shows the 5Qs model factors and their corresponding quality attributes.Factor 1: Infrastructure\nDiscussion, conclusion and implications: The first and most important factor for Kazakhstan patients was hospital infrastructure. It is clear that all attributes related to healthcare quality and patient satisfaction were no more than average. Twenty-four from 39 attributes had responses leaning towards negative; only 15 were predominantly positive. When each 5Qs model topic was analyzed, we see that object (medical treatment) and atmosphere (staff attitude) are perceived more negatively. Processes were seen to be neither negative nor positive. Infrastructure and interaction tended towards the negative. When frequencies and factor analysis are combined, the three factors that concern Kazakhstan inpatients are: infrastructure; atmosphere; and interaction (Table III).Patients were most dissatisfied with visitor parking. Second was the time between arrival and getting into a room. Third was room pleasantness and appeal. Fourth was admission speed and ease. Fifth, food taste and sixth was sleeping accommodation. Seventh was waiting time for refunds and eighth was hospital staff concern for family and visitors. The ninth problem was staff competence filing insurance and the tenth most critical problem was food temperature.One objective was to compare Kazakhstan, Jordanian and Egyptian health services. The ten shortcomings listed in Table III were similar in all three countries. Hospital staff concern for patients' needs, parking facilities for visitors, waiting time for refunds and food temperature were all common shortcomings for patient satisfaction in all three countries.A strategy to improve Kazakhstan hospital patient satisfaction is focussing on infrastructure (Q3) and atmosphere (Q5), which are also concerns in the other two countries. Zineldin (2006) felt that Egyptian and Jordanian patient satisfaction data will be helpful for Kazakhstan hospitals because the most critical healthcare shortcomings, which lead to patient dissatisfaction, are the same. Healthcare service improvement is achieved by applying total relationship management (TRM) and the 5Qs model with a customer orientation strategy. According to TRM, improving quality and patient satisfaction requires good atmosphere, infrastructure and relationships between physicians, nurses and other hospital employees. All health service personnel should be included in developing guidelines and measuring standards (Longo, 1994).We used the 5Qs model to measure patient satisfaction with medical care; also used in the Egyptian and Jordanian studies. The 5Qs model encompasses technical, functional, interaction, infrastructure and atmosphere qualities and services. The results can be used by hospital managers to reengineer and redesign their quality management processes. This model is just a short-term initial improvement step. For long-term benefits, service quality should be continuously measured and improved. Our study focuses on service quality measurement. However, cost measures, physician and nurse performance, and salary distribution might also be measured in detail.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the major factors affecting cumulative summation, to empirically examine the major factors affecting satisfaction and to address the question whether patients in Kazakhstan evaluate healthcare similarly or differently from patients in Egypt and Jordan.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A questionnaire, adapted from previous research, was distributed to Kazakhstan inpatients. The questionnaire contained 39 attributes about five newly-developed quality dimensions (5Qs), which were identified to be the most relevant attributes for hospitals. The questionnaire was translated into Russian to increase the response rate and improve data quality. Almost 200 usable questionnaires were returned. Frequency distribution, factor analysis and reliability checks were used to analyze the data.\nFindings: - The three biggest concerns for Kazakhstan patients are: infrastructure; atmosphere; and interaction. Hospital staff's concern for patients' needs, parking facilities for visitors, waiting time and food temperature were all common specific attributes, which were perceived as concerns. These were shortcomings in all three countries. Improving health service quality by applying total relationship management and the 5Qs model together with a customer-orientation strategy is recommended.\nPractical implications: - Results can be used by hospital staff to reengineer and redesign creatively their quality management processes and help move towards more effective healthcare quality strategies.\nSocial implications: - Patients in three countries have similar concerns and quality perceptions.\nOriginality/value: - The paper describes a new instrument and method. The study assures relevance, validity and reliability, while being explicitly change-oriented. The authors argue that patient satisfaction is a cumulative construct, summing satisfaction as five different qualities (5Qs): object; processes; infrastructure; interaction and atmosphere.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Social responsibility and event-sponsor portfolio fit: Positive outcomes for events and brand sponsors
|
[
"Branding",
"Sponsorship",
"Social responsibility",
"Consumer attitudes",
"Consumer psychology",
"Integrated brand promotion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The Loch Ness Marathon is an annual long-distance race that attracts over 8,000 participants. The marathon supports Macmillan Cancer Support and a variety of other charities as well.\nConceptual background: corporate social responsibility and event sponsorship: Corporate social responsibility and event sponsorship research provide the conceptual background for this study. A broad overview of each is provided before the conceptual model is presented.\nTheoretical background and conceptual model: Fueled by emotional and experiential benefits, sponsored events can serve as marketing channels for sponsors to promote brands, connect with consumers via their passions and demonstrate their commitment to the community. The conceptual framework, shown in Figure 2, synthesizes the areas developed below. As described above, established paths are from ESR to fan attachment, from ESR to event word-of-mouth, from fan attachment to event word-of-mouth, from ESR to sponsor patronage (Scheinbaum and Lacey, 2015) and from event-sponsor fit to ESR (Scheinbaum et al., 2017). These established paths are noted with a lighter line in Figure 2 and reaffirmed in this study but not formally hypothesized nor intended as part of the new scholarly contribution. Instead, the intended contribution is to build on this extant knowledge primarily by adding antecedents and moderators of ESR.\nEmpirical context: Field studies\nResults: Overall fit statistics suggested a good fit between the hypothesized model and the observed data. The proposed structural model exhibited acceptable levels of fit with kh 2(127) = 709.85, NNFI = 0.98, CFI = 0.98, IFI = 0.98, GFI = 0.92, and RMSEA = 0.07. Given the satisfactory fit of the structural model, the standardized coefficients were inspected. Table III reports that each path was significant (p < 0.001).\nDiscussion and contributions: Broadly, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about the community aspect of sponsored events (Close et al., 2006; Plewa et al., 2016; Plewa and Quester, 2011; Quester et al., 2013; Scheinbaum and Lacey, 2015; Scheinbaum et al., 2017). The findings of this research are merged with extant findings to create a comprehensive conceptual framework of ESR that is theoretically undergirded by weaving together social identity, congruity and schema theories with mechanisms of both image and affect transfer. Previous research has not provided a comprehensive, theoretically integrated explanation of both the direct and indirect effects of ESR nor has it identified any antecedents.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the outcomes of consumer perceptions of event social responsibility (ESR) for a sponsored community event and its sponsor portfolio (i.e. group of sponsoring companies). It integrates a new antecedent and new moderators of ESR with extant findings to provide a comprehensive model that is theoretically grounded in social identity theory, congruency theory and image and affect transfer.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors test the theoretical framework via a field study of attendees (n = 879) at a sponsored, large-scale sporting event that provided ESR through health and wellness education and activities. A field study is especially appropriate because of the experiential nature of sponsored events and ESR.\nFindings: Fan identification with the sport is an antecedent of ESR, and motivation to attend the event's supporting activities moderates the relationship between fan identification and ESR. High event-sponsor fit strengthens the relationship between ESR and word-of-mouth and between ESR and sponsor patronage.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study illuminates the role of ESR as a key driver of outcomes for events and for their sponsor portfolio. Future research should investigate ESR in contexts other than sport and use longitudinal data that include actual purchases. It should further examine the construct of sponsor portfolio because so many events have multiple sponsors\nPractical implications: Event sponsorship offers an attractive platform for brands to demonstrate good corporate citizenship; therefore, marketers should consider ESR as a key criterion when selecting events to sponsor. Marketers should sponsor events with high event-sponsor portfolio fit to enhance the outcomes related to ESR for both sponsors and events. This research generally underscores the importance of creating auxiliary, interactive experiences for event attendees.\nSocial implications: ESR entails that events should contribute or give back to the local communities and organizations in a charitable way to both help give back socially and to maximize success as measured by electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and sponsor patronage toward brands sponsoring the event.\nOriginality/value: This research identifies a new antecedent and new moderators of ESR and integrates them with extant findings to create a comprehensive, theoretically grounded model. It investigates outcomes for both the event and its sponsor portfolio, in contrast to the scholarship that tends to focus on the (title) sponsor.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Time allocations for study: evidence from Arts students in Australia
|
[
"Undergraduates",
"Australia",
"Languages",
"Resource management",
"Learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper examines availability and use of time amongst 109 undergraduate Arts students. Availability of time for study commitments is indirectly measured by the number of non-curricular commitments that students have - typically employment commitments - that are the circumstances that usually limit students' time for study purposes. These are significant factors in the lives of many, if not most, students in fee-paying university-level study programmes in many English-speaking countries, e.g. Australia, UK, New Zealand, Canada, USA. Further, responses on actual time use for study purposes, outside attendance or contact hours required of on-campus students, are elicited in the same quantitative survey. The relationship between time availability and use is examined to see whether there is a positive relationship between fewer commitments and greater time devoted to study. Further, use of resources and preferences for either traditional, paper-based resources or electronic resources are matched against informants' responses on time commitments and time devoted to study to see whether there are patterns of resource use specific to students according to their time availability and use. Finally, linguistic background and residential status of informants are matched against the features of time availability and use to see whether these features co-occur with particular patterns of time allocations.\n2. Non-study commitments: Non-study commitments that students have are usually related to work engagement and the need to be in paid employment (see Greenbank et al., 2009; Winkler, 2009). Discussion in this section briefly examines levels of employment amongst students and the number of hours that students work as key factors determining both the number of hours that they can devote to study as well as other factors indirectly related to study performance such as levels of tiredness, relatedness of work to study or future career aspirations and social \"engagement\". Studies are drawn on which quantitatively or qualitatively measure time availability. Time allocations and availability are examined to the extent that they have negative, neutral or positive consequences on students' academic engagement.In Australia, over two-thirds of students are likely to be engaged in some form of employment (Martin and Karmel, 2002). In other English-speaking countries with university tuition fees, there are various estimates as to the level of student employment, e.g. 50 per cent in UK (Universities UK, 2003), 68-87 per cent in New Zealand (Manthei and Gilmore, 2005) and 50-80 per cent in US (Riggert et al., 2006). Robotham (2009, p. 326) surveys 19 studies conducted since 1996 with data on student employment and reports percentages of between 32 per cent and 89 per cent with a general increase in employment throughout the 2000s. The introduction of university fees in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the UK, over the last 20 years appears to at least partially account for current levels of employment amongst students. Reflecting other circumstances pertaining to young people, the desire to pursue a particular lifestyle and/or a desire to secure an independent source of income is identified in other examinations of the increased number of tertiary (i.e. university-level, post-secondary) students in paid employment (e.g. Broadbridge and Swanson, 2005, p. 237).Unsurprisingly, a decrease in time availability is the first common concern identified in many studies focussing on working students (e.g. Sorenson and Winn, 1993; Silver and Silver, 1997; Winn and Stevenson, 1997). Many studies record largely negative impacts of employment on student performance. A large-scale study of 4,000 American students generally found a \"lower investment and performance\" (Steinberg and Dornbusch, 1991, p. 304). A perceived reduction in academic performance is commensurate to the number of hours worked - those working 14 hours or more report a higher level of detrimental effects (between 52 per cent to 75 per cent) on study due to employment than those working less than 14 hours per week (30 per cent to 48 per cent) (Hunt et al., 2004, p. 11). Other researchers also report negative effects from paid employment such as perceived lower academic performance (Holmes, 2008; Hunt et al., 2004).Some studies report mixed results. A survey of 359 Manchester University students found an almost even, three-way split of responses in regard to the effects of employment on academic studies - 35 per cent report \"no effect\", 30 per cent report it \"helps academic work\", 34 per cent report a \"bad effect\" (Curtis and Shani, 2002, p. 135). Robotham (2009, p. 327) also reports mixed effects of employment amongst 270 business studies informants: 60 per cent of informants report an \"improved ability to deal with people\" and an \"improvement in communication skills\" as a result of paid employment; at the same time, 67 per cent of informants also report doing \"less work/reading\" for university and 53 per cent claim that they \"felt so tired you cannot concentrate\".Similarly, Watts (2002) reports negative, neutral and positive responses from a qualitative study of 12 university students. There are mixed reactions to whether paid employment is: detrimental, \"prevent[ing] them from spending as much time on their academic work as they would like, they thought their academic performance had suffered\"; beneficial, \"gives me a break to do something completely different\"; or both, \"... thought it had both a good and bad effect on his academic work\" (Watts, 2002, pp. 68-9).From most of the above-mentioned studies it appears that a low to moderate number of hours (e.g. six to 12 hours) allocated to employment obligations has fewer negative effects on students' academic engagement. Heavier extra-curricular obligations, however, are likely to have detrimental effects on time availability and performance. In the following sections, resource selection and language background/residency status are discussed in the context of time investment and time availability for study.2.1 Resource use\n3. Method: Informants are drawn from three first year under-graduate Arts units from the disciplines of Linguistics, Philosophy and English as an International Language. Selection of these units was made based on the authors' familiarity with the content of these units, co-operation of the unit co-ordinators and ability to produce versions of the existing teaching materials and supplementary resources for students and sources in all modes. Identical or equivalent teaching and learning materials were supplied in all modes to all students in three academic units over one semester in 2008. All students are on-campus students, enrolled full-time, i.e. their student load is equivalent to 75 per cent or more of the normal full-time load of three academic units per semester. Table I shows the distribution of informants across units.All students were informed of the intentions of the research project and were invited to participate through completion of a questionnaire which was made available in both electronic and hard-copy form[1]. Of the approximate 350 students enrolled in all three units, 109 (31 per cent) participated as informants. Responses provided by informants relate to their time allocation and resource choices for one of the units listed in Table I, not for all of the units that they are studying. Distribution of informants from respective units is varied but generally reflective of the relative size of the enrolments for each unit. Because of logistical limitations and restrictions placed by the university ethics committee, it was not possible to gain information from informants about the other units that they were studying. Data presented below relate to responses elicited only in regard to the units shown in Table I.\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Non-study commitments and time allocations\n5. Conclusions: Over half (54 per cent) of informants have non-study commitments of six hours or more and nearly one-quarter have commitments that take up 15 or more hours per week. Less than a fifth of informants have no other commitments. Almost half (45 per cent) of informants state that they spend three to five hours studying out of class on their nominated unit per week. There is a weak correlation between a higher number of non-study commitments and a lower number of allocated hours per unit. Conversely, a lower number of non-study commitments does not pattern with a higher number of allocated hours per unit. While other studies do not typically cross-tabulate time obligations and study allocations to ascertain a link between the two, the lack of a strong correlation between the two in this study is initially surprising. A lack of correlation may be accounted for by the moderate number of hours that most informants report devoting to extra-curricular obligations. Where this number remains moderate, there are few negative (or positive) effects on self-reported performance, and few reported limits to students' ability to devote sufficient time to their studies (Sorenson and Winn, 1993; Leonard, 1995; Winn and Stevenson, 1997; Holmes, 2008; Greenbank et al., 2009). This mirrors some findings from the USA, a country in which there is a long tradition of student employment, which point to a \"habitualised\" relationship between study and employment in young people's lives (Stern and Nakata, 1991; Curtis and Shani, 2002; Hunt et al. 2004; Broadbridge and Swanson, 2005). In these studies, there are few demonstrable negative effects on academic performance due to students' devoting (moderate amounts of) time to employment.Traditional, \"paper-based\" resources are popular amongst well over a half (58 per cent) of informants. Proportionally, those informants with a lower number of non-study commitments tend to prefer traditional resources to a greater degree than those with a higher number of non-study commitments who have less pronounced preferences towards using traditional sources only. There are congruent tendencies in the use of resources amongst those who allocate a higher number of hours for their unit - these informants tend proportionately to rely more on paper-based, traditional resources than those who study for a lower number of hours out of class. Independent of informants' time allocations, when asked to nominate favoured resources when time is limited, informants choose the following traditional resources in order of preference: lecture notes, textbooks or key texts, course booklets, internet searches and daily handouts. When time is plentiful, informants choose these same resources with the addition of online readings. Time availability, whether high or low and even when posed hypothetically to students, appears to have a slight effect on this sample's general preference for hard-copy resources. It is possible that recent experiences from other educational settings, most often secondary schools (Krause et al., 2009) and some lecturers' preferences for modelling resources in particular ways (traditional as \"core\", electronic as \"supplementary\") may influence informants' choices more than time availability. Otherwise, these findings are similar to those of Broadbridge and Swanson (2005), who locate similar findings for resource use in their examination of the effects of student employment which encompasses both positive and negative outcomes.NESB and international informants tend to have fewer non-study commitments than their ESB and local classmates - visa restrictions on international students partly account for this. There is a sharper contrast between the two groups in terms of number of nominated study hours for each unit - NESB and international students spend significantly more time on the unit than ESB and local students. The significance of these findings for these two variables is that they strongly vindicate the \"time-intensive input\" observed in other studies of NESB and international students that these students invest in their studies, whether \"in-class\" or \"out of class\" (Lewthwaite, 1997; Lin and Yi, 1997; Hellsten., 2002; Devos, 2003). Further, an overall comparison of time allocations out of class reveals that many NESB and international students devote nearly double the amount of time to \"out of class\" study than their ESB and local classmates. It is possible that the total number of hours that many NESB and international students devote to study for all of their subjects is close to a full-time engagement of 40 hours per week, which, along with limits specified by their visas, limits their capacity to accept substantial extra-curricular engagements.Associated areas of interest to this study include time allocations to non-study obligations that are not related to employment, such as family or carer commitments, further qualitative data on how students spend their \"out of class\" time and the prioritisation of study needs as a part of the time that students have at their disposal. Further, comparative data from disciplines other than Arts initially suggest that use of electronic resources is higher (Kirkwood and Price, 2005), but this is not measured against factors such as different (usually higher) numbers of \"in class\" contact hours. The inter-relationships between discipline, time allocation and resource use are complex and further research may increasingly focus on these factors and associated ones such as innovations in pedagogic technology, mobility and the blurring of divisions between work, study and leisure.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The primary purpose of this paper is to compare time availability and its allocation amongst Arts students. In addition it aims to match time availability and use with informants' resource preferences and the variables of language background and residential status.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A sample of 109 students completed quantitatively-based electronic and paper-copy surveys. Empirical data from primary informants form the basis of analysis.\nFindings: - The paper finds that over 90 per cent of informants have non-study commitments and over half have commitments of six or more hours per week. The largest single group (35 per cent) has obligations of six to 14 hours per week. There is only a weak correlation between a higher number of commitments a lower amount of \"out-of-class\" time to engage with study obligations. Conversely, fewer extra-curricular obligations does not automatically lead to a higher number of hours devoted to study. Differences in resource use are small: paper copy resources are universally popular, regardless of time commitments and allocations. Non-English-speaking background and international students tend to have fewer non-study commitments and devote more time to study in general than English-speaking background and local informants.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Research covers one of full-time student informants' four units and does not elicit responses from all units studied by informants.\nOriginality/value: - While employment has been examined as a factor affecting student performance and time availability, few studies have matched time availability and declared time allocations to study. Further, time availability as a key feature of academic study is matched against variables highly relevant to today's student populations: resource mode use; language background; and residential status.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Embedding innovation: design thinking for small enterprises
|
[
"Design",
"Corporate strategy",
"Small to medium‐sized enterprises",
"Brands",
"Shopfloor",
"Innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Of the 4.5 million enterprises in the UK, 99 per cent employ fewer than 50 people. No longer a nation of shopkeepers, the UK is now a nation of small businesses. However, six out of ten businesses in the UK have not launched a new product or service in the last three years. Despite evidence that companies who invest in design do better (83 per cent of design-led companies have introduced a new product or service in the last three years, for example, and a business that increases its investment in design is more than twice as likely to see its turnover grow as a business that has not) only one-third of companies in the UK have actually increased their investment in design in the past three years, and nearly half of UK businesses (43 per cent) do not invest in design at all.\nThe first five - adding value to business: Identifying five key areas where design can help to add value to businesses has been at the heart of the programme's success. These - vision and strategy, brand and identity, product and service, user experience and innovative culture - have provided a framework for introducing and embedding design capability in companies in such diverse sectors as heavy industry, nanotechnology, fuel cells and garden ceramics.These five areas enable the design associates to structure their work with the companies, identifying and prioritising the challenges faced by each business and enabling the design associates - working with the senior management of the business - to map out opportunities for design-led improvements and innovations.Vision and strategy - designing the business, not just the product\nThe final five - why the Designing Demand programme works: Of course, companies have been using design to address strategic, product development, brand, customer and cultural challenges for years. What is it about the Design Council programme's approach that ensures the successful transfer of these methods to the traditionally hard-to-reach SME market?Demonstrating that design is a business tool\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to outline the approaches used by the UK Design Council to embed design and innovation capability in small businesses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Case studies of Design Council programmes are outlined and the design methods, tools and processes used to embed design-led innovation are explored. These are grouped under five headings: vision and strategy; brand and identity; product and service; user experience and innovative culture.\nFindings: - The paper finds that programmes which use design thinking, design mentoring and co-creation to help companies develop innovation capacity result in tangible business benefits.\nOriginality/value: - This overview of design methods in practice creates a compelling case for the strategic deployment of design-led innovation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Customer experience design: a case study in the cultural sector
|
[
"Customer journey",
"Customer experience",
"Cultural sector",
"Experience design",
"Intended experience",
"Realized experience"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The cultural sector is making a significant impact on the economy and society of both developed and developing countries (Burton and Scott, 2003; Pallud and Straub, 2014). For instance, a global study indicates that cultural and creative industries generated revenues of USD709 billion and employed 7.7 million people in Europe whilst the Asia-Pacific region achieved USD743 billion in revenues and 12.7 million jobs in 2013 (Ernst and Young, 2015). Projections suggest that this trend is set to continue due to people's growing appetite for leisure, entertainment and personal development activities. The cultural sector includes a diverse set of organisations such as museums, galleries, parks, gardens, theatres as well as art and science centres among others. Whilst cultural organisations have traditionally been dominated by an inside-out perspective and a curatorial orientation, more recently scholars observe that a major shift towards the adoption of a customer orientation has taken place (Goulding, 2000; Hede et al., 2014). This shift is caused by the combined effects of heightened competitive pressures, reduced public funding opportunities and the economic imperative of attracting and retaining a wide audience (Slater and Armstrong, 2010; Camarero and Jose, 2012). As a result of this shift, the customer experience has become a critical success factor for cultural organisations (Camarero and Jose, 2012).\n2. Theoretical foundations: A popular design approach across many service industries is to focus on the customer experience as a means to drive competitive advantage (Voss et al., 2008). The experience design literature emphasises that organisations cannot directly deliver experiences to customers. Rather, their role is to \"stage the prerequisites that enable customers to have the desired experiences\" (Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010, p. 13). The provider designs and executes a service delivery system for target customers who derive value and benefits through their interactions with the system's tangible and intangible characteristics (Roth and Menor, 2003). This contention is supported by empirical findings suggesting that customers evaluate the superiority of their experiences throughout the process of interacting with a provider's resources (Lemke et al., 2011). This theoretical development has helped to recognise the importance of designing service systems for experience and has fuelled the need to explore this phenomenon through academic research (Roth and Menor, 2003; Patricio et al., 2011). For instance, Ng et al. (2012) assert that the role of organisations is to design contexts in which the customer experience takes place. Similarly, Payne et al. (2008) argue that organisations should focus efforts on crafting experiences for customers to receive.\n3. Research methodology: Experience design in cultural settings is an emergent research area that requires theory-building efforts (Machuca et al., 2007; Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010) for which case-based research designs are particularly appropriate (Yin, 2003). Moreover, a highly detailed, granular view of intended and realised experience is needed to be able to make sense of the phenomenon (Voss et al., 2008; Kwortnik and Thompson, 2009). The scale of the task, i.e. the breadth and depth of data collection and analysis required to understand, describe and compare the main dimensions of the realised experience and intended experience, calls for an enquiry that compiles a rich evidence base from both provider and customer perspectives. An in-depth single case allows access to rich organisational and customer data and the development of a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon (Yin, 2003). This carefully chosen case study provides the opportunity to develop novel theoretical insights into experience design in cultural settings (Siggelkow, 2007).\n4. Findings: This section presents and describes the design characteristics of the permanent tour as they were intended by organisation and as they were perceived by customers. These characteristics are organised into the decision areas of journey, touchpoints, social environment and physical environment. Whilst the choice of these design areas is informed by the literature review, the actual design characteristics that are presented emerged from the data through the inductive analytical process outlined previously. To conclude, the gaps between intended and realised experience are assessed for each design characteristic. Respondent quotes are provided as evidence supporting the research findings in Tables AI and AII.\n5. Discussion: This section discusses the findings in the context of the existing literature, considers the implications of these findings for theory and practice, and outlines the study limitations and future research opportunities.\n6. Conclusions: This study advances the scholarly understanding of customer experience design in cultural settings. The main contribution of this study is to provide novel insights into experience design in the cultural context by articulating a set of design characteristics that support the alignment between an organisation's design intention (i.e. intended experience) and the actual experience of customers (i.e. realised experience). These insights are captured in an experience design framework for the cultural context. The framework includes design characteristics of individual touchpoints and the overall customer journey, which constitute the core experience, as well as design characteristics of the physical and relational environment, which support the realisation of the core experience. This contribution is achieved through comparing the intended experience from the provider perspective to the realised experience from the customer perspective. The authors hope to stimulate further research that jointly considers both perspectives in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of customer experience design across different service contexts.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience design phenomenon in the cultural sector. Specifically, it purports to articulate a set of design characteristics that support the alignment between an organisation's design intention (i.e. intended experience) and the actual experience of customers (i.e. realised experience).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A single case study approach is adopted to explore the phenomenon from both the provider and customer perspectives simultaneously. A range of qualitative data, including 42 interviews with managers and customers as well as voluminous documentary evidence, are collected. Provider and customer data are analysed independently using a rigorous inductive analytical process to generate experience design themes and to assess possible gaps between intended and realised experience.\nFindings: The findings reveal the design characteristics of touchpoints and the overall customer journey, which constitute the core experience, as well as the design characteristics of the physical and social environment, which support the realisation of the core experience, in a cultural context.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations include difficulties in generalising the findings from a single case and in claiming that the set of design characteristics identified is exhaustive.\nPractical implications: The paper makes several recommendations that are useful and relevant for customer experience practitioners in the cultural sector.\nOriginality/value: The paper's contribution is to provide novel empirical insights into the four experience design areas of touchpoints, journey, physical elements and social elements in an experience-centric cultural context. On that basis, a conceptual framework for experience design in the cultural context is proposed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Parent voices guide smoking intervention development
|
[
"Parents",
"Smoking",
"Children"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Parents are a key influence on their children's smoking behaviours (Chassin et al., 1998; Bricker et al., 2009; Mahabee-Gittens et al., 2012). Targeting parental smoking cessation can be an effective method of reducing smoking during adolescence and beyond, particularly when parental cessation occurs before their child turns nine years of age (Farkas et al., 1999; den Exter Blokland et al., 2004; Bricker et al., 2006, 2009). Additionally, parents' anti-smoking socialisation practises (e.g. parental monitoring, establishing rules and consequences for child smoking and communicating about smoking) may decrease the likelihood of their child smoking regardless of parental smoking status (Chassin et al., 1998; Jackson and Henriksen, 1997; Jackson and Dickinson, 2003; Harakeh et al., 2005; Mahabee-Gittens et al., 2012). These factors highlight the potential benefits of targeting parents of junior primary school-aged children with smoking cessation and harm minimisation interventions. Parents in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas represent a key target population since individuals from these areas are more likely to smoke than the general population (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 2011; Hiscock et al., 2012).\nMethods: This formative research used the PRECEDE-PROCEED framework (Green and Kreuter, 2005) to plan and guide intervention development. This incorporated a systematic review of the epidemiologic literature to identify the target population (parents in low socio-economic areas with children aged under nine years) and focus groups/interviews to assess parental needs and preferred content, strategies and channels for intervention. This approach, incorporating participation by the target population, can increase the likelihood that desired behaviour change will occur (Green and Kreuter, 2005). The theoretical framework guiding this study is shown in Figure 1. Theories of behaviour including Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura 1977) and the Health Belief Model (Janz and Becker, 1984) guided the identification of moderators used to construct the focus group questions. These explored parents' motivations, barriers and enablers to quitting, as well as factors influencing their use of anti-smoking socialisation practices with their child including: their concerns about smoking; their perceived influence on their child's smoking; and communication with their child about smoking. Parents' preferences regarding intervention structure and design were also explored.\nResults: In total, 46 parents/carers participated in the study: 29 participated in one of four focus groups (group size ranged from four to ten participants) and 17 completed telephone interviews. Just under half (n=22) currently smoked (Table I). In total, 80 per cent (n=37) of participants were female.\nDiscussion: While children are not the only factor motivating parents' quitting or use of harm minimisation strategies, they are an important factor. Research with 1,376 New Zealand adults who smoked found \"setting an example to children\" (p. 82) was their key reason to quit (Thomson et al., 2011).\nConclusion: While this study represents the views of a small number of parents, it suggests that some parents who smoke, or those who have quit, or live with a person who smokes and care for children aged between four and eight years, see it as relevant and appropriate to address smoking issues with their children. Interventions need to reinforce the important role of parents in influencing their child's future smoking behaviours, even if they themselves smoke, and emphasise methods to protect children from tobacco smoke. If interventions delivered through schools are linked to other resources, parents can access these in their own time and home, which may increase access by lower SES parents who smoke and have four to eight year old children.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: While parents' influence on their children's smoking behaviour is widely recognised, little is known about parents of four to eight year olds' attitudes and beliefs around smoking cessation and how they communicate with their children about smoking. The purpose of this paper is to explore parents' perceptions of quitting smoking and their beliefs and actions related to the use of parenting practices to discourage smoking by their children.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Four focus groups and 17 interviews were conducted with parents (n=46) of four to eight year old children in Perth, Western Australia.\nFindings: Many parents indicated their children strongly influenced their quitting behaviours, however, some resented being made to feel guilty about their smoking because of their children. Parents were divided in their beliefs about the amount of influence they had on their children's future smoking. Feelings of hypocrisy appear to influence the extent to which parents who smoked talked with their child about smoking. Parents recommended a variety of resource options to support quitting and talking with their child about smoking.\nPractical implications: Interventions aimed at parents who smoke and have young children should: reinforce parents' importance as role models; highlight the importance of talking to children about smoking when they are young and provide strategies for maintaining ongoing communication; be supportive and avoid making parents feel guilty; and emphasise that quitting smoking is the best option for their child's health (and their own), while also providing effective harm minimisation options for parents who have not yet quit.\nOriginality/value: Parents of children of lower primary school age can be highly influential on their children's later smoking behaviours, thus, effective interventions that address the current beliefs and practices of these parents may be particularly advantageous.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Gen Y recruitment: Understanding graduate intentions to join an organisation using the Theory of Planned Behaviour
|
[
"Recruitment",
"Generation Y",
"Theory of Planned Behaviour",
"Intention",
"Gen Y",
"Graduate recruitment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An organisation's human capacity has long been cited as a primary factor influencing competitive edge and organisational success (Hiltrop, 1999). It has been reported that having the right employee is the foremost driver of organisational effectiveness for the future (e.g. Acarlar and Bilgic, 2012; Buckingham and Vosburgh, 2001; Chapman et al., 2005). Worldwide, including Australia, changing societal demography, such as the ageing population and retiring baby boomers, compounded by a changing economic climate, means that in the near future there will be a major influx of Generation Y (Gen Y) workers into the workforce (Chapman et al., 2005). This influx will result in organisations competing on an international level for the most qualified and talented Gen Y individuals (Earle, 2003; Terjesen et al., 2007). These forecast changes have resulted in increased attention towards the Gen Y cohort in the workplace and, in particular, aspects influencing their recruitment and retention (Luscombe et al., 2013; Twenge, 2010).\nTheoretical framework: TPB: Building upon its predecessor, the TRA (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980), the TPB proposes that intentions to engage in a behaviour are determined by three standard components; attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control (PBC). The latter construct, PBC was added to the original TRA within the subsequent TPB framework to better account for behaviours not under complete volitional control (Ajzen, 1991). PBC is posited in the model as influencing behaviour both indirectly through intentions as well as directly (Ajzen, 2002b). The central premise of the model is that intentions are the most proximal determinant of planned behaviour.\nMethods: Phase 1 - qualitative\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: The aim of the current study was to conduct a theoretically based investigation of Gen Y final-year undergraduate business students' intention to join their ideal organisation. Specifically, the current research sought to identify the factors influencing Gen Y individuals' intention to join their ideal organisation. The contribution of this research is significant given that, ultimately, researchers as well as organisations may be able to better understand the graduating Gen Y workforce and by extension the means by which to recruit and increase the likelihood that Gen Y will apply at an organisation. The more applicants an organisation receives, the more selective they can be with candidates and the increased likelihood of achieving competitive advantage derived from its human resources.\nImplications of current research and further research suggestions: Theoretical implications\nConclusion: The current research addresses a contemporary workplace issue and provides insight into what drives Gen Y to intend to join an organisation. The findings support the use of the theoretical framework for enhancing the prediction of individuals' intentions through the components of PBC and subjective norm. Through the course of this investigation, suggestions have been provided which may allow organisations to tailor recruitment strategies based on a greater understanding of the factors influencing Gen Y individuals' intentions to apply. Gen Y represents a large generational cohort to join the workforce, at a time when baby boomers are retiring, it is essential that organisations understand how to attract and recruit Gen Y. The current research identifies factors influencing a Gen Y's decision to apply at an organisation. Organisations may find the current study's results important for informing their recruitment strategies for Gen Y applicants. Implementing these findings may allow organisations to stand out from their competitors (Lievens and Highhouse, 2003) resulting in a larger applicant pool from which to select the best human capital and to achieve organisational success.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework, the purpose of this paper is to explore whether the standard TPB constructs explained variance in Generation Y (Gen Y) individuals' intentions to join their ideal organisation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A mixed methods approach was used featuring qualitative and quantitative methods.\nFindings: The overall TPB model accounted for a significant 51.6 per cent of the variance in intention to join one's ideal organisation in the next six months with the significant predictors in the model being subjective norm and perceived behaviour control but not attitude.\nResearch limitations/implications: Using graduating students from a single Australian university sample may mean that the current findings may not extend to all Gen Y individuals. The current study has demonstrated the explanatory utility of the TPB in relation to graduate Gen Y's intention to join their ideal organisation, providing further evidence of the robustness of the TPB framework in an organisational setting.\nPractical implications: These findings have implications for enhancing understanding of the most effective recruitment processes for Gen Y students entering the workforce. The findings could inform recruitment policies and strategies to attract Gen Y applicants.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge this study is the first application of the TPB to this topic. The current research extends the recruitment literature with a theoretically based investigation. Identification of factors which inform organisational recruitment strategies, allow organisations to stand out from their competitors and potentially achieve a larger application pool from which to select the best human capital and sustain competitive advantage.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Modern information warfare: analysis and policy recommendations
|
[
"Internet",
"Information media",
"Cybersecurity",
"Private sector organizations",
"Information warfare",
"Legal frameworks"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: What is information warfare (IW)? The dictionary definition of IW is the \"tactical and strategic use of information to gain an advantage\" (What Is Information Warfare?, no date). Starting off as a purely military tactic, IW has dramatically evolved over time. Today, IW is a unique foreign policy tool that threatens states in ways never seen before in history.\n2. Methodology and literature review: Over the past decade, cases of IW have been well documented in public news sources (Abramson, 2017; Badshah, 2018; Braw, 2018; Byers, 2017; Farrell, 2017; Galeotti, 2014, 2017; Kang, 2018; Keeley, 2018; Miller et al., 2017; Pifer, 2016; Singer, 2018). However, contemporary research is lacking when it comes to defining and analyzing the unique threat of modern IW. Given the novelty of the issue and the severe implications it has on the global security environment, modern IW should be examined to identify its core features as well as causes and effects.\n3. Analytical framework: Most generally, IW is the \"tactical and strategic use of information to gain an advantage\" (What Is Information Warfare?, no date). This definition by itself is unsatisfactory when attempting to distinguish modern IW from historical examples of IW because anything from strategic bombing campaigns to recruiting scientists can fit under this definition. This does not help when trying to formulate effective policy, and for the sake of specificity, the working definition of \"modern information warfare\" identified at the end of this section will only deal with strategies that rely on manipulation of information systems.\n4. Research results: 4.1 Historical and contemporary cases\n5. Conclusion: Modern IW, made possible by the rise of cyber connectivity, is a novel threat that states are struggling to deal with. From Ukraine to Korea, IW operations have challenged traditional security doctrines, a fact that many policymakers are only now beginning to understand. Driven by the factors that IW is an effective tool by weaker states to challenge stronger ones and that existing legal and normative frameworks are nascent at best, IW can be expected to become a more common threat to international peace in the coming years. However, this does not mean that actions cannot be taken against IW. Internationally, states can open forums for discussing IW, setting norms that make IW less attractive and less effective. Domestically, states can work with corporations, develop robust defensive tactics and formulate deterrence strategies to protect themselves from IW. One can only hope that action, not inaction, becomes the norm as modern IW continues to be used as a foreign policy tool.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: Information warfare (IW) is a novel and poorly understood threat to the international community, which may be used more commonly as a foreign policy tool in the future. By identifying the key components of modern IW, this paper seeks to formulate policy recommendations for how best to deal with this new threat. The general overview of the topic that this paper provides contributes to current efforts to develop strategies to counter IW operations around the world.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The goal of this paper is to break down the components of modern IW and provide policy recommendations for domestic and international governance on the issue. These recommendations will be based in part of historical initiatives to counter IW and existing literature on cyber governance. Central to the framework used to analyze the cases of Russian and North Korean IW operations are the seven defining features of \"strategic\" IW established by a 1996 RAND Corporation report, modified to incorporate the importance of cyberspace to cases of IW in the modern day.\nFindings: Modern IW presents a new, multifaceted threat to states. Because of the value of IW as a tool by weaker states to counter stronger ones and the weakness of existing legal and normative frameworks, use of IW can be expected to be increasingly common. States can take action to promote international governance on the issue and develop policy frameworks for protecting themselves against IW.\nPractical implications: IW has historically been a very tricky tactic to define and identify. By analyzing IW's basic features, this paper provides a framework for breaking down IW into its component parts, which reveals valuable policy implications. Preventative efforts against IW can help restore trust to global information networks and lower the risk of conflict.\nOriginality/value: Formal scholarship on modern IW and related subjects is lacking in comparison with higher visibility threats. Increased awareness of this issue, especially amongst civilian leaders, can augment global efforts to counter IW.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Restaurant location in Hamilton, New Zealand: clustering patterns from 1996 to 2008
|
[
"Restaurant location",
"Spatial patterns",
"GIS",
"Retailing theory",
"New Zealand",
"Geographic information systems",
"Retailing",
"Cluster analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The traditional adage in marketing that location is one of the most important and long-term strategic decision for a business remains valid today (Chou et al., 2008; Craig et al., 1984; Timor and Sipahi, 2005). A good location is vital for retail success, attracting a large number of customers and allowing ready access, while having a significant impact on market share and profitability (Craig et al., 1984; Durvasula et al., 1992). This holds true also for the hospitality sector where restaurants and hotels consider location to be a key determinant of success (Bull, 1994; Chou et al., 2008; Joerger et al., 1999; Smith, 1983, 1985; Tzeng et al., 2002). In this sector, a good location enhances the convenience of lodging and dining for customers, has a positive impact on customer loyalty, and shortens the payoff period for fixed capital investments (Chou et al., 2008; Ramanathan and Ramanathan, 2011).While there are many studies on retail location selection criteria in the marketing and retailing literature (see Craig et al., 1984; Cheng et al., 2005; Durvasula et al., 1992; Wood and Tasker, 2008), relatively fewer studies have analysed the selection criteria for hospitality operations and patterns of location over time using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) (Austin et al., 2005; Chancellor and Cole, 2008; Hernandez, 2007; Muller and Inman, 1994; Smith, 1985; Timor and Sipahi, 2005). Except for the studies of Smith (1985), Muller and Inman (1994), and Austin et al. (2005), none of these studies have taken a longitudinal approach to understand the evolution of locational patterns or focused their study on the restaurant business. The study of Muller and Inman (1994) is particularly interesting given that demographic and geographic information are used to identify locations for restaurants units by analysing restaurant density patterns. Following, and modifying the work of Muller and Inman (1994), the principles underlying this research are three-fold, namely:1. restaurants are dispersed in retail areas and are customer focused;2. clusters of restaurants are formed through external and market forces, and physical and geographical constraints, of which town planning policies are significant; and3. restaurant unit clusters constitute a broad central place system linked to other forms of clustering such as retail patterns and residential zones.Therefore, the research questions addressed in this paper are:RQ1. Taking Hamilton city, New Zealand, what changes have occurred in the spatial distribution of restaurants over a decade, and do clusters and satellites occur?RQ2. With reference to the planning regimes, retail provision and population changes, what might be the determinants of such changes or lack of changes that are observed?RQ3. Having identified possible linkages, what general principles of restaurant location might emerge?This study differs from others by employing GIS as the main method of data analysis and focusing on mainstream restaurants as opposed to previous studies (e.g. Austin et al., 2005; Timor and Sipahi, 2005) that have mostly researched fast-food restaurants. The use of GIS and a longitudinal approach potentially offer an informative and powerful technique for quantifying and statistically testing spatial patterns of restaurant locations and land use. Specifically, GIS can visually depict an existing restaurant allocation in a geographical area and this may be helpful in identifying possible determinants, thereby enabling restaurateurs and city planners to better understand planning, development and site selection for future restaurants.\nLiterature review: Central place theory\nMethodology: The context - Hamilton\nFindings: In terms of absolute growth, the number of restaurants grew by 48.3 percent over the 12-year period. The largest relative growth occurred between 2001 and 2002, which reflected the introduction of the Tainui Novotel and the SkyCity Casino. Next, the findings derived from the various techniques used to identify locational patterns are presented.Nearest Neighbor Distance\nDiscussion and implications: The objective of this study was to identify the evolution of the spatial distribution of restaurants in Hamilton, and the relationship that may exist with other sub-systems of clusters as described by authors such as Muller and Inman (1994). From a theoretical perspective, the results supported more explicitly variants of spatial interaction and principle of minimum differentiation theories than central place theory. The clustering effects identified from 1998 to 2000 may suggest that central place theory is applicable given the increased concentration of restaurants within the CBD where there is a substantial customer base, and minimization of traveling distance, given the relatively small size of Hamilton compared to other NZ cities. Yet, other factors could be accountable for this clustering effect. As can be seen in Figure 3, the emergence of a residential development in the Te Rapa area, north of the city, may explain the increase in number of restaurants. The well-developed infrastructure in this new area and CBD could also possibly account for the increased concentration. Accordingly, central place theory remains weak at explaining intra-urban location patterns beyond increasing customer base and minimization of traveling times (Smith, 1985). As for spatial interaction theory, the original model of two factors only is of little value, but more recent gravity models are useful in explaining the restaurant location patterns identified in this study. For example, the nightlife and ambience in the city centre, the existence of other complementary businesses such as bars, pubs, shopping malls and cinema complexes make the area more attractive to customers, thereby supporting site related factors and other attractiveness factors as being of importance in understanding an existing location pattern. Litz and Rajaguru's (2008) proposition that what is being transacted is more important than where it is being transacted cannot be entirely assessed for Hamilton using the results of our study. Yet, the results seem to suggest that proximity to the CBD is a key criterion of location for newer restaurants and thereby supporting more strongly the principle of minimum differentiation theory. The agglomeration or concentration effects identified around the CBD and CBD core, arguably, is to some extent independent of the City Council's planning regimes. The existing pattern of location may also reflect spill over effects. Generally the results confirm the complementary nature of the three classic theories of retailing or variants thereof, and their limited ability individually to enhance understanding of restaurant location patterns (Brown, 1993; Litz and Rajaguru, 2008).The use of GIS mapping can offer a simple and visual understanding of the evolution of restaurants in a geographical area. The identified clustering effects using geocoded data confirm the usefulness of the technique (Austin et al., 2005; Benoit and Clarke, 1997; Chancellor and Cole, 2008; Hernandez, 2007) and reaffirm its ability to analyze temporal data (Hernandez, 2007) from the hospitality field. The variety of analytical techniques available within GIS, offers the opportunity to complement the weakness of one (nearest neighbor distance) with the strength of another (multi-distance spatial clustering), thereby providing greater validity of the results obtained and confirmation of trends identified. Consistent with the literature (Chen, 2007; Muller and Inman, 1994), the results also attest to the applicability of GIS to understand restaurant land-use in a city, whereby identified concentration of restaurants within the CBD, may explain the higher land and retail costs experienced by new restaurants and the spill over effects in peripheral areas.From an urban planning perspective, given the non-directive form of planning undertaken in New Zealand, it may be argued that resultant land use patterns will tend to better reflect patterns of entrepreneurial initiative, market demand and changes of population, and thus adhere more closely to concepts of spatial distribution theory that tend to ignore disruption of the influences induced by more mandatory systems of planning. In terms of the importance of sub-systems of land use within the city, a number of key factors seem to emerge that help explain the spatial pattern of restaurants identified in this study. First, the increasing population size and the more heterogeneous nature of that population, may explain the emergence of new restaurants in two types of areas:1. the northern part of Victoria Street that lies just outside the CBD, but is within easy travel distance of it by car, where rents are cheaper; and2. in suburbs where again rents are cheaper, but with locations nearer the immigrant populations.Second, the planning regime of the City Council that has sought to retain business and the vibrancy of the CBD. This policy has been illustrated by the Variant 21 proposals and in late 2010 the introduction of cheap parking in the city centre to help offset the retail drift to the north of the city. This illustrated a factor not considered by other authors such as Smith (1985) and Tzeng et al. (2002), who have generally seen restaurant location being determined by general market forces and population changes and who have tended to ignore the role of planning policies. Practically therefore, this study reinforces the role of planning policies in changes in spatial patterns of restaurants and addresses this gap in the current restaurant literature.Accordingly, a longitudinal study of this nature allows town planners and potential restaurateurs to identify new development areas and potential locations for new restaurants respectively. From Figures 3 and 4, it can be observed that most restaurants concentrate within CBD core while CBD periphery could be redeveloped to attract new restaurants. From one perspective, the concentration of restaurants within the central CBD provides evidence of a vibrant cafe/restaurant scene. On the other hand, the relative absence of restaurants, bars and cafes in the newer residential areas north of the city represents locations where such restaurants may thrive. However, demand side perspectives must also be considered in the location decision. For example, eating habits of different segments, motivation factors to dine out, menu and cuisine preferences, and quality of service and food are other important considerations (Kincaid et al., 2010; Soriano, 2002; Yuksel and Yuksel, 2003).While the study has offered an insight into patterns of restaurant locations in Hamilton for a 12-year period, the findings are not without limitations. First, the nature of the data did not allow for other information such as restaurant size, sales figures or type of ownership to be assessed. Future studies can look at incorporating such information so that the patterns identified can be explained by specific changes in demographic population or restaurant characteristics in the city. Second, the study does not account for those restaurants that do not advertise in the yellow pages, although it is thought that these are very few in number, if they exist at all. Third, the GIS techniques employed have their own limitations. Yet, the simplicity of these techniques provided valuable insights into the existing patterns of restaurant location. Future studies can incorporate geo-visualization techniques, which are extensions of the traditional GIS mapping. One advantage of the data set has been the development of a longitudinal study - and as discussed above, while clustering has tended to remain high in CBD core, nonetheless the spatial patterns do reveal sensitivities to the changing population and land usage patterns of the city. As noted above, Hamilton's planning is subject to zones of residential, commercial and industrial usage, and what is of interest is how, especially in the period since 2000, increased industrial development to the north of the city and improving road access to Auckland, New Zealand's major city, has generated residential, retail and leisure developments - and thus the maps represent a tension between the predisposition to adhere to a city centre and a wish to move toward new nodes of residence and thus demand on the part of the restaurant industry. As ever therefore, there remains a need to monitor such developments.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this study is to assess the evolution of restaurant locations in the city of Hamilton over a 12-year period (1996 to 2008) using GIS techniques. Retail theories such as central place, spatial interaction and principle of minimum differentiation are applied to the restaurant setting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A database of restaurants was compiled using the NZ yellow pages and contained 981 entries that consisted mainly of location addresses and types of cuisine. This paper focuses on locational patterns only.\nFindings: - A process of geo-coding and clustering enabled the identification of two clustering periods over 12 years for city restaurants, indicating locational patterns of agglomeration within a short walking distance of the CBD and spill over effects to the north of the city.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The data do not allow statistical analysis of the variables causing the clustering but offer a visual description of the evolution. Explanations are offered on the possible planning regimes, retail provision and population changes that may explain this evolution.\nPractical implications: - The findings allow identification of land use patterns in Hamilton city and potential areas where new restaurants could be developed. Also, the usefulness of geo-coded data in identifying clustering effects is highlighted.\nOriginality/value: - Existing location studies relate mostly to site selection criteria in the retailing industry while few have considered the evolution of restaurant locations in a specific geographic area. This paper offers a case study of Hamilton city and highlights the usefulness of GIS techniques in understanding locational patterns.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Brazilians aim for culture of inclusion: HR has a vital role to play in tackling diversity management at work
|
[
"Brazil",
"Equal opportunities",
"Human resources management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nRising forces: Social and economic development does not take place at the same pace. Disabled Westerners visiting the economic miracle that was 1970s' Japan might, for example, have been dismayed by attitudes towards them.Brazil is one of the emerging powerhouse BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations. These countries have the potential to be the major economic forces of the twenty-first century, and China, despite the political grip of the Communist Party, has already made it. Brazil recently overtook the UK to become the world's sixth biggest economy.However, it remains a place with one of the world's greatest gulfs between rich and poor. These positions are often related uncomfortably closely to skin color, with the descendants of European Caucasians most likely to be at the top of the tree. It is true, though, that the principle of human dignity is laid out in Brazil's constitution which includes one fundamental objective of promoting \"the well being of all without prejudice as to origin, race, sex, color, age, or any other form of discrimination\". Brazil also relies on \"affirmative action\" which aims to ban the accumulated effects of past prejudices.Diversity is of huge importance for the future of Brazil but it is not a subject that has previously been examined in any depth. Researchers asked how Brazilian companies were incorporating diversity, and what form the role of human resources took in that context.\nSao Paulo: A total of 15 companies (all with 500 or more employees) were chosen from the Central Western region of the State of Sao Paulo. These firms were also selected as \"typically\" Brazilian in the range of enterprises they represented. Interviewees, usually a CEO and an HR manager, were encouraged to talk freely about their experiences and their beliefs.Larger firms have faced pressure from the Brazilian government to incorporate diversity management practices via specific quotas for minority groups. Basic questions in the research related to the way organizations deal with diversity, the support for diversity, challenges and opportunities, and the role of HR throughout the process. There were also one or two technical visits to each company, in which it was possible to see employees engage in their daily routine.Generally, it emerged that Brazilian companies are still beginning to use diversity management programs. Many CEOs showed an interest in directly addressing this issue, but admitted that doing so might be difficult due to the workforce profile. Some minorities and disabled people, for example, have poor education and lack professional experience due to difficulties associated with transportation and access to schools. Some companies might not be prepared to hire disabled people because of a lack of vacancies, or because there are no suitable jobs available.The inclusion of minority groups often takes place purely because of legal impositions and only four of the 15 companies (A-O) have a diversity management policy. Nevertheless, many observations made by CEOs and HR chiefs at the remaining 11 companies do reflect an awareness that they should be addressing these issues. An interviewee at company A (in the food sector) said:We try to vary the profile when recruiting and selecting employees in order to have a mixture of cultures and ideas.Sometimes it was apparent that legal obligations were at the forefront of company policy. From company B (also food):The administration aims to formulate policies of hiring people with a wide diversity focusing on social inclusion because, according to the legislation, we must hire disabled individuals.\nCommitment: The comments from interviewees at the four policy-adopting companies were indicative of a greater commitment. At company D (car industry):The HR managers restructured the human resources department, recreated the programs for qualifying the employees who are part of a minority group, and restructured the departments to receive them (i.e. equipment adaptation and wheelchair access ramps).Some companies indicated difficulties in hiring members of minority groups who were adequately qualified for specific functions, reinforcing the social stigma of poor education and lack of professional competence. No executive position was occupied by a disabled individual at any of the companies studied. In three companies there were Brazilian-African descendant leaders and two firms had female leaders occupying top administration jobs. Most positions occupied by members of minority groups were in operation and maintenance, confirming the lack of qualification mentioned by managers.In most companies there were least a handful of employees whose total opposition to diversity issues revealed itself by negative attitudes or even, in some cases, humiliating other employees. The most offensive practices involved teasing and jokes that revealed religion and race-related prejudices. This is often the result of ignorance and lack of understanding of other cultures as revealed by the Company A observation:Some conflicts were identified due to the mixing of very different people in terms of culture, ideas and gender views.Indeed, many respondents stated that cultural differences were the major barrier to diversity management. The importance of HR in driving liberal policies is implicit in one comment from company C, where intervention was crucial ultimately to creating more harmony:We noticed that some workers did not respect diversity or differences, causing discomfort to employees who could not agree with those people.\nSocial cohesion: There was universal acknowledgment that companies can gain from progressive thinking, so that even firms who do not explicitly adopt a diversity management policy made comments along the lines (F, metal mechanics) of:By adopting diversity policies, we created opportunities for disadvantageous groups to strengthen our social cohesion.The firms that were revealed to have clear diversity management policies, then, involved their HR departments very closely in the process. They were also the firms who saw it as a way to improve competitiveness by strengthening relationships with clients and suppliers while enhancing integration between employees, promoting innovation, and reducing turnover.The gradual realization that these positive outcomes will outweigh problems along the route, such as cultural conflicts, will surely encourage other firms to follow the example of the diversity-friendly quartet. While the study is inevitably limited by the small number of firms involved, which might not be representative of Brazilian firms in other parts of a huge country, other culturally-diverse nations can learn from it.\nComment: This review is based on \"Diversity management: challenges, benefits, and the role of human resource management in Brazilian organizations,\" by Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour, Fernanda Serotini Gordono, Jorge Henrique Caldeira de Oliveira, Jose Carlos Martinez and Rosane Aparecida Gomes Battistelle. The authors' view that human resource departments are \"in theory, the most relevant area to manage diversity\" appears to be backed up by their findings. Without pulling punches on some difficult issues, the findings offer hope that, as Brazil grows economically, its companies can mature socially.\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 authors' view that human resource departments are \"in theory, the most relevant area to manage diversity\" appears to be backed up by their findings. Without pulling punches on some difficult issues, the findings offer hope that, as Brazil grows economically, its companies can mature socially.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to digest format.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Creating a development force in Swedish healthcare: A focus on the first-line managers' perspective when applying Lean
|
[
"Healthcare",
"Lean",
"Leadership",
"First-line managers",
"Improvement work"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Globally, healthcare is stated to require change and development that to a large extent is concerned with improvements in efficiency and the quality of care and becoming a more attractive employer to meet future requirements (Moraros et al., 2016; van Rossum et al., 2016). Swedish healthcare has for a long time struggled with its financial resources (SKL Intermountain Healthcare, 2014), and a breakthrough in the healthcare system quality performance is generally identified to be necessary (Katz - Navon et al., 2006).\nApplying Lean to meet challenges in healthcare: Lean is defined and approached differently by different healthcare organizations (Eriksson et al., 2016), but researchers indicate that Lean in healthcare is mostly used as a process improvement approach that is supported by different tools and methods such as value stream mapping (Poksinska, 2010; Radnor and Boaden, 2010; De Souza, 2009). There is a risk that the Lean brand is easily viewed as a distinct technique that will fix everything in organizations (Bagley and Lewis, 2008) and often initially functions as a mechanism of hope (Brunsson, 2006). Successful Lean applications require significant participation and involvement by coworkers and by healthcare first-line and executive leaders where everyone takes responsibility to improve in their daily work (Poksinska, 2010; Rother, 2010; Bergman and Klefsjo, 2010) with a recognition among everybody that change is needed (Deblois and Lepanto, 2016; Andersen et al., 2014).\nFirst-line healthcare managers' role, conditions and ability to drive change: First-line managers have an essential role in healthcare organizations because they are the link between their own managers and their coworkers (Ericsson and Augustinsson, 2015); accordingly, they play a key role in improvement work (Deblois and Lepanto, 2016; Birken et al., 2013). They have a great responsibility, an explicit obligation and the possibility to influence the development of healthcare, for instance, by prioritizing improvement work and deciding how it should be evaluated (Myndigheten for vard- och omsorgsanalys, 2016). First-line managers' commitment to change work positively influences frontline workers' support of improvements (Fryer et al., 2018), and by their proximity and frequent interaction with coworkers, they have the potential to influence coworkers' attitude and behavior (Hutchinsson and Purcell, 2010). With their leadership, first-line managers can influence coworkers to be more development-oriented (Larsson, 2008), promote energy and competence and create the conditions for action and cooperation in change work (Sodergren, 2008).\nFactors influencing the application of Lean: Many professionals in Swedish healthcare experience that they do not have sufficient time to work with improvement ideas, and it is argued that quality initiatives fail because people within organizations lack time (Socialstyrelsen, 2017; Andersson, 2013). Halling (2013) notes that improvement work is a learning process that takes time, and Lean should thus be approached as a process and not as a project. A supportive and participating executive management who successfully applies Lean is extremely important (Berntson et al., 2012), in addition to their deep understanding and knowledge of it (Bagley and Lewis, 2008). However, Emiliani (2012) claims that first-line managers often experience that executives do not sufficiently understand and support improvement work. Conway and Monks (2011) report that some managers experience the top management force change on them without consulting with them or examining the needs, which results in a lack of ownership.\nMethodology: A questionnaire with the overall purpose to investigate first-line managers' views on their role, ability and conditions to create change according to Lean was developed based on literature studies. The questionnaire was reviewed and improved with a research group at Mid Sweden University, and a pilot study then was conducted. The pilot consisted of five managers in the studied organization who answered the questionnaire. Feedback was received orally from each manager about how the different questions and statements were interpreted and understood. This feedback led to minor improvements to the questionnaire.\nThe studied organization: A healthcare organization in the middle of Sweden with approximately 4,000 employees that serves a population of 128,000 was studied and the investigation was conducted two years after the initiation of Lean. The initiative started with a Lean education program for all managers and medically responsible doctors. Some of the main arguments for the application of Lean were financial challenges and long waiting times. A change vision was developed by the management team, which aimed at a healthy population that includes the patients and everybody who works within the organization and the elimination of waiting.\nResults and analysis of results: The results and analysis of the four questions are presented below. The results of questions one and two will be presented separately, and the results of questions three and four will be presented together.\nTo what extent do you consider your role to be crucial for driving improvement work based on Lean?: In total, 64 managers answered this question, which is a response rate of 57 percent. Out of the 64 responding managers, 83 percent consider themselves to have a crucial role to a high or very high extent in driving improvement work based on Lean. In contrast, 14 percent consider themselves to be important to a very low degree. The results show that a clear majority considers their role to be crucial, which agrees with the researchers who emphasize first-line managers' key role in improvement work due to the strategic position between their own managers and coworkers (Deblois and Lepanto, 2016; Ericsson and Augustinsson, 2015; Birken et al., 2013).\nList the three work tasks that you spend most of your time on as a first-line manager: In total, 73 first-line managers answered this question, which corresponds to a response rate of 65 percent. In all, 71 listed three work tasks, and the remaining two listed two answers, which gives a total amount of 217 listed work tasks out of the possible 219. Overall, 70 percent of the answers were associated with coworker-related issues such as coworkers, staff matters, staff administration, hiring staff, recruitment, workforce planning, employee issues, supporting employees, scheduling questions, appraisals, handling the report system, supervision, rehabilitation issues and workplace issues. Of these answers, 11 percent related to meetings, and 10 percent related to administration and the economy such as administration, business trips, vehicles, mail, the economy, bills, operational follow-up and reports. In all, 8 percent of the answers were connected to the time spent on development and improvement work, and these words included organizational development, development, care development, developmental issues, improvement work, and improvement considering goals and efficiency. The remaining 2 percent of the answers related to the customers and the executive level. Although the respondents were not asked to rank their answers (by indicating what most of their time was spent on), there was a clear trend of work tasks that related to human resources among the first written words. This result is confirmed by earlier research and reports that describe a variety of work tasks and a considerable time spent on issues that relate to coworkers, including a heavy administration (Harenstam et al., 2013) and extensive social responsibility at work (Stenfors-Hayes, 2015).\nThree factors that first-line managers consider to be most important for their ability to drive improvement work and the three factors that best describe what Lean provides: Overall, 72 of the managers answered these two survey questions, which is a response rate of 64 percent. All managers except for three marked three factors when answering the question about the ability to drive change (two marked two factors, and one marked 1 factor). All managers except for 21 marked three factors when answering the question about what Lean provides (11 marked two factors, and 10 marked one factor).\nDiscussion and practical implications for management when applying Lean: The purpose of this paper was to present the results from a study that investigates first-line healthcare managers' views on their role and the conditions that influence their ability to drive improvement work based on Lean.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the results from a study that investigates first-line healthcare managers' views on their role and the conditions that influence their ability to drive improvement work based on Lean.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was sent to all first-line managers in a healthcare organization to investigate their views on their role, conditions and ability to create change according to Lean. The results from four of the questions are presented, which focus on how crucial they consider their role to be for managing improvement work based on Lean, what work tasks their time is spent on, what factors they consider to be important to their ability to drive change and what factors best describe what Lean provides.\nFindings: The results show that first-line managers claim that their role is crucial in improvement work, but when they defined their work tasks, the time spent on improvements was not frequently described. Time, support from coworkers, and a clear vision and clear goals were the three factors that they considered to be most important to their ability to drive improvement work. Considering their leadership, Lean contributed to the structure with tools and supportive methods.\nOriginality/value: The questions can be used separately or as part of the entire questionnaire before and along a Lean process to obtain a better understanding of how to create a sustainable Lean approach in healthcare. Understanding the factors that first-line managers consider supporting their ability in improvement work and what they consider Lean provides is important in creating a development force in Swedish healthcare.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Hotel employees' organizational behaviors from cross-national perspectives
|
[
"LMX",
"Employee behavior",
"Job satisfaction",
"Employee voice",
"Cross-culture",
"Hotel employee"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As a major force of globalization, the hospitality industry is expanding its operations in international businesses. Given the rapid development of global business, cultural issues increasingly challenge management. There has been a surge in interest in research on cross-national and cross-cultural issues to provide more applicable management theories in a global context and best management practices from one country to another.\nReview of literature: Cultural influences on organizational behavior: the USA and China\nResearch methodology: Sampling and measurement development\nResults: Profile of survey respondents\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the relationships among leader-member exchange (LMX), employee voice, team-member exchange (TMX), employee job satisfaction and employee commitment to customer service (ECCS) across the USA and Chinese cultures within the hotel context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online survey was completed by hotel employees across the USA (n = 315) and China (n = 363). The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The findings of this study imply that the relationships among constructs between two nations are very similar, with a few significant differences. Specifically, this study shows that there are significant differences between the USA and China regarding the effects of LMX on employee voice, TMX, job satisfaction and ECCS.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research should be extended with more than two national cultures to increase the generalizability of the research findings. Primary implication is that leader in China, and the USA should seek to build LMX quality to reap organizational benefits.\nPractical implications: This study can help global hospitality firms develop management strategies effectively.\nOriginality/value: The study's findings provide researchers with a better understanding of the LMX framework across USA and Chinese cultures. It also verifies the underlying relational effects among LMX and its outcomes across different nations, thus offering global hospitality organizations best management practices across cultures. Further, this study seeks to fill gaps in previous LMX and employee voice studies by providing robust explanations of the cultural influences on LMX framework across nations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Incorporating cultural competency skills in emergency management education
|
[
"Higher education",
"Emergency management",
"Case study design",
"Cultural competencies"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Throughout the majority of the US's educational system history, diversity-related initiatives pertained mostly to legally protected classes vs the plethora of interpretive factors existing in today's society (Bailey, 2004). Within educational curricula, knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are a focus as faculty and staff develop cultural competencies and prepare students to interact with a diverse citizenry and workforce. However, the issue of how to incorporate cultural competency in the classroom has yet to be fully addressed as \"specialists have the authority to name, and therefore to regulate, construction of the 'other' \" (Infante and Matus, 2009, p. 440) without adequate space for students to reflect and dialogue. By acknowledging aspects of bias and prejudice, scholars believe cultural competency can be meaningfully integrated into educational curricula (e.g. Carrizales, 2010; Gaynor, 2014; Norman-Major and Gooden, 2012; Rice, 2004; Rice and Mathews, 2012). This incorporation leads to managers who can intentionally initiate intergroup contact to reduce negative perceptions and increase empathy for those deemed the \"other\" (Dixon et al., 2010; Paluck and Green, 2009).\nLiterature review: Some disciplines use culture synonymously with diversity, multiculturalism, and/or social justice (Akombo, 2013; Gurin et al., 2002; Rice, 2004). This study views culture as shared norms and values of a set of people through which they interpret, express, respond, and perceive their surrounding environment (Lederach, 1995). This leads to a cultural identity consisting of informal and formal ties leading to knowledge of behaviors, worldviews, values, expectations, beliefs, and symbols, along with an acceptance of these aspects in personally meaningful ways (Pedersen, 2000). Therefore, cultural competency \"reflects specific actions or policies within an organization that enable it to more effectively serve it culturally diverse populations\" (Carrizales, 2010, p. 594). Through understanding these actions and policies and incorporating cultural identity development theory, administrators open themselves to an awareness of the \"backstage\" cultural paradigms existing in institutions and recognize how their perspectives intersect with others (i.e. language and communication patterns, self- and group identities, and relationship interactions) (Moore-Thomas, 2010; Ryan, 2010; Riccucci, 2012). This theory is a complicated construct of psychosocial and cognitive layers viewing each individual as multi-dimensional in nature with coexisting identities influenced by certain phases or stages within their lifetime. Additionally, these identities are highly influenced by the environment, which affects how the individual defines whom they are, how they interact with others, their purpose in life, and their knowledge base and reflective judgment abilities (Moore-Thomas, 2010).\nThe case study and implementation: The case study occurred each semester, from Fall 2013 to Fall 2014, within an undergraduate Disaster Response and Recovery course[1] at a US southeastern state university. The professor has five years of emergency management experience[2], while the facilitator has seven years of identity development, communication, and conflict presentation experience in university settings. The case study subject matter aligns the need for cultural competence in emergency managers with the goal to begin conversations regarding bias, stereotypes, and preconceived notions (hereinafter defined terminology) during disaster response. Learning outcomes were: participants demonstrating greater understanding of the defined terminology by engaging in-group and self-reflection of the case study; and participants demonstrating comprehension of how the aforementioned terms influence their role as an emergency manager. Students completed a pretest to capture demographic information, assess understanding of terminology, and establish a baseline of attitudes prior to the exercise[3]. Following the group discussions, students completed a posttest, which included an open-ended statement \"I used to think___, but now I think ___.\"\nResults and discussion: After each semester, the professor and facilitator modified the implementation to increase the learning outcome results. Group 1 (Fall 2013), the most informal facilitation, was analyzed through responses to an open-ended question. Groups 2 and 3 completed a more formalized pre- and posttest. The majority of Group 2 and 3 students were public administration majors (62 percent and 36.1 percent). Group 2 (Spring 2014) was primarily female (52.4 percent), while Group 3 (Fall 2014) was primarily male (69.4 percent).\nConclusion and recommendations: The process for becoming a culturally competent emergency manager is a dynamic relationship influenced by the knowledge of evolving demographics and the needs and demands of society. Practitioners must equip themselves with the appropriate KSAs to purposefully reduce negative perceptions and increase empathy for those considered different within their community (Dixon et al., 2010; Paluck and Green, 2009). Furthermore, there is a critical need to incorporate a set of baseline standards and competencies to support positive societal impacts. Although implementation of cultural competency is a challenge, the benefits are too valuable. By becoming relatable, empathetic, representative change agents, emergency management practitioners will not only hold a better understanding of their own cultural identities, but they will also understand the interaction with their community to hopefully ensure the rights of their citizenry, equal service distribution, and full inclusiveness. Therefore, we recommend incorporating and adopting cultural competency-related KSAs into programmatic learning objectives for emergency management higher education standards, such as the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration's universal required competency \"to communicate and interact productively with a diverse and changing workforce and citizenry\" (Network, 2015, p. 7).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to incorporate a model of prejudice reduction and cultural identity development theory to assess: the implementation of a diversity case study in a disaster management course; and the cultural competency understanding among the students.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A diversity case study was implemented in an undergraduate Disaster Response and Recovery course (Fall 2013 n=17; Spring 2014 n=21; Fall 2014 n=35). The discussion encouraged students to contemplate how their biases, preconceived notions, and stereotypes affect their future role in emergency management.\nFindings: Results from Likert scale pre/post tests showed a marked increase in knowledge and a positive change in attitudes (p\nResearch limitations/implications: Bias can be attributed to the instructor and facilitator, and contextual limitations including a lack of: previous conversations and courses on diversity-related topics and participation motivation.\nPractical implications: By developing cultural competency, managers initiate intergroup contact reducing negative perceptions and increasing empathy for those deemed different. Integrating cultural competency into emergency management academic programs allows students to identify how their biases, stereotypes, and preconceived notions affect their performance.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the literature by focussing on implementing a diversity case study to explore cultural competency, which is lacking in emergency management higher education. The diversity case study and instructional design could be adopted in disaster management courses.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Strategies for emerging research and innovation futures
|
[
"Research",
"Stakeholders",
"Innovation",
"Strategy",
"Foresight",
"Scenarios"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction and methodology: The emergence of new research practices and transformations in society, technology, economy, environment, policy, values and cultures are reconfiguring the landscape of Research and Innovation (R&I). Recent trends indicate that R&I is becoming global and interconnected resulting in the development of a multi-polar world. The R&I activities are undertaken in multiple locations by the communities of scientists and technology developers enabled by networking, digitalisation and virtualisation through information and communication technologies (ICTs). The role of business in R&I is continuously growing and is becoming increasingly transnational. The traditional scope of stakeholders involved in R&I is expanding to include citizens, funding agencies, policy makers, media and volunteer groups. All these developments introduce emerging new opportunities as well as uncertainties and tensions on how R&I might be initiated, organised and conducted in the future. The research presented in this paper is based on the project \"Research and Innovation Futures 2030: From explorative to transformative scenarios (RIF)\". RIF aims at analysing these developments with a systemic and long-term perspective and developing long-term prospects on the ways of R&I might be undertaken.\n2. Background: the evolution of the research and innovation landscape: The issue of knowledge dynamics and knowledge production in society has concerned social scientists for over 50 years. Starting from the 1960s, the focus was on the social consequences of the then prevailing \"big science\" model (de Solla Price, 1963; and Ravetz, 1971). The debate gained new momentum in the 1990s, when a number of new concepts were developed to capture a new relationship between science and society in the shaping of the dynamics of knowledge production. Among the most influential of these concepts are \"Mode 2\" of knowledge production, post-normal science and the triple helix concept (Gibbons et al., 1994; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). Sociologists have been looking for not only new patterns of knowledge production but also for new ways to analyse the complexity of knowledge dynamics and the relationship of scientific knowledge production with other forms of knowledge production in society. These concepts allowed reflection on the status of different forms of knowledge production and their relation to the context of application.\n3. Stakeholders and scenarios in research and innovation futures 2030: 3.1 Mapping stakeholders in research and innovation\n4. Discussion and conclusions: The use of scenarios to guide strategic choices needs the presence of some underlying, but not necessarily obvious, \"glue\" to hold their development together. In the scenarios presented, and all that hinges on them, the \"glue\" was the notion of a stakeholder as defined by van de Kerkhof (2001). Without this notion the development of the scenarios would have been rather \"foggy\".\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to present a set of strategic options for Research and Innovation (R&I) stakeholders in the light of new and emerging ways of organising and performing research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper first reviews the evolution of the R&I landscape and identifies the most influential stakeholders engaged in R&I. In the light of the scenarios developed for the year 2030, a set of strategic options are identified and assessed for each stakeholder group.\nFindings: R&I systems are now more complex than 50 years ago and will be even more in the future. Radical changes are expected in terms of the ways research is funded, organised and carried out. Some of these transformations are captured by the scenarios developed. The analysis of scenarios indicated that their feasibility and desirability differ across different sectors of industry, and research areas within the research landscape.\nResearch limitations/implications: Scenarios and strategies presented in the paper bring new considerations on the way research activities are practiced. Further research is considered to be useful on the new modes of research and implications for academia, industry, society and policy makers.\nPractical implications: The discussion around the responses of different stakeholders vis-a-vis specific scenarios about the future in R&I practices and organisation gives a practical view about how to deal with associated emerging trends and issues.\nSocial implications: Society is a crucial stakeholder of all R&I activities. The transformative scenarios suggest that society will not only be playing a reactive role on the demand side but also more proactive role on the supply side in the decades to come.\nOriginality/value: The paper is based on work undertaken within the Research and Innovation (RIF) 2030 project. As R&I activities will be important for the development and competitiveness of the EU and its member states, the work presented here is considered to be of value by highlighting how to create more resilient strategies in a fast-changing R&I landscape.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Antecedents of relationship learning in supplier partnerships from the perspective of an industrial customer: the direct effects model
|
[
"Relational practices",
"Social capital",
"Supplier's relationship‐specific investments",
"Relationship learning",
"Partnership",
"Customer‐supplier relationships",
"Customers",
"Suppliers",
"Buyer‐seller relationships"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executives readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: In global markets, companies, strategic networks and value systems face increasing competition (Gerlach, 1992; Dwyer and Tanner, 2009). When managing their supplier relationships, companies tend to react to increased market pressures by systematically applying market mechanisms (a mechanism of competition that takes place in markets) forcing companies to develop and innovate (Krause et al., 2000). However, the industrial markets often function imperfectly, due to long and costly supplier switching processes (Caniels and Gelderman, 2007; Handfield et al., 2000). Thus, in industrial markets, the market mechanism is ineffective and as a consequence, relationships often start to resemble long-term partnerships (Axelsson and Easton, 1992; Bensaou, 1999; Hakansson and Snehota, 1989; Moller et al., 2005). Prior studies note that in these inter-dependent and long-term partnerships, customers need to apply mechanisms other than market pressure to facilitate relationship learning (Adler, 2001; Knight, 2002; Kohtamaki, 2010; Ritter, 2007), and hence customers need specific knowledge on how to facilitate learning in industrial partnerships (Mohr and Sengupta, 2002). Therefore, this study sets out to analyse the antecedents of learning within industrial partnerships, from the perspective of the customer company.Prior studies argue that the antecedents of learning are different in partnerships in comparison to market relationships (Ahmadjian and Lincoln, 2001; Selnes and Sallis, 2003). In short-term market relationships, suppliers learn from customers and competitors through observation, while in partnerships and networks, companies learn jointly through continuous and intensive interactions (Holmqvist, 2003; Johnsen and Ford, 2006). In partnerships, learning is interactive, while in market relationships, learning is based on more distant market research, analysis and benchmarking. Due to this fundamental difference, scholars should apply partnerships and not market relationships, as the unit of analysis when analysing the antecedents of relationship learning (Knight, 2002; Morris et al., 2006).To understand the antecedents of relationship learning in the context of partnerships, we decided to study the effects of relational practices, social capital and a supplier's relationship-specific investments. These constructs represent complementary and important antecedents of relationship learning. Relational practices are included in the research model, as these practices potentially manifest processes and structures that facilitate interaction, information-sharing and relationship learning (Bensaou, 1999; Hakansson et al., 1999; Johnsen and Ford, 2006). Further, prior studies suggest, and to an extent demonstrate, that social capital facilitates open information exchange, and thus learning in a customer-supplier relationship (Adler, 2001; Selnes and Sallis, 2003). Lastly, relationship-specific investments may play an important role in creating new resources, strengthening the relationship resource-base and influencing partners to develop specific working procedures to take full advantage of supplier's new resources (Chang and Gotcher, 2007).Nooteboom and Gilsing (2004) argue that the research literature lacks empirical evidence on relational antecedents of learning, such as relational practices, social capital and relationship-specific investments. Studies only rarely combine relational constructs, such as coordination or relationship specific investments, to explain relationship learning or innovation (Selnes and Sallis, 2003). Instead, vast amount of evidence exists on the antecedents and mechanisms of transaction costs (Williamson, 1985). The present study intends to address this knowledge gap by applying constructs mostly based on interaction approach (relational practices) (Ford and Hakansson, 2006; Hakansson and Snehota, 1989), social capital approach (social capital) (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998), relational governance as well as the resource-based view (relationship specific investments) (Barney, 1991; Chang and Gotcher, 2007), and the relationship learning view (Selnes and Sallis, 2003). Some studies across the spectrum of these research streams have taken a learning approach; however, these studies have mostly utilise qualitative or case-based evidence and have focused on a more narrowly defined research model or have integrated market-relationships into the datasets rather than focusing on partnerships.Considering the scarcity of quantitative research on the links between relational practices, social capital and a supplier's relationship-specific investments on the one hand and relationship learning in the specific context of partnerships on the other, the present study integrates the concepts described above into a single research model and tests their joint impact on relationship learning. Hence, we formulate our research question as follows: \"To what extent do relational practices, social capital and a supplier's relationship-specific investments facilitate learning in partnerships?\"This paper is organised as follows. The next section reviews the literature on relationship learning and sets out three hypotheses on the impact of relational practices, social capital and a supplier's relationship-specific investments on relationship learning. A subsequent section presents the methodology of the study. The following section exhibits the results of the empirical work, as the last section highlights managerial and research implications and discusses the limitations of this study.\nTheory development and hypotheses: Relationship learning\nResearch method and data analysis: Data collection, response pattern and respondents\nData analysis and results: Table II presents the correlations between the given constructs and shows that the highest correlation between the independent variables is 0.68; this correlation was observed between relational practices and relationship learning. The other independent variables seem to correlate moderately. Due to the correlation between the independent variables, potential multicollinearity was tested using the variance inflation factor (vif-index). As all values for each independent variable are well below 2 and the multicollinearity threshold is 10, we can conclude that the data is satisfactorily free from multicollinearity.In the second phase of the analysis, we applied PLS analysis to test the research model. Figure 2 provides the results of the analysis. We chose the path-weighting scheme (Lohmoller, 1989) to estimate the paths between constructs. To determine the significance of each estimated path, a standard bootstrapping procedure was applied with 500 re-samples consisting of the same number of cases as in the original data sample. Both estimated models explain a satisfactory amount of variance in the dependent variables. Furthermore, an examination of the Stone-Geisser Criterion reveals a satisfying predictive relevance, as the Q2 value for the dependent variable exceeds zero (0.35).The results show that neither of the control variables, i.e. the length of the relationship (b=0.00, t=0.02, n.s.) nor supplier distance from the customer (b=0.08, t=1.61, n.s.), has a statistically significant effect on relationship learning. The independent variables together with the non-significant control variables have an extensive effect on the dependent variable. The R2 value for the relationship learning is 0.58; thus, the independent variables explain 58 percent of the variance of the dependent variable. The result shows the importance of the independent variables in relationship learning.The model shows that relational practices have a statistically significant impact on relationship learning (b=0.44, t=7.20, p < 0.001). This result supports the first hypothesis, suggesting a positive impact of relational practices on relationship learning. According to this result, relationships with extensive activities enjoy higher levels of relationship learning than relationships with looser cooperative links and practices. The PLS model also indicates a statistically significant effect of social capital on relationship learning (b=0.27, t=4.66, p < 0.001). This result demonstrates that social capital is an important antecedent of relationship learning and supports hypothesis 2. Results also demonstrate that supplier's relationship-specific investments explain relationship learning (b=0.25, t=4.38, p < 0.001). Thus, as it appears that learning requires supplier's relationship-specific investments, strong support is provided for hypothesis 3. We also found that the independent variables correlate strongly, but we decided to focus on the direct links between the selected independent variables and relationship learning. Finally, we also tested the moderating relationships between constructs, but we did not find significant interaction effects.\nDiscussion and implications: Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This study aims to examine the antecedents of relationship learning in partnerships and develop a research model that explains relationship learning through three complementary constructs: relational practices, social capital and suppliers' relationship-specific investments.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study examines data drawn from interviews regarding 195 customer-supplier relationships from the metal and electronics industries. In terms of methodology, the study employs structural equation modelling.\nFindings: - The findings indicate that relational practices, social capital and supplier's relationship-specific investments explain relationship learning to a great extent.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The present study has some limitations, such as the use of cross-sectional data and a limited sample size. More empirical research is needed on the antecedents and mechanisms of relationship learning as well as the interactions among antecedents.\nPractical implications: - The results suggest that companies must be able to facilitate the development of relational practices, social capital and suppliers' relationship-specific investments, as these constructs explain relationship learning largely.\nOriginality/value: - The prior literature lacks empirical evidence on the antecedents of relationship learning, particularly in the context of partnerships. The present study demonstrates a significant impact of three antecedent constructs on relationship learning.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Organizational justice, conflict management and employee relations: The mediating role of climate of trust
|
[
"Employee relations",
"Employees",
"Organizational justice",
"Conflict management",
"Employers",
"Climate of trust",
"Power transmission unit"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The domination of heightened competition has enforced the power sector undertakings to drive the human resource to confront the dynamic and challenging world. In order to survive and thrive, the organization needs to develop strategies to make the employees feel happy and satisfied, as they are the most critical stakeholders and business partners (Kim and Rhee, 2011). Employees share the workspace with their teammates, supervisors and managers under a common ceiling by enduring the channel of communication based on which a relationship is initiated. The exchange of obligations and rights between employees and employers is the prime promoter of employee relations (ER). It is the building block of an organization that directly affects the attitudes and behaviors of the employees (Masterson et al., 2000). An effective ER is, hence, indispensable to the success of both the individuals and the organization as a whole (Gennard, 2002; Madlock and Booth-Butterfield, 2012).\n2. Theoretical framework and hypotheses development: In this research, the social exchange theory (SET) is adapted to establish a conceptual framework by illustrating the influence of organizational justice, conflict management and climate of trust on ER. The idea of social exchange was advocated by Blau (1964), which is considered prevalent to describe organization-employee relations (Cropanzano et al., 2003). In ER, social exchange is cultivated on the organization's fair and equal treatment provided to the employees (Aryee et al., 2002). In social exchange, trust is defined as the central feature, and mutual obligation flourishes as the social entities start exchanging the concrete outcomes and the socio-emotional benefits (Blau, 1964).\n3. Methods: 3.1 Sample\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Hypotheses testing: 5.1 Mediation\n6. Discussion: The study aimed to analyze the effect of organizational justice and conflict management on ER through the mediating role of climate of trust. Based on the study results, seven key findings have been identified and illustrated according to the hypotheses. First, it was confirmed that organizational justice revealed positive and significant relations with ER. This hypothesized link corresponds with the literature that supports finding exhibiting organizational justice predicts ER (Rupp and Cropanzano, 2002; Fein et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2017). Second, conflict management was found as a positive and significant predictor of ER. This finding is in line with the prior studies and stated that manager-employee relations are the consequences of appropriate conflict management strategy (Chen et al., 2005; Posthuma, 2011). Third, the relationship between organizational justice and climate of trust was found to be positive and significant. These findings corroborate with prior studies that stated that organizational justice is a significant predictor of climate of trust (Aryee et al., 2002; Katou, 2013).\n7. Implications: The comprehensive results of this research are convincing and contribute for a better grasp over ER. These findings are of great importance to both scholars and practitioners.\n8. Limitations and suggestions for future research: This scholarly endeavor though highlighted the significant outcomes, encountered some limitations. The major drawback is the size of the sample that was confined only to a single power transmission unit of a particular state of India. Future research could be extended by conducting longitudinal studies considering other public and private power sector located across the country. Thus, a series of comparative analysis could be presented to attain the generalizability of results. This approach could be modeled into a cross-cultural study by considering the international perspectives. Furthermore, climate of trust was employed as a mediator between organizational justice and ER, and conflict management and ER. As for future research, other variables could be suggested to play the role of mediator to enrich the knowledge of ER. The model proposed in this research could be extended to alternative constructs and also to emphasize on different dimensions for a better understanding of their significance and influence on ER within the framework of a power sector and other business units.\n9. Conclusion: The study concluded that the significance of ER is imperative for enduring a smooth and successful organizational life. In order to promote cordial employer-employee relations, it is prioritized to ensure organizational fairness, adequate management of conflicts and building of a climate of trust. When organizational justice, conflict management and climate of trust are coupled with ER, it will have a positive effect on employees' attitudes and behaviors results in achieving organizational outcomes. Organizations by emphasizing on these constructs can strengthen employee morale, corporate communication, mutual understanding and respect within the workplace. As a result, employees will feel motivated and encouraged to confront the future challenges and organizational growth and sustainability can better be accomplished. The researcher in this work attempted to cultivate the quality relationship between employers and employees by collaborating the employees' contribution and employer's investment. As employees are the vital assets of the power sector undertakings, they should be properly cared and valued. In order to satisfy and make employees feel happy, it can be plausible to implement effective and proactive strategies at the organizational domain. Thus, this recent work by integrating the importance of organizational justice, conflict management and climate of trust confirmed the empirical validation and provides new and meaningful insights to enhance the existing knowledge of ER in power sector organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of organizational justice and conflict management on employee relations (ER) through the mediating role of climate of trust.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was conducted with a sample of 331 employees working in a power transmission unit of Odisha. Data were collected by administering a structured questionnaire and analyzed using structural equation modeling (AMOS 20).\nFindings: The results reveal that climate of trust plays the role of a partial mediator between organizational justice and ER and conflict management and ER. Also, it was found that organizational justice, conflict management and climate of trust are the positive and significant predictors of ER.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study was confined to a single state-owned power transmission unit of an Indian state, which restricts its generalizability. The research would benefit from exploration in alternative units.\nPractical implications: This scholarly work may encourage managers and decision makers to develop trust building climate by focusing on organizational justice and conflict management to flourish an environment of harmonious ER, furthermore to formulate effective strategies for cultivating facilitative work environment to enhance positive attitude among the employees to challenge future goals.\nOriginality/value: The research is exclusive in determining the influence of organizational justice and conflict management on ER through the mediator of climate of trust in the new perspective of the power sector that provides empirical evidence to the extant literature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Diversification, family involvement and firm performance: Empirical evidence from Italian manufacturing firms
|
[
"Performance",
"Family involvement",
"Geographic diversification",
"Product diversification"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The impact of product and geographic diversification on firm's performance has been widely explored in the management literature over the years (e.g. Benito-Osorio et al., 2012; Chatterjee and Wernerfelt, 1991; Datta et al., 1991). Despite the large number of empirical studies on this topic, there is no clear consensus on the nature of the relationship between diversification and performance (e.g. Palich et al., 2000). The diversity of findings is obviously conditioned by conceptual assumptions (such as the use of an institutional or transactional perspective) and methodological issues (such as the use of different samples, time periods and measures of variables). In any case, it seems clear that the research stream examining this topic cannot be described as mature due to this lack of empirically shaped consensus (Palich et al., 2000; Park and Jang, 2013). As a result, new research is still required to understand the nature of the relationship between diversification and performance.\nTheory and hypotheses: Diversification refers to an increase by a firm in the kinds of businesses in which it operates, be that diversity related to products, geographical markets or knowledge. The definition of diversification used in this paper includes the changes in a firm's administrative structure, systems and other managerial processes. Line extensions that are not accompanied by changes in administrative linkage mechanisms do not fall under this conceptualization of diversification (Montgomery, 1994; Ramanujam and Varadarajan, 1989).\nMethods: Sample and data collection\nAnalysis: Prior to running the analyses, the variables' normality of their distributions was examined by graphing the distributions and examining the skewness and kurtosis. The variables which were not normally distributed were transformed (e.g. log of firm size).\nResults: Table II presents the results of the fixed-effects model. We tested three different models. First, the control variables were entered (Model 1), followed by PD, geographic diversification and family involvement (Model 2). In the third model, in addition to the control variables and main predictors we added the interaction terms (Model 3). Model 3 shows a significantly improved fit in comparison with Models 1 and 2, thus suggesting the overall theoretical model finds general confirmation with the data.\nDiscussion: In response to dynamic competition and globalization of markets, diversification is becoming a strategic option that firms of all types consider in order to build and sustain their competitive advantage in national and international contexts. This study provides new evidence for the effect on a firm's performance of the expansion into additional business areas and geographic markets, focusing on the nature of the type of owner (family or non-family firms). Specifically, our work contributes to the literature by exploring whether family firms improve their performance (relative to non-family firms) by engaging in both dimensions of diversification. The empirical analysis has been applied to a sample of manufacturing companies in Italy over a seven-year time period. The results generally support the theoretical predictions and provide some unexpected and interesting results which deserve particular attention.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of product and geographic diversification on the performance of Italian manufacturing firms and evaluate the moderating role of family involvement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The hypotheses have been tested by using a fixed-effects panel data regression model.\nFindings: Results show a linear relationship between product diversification and firm performance and an inverted U-shaped relationship between geographic diversification and firm performance. Moreover, when considering the status of the family firm, family ties have a negative moderating role on the performance of companies that are product and internationally diversified.\nOriginality/value: By providing theoretical explanations and empirical evidence, the study extends the diversification-performance research by testing this relationship in an unexplored context (i.e. Italy), and by identifying a still not well explored contingency factor (i.e. family involvement). In doing so, diversification and family involvement literatures are brought together and the results show the importance of the type of owner regarding the impact of product and international diversification on firm performance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Beyond the digital divide: policy analysis for knowledge societies
|
[
"National cultures",
"Intellectual capital",
"Sustainable development",
"Knowledge economy",
"Information strategy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: If every nation contains people of diverse skills, experiences, attributes, education and beliefs, is it then a simple matter to classify some societies as knowledge societies and others as less-developed societies? The findings of our research convince us that it is indeed difficult to classify societies on the basis of their knowledge capital because knowledge is a substitutable and transferable commodity that is by no means an end in itself. The term knowledge society is commonly used to denote the advanced economy where most operations are knowledge-based (Hearn and Rooney, 2002). These are societies that have shown superiority in their ability to leverage on the knowledge resources that reside within them. However, more significantly, as we stated in the earlier report (Sharma et al., 2008), a nation's route to becoming a successful knowledge economy is its ability to also be a learning society. This is a hallmark of an aspiring knowledge society in terms of its strategy and policy. Efforts to bridge the gaps between the have and have-less societies are mixed, with the advanced economies usually showing greater propensities for learning and innovation over the developing ones. The challenge of a society towards becoming knowledge intensive is undoubtedly multi-dimensional as there are no sufficient policy frameworks to help these societies navigate through strategy and policy options.The present phase of globalization unveils the growing knowledge intensity of goods and services; hence, creating a huge appreciation for knowledge, its cultivation and exploitation. Both the information and knowledge economy, have unleashed \"weightless goods\" as contributing more to the gross national product than physical goods. Unlike physical goods that are consumed due to use and congruent with the law of diminishing returns, knowledge and information goods provide increasing returns over time, a point not lost on knowledge societies. As Stiglitz (1999, p. 9) remarks:The properties of dynamic processes driven by knowledge seem to ultimately derive from the scarcity-defying expansiveness of non-rivalrous aspect of knowledge. Once knowledge is discovered and made public, there is essentially zero-marginal cost to adding more users.This is indeed the defining quality of knowledge societies that we explore in our policy analysis.In an earlier segment of this study (reported in Sharma et al., 2008) we discussed a framework of 13 dimensions that spans across four main pillars such as: governance, infrastructure, human capital and culture. In this sequel, our aim is to formulate a policy planning tool that can be put to use in the field. Given our observation about the lack of policy analysis frameworks for understanding knowledge societies, we now seek to use the framework of 13 dimensions in the field in order to test the usefulness and the relevance of the framework for the benefit of policy planners. In the next section, we recap the conceptual model discussed at length in the earlier paper and review the adopted research method. Next we present the empirical observation obtained in applying the framework to policy analyses using a combination of the Delphi and critical success factors approaches. We used the cases of Nigeria, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the USA as subjects of analysis because of their familiarity to our research participants and availability of socio-economic data. Finally, we conclude with our thoughts on formulating knowledge policies.\n2. Brief recap of conceptual model and field research: The model that was first introduced in Sharma et al. (2008) was drawn from the synthesis of what constitutes the intellectual capital of nations (Edvinsson, 2003) and a framework that suggests how knowledge societies organize themselves (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). We performed a comprehensive, constructive review and analysis of research in the field to formulate 13 dimensions that were consistent with four major philosophical constructs of a knowledge society; namely, infrastructure; governance; human capital and culture (see Figure 1). We do not claim that the 13 dimensions are mutually exclusive to any one pillar but rather that they overlap through the four philosophical constructs much like the interdependency suggested by Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) and Chou (2005). In other words, almost all the dimensions contribute to more than one of the pillars of a knowledge society.After three iterations of refinements with a Delphi panel of researchers, the identification and definition of dimensions was completed. We next matched them with various readily available proxy indicators generated from several reputable, published sources of socio-economic indicators (such as the OECD, ITU, UNDP, UNESCO, WEF, and World Bank) so as to make the model measurable as well as an actionable. During this exercise we discovered that in many instances, there was no single, proxy indicator that covered the constructs of a dimension entirely. Hence, either several proxy indicators were necessary for a single dimension. The converse was also the case. For example, dimension 7 in Table I that was covered by several indicators such as business competitiveness index; global competitiveness index; ease of doing business; and index of economic freedoms - each with its own distinct but relevant nuance. Conversely, examples of proxy measures that covered more than one dimension are: voice and accountability for human rights and freedoms, as well as, the role of mass media. It is therefore worth reiterating that the relationship between the 13 dimensions and the various proxy indicators is rarely one-to-one and exclusive.Table I recapitulates and summarizes the 13 dimensions of a knowledge society, the claims of their contribution to a KBE with corresponding support from the literature, and proxy measures from the referred to authoritative sources.It is to be noted that we did not seek to develop a quantitative, composite measure and ranking of knowledge societies with our framework of 13 dimensions. As pointed out earlier, there have been numerous attempts at this for entirely different purposes (see UNDP, 2007; World Bank, 2006; OECD, 2007). As well, using the theoretical underpinnings of the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Awards, Carrillo (2004) and his associates at the World Capital Institute (see www.worldcapitalinstitute.org) have ranked knowledge cities in terms of discernible attributes for researchers and policy makers. Their MAKCi framework comprises assessments within four broad categories: identity, intelligence and relational capitals; financial and instrumental-material capitals; human individual, collective and instrumental k-capitals; and other tangible-intangible capitals. However, we did find it appropriate to benchmark our framework with the theoretical underpinnings of some significant efforts in the field - the World Bank's (2007) Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) and Knowledge Economy Index (KEI), the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP, 2007) Human Development Index (HDI), and Spence's (2008) Growth Report. These concepts are reviewed briefly in the following sub-sections.KAM\n3. Empirical findings and discussion: As stated earlier, we selected the four societies (Singapore, Nigeria, the UAE and the USA) that span the development spectrum because many in our focus group were familiar with them - most commonly having lived there or dealt with them in a professional capacity. Table II summarizes some key statistics drawn from the UNDP's HDI report of our four societies of interest. These statistics and the country profiles were shared with focus group participants.In the focus group sessions, we first used the four-pillar model of 13 dimensions to conduct a qualitative discussion on Singapore, Nigeria, the USA and the UAE as a means of evaluating our framework's utility for policy researchers and decision-makers. From this qualitative discussion, we developed a K-SWOT analysis (Zack, 1999) of the focus groups. Assessing a nation's K-SWOT means evaluating both internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external factors (opportunities and threats) capable of either helping the nation's drive towards becoming a knowledge society. In other words, it is an assessment of a society's inherent knowledge capabilities or lack of the same. The K-SWOT we deployed in this exercise is unique in that it uses two descriptive indicators, namely a strength index and an opportunity index. The net strength (the difference of strength and weakness assessments) and net opportunity (the difference of the opportunity and threat assessments) respectively may be derived. Various tools such as storytelling, best practices, lessons learned, newspaper reviews and articles were used among the discussion group members to facilitate a consensus of the analysis of the focus groups. Normalized on a scale of 0-10, societies' strengths, weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats were analyzed through the lens of the 13 dimensions used in this study. The results obtained through such an exercise are shown in Table III.These opportunity and strength indices were then plotted as radar or kaviat charts for the purpose of sharing with the participants in order to seek their further validation. This is also shown in Figure 2.Figure 2, at a glance, reveals that Nigeria possesses a number of weaknesses along the 13 dimensions and has tremendous challenges to becoming a knowledge society. While this indicates that the country is sadly lagging in the knowledge league at this time, there are opportunities in abundance. A major strength of Nigeria is the role of mass media that is considered as an opportunity with numerous benefits. The strength of the mass media is a dimension the country can leverage on. Singapore and the USA (as would be expected) possess enormous net strengths along many of the 13 dimensions. The charts in Figure 2 also reveal that vast opportunities to become increasingly knowledge intensive co-exist with the threats they face. Here lies the critical challenge for policy-makers. The UAE shows a range of strengths in some of the dimensions and weaknesses in others. But opportunities exist to become knowledge intensive if they can leverage more on knowledge resources that resides within them. However, the assessments of the UAE also showed the greatest variance (and therefore least consensus) among our participants.A simple test of reliability or consistency was next carried out. The strength and opportunities indices derived from our focus group participants were matched with the World Bank's KAM. More specifically, a comparison with the KEI basic scorecard resulted in the radar diagram in Figure 3. We discovered that the Strength and Opportunity indices show consistency with the KEI. Just as some countries show high or low results in variables of the strength and opportunity indices, they show similar results with the KAM's basic scorecard proxy indicators.The HDI comprises various measures with readily available data drawn from its main proxy indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, education, standard of living, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. These measures aggregate to three basic dimensions of human development - a decent standard of living, long and healthy life and potential for education and growth. Table IV shows these proxies measures for the four countries. Again, Nigeria is ranked lowest amongst the four societies analyzed and accordingly categorized as a low human development country. In the full HDI listings Nigeria was ranked third behind Senegal and Eritrea in the low HDI class. The UAE is next after Nigeria, among the four countries ranked 39th in the HDI. The UAE was placed in the High HDI class, as were Singapore and the USA, which were ranked 25th and 12th respectively.Finally, our focus group participants were asked to engage in a free-flowing policy discussion of what could be transferable from the haves to the have-less (in terms of knowledge policies). This discussion was also meant to spawn policy recommendations that would help transform societies into knowledge economies. Some of the key ideas will be discussed in the concluding section that follows.\n4. Concluding remarks: Our research suggests that the pursuit of a framework for knowledge policy analysis is an ongoing journey. We do not claim superiority over the quantitative approaches favored by the UNDP (2007), the World Bank (2007) and our fellow researchers in the area of knowledge economics (see Carrillo, 2004; Dolfsma and Soete, 2006; Sagasti, 2004). However, we do claim that our framework of 13 dimensions, in the context of a K-SWOT policy discussion, results in some very useful (and transferable) success stories and lessons learned in the process of discussion, debates, story-telling and scenario planning. The K-SWOT exercise allowed gaps to be identified and appropriate policy recommendations derived. One unanticipated result of the focus group session was the widely held view that the 13 dimensions taken together were not as comprehensive and parsimonious as we would have liked. More specifically, there were missing elements having to do with the \"social aspects\" of a knowledge society.Social efficacy\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to report the results of using the framework in the field for the purpose of formulating knowledge policies. The framework derives from a conceptual model for analyzing knowledge development overviewed by the authors in a previous paper.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper uses the conceptual framework of 13 dimensions for knowledge policy-making analysis and qualitative focus group discussions by means of what is known as a knowledge SWOT analysis. Such an exercise ordinarily determines what is termed as net strength (strengths offset by weaknesses) and net opportunity (opportunities offset by threats).\nFindings: - The field research suggests that, whereas quantitative indicators are very commonly used for the purpose of benchmarking and progress tracking, they are limited in terms of determining causes, effects and encapsulating good practices. The present framework provides a means for policy-makers and analysts to engage in discussion, debates, story-telling and scenario building in order to understand net strengths and opportunities.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research is limited by the time constraints of the focus group participants and it is not feasible to conduct a K-SWOT of more than the four societies used for the reason that there are insufficient numbers of informed participants.\nPractical implications: - Developing the knowledge economy has to be more than a management of socio-economic indicators. Understanding the net strength and opportunity faced by a society in the context of a global knowledge economy allowed insights into gaps that may be addressed with appropriate knowledge policies. There is much work to be done in formulating implementable policy recommendations.\nOriginality/value: - It is hoped that a useful and valid policy analysis tool for knowledge development has thus been described.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Towards lean transformation: the analysis of lean implementation frameworks
|
[
"Lean production",
"Employee involvement",
"Contingency",
"Framework",
"Bottom-up approach",
"Lean transformation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Lean Production System was first coined by John Krafcik (1998) and made popular worldwide by Womack et al. (1990) in their best-selling book, The Machine that Changed the World. In 1996, lean thinking was further introduced by Womack and Jones where lean production principles could be applied beyond manufacturing environment into any field including office administration and service sectors.\n2. Research methodology: The analytical studies of lean production frameworks pioneered by Anand and Kodali (2009, 2010) opened the window for further research in this area. To search for the published literatures on frameworks of Lean Production System, the following knowledge databases were browsed through: Scopus, Emerald and Google Scholar. The keywords used including \"lean manufacturing\", \"lean production\", \"lean transformation\", \"lean thinking\", \"toyota production system\" with \"model\" and \"framework\". In addition, the literatures reviewed in this study were those published from year 2010 until 2013. The literatures published before year 2010 had been reviewed by Anand and Kodali (2009, 2010) and would not be discussed again.\n3. Review and analysis of the lean implementation frameworks: Purpose of a lean implementation framework\n4. Discussions of shortfalls in the lean implementation frameworks: A framework translates theories into practices systematically (Hakes, 1991). It was found that some of the lean production principles were often overlooked by the researchers hence they failed to deliver the gist of lean to the practitioners. It is difficult to propose a framework that fits all the needs of different industries and different companies; however a proposed framework should at least be able to address the problems lean practitioners faced and overcome the shortfalls that lean practitioners encountered during lean transformation. By focusing on shop floor production activities, the above frameworks' shortages will be discussed following the sequence of objectives as listed in Section 1 - Introduction:\n5. Conclusion: Lean is characterised as a people-oriented production system and \"Employee involvement\" is one of the most critical elements to make a lean transformation programme a success story. Ironically, the common barriers that hinder lean transformation are always the issues surrounding at \"shop floor employees\" such as \"lacking of skill or technical knowhow\" in practicing lean among the shop floor employees (including supervisory staff); or companies have failed to engage shop floor associates into lean activities.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Failure in engaging shop floor employees (including supervisory staff) in lean, lacking of supervisory skills in leading workers and lacking of lean technical knowhow among the shop floor employees are some of the major obstacles in lean transformation. One of the reasons of inefficient lean transformation is the shortages in frameworks or plans in implementing lean. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the shortfalls in the current lean implementation frameworks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The frameworks were analysed according to the following criteria: first, \"What\" is the approach of lean implementation, i.e. top-down or bottom-up; second, \"How\" to implement lean (description of steps or sequences of lean implementation along the lean journey); third, \"Why\" - the reason of adoption of the proposed lean tools, techniques or practices (thereafter TTPs) in each phase of lean implementation; and fourth, \"Who\" are the targeted internal stakeholders to use or apply the lean TTPs that were proposed in the frameworks.\nFindings: Most of the current available lean frameworks were prone to top-down approach but not bottom-up. Improvement initiatives from the shop floor employees were often overlooked by researchers. In proposing their frameworks, most of the researchers have neglected the importance of \"Why\" aspect in the adoption of TTPs or the framework itself without giving the \"reason\" for each of the elements in lean implementation. Besides the aspects of \"What\" and \"How\", the mentioned \"Why\" aspect is important in contributing to capability building among the shop floor employees in carrying out improvement, problem-solving or waste elimination activities. The aspect of \"Who should carry out which lean TTP\" was somewhat not emphasised by most of the lean researchers. In addition, the current frameworks were prone to \"one-best-way\" approach with lacking of contingency sense, which is one of the common criticisms against Lean Production System.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides a critical view on the shortfalls of current lean implementation frameworks, and proposes an insight of new criteria for future research in analysing and proposing new lean implementation framework towards lean transformation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
To the ends of the earth: student mobility in southern Chile
|
[
"International students",
"Study abroad",
"Case study",
"Academic performance",
"Student mobility"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Internationalization of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) involves almost all aspects of institutional activity (Knight and De Wit, 1995; De Wit, 2011) and various implementation strategies (Knight, 2004; Dewey and Duff, 2009), of which student mobility has become one of the most recurrent (De Wit, 2010). Although student exchange is not a new phenomenon (Varghese, 2008), it has become progressively more common over the last few decades. In 2010, the estimated number of students abroad was 4.1 million, i.e. a fivefold escalation since 1985 (OECD, 2012). Furthermore, an exponential expansion is predicted for the forthcoming years (Altbach, 2008) as a result of increased student expectations (Varghese, 2009), the importance of financial payback for institutions (OECD, 2004), and the anticipated improvement of human capital and competitiveness of emerging economies (OECD, 2011).\nMethodology: A single-case design with two embedded units of analysis is presented (Yin, 2009, 2012). The first unit refers to ULAGOS students who participated in international exchanges during five cohorts (2006 and 2010). The second alludes to international students who visited ULAGOS during the same period of time. Both groups of students participated in the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP), which is one of the strategies included in the internationalization plan developed at ULAGOS. The academic performance and experiences of students during their exchange visits were analyzed.\nResults: Academic performance of local students abroad\nDiscussion: Evidence abounds on the advantages associated with the internationalization of higher education, and how it benefits individuals, institutions, and even countries (Knight and De Wit, 1995; Turpin et al., 2002; OECD, 2004, 2011; Knight, 2006; Lee, 2008; Oyewole, 2009; Jowi, 2009; Wang et al., 2009; Horta, 2010; Montgomery, 2010; Kondakci and Van den Broeck, 2009). Consequently, internationalization has become one of the main trends worldwide (Knight, 2002; Jackson, 2008; Altbach, 2008; De Wit, 2010), and, in particular, student mobility has experienced a fivefold increase over the last three decades (OECD, 2012). Accordingly, these trends are also observed in Chile (Ramirez, 2005; Lemaitre, 2007).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although student mobility worldwide is increasing dramatically, systematic analysis of the effects and variables associated with its results is still recent, especially in new destinations. The purpose of this paper is to examine student mobility in southern Chile from a case study perspective. An exploratory study is presented to analyze the experiences of students in an exchange program over a five-year period and the academic performance of local students abroad.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A single-case design with two embedded units of analysis is presented. Data were drawn from semi-structured surveys and students' grade records. Content analysis was applied to the students' reports and statistical methods were used to verify the influence of certain variables.\nFindings: The experience of Chilean students abroad centered on building up personal competences, while visiting international students concentrated on intercultural interaction, influenced mainly by the quality of accommodation and language factors, the latter determining their relations with professors and local students. Academic performance of local students abroad was determined by the type of academic activity undertaken, course validation, and the selected destination.\nPractical implications: Some patterns recorded in international literature are similar to the results of this particular case. However, this study reveals some unique findings that can be associated to the operation of study abroad programs in emerging countries, especially in young regional universities unprecedented in aspects related to student mobility.\nOriginality/value: The lack of scientific studies on student mobility in Chile, a country which international student population is rapidly growing, concedes great value to this exploratory study.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Why do Malaysian customers patronise Islamic banks?
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Banks",
"Banking",
"Islam",
"Social responsibility",
"Malaysia"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past three decades, Islamic banking has emerged as one of the fastest growing industries. It has spread to all corners of the globe and received wide acceptance by both Muslims and non-Muslims alike (Iqbal and Molyneux, 2005). Islamic banks perform the same essential functions as banks do in the conventional system, except that the need for them to carry out their transactions in accordance with the rules and principles of Islam (Henry and Wilson, 2004; Iqbal and Mirakhor, 2007).As one of the most important players in service industry today, Islamic banking is no longer regarded as a business entity striving only to fulfil the religious obligations of the Muslim community, but more significantly, as a business that is ineluctably in need for winning over customers whilst retaining the old ones (Wilson, 1995). This necessitates Islamic banks to really understand the perceptions of their customers towards them in terms of service quality and other patronage factors to secure customers' allegiance.In Malaysia, customers' positive perception towards Islamic banking is far more crucial mainly due to the fact that Islamic banks have to compete with the long established conventional banks in a dual-banking system. Since 1983, Malaysia to date has a dual banking system, whereby the Islamic banking system operates in parallel with the conventional system. The former is currently represented by 27 banking institutions, comprising nine Islamic banks and 18 conventional banking institutions (eight commercial banks, four merchant banks and six discount houses) offering Islamic banking products and services under the Islamic Banking Scheme (IBS), also known as Islamic windows (Bank Negara, 2005).The Islamic banking and finance today has emerged as an important component of the overall Malaysian financial system that contributes to the growth and development of the Malaysian economy. Since 2000, the domestic Islamic banking industry has been growing at an average rate of 18 percent per annum in terms of assets (Aziz, 2006). It is the aspiration of the Malaysian government to have a strong Islamic banking industry capturing 20 percent of market shares of financing and deposits in the Malaysian financial industry by 2010. The latest figure of market shares of Islamic deposits and financing stood at 11.7 and 12.1 percent of the industry's total respectively (Bank Negara, 2005). In this regard, the ability of the Islamic banking industry to capture a significant market share in a rapidly evolving and challenging financial environment particularly in a dual-banking system like Malaysia, is dependent on the strategic positioning of the Islamic banking players to maintain their competitive edge and offer services and products that satisfy the needs of their customers.Against this backdrop, the present study investigates Islamic banking patronage factors from the customers' perspectives. Specifically, the study sets out to provide answers to the following research questions:* What are the factors which customers consider important when selecting to bank with an Islamic bank?* What is the ranking of criteria, which influence the bank patronage decision of customers in a dual-banking environment like Malaysian?Our analysis is based on a survey conducted among customers (both financing customers and depositors) of two leading full-fledged Islamic banks in Malaysia, namely Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad (BIMB) and Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad (BMMB). To our knowledge, the sample (750 respondents), covering four regions in Malaysia, notably, Kelantan (east), Kuala Lumpur (central), Pulau Pinang (north) and Johore (south) is the largest sample ever employed in the research area of Islamic banking selection criteria. A questionnaire was prepared to solicit information on perception of customers of Islamic banks in Malaysia. An analysis of the collected information has interesting implications for the incumbents and new entrants into this niche market to formulate effective marketing strategies capturing significant market shares of Islamic banking customers.The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. The next section highlights the philosophy of Islamic banking, the growing phenomenon of ethical investment in the West and review on past studies on banking selection criteria. Section three and four expounds the research methodology and analysis tools adopted in this study. Research findings and analysis are enumerated in section five, whilst the final section contains the concluding remarks.\nLiterature review: Philosophy of Islamic banking\nResearch methodology: Instrument\nResearch findings and implications: Islamic banking criteria ranking\nConclusion: It is the main objective of this study to determine the pertinent factors, which customers of Islamic banks perceive as influential to their selection and patronage of banks. The most important fact revealed by this study is that customer satisfaction often depends on the quality of services provided by Islamic banks. The quality of services includes factors like treating customers with courtesy and respect; staff ability to convey trust and confidence; efficiency and effectiveness in handling any transaction; and knowledgeable and preparedness in providing solutions and answers concerning Islamic bank's products and services.Consequently, Islamic bankers can no longer depend on marketing strategy of attracting pious and religious customers who might only concern about Islamicity of financial product. The important insights identified on the ranking of various banking selection criteria implies the need for Islamic bank to enhance its service quality which is now considered a critical success factor that affects an organisation's competitiveness.In addition, another substantial issue, which requires attention, is the need to intensify public education and awareness towards the distinctive characteristics of Islamic banks and how it may profitably suit the interest of customers in their financial dealings. Islamic banks have the potential of being marketed to various segments of customers extending beyond those who are concerned with the legitimacy of the facility from Islamic point of view and those who seek for service quality, convenience and efficient transactions. Consumer education programmes are therefore crucial if they are to increase the level of consumer awareness about the unique characteristics of Islamic banking and its wide-range of financial products offered.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the main factors that motivate customers to deal with Islamic banks particularly in a dual banking environment, like in the case of Malaysia. A discussion on factors relating to corporate social responsibility initiatives as part of potential customers' banking selection criteria is also included.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper presents primary data collected by self-administered questionnaires involving a sample of 750 respondents from four different regions in Malaysia. The Islamic banking criteria ranking as perceived by the respondents are analysed using Friedman Test. To further explore the customers' understanding of the banking criteria, an exploratory factor analysis is employed.\nFindings: - This study reveals that the selection of Islamic banks appears to be predominantly a combination of Islamic and financial reputation and quality service offered by the bank. Other factors perceived to be important include good social responsibility practices, convenience and product price.\nPractical implications: - The empirical evidence of this paper affects two aspects; first, Islamic banks must offer quality services while maintaining its Islamic credential and reputation; second, Islamic banks should also embrace good customers services policies to reap its potential as a strategic tool to achieve competitive advantage, enhance reputation and secure customers allegiance. This research will be of interest to both incumbent and potential entrants into this niche market.\nOriginality/value: - The paper reports findings from the first nationwide study carried out in the area of Islamic banking selection criteria.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Visual management for a dynamic strategic change
|
[
"Quality management",
"Change management",
"Strategic planning",
"Operations management",
"Visual management",
"Visual communication"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Ideal strategic changes presuppose a dynamic process with a clear vision and well-defined aims and targets (Kotter, 1995). Strategic changes in an organization will face challenges not only related to the changes as such but with regard to how the vision of the future is interpreted and understood in the organization (Kyriakidou, 2011). Since strategic changes are long term, they span over several years and frequently new strategic change processes are introduced at the end of a realization of the previous change process. To make change happen, which is often dependent on cultural and geographical variations, it is difficult to communicate with and involve all individuals in an organization and there are numerous of dilemmas that hinder the change process. Through conscious visualization of a strategy, the probability of reaching a common mental image of the future can be increased (Greif, 1991), but it will meet many challenges. Since a dynamic strategic change is process oriented, it is necessary to avoid static visualizations (Whyte et al., 2007). Strategies tend to be perceived as objects and not as a living document.\nManaging change through visual management: Globalization is given high priority on the agenda in many companies today; new marketplaces promote possibilities to increase the number of products and services. One way to raise interest in and understanding of products and services is to combine information in texts with visuals, since visuals have the ability to give direct and concrete information. Visual culture is here defined in a broad sense including 2D pictures (photography, paintings, videos, etc.) and 3D artifacts (built environment and people); how people act and dress is considerable for the visual culture. This has led to an increased interest in pictures (figurative and abstract symbols) as a tool for communication. This could be described as a pictorial turn (Mitchell, 1994), which is partly a reaction to the linguistic turn (Rorty, 1992). The linguistic turn proposes that language shapes the understanding of the environment, it emphasizes that meaning could only be understood through language (Rorty, 1992), while the pictorial turn suggests that visuals play a crucial role for understanding and communication. The challenge in change management strategy is to create a common meaning or at least an understanding of a future scenario; in other words, a shared reference is needed. By using visual communication it is possible to externalize a future scenario and to offer something visible and concrete (Tversky, 2011). However, using pictures in an early stage of organizational change could also lead to a deadlock since what has been seen can never be unseen.\nBuilding blocks for a dynamic strategic change: The issue does not only concern when the strategy is cascaded as a means to achieve a shared reference of the future, but also understanding actual progress in the process when a strategy is operationalized, aiming at a shared view of the future result when different global initiatives are defined in terms of a mutual understanding of the future. To achieve a shared reference, the visualization of a strategy requires efforts across the complete strategic cycle and is also of importance when it is time to present and reflect on the actual results that a global company wants to reach. Visual management is not an established field but rather a combination of the two disciplines of change management and visual communication. Since the two disciplines offer different theoretical and methodical traditions, visual management has to be defined as interdisciplinary. In addition, they offer a range of variations individually. A theoretical approach to the interdisciplinary field that covers visual management with a focus on visual communication in combination with change management is required. A first step has been to define and justify what areas have to be taken into consideration when framing the topic.\nManaging change across an episodic process: Change management as a concept has been researched by many scholars, since Lewin (1947) introduced the idea that changes can be planned by taking conscious steps considering the role of life spaces as boundaries for changes in social contexts. A few years later, Lewin (1951) introduced a process of three steps that has influenced change management research over many decades; planned changes were described through a process of unfreezing the current state, moving toward a future state, and finally freezing the new state. An interesting review of Lewin's field theory was presented by Burnes and Cooke (2013), putting forward field theories as theories that also acknowledge individuals and groups to explore how the world is perceived (Burnes and Cooke, 2013). They further emphasized that if there is no common understanding of the current state, there is no room for making change happen at all. Many years after Lewin, one of the most referred researchers in the field of change management is John Kotter (1995). After his introduction of the eight-step model for change, it has been a guide for many companies, not only on how to successfully manage change but also what pitfalls to avoid (Kotter, 1995, 2007). The eight steps are: establishing a sense of urgency, forming a powerful guiding coalition, creating a vision, communicating the vision, empowering others to act on the vision, planning for and creating short-term wins, consolidating improvements and producing still more change, and institutionalizing new approaches. Since the research work by John Kotter, research has presented numerous supplementary methods, steps, and concepts of how to manage change in organizations. For example, important practical steps (Jorgensen et al., 2009), themes and success factors (Oakland and Tanner, 2007), process pattern and success factors (Ford and Greer, 2006), hard key factors (Sirkin et al., 2005), facilitating practices of employee development (Proctor and Doukakis, 2003), success factors (Kotter and Cohen, 2002), 12-step model for change (Mento et al., 2002), 2 theories of change (Beer and Nohria, 2000), 8 initiatives (Gilgeous and Gilgeous, 2001), and 4 rules (Denton, 1996). Some approaches are strongly linked to each other, while some are found to be more supplementary (Sanno et al., 2016). A common denominator of importance in the research, however, is that all are approaches to how to reach a common understanding about, first, the current state of an operation, and second, a future attractive state shaped as a vision to strive toward. However, the eight steps have never been discussed with respect to visual management. The eight-step change process is a well-described example of an episodic change process using the definition by Weick and Quinn (1999) with characteristics of infrequency, discontinuity, and being intentional. The duality of episodic change is described by the same authors as continuous change processes characterized by being ongoing, evolving, and cumulative (Weick and Quinn, 1999).\nAmbidextrous capabilities in strategy formulation and communication: Organizational ambidexterity has been a research topic for some years and the interest seems to increase (Gupta et al., 2006; Raisch et al., 2009). In this discourse of research, change processes are building blocks for organizational learning and prerequisites to fostering an innovative climate. Building on theories by James March (1991), an important distinction is made between exploration and exploitation; explorative strategic change processes aim at future product or service solutions, while exploitative processes concern execution and refinement of existing processes. These ideas are further explored in change management theories aiming to find a balance and a dynamic between the concepts of exploration and exploitation (Gupta et al., 2006); in other words, organizations face challenges in being ambidextrous when managing speed of change (Raisch et al., 2009). Ambidextrous capabilities of an organization are capabilities for strategically managing dichotomies simultaneously such as, for example, differentiation and integration, individual and organization, static and dynamic, and internal and external (Raisch et al., 2009). From a strategy formulation perspective, managing dichotomies simultaneously is not an easy task; organizations strive for exploitation and execution of current strategies while at the same time formulating explorative strategies for the future, and formulation of a new strategy and execution of a current one require a number of ambidextrous capabilities.\nBridging visual management through an episodic change management process: Visualizations in change management constitute an image to facilitate planning of future changes. Paradoxically, even though the visual representations are used operatively they are often not designed according to principles for visual theory or visual communication or for specific occasions and purposes. Instead the visuals that are used are often dependent on the software or on pre-designed symbols and pictures in PowerPoint presentations. Dynamic qualitative change management cannot be founded on a static image of the future, it is dependent on a strong vision that the majority of employers agree upon or at least accept. At the same time it has to be flexible in order to fulfill the demands of being dynamic. It is necessary to know and understand what mechanisms need to be supported to push the change in the intended direction. Therefore, it is important to delimit the action plan and make a clear definition of the expected result of the change management and visual communication in order to combine the theories in a fruitful way. However, visualizing a strategy requires ambidextrous abilities among the users since the visuals need to promote the vision in a specific way to support the ability to build a shared reference of the future and at the same time have a level of both concretization that supports the understanding, and abstractions that enable individual interpretations. But the individual interpretations have to be aligned with the mutual mental understanding of the future.\nProposed model to facilitate dynamic strategic change: As a means to facilitate dynamic strategic change management, by linking to literature in visual communication to be used for visual management, our research proposes a model built on Kotter's (1995) eight steps. The proposed model describes how visual management can be utilized considering needs of ambidextrous capabilities. If change is considered as episodic, the eight steps suggested by Kotter will be repeated periodically during a dynamic strategic change process. An episode of change comprises the eight stages and there is a need to link those in order to create an overall image of the coming dynamic strategic changes. This requires ambidextrous capabilities among the initiators as well as in the organization; by using visuals to materialize the various phases and the different stages, the ambidextrous capability could be increased. In dynamic strategic visual management for change management the challenge is to be aware of the organization's identity, the current stage, how it changes over time, and the actual meaning of the actual change management models adopted by those initiating a change. Three important ambidextrous capabilities are projected in the model: managing change in each stage (A1), managing change in the transformation between stages (A2), and managing change between episodic change processes (A3) (see Table I):\nDiscussion and conclusions: The literature review of the research field of visual management indicates that a multidisciplinary approach is required, both in theory and in practice. Visual management is still an immature field of research and needs to be considered with care and not only by introducing visual aspects as such in management theories. The review shows several well-written overviews of research in visual communication; however, these are still not interlinked with the management literature and certainly not with a change management perspective, while theories for visualizing implementations are missing except for how to visualize improvement work in lean production systems. The other way around, visual communication focuses on social and cultural contexts, and there are no studies focusing on management and industrial contexts. Combining competences from change management with visual communication will enable a multidisciplinary approach and redefine problems arising from common boundaries in order to reach solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Strategic changes in an organization will face challenges not only related to the changes as such but also with regard to how the vision of the future is interpreted and understood by the organization. Visual management is a field of research that could contribute to change management research as a means to facilitate management of the dynamics in a change process and to facilitate the process of communication. The purpose of this paper is to problematize episodic change processes with regard to communication and to contribute with a proposed model on how to facilitate dynamic strategic change management using visual management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses an interdisciplinary approach by linking change management literature to visual communication to be used for visual management.\nFindings: A proposed model presents how a dynamic episodic change process can be managed in terms of visual management, potential pitfalls to avoid, and what ambidextrous capabilities are needed throughout the complete episodic change.\nResearch limitations/implications: The proposed model is still yet theoretical, based on a literature review of dynamic change management and visual communication. Future research will validate the model in practice to confirm its robustness.\nPractical implications: An implementation of visual management in Kotter's (1995) eight steps on how to strategically manage change in combination with theories on ambidexterity and episodic change is suggested.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to how visual management can support change management by combining visual communication and change management.\n",
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] |
WYPS cuts stress-related illness: Individualized training helps managers to become better supervisors
|
[
"Management skills",
"Management effectiveness",
"Management development",
"Stress",
"Sick leave",
"Bullying"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Employee absence fell so dramatically after managers were trained to become better supervisors that \"it was like adding eight or nine new employees when considering the increase in efficiencies,\" according to the HR manager at West Yorkshire Probation Service (WYPS), Ian Brandwood.\nExample: a side-effect of poor management: Isobel Rimmer, who has more than 20 years' experience in this arena and who works closely with the National Bullying Helpline, commented: \"Statistics from the National Bullying Helpline paint a grim picture of 'Workplace UK' today. One in four people say they are affected by bullying. More frightening is the fact that at least 80 percent of calls to the helpline come from the public sector. Many managers feel that the fears and risks of actually being a manager more than outweigh the returns and rewards - considering the recent amount of new legislation, employee relations, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, tribunals and large compensation awards.\"In addition, 80 percent of managers know that bullying is occurring in their workplace, and few admit being involved. Yet, almost 50 percent of managers polled admit to having been bullied as well.Isobel Rimmer described two questions that managers commonly ask during training sessions:1. When does giving an individual clear, data-based feedback become bullying or harassment?2. How can I prevent staff from making work-stress-related illness claims simply because they are failing to achieve their realistic targets and are being intimately monitored by their supervisor?Recent statistics reveal that bullying in UK workplaces costs 19 million sick days and more than PS13 billion each year. High-profile organizations are often targets for disgruntled employees. The assumption is that if the organization is profitable and wants to avoid bad press, it will settle employee claims quickly and probably generously.Christine Pratt, of the National Bullying Helpline, emphasized that supervisors need to be able to:* manage employees fairly and consistently;* possess the skills and confidence to deal with performance issues; and* dissuade unfair claims from disgruntled employees and team members.\"All managers need to be fully informed of the latest legislation in place and what constitutes best practice with regard to performance management, appraisals and the employee-manager feedback process,\" said Isobel Rimmer.\nSolutions: set clear objectives: First, managers must set clear objectives, which need to specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and with a clear timeline (Smart) in their approach. Managers must observe and measure their team members' performance against these impartial objectives in order to give accurate feedback on their performance.\"It is key that one communicates Smart objectives at the outset and continues to review them with the appropriate people on an ongoing basis,\" said Isobel Rimmer. \"This builds a more transparent and productive relationship between manager and team member. The Smart objectives need to be aligned with prescribed business, organizational or departmental goals. They need to be measurable in such a way that both parties can understand how everyone needs to be committed to them.\"Second, regular feedback is essential. \"Giving and receiving feedback need skill and care,\" Isobel Rimmer explained. \"Lack of data in itself might not demonstrate whether a strength or a weakness exists. If someone fails to deliver against an objective once, it does not necessarily mean that he or she will continue to fail.\"Employment legislation is often based on the principles of natural justice, or fairness. This involves consistency, and an open dialog between employer and employee.Third, investing in practical training is essential to preparing managers to handle any number of employee-relations challenges. \"Adding management training with an overview of current employment legislation is a winning combination that will help managers better to understand the obligations and parameters of their new position,\" said Isobel Rimmer.\"I have run management and leadership programs for clients in the public and private sector for over 15 years. One thing that is common among all trainees is that they almost unanimously align their programs to specific metrics to allow the organization to see the gains they are making.\"Her programs address critical topics that influence the way managers might successfully handle a variety of situations. She explained that a successful workshop, such as that she ran for WYPS, might involve:* incorporating best-practice techniques in performance management, giving delegates the opportunity to practice a range of skills - from observing and giving feedback to avoiding common; and* using at least two facilitators - one of whom should be an employment-legislation expert - for groups of more than ten people, so that the workshop is highly interactive and fast.\nTypical results: Isobel Rimmer believes that WYPS managers are now better able to manage their people, even under difficult or demanding circumstances, from a skills as well as a confidence perspective.WYPS managers understand the importance of keeping good notes and an \"audit trail\" when dealing with poor performance. In addition, as a best-practice tip, they practice the art of giving feedback when faced with poor performance - be it based on capability or attitude.The \"trained-up\" managers are now fully aware of discrimination and the law; what is and is not permissible. No longer are they worried about what questions they can or cannot ask during interview, or what is \"politically incorrect\".Finally, the managers have the self-assurance to manage their people firmly, fairly and effectively, avoiding the cost and aggravation of a costly and protracted employment tribunal.\nNote: David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest editor, wrote this article.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to reveal how individualized training helped managers to become better supervisors at West Yorkshire Probation Service, UK.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Presents statistics on the costs of unplanned absences at work, the skills managers need to transform good case workers/employees into good managers, and the positive results that can be achieved by receiving managerial training.\nFindings: - Claims that the training helped WYPS managers to: understand the importance of keeping good notes and an audit trail when dealing with poor performance; practise the art of giving feedback; be able quickly to adjust to major policy shifts in practices and procedures; and have the self-assurance to manage their people firmly, fairly and effectively.\nPractical implications: - Reveals that employee absence fell by so much after managers were trained to become better supervisors at WYPS that \"it was like adding eight or nine new employees when considering the increase in efficiencies\".\nOriginality/value: - Underlines the importance of setting clear objectives, which need to be specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and with a clear timeline (Smart) in their approach.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Closed-ended and open-ended fit articulation: Communication strategies for incongruent sponsorships
|
[
"Sponsorship",
"Advertising",
"Fit",
"Congruence",
"Articulation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With the advertising campaign \"Great Together\", Heineken launched its 2008-sponsorship of Champions League. Consumers around the world had no problem understanding and accepting the message: football and beer belong together. The functional fit (Gwinner and Eaton, 1999) between sponsor and sponsee in this particular sponsorship, based on spectators' consumption, made \"Great Together\" a meaningful slogan. However, many sponsorships lack natural fit because sponsor and object are not perceived as congruent (i.e. as going together) on key associations (Simmons and Becker-Olsen 2006). Such incongruent sponsorships benefit from additional communication that \"explains\" the sponsorship to the market, a strategy known as articulation (Cornwell et al., 2006).\nTheoretical background and conceptual development: Sponsorship articulation\nHypotheses: Prior studies show that consumers like sponsorships with a meaningful rationale (Speed and Thompson, 2000; Simmons and Becker-Olsen, 2006). For incongruent sponsorships, fit articulation attempts to connect the brand and the object to the same association or attribute, which will provide some meaning to the sponsorship that is not salient without the communication. Without fit articulation, the sponsorship message merely contains the association between the sponsor and the object, and the audience is responsible for interpreting the relationship (Fleck and Quester, 2007). In this situation, consumers must rely on information retrieved from memory about the brand and the object (Pappu and Cornwell, 2014). Similarity judgments tend to be based on a limited number of relevant attributes, sometimes even on a single category association (Pappu and Cornwell, 2014). Therefore, consumers are not likely to engage in extensive feature mapping of the two entities when judging the sponsorship (Broniarczyk and Alba, 1994). Consequently, when provided with information that explicitly or implicitly links the incongruent sponsor to the object, consumers will use this information to form attitudes about the sponsor. Both explicit and implicit information about shared attributes will help the consumers to process information about the sponsorship and attribute a meaning to it. Thus, it is expected that both closed-ended and open-ended fit articulation will improve attitudes toward the sponsor compared to no fit articulation. No fit articulation means exposing consumers to the sponsorship without any further explanation of shared associations. This baseline is relevant for testing fit articulation because sponsorship communication frequently appears in the form of logos in conjunction with the sponsorship object without a controlled and meaningful message element.\nStudy 1: Manipulation of incongruence\nStudy 2: Manipulation of incongruence\nSummary and general discussion: Many researchers advocate that sponsorship articulation should be clear and explicit (Pappu and Cornwell, 2014; Mazodier and Quester, 2014). However, across two experimental studies of incongruent sponsorships, the current research shows that explicit arguments for fit is less effective than implicit messages in terms of enhancing consumers' attitudes toward the sponsor brand. Mediation analyses provide novel insight into the processing mechanisms involved in closed-ended and open-ended fit articulation. Results show that open-ended fit articulation improves brand attitudes through positive inferences about the implied brand image dimension (Study 1 and Study 2) and increased attributions of altruistic sponsor motives (Study 2). In accordance with the predictions, the open-ended message did not influence consumers' judgments of global fit in any of the studies.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Previous research suggests that firms should articulate incongruent sponsorships to provide a rationale for the relationship between sponsor and sponsorship object. Fit articulation is a strategy that communicates shared associations between sponsor and object. Based on conclusion explicitness theory, this paper aims to conceptualize and tests two fit articulation strategies in sponsorships: open-ended and closed-ended.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Research hypotheses were tested in two experiments.\nFindings: Only open-ended fit articulation improved brand attitudes. Mediation analyses show that while open-ended articulation influenced brand attitudes through brand image (Study 1 and Study 2) and altruistic motive attributions (Study 2), there was an indirect effect of closed-ended articulation on brand attitudes through global fit perceptions (Study 2).\nPractical implications: The results from two experiments suggest that incongruent sponsors should use open-ended conclusions about a shared image dimension. Although explicit arguments may increase global perceptions of fit, they may impede a positive impact on the articulated brand image dimension and generation of altruistic motive attribution. Therefore, sponsorship managers should be careful in terms of using explicit arguments for fit when the sponsorship is incongruent because such arguments may hinder articulation from generating goodwill and a positive brand image.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper to develop and test different types of fit articulation strategies in sponsorships.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Taking part in school life: views of children
|
[
"Ireland",
"Children",
"Participation",
"Schools",
"Primary schools",
"Health promotion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The school has been identified as an important setting for promoting the health and well-being of children. The settings-based approach to health promotion is founded on the Ottawa Charter (World Health Organisation, 1986), and prioritises improving the health of the whole school rather than health at the individual level. One of the principles within the settings-based approach is that of participation, which recognises the importance of encouraging the development of the decision-making capacity in order to initiate appropriate action. An increased interest in child participation and the possibility of the positive impact it could have on, not only the child but also parents, families and broader society, has been highlighted (Simovska and Jensen, 2009). Within school, the emphasis on a participatory approach to learning has demonstrated a potential for developing young people into active and responsible members of society, as well as ensuring the sustainability of health promotion programmes by encouraging ownership via participation (Jensen and Simovska, 2005).\nMethods: Research design\nFindings: Demographic results/introduction\nDiscussion: In this study, primary school pupils were given an opportunity to describe what participation in school meant to them. Findings from the study were drawn from responses to the two key questions posed. Responses to Q1 \"What makes you feel a part of the school?\" authenticated the notion of taking part in school and elicited understandings of what pupils believed about how feeling a part of school influences taking part in school. Q2 \"If it was your job to make sure everybody in your school felt a part of the school, what would you do?\" encouraged descriptions of participation from the school children's perspectives.\nStrengths of the study: Documenting the voice of children on what participation means to them could be a powerful tool in improving the planning of child participation programmes. This study aimed to explore the views of children about what makes them feel a part of their school and how feeling part of their school could be improved. The PRP gave pupils the opportunity to be involved in all phases of the research process with minimal influence from adults (researchers or class teachers). Such a process is supportive of genuine participation of children in the research process. In addition, pupils' competence and capacity for team work was further developed and they had fun. Research suggests that the genuine involvement of young people in participatory processes improves channels of communication and connection between young people, their friends and older people they interact with (Kirby and Bryson, 2002). Furthermore, pupils were given the freedom to express their views of what feeling part of the school meant to them. Children feel happy and involved when their opinions are counted as worthy and expressed in an interactive and liberal environment (Simovska and Jensen, 2009).\nLimitations: Data from this study were collected across three primary schools among pupils in 4th, 5th and 6th classes. Having a more heterogeneous group for all age or class groups during the three phases of the PRP might have facilitated more descriptions of participation in school, a broader reflection and comparison of pupils' perspectives of feeling a part/taking part in their school. Carrying out the research process in a controlled environment within a school classroom, considering the small space could have affected the process. This limitation was reduced by dividing the pupils into sub-groups of small numbers so creating group bonding, facilitating more interaction and fun. At the schema development stage, some categories were removed and new category additions were included; 13 categories were removed and nine new categories added to Q1, and 17 categories were removed and 29 new categories added to Q2. This removal and inclusion of new categories raises questions about how the original data (as categories developed) were represented at the schema development phase, especially for Q2. Providing sequential groups of children the opportunity to alter the data of earlier groups mirrors an iterative process, and results in the views of later participants being given stronger weighting in the final schema.\nThe PRP as a developmental tool to facilitate children's participation in schools: In this study, the PRP was found to be an effective method used in engaging and identifying pupils' perspectives of taking part in school life. The PRP encouraged an active participation of pupils in all aspects of the research process and they were given the free hand to generate, categorise and analyse the data with limited interference. The procedure of the research process was explained to the pupils at the beginning of each stage and pupils were invited to ask questions if they needed any clarifications. At the end of each stage of the research process, pupils were asked as a form of feedback on their opinion about the process and if they enjoyed it. Across all three schools, pupils responded that they were happy with the process and thought that it was fun. The researchers also observed that the pupils enjoyed each stage of the research process and it encouraged group process.\nConclusion and implications: This study has shown the value of including children as active participants in research; children as young as nine -to 13 years have a clear understanding of what participation in their schools means to them. School children's contributions should be given due recognition. Exploring children's views on participation can help to ensure genuine participation of pupils in schools. Additional research is required to assess socio-ecological perspectives of the role of children participation and other HPS relevant outcomes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Child participation is increasingly a global phenomenon as stated by Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on Children's Rights. This supports the first principle, Democracy, of the Health Promoting School movement. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate a three-phase participatory research process (PRP) to document the views of children about participation in school.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 248 primary school pupils aged nine to 13 years participated: the first group of pupils answered two questions on individual coloured paper; the second group categorised these data separately, by question, assigning labels for each of the categories; and the third group used the categories to develop schema. The analysis was inductive.\nFindings: The most common categories for what made pupils feel a part of their school were school uniforms, sports, friends, teachers and their school/classroom environment. Increase in the number of school activities, encouraging friendship and equal participation were key indicators of how pupils would ensure that everybody felt a part of the school. The findings indicate that interpersonal relationships and belonging are in the opinion of children important for taking part in school life.\nOriginality/value: The paper illustrates children's understanding of what taking part in school means to them. The PRP encouraged pupils to have control of the three-phase research process, and demonstrated the ability of children to work together in groups while having fun at the same time.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The bridge between ontological concepts and empirical evidence: an interview with Rob Stones
|
[
"Empirical research",
"Strong structuration theory",
"Agent’s context and conduct analysis",
"Conceptual methodology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Interviewer (IV). You've said today that all social researchers become social theorists in practice but how did you become drawn more clearly into being a theorist and into developing strong structuration theory (SST)?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share interdisciplinary ideas about the purpose of social theory in empirical research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The formal interview took place in front of an audience at the Strong Structuration Theory and Management Research workshop at IAE de Paris, Universite Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, on 10 May 2016. A recording was made, transcribed, and then edited. Elements from a recorded lecture on the same day are also included. A conversational format is retained to enhance the sense of interdisciplinary dialogue that characterises the research project.\nFindings: The use of SST as a conceptual methodology is explained, and the use of agent's conduct and agent's context analyses is elucidated providing pointers regarding how accounting research can be developed further by basing the analysis in an understanding of the status and adequacy of knowledge on which people act to produce and reproduce structure.\nOriginality/value: The value of the interview is to provide insights into the process of empirical research and conceptualisation, which are likely to be particularly helpful for early career researchers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Luxury retailers' entry and expansion strategies in China
|
[
"International retailing",
"Mainland China",
"Foreign market entry strategy",
"Luxury fashion retailing",
"Post-entry expansion strategy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The luxury market in mainland China has grown significantly since 2005, when the Chinese Government lifted all restrictions on foreign investment to fulfil the promises made to the World Trade Organisation (Peng, 2010). According to Bain & Co. (2015), the Chinese luxury market exhibited double-digit growth rate between 2008 and 2014, when many traditional luxury markets experienced economic recession, increasing in value from $14.3 billion to $25.3 billion. China overtook Japan as the second largest luxury market globally in 2011, and it is predicated to be the largest by the end of 2016 (McKinsey & Co., 2012). Despite stagnation and decline in western markets, luxury fashion retailers in mainland China have not only strengthened operations in the national metropolis such as Beijing and Shanghai, but have also aggressively extended operations into a wide range of tier-2 regional and/or provincial capitals and tier-3 local markets (KPMG, 2013). Some luxury fashion retailers operate more brick-and-mortar stores in mainland China than in their home markets (Li, 2013).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Defining luxury fashion retailers\n3. Methodology: This paper adopts a pragmatic two-stage mixed-methods research approach, which focusses on research questions and reveals rich details that cannot be achieved through either a quantitative research or a qualitative study alone (Silverman, 2015). According to Creswell (2014), the decision made regarding the elements of a mixed-methods approach involves four aspects. The first is timing. In this study, a quantitative research in the form of a mail survey from a macro perspective was carried out first, achieving a comprehensive understanding of the strategies employed by luxury fashion retailers for initial Chinese market entry and post-entry expansions. The second is weighting. A priority was given to qualitative data, as this study seeks to examine the methods used by luxury fashion retailers for post-entry expansion in greater depth through the qualitative research. The quantitative data analysis was mainly descriptive. The third is mixing. The data and collected results from stage 1 were used to identify (connecting) the research questions and the participants for qualitative data collection in stage 2. Both quantitative data and qualitative data collected from stage 1 will be integrated with the qualitative data collected from stage 2 (integrating). The final aspect is theorising. There was no single, explicit theoretical perspective guiding the entire research design. The theories and frameworks identified in the literature review are used to underpin the research.\n4. Research findings: 4.1 Chinese market entry strategies\n5. Discussion: In the context of mainland China, some findings of this study contradict those of prior empirical studies (Alexander and Doherty, 2009). Unlike entry into developed markets where luxury fashion retailers have adopted multiple methods of market entry, particularly low-cost and low-control entry strategies, such as wholesale, export and/or concessions, entry into the Chinese market has been driven by a number of different influences. Because of the different infrastructure in Chinese retail market, such as a lack of high-end department stores and premium shopping districts, most luxury fashion retailers have adopted single methods to enter Chinese mainland market, employing high-cost and high-control strategies, such as standalone stores in high-end hotel or luxury malls. The high-cost and high-control entry strategies are capable of proving luxury fashion retailers full control over their brands and business practices in China, a geographically and psychically remote market. Direct retailing has become increasingly popular in China, evidenced by increasing numbers of luxury fashion retailers who have withdrawn or plan to withdraw from local partnerships, because they desire to control their brands and business directly, and tailor their marketing mix to local conditions. However, such directly controlled strategies are not suitable for every luxury fashion retailer, because these strategies require considerable initial investment, strong international experience and local knowledge. Direct retailing may, therefore, be unsuitable for many small independent luxury brands, especially for those whose brand awareness in China is relatively low and who do not have support from parent companies. These companies may be willing to trade control risks for market entry opportunities.\n6. Conclusion: This research has focussed on mainland China, an economically significant market which has long been neglected in terms of luxury fashion retailing. The study has not only examined luxury fashion retailers' Chinese market entry strategies, but has also examined the strategies employed for post-internationalisation expansion strategies there. In recent years, foreign luxury fashion and accessories retailers have not only strengthened their operations in tier-1 national capitals in mainland China but have also expanded into tier-2 regional and provisional capitals and tier-3 local markets. In doing so, they have moved from highly controlled methods of market entry such as direct retailing towards a variety of methods some of which require less control and allow easier access to more remote areas of the country. As the companies' confidence and trust in the Chinese market and infrastructure have grown their need to control operations to the same extent as they did at the point of market entry has lessened. The results of this research therefore may be applied in developing, large-scale markets which have similar disparities in terms of infrastructure, culture and language. In adopting a pragmatic mixed-methods research approach with a relatively large numbers of luxury fashion retailers, not seen in the existing studies, the research has developed models which can be tested and extended within academia, and which can be applied by practitioners in the luxury fashion sector. It is suggested that the models can first be tested with a broader range of luxury brands and different types of company entering and expanding in China and other markets. The results of this and future studies can help guide future expansion in developing and expanding markets.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine internationalising luxury fashion retailers' entry and post-entry expansion strategies in mainland China.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study adopts a pragmatic mixed-methods research approach, including a quantitative mail survey and qualitative face-to-face in-depth executive interviews.\nFindings: Different from initial single entry methods, multiple methods are increasingly popular for luxury fashion retailers' post-entry expansion in mainland China. Although directly controlled expansion strategies have become significant, local partnerships are still important and omnichannel distribution strategies are rapidly growing.\nResearch limitations/implications: The findings were generated in mainland China only.\nOriginality/value: This work provides an understanding of luxury fashion retailers' activities in the Chinese market from both macro and micro perspectives. It examines luxury fashion retailers' initial entry strategies, as well as their post-entry expansion strategies in mainland China. Few studies in the area of international luxury fashion retailing have employed a mixed-methods approach with this number of participants.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Implementing strategies through management control systems: the case of sustainability
|
[
"Control systems",
"Design and development",
"Social accounting",
"Strategic change"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: During the last 15 years the debate on sustainability as well as on social and environmental accounting (SEA) has considerably increased. These issues have become very important subjects of, not only academic research, but also regulators' interventions throughout the world. The request to organisations for becoming more accountable and sustainable is wide, coming from not only academics and practitioners but also from analyst and the market.The review of the existing literature on the subject focuses mainly on external reporting.This paper aims to investigate if and how MCS have a role in implementing sustainable strategies within organisations and how it is set or modified in order to support this process. Thus, the main research questions are:RQ1. How MCS support the implementation of sustainability focused strategies? How formal and informal controls work together in order to allow the achievement of sustainable goals as well as the integration of sustainable principle with organisation culture?RQ2. What pattern of change is followed by MCS when a strategic change in a \"sustainable\" direction occurs?The paper is organised as follows. As a starting point, we shortly review the existing literature on the subject (Section 2). Then, a brief description of the research methodology is provided (Section 3). This is followed by the case study description (Section 4) and discussion (Section 5). Finally, some preliminary conclusions and some limitations of the study are outlined.\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Social and environmental accounting research\n3. Research methodology: The research relies upon a case study. The choice of this method comes from the observation that case studies offer the possibility of understanding the nature of accounting in practice, both in terms of techniques, procedures, systems which are used and the way in which they are used (Scapens, 2002). With specific reference to SEA related research, many scholars (Gray, 2002, p. 697; Adams, 2004; Parker, 2005) called for further employment of case and field studies or, in other words, for research more engaged with practice. Adams and Larrinaga-Gonzalez (2007, p. 333) found that the \"extant literature on sustainability accounting and reporting, in contrast to management accounting and management, has largely ignored practice within organisations\". Moreover, Owen (2008, p. 248) argued that fieldwork studies have great potential in going beyond the analysis of the contents of official statements and reports, as well as in understanding organisational processes and managerial motivations underpinning reporting initiatives and evaluating their effectiveness in promoting organisational transparency and accountability.The organisation chosen for the case study was the multinational company Procter & Gamble (P&G), for several motivations.First, the choice of a multinational company depends on the observation that effort to integrate social and environmental issues with MCS seems to be more challenging in such an environment, characterised by contextual, intraorganisational and individual heterogeneity (Roth and Kostova, 2003); however, multinational companies are often accused to be bad citizens.Second, P&G claims to be a leading organisation in sustainability management. It has a good reputation on social responsibility, especially with reference to human resources management; it engages in sustainability reporting and presents itself as a social responsible firm, in formal claims and official documents. Moreover, it has gained many awards on sustainability and social responsibility[1]. Thus, it was interesting to investigate if and how external image, reputation and formal claims were reflected in internal practices and tools.The case study draws data from both documentary research (analysis of P&G website, annual reports, sustainability reports, sustainability newsletter) and field research, through many semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted between August 2008 and May 2009. They were addressed to an External relation manager, who has the role of \"Sustainability Ambassador\" in the Italian division, as well as to marketing, sales and finance managers and corporate personnel.The main purpose of the documentary research was to appreciate the P&G \"formal\" approach to social and environmental issues in official statements.The purposes of the interviews were many. A first purpose was to collect descriptive data on the social and environmental initiatives and practices implemented within the organisations. Second, the interviews were conducted to appreciate if and how social and environmental issues were effectively integrated with strategic planning, management accounting systems and organizational activities. Finally, through the interviews potential gap between official claims and systems, practices and activities implemented within the organisation should be recognised. We attempt to investigate if sustainability principles were accepted and shared by managers and employees and how they react to change introduced when the strategic change in a sustainable direction occurred.\n4. Case study: 4.1 Background information\n5. Interpreting the interrelation between MCS and sustainability-focused strategies: The paper provides evidence of the approach P&G uses when dealing with social and environmental principles inside its management practices and tools. In particular, it shows that a company focusing on sustainability issues needs to integrate such strategy with the \"traditional\" planning and control system.To internalize sustainability principles into structures, plans and operations, a key element is moving to a strategic focus on sustainability. Moreover, an effective internalization of sustainability principles implies that it is treated as something strongly tied to the business, rather than a no-core activity. This is in line with the Porter and Kramer's (2006) call for more integration between business and society and for a strategic approach to social and environmental issues. In this regard, the analysis of the P&G sustainability plan allows to distinguish between two different sustainability profiles:1. the first sustainability strategy is market-oriented and related to the products; from this point of view, sustainability could be interpreted as an excuse for the growth through the development of innovative and more environmentally-sensitive products; and2. the second sustainability strategy is related to internal operations; from this point of view, sustainability could be interpreted as an excuse to efficiency, i.e. to obtain significant cost savings and more efficient processes.The conception of sustainability as an \"excuse\" to grow or to obtain a more efficient process is strongly related to an instrumental view of sustainability. It is well explained by the words of the Director and Associate Director for Corporate Sustainable Development:If it is seen only as a responsibility, sustainable development will be treated as an issue to be managed, rather than as a business opportunity to be pursued (Carpenter and White, 2004).5.1 MCS and the implementation of sustainable strategies\n6. Conclusions: In this paper we investigated if and how Management Control Systems (MCS) have a role in implementing sustainable strategies. In particular, we focused on the potential of MCS to translate the chosen sustainability-oriented strategy into action and on the pattern of change followed by MCS when a strategic change in a \"sustainable\" direction occurs.The study focused on the case of the multinational company Procter&Gamble, analysing internal mechanisms, tools and practices aiming to make sustainability in action. This focus is quite innovative, since SEA research has traditionally paid attention to external reporting.Many suggestion could be drawn from the case study. The first conclusion concerns the emergence of a new organisational way of thinking and operating, able to combine financial, social and environmental issues. P&G is engaged in aligning financial, environmental and social issues, managing trade-off between these dimensions. Social and environmental-related language is progressive becoming part of organisational language.Moreover, we found that MCS could have a great potential in embracing social and environmental issues, in addition to financial ones. In the examined case, no ad hoc systems and practices were required to successfully implement sustainability strategies, since they were fully integrated with the traditional \"Objective Goals Strategies Measure\" framework (OGSM). The integration rather than the replacement of existing tools and practices looks like a successful way to internalize the sustainability principles within internal operational mechanisms and strategies. Thus, social and environmental issues could be effectively integrated into conventional strategic planning, organizational structures and performance measurement systems.The case findings suggest that organisations should broaden their MCS in order to facilitate the achievement of social and environmental goals. While the process seems easier for environmental issues, the integration of social ones could be more challenging, thanks to the difficulties in translating such an elusive and tricky concept into objective and specific measures.In order to really integrate sustainability in the organisational way of thinking and operate, formal (formalized set of objectives and measures, performance measurement system, rewarding systems) and informal (corporate culture, sense of ownership, leadership commitment) elements are both necessary. Moreover, they should be well combined and aligned, avoiding the emergence of tensions between these dimensions.The choice of centralization/decentralization is also a critical point in the successful implementation of a sustainable strategy. Even if P&G choice relies upon centralization, especially with reference to the unique, sustainability plans and performance measurement system, the integration in the OGSM and its cascade mechanism allow the management of the trade-offs between instances of coordination and control (pushing centralization) and instances of autonomy and adaption to local realities (pushing decentralization).\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to explore if and how management control sysems (MCS) have a role in implementing sustainable strategies. In particular, the paper aims to investigate how MCS work in order to translate these strategies into action and how they should be modified when a strategic change in a sustainable direction occurs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research relies upon a deeply conducted case study, drawing evidence from documentary research and field research.\nFindings: - Relying upon the case of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the paper finds that integration with the traditional planning and monitoring systems, combination of both formal and informal controls, coordination across business units and decentralized structures are key-factors for successful implementation of sustainability-oriented strategies.\nOriginality/value: - From a theoretical point of view, it has been observed that research in the field of social and environmental accounting has been mainly focused on social and environmental reporting, disclosure initiatives and their linkages to other attributes of performance, such as economic or financial outcomes. The paper contributes to developing a debate on the potential of MCS in embracing social and environmental issues as well as in producing social and environmental information useful for internal users in decision-making processes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Embedding digital and research-literacy support program into postgraduate studies curriculum: A proposed program for sub-Saharan African postgraduate schools
|
[
"Information literacy",
"Postgraduate program",
"Digital literacy",
"Postgraduate curriculum",
"Postgraduate students",
"Research literacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The need for research and digital literacy skills at the postgraduate level is becoming increasingly indispensable for research enablement in Africa. Valuable research churned out worldwide has not reflected the African output to a large extent. Higher education research capacity in the form of published peer-reviewed articles, masters and doctoral output is disturbingly low in Africa, with African universities producing less than 1 per cent of global scholarly articles. (Venitha, 2015). This indicates that there exists a paradigm shift in the global research procedure with the Web and mobile technology being pertinent for the dissemination of scholarly information. This also means there is a need for a systematic review of information literacy policies in these institutions. Other areas of emphasis which are new include literature-searching skills, social media use, open science, open scholarship and publishing, to mention but a few. According to Miller et al. (2009), research and digital literacy can take different forms like stand-alone courses, or classes, online tutorials, workbooks, course-related instructions or course integrated instructions.\nDigital literacy: The proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) has shifted information literacy education toward digital education. This shift, thus, requires students in general and postgraduate students in particular to have the capabilities which fit an individual for living, for learning and for working in a digital society (Beetham, 2010).\nResearch literacy: Research literacy encompasses the traditional method of research in addition to the application of modern computing skills which include making the research process easy and making research output visible. It is about knowing how to find information for a research, evaluating the information and using the information in the research process. It involves all the steps in the research life cycle from conception to publication. After publication, research literacy widens the horizon of the researcher to newer terms in the research world. Concepts like open science, open data, research data management and virtual research environment are part of research literacy. In fact, digital literacy has also been embedded into research literacy, e.g. the use of mobile technologies to increase research collaboration and networking. In essence, it incorporates information literacy (finding, evaluating and using information) and digital literacy (using computer and computing skills to disseminate research findings and collaborate). This research literacy has little to do with the traditional research methodology/design.\nReview of literature: A peruse of literature on the information literacy skills revealed a dearth of studies that have focused on the literacy skills of postgraduate students. Majority of the few ones have reported low information literacy skills. Omeluzor et al. (2013) investigated the level of information literacy skills of postgraduate students of Babcock University, Nigeria. Their study revealed that postgraduates in this university had low-level information literacy skills focused on searching for information which has been the contents of information literacy programs. The study did not investigate the use of new research and digital tools for enabling research. At Babcock University, Nigeria, Omeluzor et al. (2013) in their study stated that despite the importance of IL skill programs which prepare students ahead of academic tasks, these programs are only given to the undergraduates, while postgraduate students were usually given briefing and orientation. The authors stated that studying and understanding the basis of using information tools is very helpful to carry out research. However, over time, the complexity in accessing research information has increased. ICT has changed the forms in which these tools come. For example, libraries now have e-databases that come with their search terms and evolve periodically. The use of social media and alternative metrics to define the impact of the research output are also skills postgraduates have to grapple with. Dorvlo and Dadzie (2016) investigated the level of information literacy of postgraduate students in the University of Ghana and stated that majority of the postgraduate students were not information-literate.\nNeed for digital and research literacy program in sub-Saharan Africa: With the increasingly hi-tech information society, the means of authoring, information finding, organizing and research as well as information use are increasingly mediated by information technology. This, thus, calls for improved literacy skills in the academic and research environment. Research studies have, however, indicated that the literacy skills of students are inadequate, especially at the postgraduate level. This problem is further heightened by the non-inclusion of information literacy programs at the postgraduate level because of the general belief that postgraduate students should be sufficiently literate enough. On the contrary, many postgraduate students in African universities do not have the needed information literacy skills to assist them in information searching, information retrieval, information evaluation and authentication, referencing and others, which are an integral part in the research process. Embracing this into postgraduate curriculum is something that needs to be explored in African universities. Justifying the need for inclusion of information literacy courses at the PhD level, Oyewo and Samuel (2016) stated that PhD students access information for publishing, research, literature review, conference, evaluation of literature materials and grants, which comes from varying filtered and unfiltered sources and can be tedious and time-consuming for early career and novice PhD students.\nConclusion: In the current world, where information has become ubiquitous and its explosion is imminent, there is a need for postgraduate students to be equipped with information literacy skills that incorporate research and digital literacy. Most available literacy programs at postgraduate levels focus on research methods/design. This is because they conduct research works and must submit a detailed and focus research output in the form of theses and dissertations as part of graduation requirements. It is, however, important for these students to know how to collaborate, manage, disseminate, make visible and protect their research output. This is even pertinent now more than ever with the shift from analog thesis and dissertations to digital thesis and dissertations which encompasses different contents and format. Postgraduates require and manage more scholarly information, as their research output is geared toward producing knowledge (Fleming-May and Yuro, 2009).\nRecommendations: Universities in sub-Saharan Africa should incorporate information digital and research literacy support programs in postgraduate-level curriculum so as to ensure that postgraduate students are well equipped with skills that can enable them to effectively and efficiently disseminate their scholarly works.\nProposed digital and research literacy program (DRL711): Short description of the course\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This viewpoint paper aims to propose a digital and research literacy support program for postgraduate schools in sub-Saharan Africa institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper reviewed literature on postgraduate students' skills and postgraduate information literacy programs and proposed one for postgraduate schools in sub-Saharan Africa institutions.\nFindings: Information literacy programs are not implemented at the postgraduate level in sub-Saharan Africa possibly because of lack of contents for these programs.\nResearch limitations/implications: The course is only a proposed course that can be embedded into the postgraduate curriculum in sub-Saharan African universities. The effectiveness of the course has not been evaluated in this study.\nOriginality/value: The proposed information literacy program focused on digital and research literacy, which is still relatively new in sub-Saharan Africa.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Construction firms at the crossroads in Hong Kong: Going insolvency or seeking opportunity
|
[
"Construction industry",
"Financial performance",
"Hong Kong"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Egan's (1998) report on Rethinking Construction expressed grave concern on the low and unreliable rate of profitability of the construction industry, which was difficult to sustain healthy development. The industry also invests too little in capital, research, development and training. Facing the poor performance of the industry in Hong Kong, the Construction Industry Review Committee has recommended a series of measures for all stakeholders of the construction industry in its report (Tang, 2001). The 93 recommendations of the report fall in the following areas:* fostering a quality culture;* achieving value in construction procurement;* nurturing a professional workforce;* developing an efficient, innovative and productive industry;* improving safety and environmental performance; and* devising a new co-ordination framework to drive the implementation of the change programme for the industry.Subsequent to the release of the report, the Provisional Construction Industry Coordinating Board has been established to oversee the progress of implementing the 93 recommendations with the emphasis on the following:* voluntary registration of sub-contractors;* lowering of construction costs; and* reducing unhealthy competition by rejecting exceptionally low bidsThe recommendations of both the reports in UK and Hong Kong emphasize on the retrieval and sharing of knowledge and experience from all sectors in the construction industry. However, the successful implementation of these recommendations will not necessarily assure the improvement of the performance of the whole industry and individual contractors, especially in the financial aspect. Sustainability of a healthy industry depends on, inter alia, a healthy market with job opportunity and reasonable financial return. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate how contractors suffer financially, although they have strived very diligently in improving other performance indicators such as quality, safety, environment and business operations, under the economic recession since 1997 and the possible ways to strive for survival. Financial analysis will be used to assess the performance of contractors and the trend of such performance.The poor financial performance of Hong Kong contractors in recent years is attributable to two basic economic factors: severe competition and reduced demand, leading to poor financial returns. The authors concur with Spencer and Winch (2002) that the fundamental issue of the construction industry is on re-valuing construction process. However, contractors in Hong Kong, as a matter of survival and profit sustainability, have to find various means to improve their financial performance immediately.\nReview of the construction industry: Most contractors in Hong Kong are suffering from business reduction and profitability deterioration. Some have been struggling very hard to retain their financial performance. The deteriorating financial performance of most contractors in 2001/02 has signalled that it is time to review the macro-economic situation of the construction market. Edum-Fotwe et al. (1996) quoted a statement from Thorpe and McCaffer (1991) and Langford et al. (1993) that \"the deep decline in output and orders for the industry, as a consequence of the recession, has resulted in the escalation of competition combined with record levels of corporate collapses in the industry\". The statement truly reflects the current situation of the construction industry in Hong Kong and raises a frightening foresight that the rate of bankruptcy may soar.Figure 1 shows that the overall construction output performed by main contractors has peaked in 1998 (HK$133b) and then started declining, more significantly in the output for building work (from HK$83b in 1998 to HK$53b in 2002).Table I and Figure 2 show that due to severe competition, the tender price index has dropped drastically since the peak (building works tender price index (BWTPI): 1103) in 1998 while the cost index (BCI) remains fairly stable. The contrast has revealed the difficulty of changing the cost structure in Hong Kong and there are no means to lower the wage rates of construction labour and to lower the costs of imported construction materials. Hence, due to the contrast, the profit margin of contractors has been entirely eroded and will remain so in the near future. Kangari (1988) advised that the construction companies must always be aware of the possibility of business failure and Kangari et al. (1992) emphasized that analysis of major financial ratios was one way to predict failure.\nReview of strategic external factors: In view of the declining market condition in Hong Kong, contractors have to face severe cut in new orders and profit margin for many years ahead. The poor financial performance of nearly all contractors will sustain for quite a long period unless there is a drastic change in increased demand and reduced competition.Strategic review of the business environment will definitely be very useful to many contractors for re-positioning their business geographically. Warszawski (1996) recommended contractors to perform strategic planning and conduct surveys on general economic factors and additional factors specific to the construction sector. Arditi et al. (2000) point out that those contractors who react promptly to economic conditions by implementing appropriate strategic policies should be able to avoid failure. Most contractors in Hong Kong will consider the following factors in their strategic planning:Government housing policy\nMethodology of study: In this study, data extracted from the annual reports of eight representative large contractors have been collected for financial analysis. These contractors are selected based upon the following common characteristics:* they are listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange so that their audited accounts are readily available;* they are local contractors having long history in the industry;* they are managed by local professionals;* they are on the list of approved contractors for public works; and* they have significant market share of local construction output.At peak in 1998, the total annual output of these eight selected contractors, as shown in Table II, amounts to HK$31b, about 23 per cent of HK$133b, the total annual output by all main contractors in the same year as shown in Table III.Financial performance can be analyzed by single accounting balance sheet and income statement ratios. The following financial ratios have been chosen from the list recommended by the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd (1999)) for the analysis:* operating profit margin, EBIT margin;* return on equity (ROE);* return on asset (ROA);* total asset turnover;* quick ratio or acid test ratio;* earning per share; and* debt ratio.\nReview of financial peformance of contractors: Altman (1993) used the multiple discriminant analysis model to combine several financial ratios into a single index, z, called \"distress score\" to discriminate between failed and non-failed groups. Equation 1 where:* X(1)=working capital / total assets;* X(2)=retained earnings / total assets;* X(3)=earnings before interest and taxes / total assets;* X(4)=market value equity / book value of total liabilities; and* X(5)=sales / total assets.Edum-Fotwe et al. (1996) pointed out that there were five distress models (z-scores) for the analysis or prediction of financial performance of a company. Despite of advantages and disadvantages of all models, the one developed by Altman (1993) is most popular for all industries and will be utilized here for the sake of simplicity as well.The results of financial ratio analysis are shown in Tables IV to VII and Tables VIII to X while Table XI summarizes the distress ratio (Altman's z-score) of the eight contractors over the years.Distress ratio (z-score)\nDiscussion: The above financial analysis shows the deteriorating financial situation of the eight representative contractors in Hong Kong. According to Altman (1993), six out of these eight major contractors in 2001/02 exhibited a very high likelihood of imminent failure (with a distress score below 1.8) while the other two were at risk (with a distress score between 1.8 and 2.7).The use of the said ranges of distress scores for prediction developed by Altman (1993) may not be applicable to the construction industry due to its unique features such as high capital tie-up, low liquidity resulted from the interim payment system, and low profit margins. Hence, the actual financial situation may not be as acute as described and construction firms may tolerate a lower distress ratio. Nonetheless, the distress ratios recorded in these major construction firms are quite alarming, signalling a critical situation for the construction industry in Hong Kong. The industry should seek the following outlets:* increase in the supply of works by entering the big infrastructure construction market in the Pearl River Delta with the help of the Hong Kong Government and the Mainland/Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) (Trade and Industry Department, Hong Kong SAR, 2003);* regulation or intervention of the Hong Kong Government by increasing the public works budget; and* lowering the cost of construction by importation of labour or increasing the content of prefabrication with precasting yards located across the border.\nConclusion: The financial performance of domestic contractors in Hong Kong peaked in 1997/98, coincident with the eve of Asian Economic Crisis and return of sovereignty from British rule to China. Since then, indicators reveal that nearly all financial ratios are deteriorating. Both the financial analysis and the distress scores recorded point out that the financial conditions of most contractors have reached a critical juncture, approaching the stage of massive corporate collapses. After reviewing strategic factors of the external economic environment, the deterioration will still last for a while and recovery of profitability in the past will not come yet unless the opportunities of the economic growth in the nearby Pearl River Delta region can be captured. In doing so, the domestic contractors have to jump out of this small city region and to transform into a cross-region or multi-national enterprise playing the game of global competition and following the rules of global market in order to survive.At this juncture, the construction industry has reached the state of a grim struggle as revealed from the above financial analysis. The Hong Kong Government should help by regulating the market and the industry in the following ways:* fully exploit the recently signed agreement on the Mainland/Hong Kong CEPA (Trade and Industry Department, Hong Kong SAR, 2003) that would open opportunities of construction work across the border for construction firms in Hong Kong; and* aid the industry in cutting construction costs.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To assist contractors in Hong Kong to review their past financial performance and to formulate new strategies for their business survival in the coming years.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The financial accounting ratios and distress scoring are very useful tools to measure the financial performance. These tools are also useful to compare the performance among themselves and over the years. The mathematical analysis together with a review of the current business environment and the characteristics of construction industry will assist contractors in Hong Kong to formulate new strategies for their own business survival in the coming years.\nFindings: - The results have shown that the financial performance of most contractors in Hong Kong have been deteriorating very fast in the past few years. The results of all financial ratios, together with the prevailing situation of over competition, inelasticity of construction costs and reduced aggregate demand in Hong Kong, has revealed the extreme difficulty of reversing the financial performance in the coming years.\nOriginality/value: - Contractors in Hong Kong now understand that their own financial performance have been deteriorating to an alarming limit. There is an urgent need to review their business environment and to formulate new corporate strategies.\n",
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New venture start-ups and technological innovation
|
[
"Business formation",
"Start‐ups",
"Research and development",
"Innovation",
"Commercialization",
"New ventures",
"Real options"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Without prior capital commitments, start-up entrepreneurs have exceptional flexibility in the innovation process that transforms uneconomic opportunities into operating businesses. Real options[1] methods for business investment are invaluable economic tools for modeling entrepreneurial flexibility (Casson, 1999). One application of this flexibility is that entrepreneurs can passively await exogenous profit improvement before commencing an operating business. In McDonald and Siegel (1986) and Dixit and Pindyck (1994), the possibility of disappointing earnings and investment irreversibility lead an entrepreneur to defer the start of an operating business until prospective earnings exceed that required by the traditional net present value (NPV) criterion for business investment. However, delay is unlikely appealing advice to action-oriented entrepreneurs (Shane, 2003).Alternatively, in this paper, we investigate the conditions under which an entrepreneur endogenously invests in knowledge creation - innovation[2] through R&D - to improve the investment prospects of a currently uneconomic opportunity. We make the distinction between commercialization that transforms prospective earnings into actual earnings upon conventional investment (without development risk) and knowledge investment through R&D (with development risk). We refer to the business after commercialization as the operating business and the business before commercialization as the entrepreneurial new venture start-up. The entrepreneur foregoes earnings before commercialization but uses R&D to increase the rate of future earnings upon commercialization. R&D for the operating business has the advantage of immediate earnings improvement compared to deferred, contingent, and prospective earnings improvement that accrue as actual earnings only if the entrepreneur eventually commercializes the start-up business. On the other hand, the start-up entrepreneur has the option to exploit knowledge creation with commercialization only if R&D is successful and otherwise saves commercialization costs.Our model generalizes the investment timing studies of McDonald and Siegel (1986) and Dixit and Pindyck (1994) to allow R&D prior to the commercialization of a new product or service that transforms prospective into actual earnings. Blazenko and Pavlov (2010a) show that R&D has a lower value maximizing hurdle rate than conventional investments. However, they investigate only already operating businesses for which R&D has an immediate profit increment and not entrepreneurial start-ups for which the profit increment from R&D is contingent and delayed to commercialization. In addition, their comparison of R&D with conventional investment is a comparative static change in their model. They do not jointly determine value maximizing profit thresholds for both. An investigation of the economic conditions in which a start-up entrepreneur invests in R&D requires this joint maximization. A demonstration that start-up entrepreneurs optimally invest in R&D requires that they do not alternatively commercialize immediately and enhance actual earnings and grow the resulting operating business with R&D. This demonstration in this paper is an essential piece of the entrepreneurial theory of endogenous knowledge creation for new venture start-ups (Acs et al., 2009).We investigate entrepreneurial advantages and disadvantages of R&D in the pursuit of business opportunities compared to managers of already operating businesses. Knowledge-based new ventures - start-up entrepreneurs that pursue R&D and incur R&D expenditure risk - have \"shadow option\" value - opportunities for follow-on investment unexpectedly uncovered in R&D's discovery process (Banik and Westgren, 2004). Start-up entrepreneurs have the advantage that R&D has greater option value prior to commercialization, but the disadvantage of R&D costs without the revenues that only commercialization generates. The value of R&D shadow options can be so great that the start-up entrepreneur invests in R&D and bears R&D costs without revenues prior to commercialization. Also, he/she invests in R&D before the manager of an otherwise similar already operating business in similar business circumstances and despite the fact that the appeal of R&D for the manager of the already operating business is also great. Under broad circumstances, a new venture start-up undertakes R&D before established operating businesses. Alternatively, if the burden of R&D costs is exceptional, the entrepreneur passively awaits, without R&D, for improved profitability before commercializing the new venture into an operating business and expanding it with R&D. Revenues allow the manager of the operating business to better bear R&D costs. Only these conditions justify the passive investment timing analysis of McDonald and Siegel (1986) and Dixit and Pindyck (1994) for the start of a new business.Because R&D has greater option value for a new venture entrepreneur than it has for the manager of an already operating business, and because risk increases option value, entrepreneurs are inclined to high-risk R&D industries. However, R&D development costs often exceed the financial resources of individuals. Thus, our focus in this paper is on venture capital financing of entrepreneurial new ventures in innovative growth industries with high development costs like health care (including, biotechnology) and information technology (including, communications, semi-conductors, software, and hardware).New venture start is a principal entrepreneurial activity. In pursuit of opportunities, start-up entrepreneurs have advantages and disadvantages compared to managers of already operating businesses that have previously commercialized and now earn revenues and operating profits. These managers can have \"first mover advantage\" that limits new entrant profitability and discourages entrepreneurial new venture start. For example, Levesque and Shepherd (2004) presume that inexperience prevents some entrepreneurs from mimicking the business models of profitable incumbents. Smit and Trigeorgis (2007), Lint and Pennings (1999), Weeds (2002), and De Liso and Filatrella (2008) investigate other first mover advantages. On the other hand, in Cottrell and Sick (2002), imitators have lower development costs than innovators and other \"follower\" advantages. In cases of low profitability, incumbent managers have the disadvantage of irreversible capital that forces them to persevere with businesses that they would not start in retrospect. Since managers of already operating businesses exploit obviously profitable ventures, entrepreneurial opportunity lies mainly in transforming currently unprofitable, infeasible, uneconomic prospects into profitable operating businesses. Innovation is at the core of entrepreneurial new product creation, new markets, new production processes, new organizational arrangements, and new supply sources that yield profitable businesses from unprofitable prospects (Schumpeter, 1942).There are numerous factors that influence an entrepreneur's decision to undertake innovative investments. For example, presuming that the process that generates innovations is exogenous and beyond the control of managers, Cassiman and Ueda (2006) investigate the decision by established firms to commercialize innovations internally, spin-off innovations and commercialize externally (as new firm start-ups), or reject innovations entirely. Our paper differs because we compare the endogenous and independent R&D investment decisions of start-up entrepreneurs and managers of already operating businesses.Rather than a source of shadow options and associated \"spillovers\" (Jaffe, 1986; Griliches, 1992; Acs et al., 2009), an alternative R&D perspective is that it reduces payoff uncertainty in multi-stage investments (Berk et al., 2004; Miller and Park, 2005; Roberts and Weitzman, 1981; Choi et al., 2008). In particular, Roberts and Weitzman (1981) propose uncertainty resolution that is faster, slower, or equal to the rate of R&D expense prior to an entrepreneur's decision to accept or reject a terminal payment as the source of value for R&D. Because they do not investigate R&D after the terminal payment, their analysis is for new ventures without comparison to R&D for operating businesses.The new venture literature investigates R&D as a strategic tool to forestall competition (Cohen and Eliashberg, 1996; Lilien and Yoon, 1990; Lukach et al., 2007). Pakes and Ericson (1998) extend the business life cycle model of Jovanovic and MacDonald (1994) to incorporate R&D accelerated learning that allows entrepreneurs to improve business skills and manage complex organizations as their firms grow. Scherer (1991), and others, argue that large firm bureaucracy discourages risky R&D. Banik and Westgren (2004) argue that diversified firms more likely engage in R&D because they are better able than focussed new venture firms, with less breadth of experience, to recognize and exploit unexpected opportunities revealed in R&D's discovery process from one operating unit in other operating units of the same firm.The real options literature often investigates R&D and technology investments (Lint and Pennings, 2000; Weeds, 2002; Gunther McGrath and Nerkar, 2004; Wu and Yen, 2007; Blazenko and Pavlov, 2010a). The investment literature focusses on ancillary R&D benefits, like, spawning (Kasanen, 1993), learning (Koussis et al., 2007) wealth from failure (Gunther McGrath, 1999), and follow-on success (Hopp, 1987). However, there is no distinction between new ventures and operating businesses in these literatures. Essential results differ only as comparative static changes in R&D models of business investing without comparing R&D between start-ups and operating businesses. Rather, we investigate the timing of commercialization as the source of R&D differences between start-ups and operating businesses. Start-up entrepreneurs have one more real option than managers of already operating businesses. The entrepreneur can time the commercialization of his/her new business while the manager of an already operating business has already exercised this option. The interaction between R&D and commercialization determines the appeal of R&D for the start-up entrepreneur.Section 2 describes an operating business in which the manager increments earnings and grows a business with risky R&D. In Section 3, we model a new venture as a perpetual call option on that operating business. We jointly determine value maximizing return thresholds for entrepreneurial R&D and for commercializing the new venture. When the commercialization threshold exceeds the R&D threshold, the start-up entrepreneur optimally invests in R&D. If not, the entrepreneur passively awaits, without R&D, improved profitability before commercializing the new venture and expanding it with R&D. We compare return thresholds for R&D for new venture entrepreneurs and managers of already operating businesses. Section 4 discusses comparative statics and proposes testable hypotheses. Section 5 summarizes and concludes.\n2. The operating business: 2.1 Preliminaries\n3. The new venture: 3.1 Introduction\n4. Comparative statics and empirically testable propositions: In this section, we combine the comparative statics of our model of R&D for entrepreneurs relative to R&D for managers of already operating businesses with a discussion of empirically testable propositions. We compare the return threshold for entrepreneurial R&D, x*, with the return threshold for R&D for the operating business, kh*, to determine the value appeal of R&D for new venture entrepreneurs compared to managers of already operating businesses. For example, in Figure 1, the return threshold for entrepreneurial R&D, x*, is 6.5 percent, whereas, the return threshold for R&D for the operating business, kh*, is 7.2 percent. The new venture entrepreneur starts R&D at a lower return despite R&D costs and despite the fact that earnings do not accrue until after commercialization of the new venture with conventional investment that starts the operating business at some future date.Empirical testing of real options models of business investment timing requires great care. Often this care is not taken. For example, Folta et al. (2006) presume that volatility delays investment because profit thresholds for new venture start in real options models increase with profit volatility (e.g. McDonald and Siegel, 1986; Dixit and Pindyck, 1994). However, this presumption fails to recognize that volatility also impacts the stochastic process for earnings. Sarkar (2000) shows that, except for exceptional cases, volatility increases the probability of reaching a value maximizing profit threshold for new venture start that itself increases with volatility. Consequently, volatility accelerates rather than delays new venture start.Not only do we recognize Sarkar's (2000) result in our discussion of empirically testable propositions, but also, we use operating businesses as a relative benchmark for the appeal of R&D to the entrepreneurs of new ventures. Relative hypotheses give greater structure and clarity to empirical propositions that describe how new venture start-ups differ from already operating businesses.4.1 R&D risk\n5. Summary: We compare technological investment between new venture start-ups before commercialization and already operating businesses after commercialization. Operating businesses use R&D to improve actual earnings. Start-ups use R&D to improve prospective earnings. When the start-up entrepreneur commercializes his/her new product, device, or service with conventional investment, prospective earnings convert to actual earnings. R&D's appeal for start-ups is not obvious because the same R&D after commercialization improves actual rather than prospective earnings. However, the start-up entrepreneur exploits R&D's knowledge creation with commercialization only if R&D's impact on prospective earnings is significant and otherwise not (which avoids commercialization costs). These costs are sunk for the operating business, but avoidable for the new venture start-up. The R&D option is, therefore, more valuable for the start-up. This value can exceed expected R&D costs and can even be so great that the start-up entrepreneur invests in R&D before the manager of an otherwise similar operating business in similar business circumstances.Because R&D is of greater value for the start-up, but R&D costs are a greater burden, the entrepreneur invests in R&D before an otherwise similar operating business only when R&D expenditure volatility that generates shadow options - opportunities for follow-on investment unexpectedly uncovered in R&D's discovery process - is great. Risks that the entrepreneur or operating business manager control by suspending or undertaking investment (i.e. R&D) have greater appeal than external risks (profit volatility) over which they have less control. R&D risk decreases, while profit volatility increases, value maximizing thresholds for R&D investment. R&D costs make the new venture start-up more sensitive to both these risks. When R&D risk is great, the R&D threshold is lower for the new venture start-up compared to the operating business. When profit volatility is great, the R&D threshold is greater for the new venture start-up compared to the operating business.Growth increases the shadow benefits of R&D, but also R&D costs. When growth is modest, even thought the shadow benefits of R&D are modest, because the R&D costs are modest, R&D's new venture appeal is great. For moderate growth rates, costs are a great burden relative to shadow option benefits and the attraction of R&D to the new venture entrepreneur is low. For high growth rates, shadow option benefits of R&D dominate high R&D costs and R&D has great value appeal to the new venture entrepreneur.Finally, commercialization costs delay commercialization of a new venture until profitability is great. Delayed commercialization reduces the appeal of R&D to the new venture entrepreneur (who bears R&D costs without revenue prior to commercialization) relative to managers of already operating businesses.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to compare investment in innovation (e.g. R&D) between new venture start-ups before commercialization and operating businesses after commercialization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Real options methods were used to model a new venture start-up as a perpetual call option on an operating business that grows with R&D. The operating business uses R&D to improve actual earnings while the start-up uses R&D to improve prospective earnings. When the start-up entrepreneur commercializes his/her new product, device, or service with conventional investment (e.g. plant, property, and equipment to begin production), prospective earnings convert into actual earnings.\nFindings: - The ability of the start-up entrepreneur to avoid commercialization costs upon failed R&D makes R&D more valuable to the start-up entrepreneur than to the manager of the already operating business (for whom commercialization costs are sunk) and despite R&D costs that the start-up incurs without the revenues that only commercialization generates. The value of R&D to the start-up can be so great that the entrepreneur invests in R&D before the manager of an otherwise similar operating business in similar business conditions.\nOriginality/value: - Without favoring either a priori, the authors show that under broad circumstances, a new venture start-up undertakes R&D before an already operating business. The authors also discuss the empirical implications of the results.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Names, brands, branding: beyond the signs, symbols, products and services
|
[
"Brands",
"Brand identity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Macrae and Uncles (1997) declared that 1988 was the \"year of the brand\", but since then brands and the study of them have become considerably more complex. Even they noted that \"Six years can be a long time in branding\" (Macrae and Uncles, 1997, p. 64), and it is a tad past the period since they said it.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to stimulate discussion of what branding actually is, does and maybe should do.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A reflective essay is presented which briefly outlines the history of meanings of branding leading to speculation about future meanings.\nFindings: - The paper finds that the term \"brand\" is now used extensively in previously unimaginable areas, yet the common examples and textbooks seem to be inexorably linked to little beyond the brand management of products or for-profit consumer services.\nPractical implications: - With this piece, the Journal of Product & Brand Management starts a new section that aims to bring discussion beyond products brand management - taking thinking about brands beyond the current conventions.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides a detailed call to action for academics and practitioners interested in exploring possible futures of branding thought.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Strategic alignment and middle-level managers' motivation in a balanced scorecard setting
|
[
"Balanced scorecard",
"Strategic alignment",
"Manufacturing systems",
"Motivation (psychology)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Companies whose competitive strategy relies significantly on the manufacturing function should incorporate the manufacturing perspective as a key aspect of their corporate business strategy. In the current, increasingly competitive, business environment, the manufacturing function can only contribute to a company's success if that function has a \"business-supportive\" role, as opposed to a \"reactive\" role (Wheelwright and Hayes, 1985).The creation of a strategic alignment between a corporate business strategy and manufacturing strategy can facilitate the formulation of a business-supportive manufacturing strategy. A corporate business strategy stipulates the broad dimensions that a business uses as a basis for gaining and/or maintaining competitive advantage, e.g. a low cost structure or product differentiation (Porter, 1998). A manufacturing strategy is:... a consistent pattern of decision-making in the manufacturing function which acts in support of the overall strategic direction of the business and which provides for competitive advantages (Dangayach and Deshmukh, 2001, p. 885).In other words, a manufacturing strategy encompasses all decisions and plans to use resources in a way that enhances a company's competitive position in the market place (Swink and Way, 1995). During the process of strategic alignment, clear links between the manufacturing strategy and the corporate business strategy are created (Chenhall, 2005). Having clear links between these two strategies means that:1. senior management and management of the manufacturing function agree on the goals of the company and of the manufacturing function;2. the manufacturing function supports the strategic direction of the company (Papke-Shields and Malhotra, 2001); and3. management can prevent the emergence of any disparity between an intended business strategy at the corporate level and a realized manufacturing strategy at the functional level (Kaplan and Norton, 1996).This paper develops and illustrates a model of the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and organizational performance in a balanced scorecard (BSC) context. More specifically, we demonstrate the importance of strategic alignment to the improvement of organizational performance in a BSC setting. Moreover, we investigate the cascading process, which is a specific process to create strategic alignment in a BSC setting (Kaplan and Norton, 1996).The concept of strategic alignment has been investigated in the literature on operations management and management control. Research in operations management tends to focus more on the development of performance measurement systems and alignment techniques, whereas the literature on management control focuses on the behavioural and the motivational aspects of these systems. The present study focuses on the strategic alignment concept by integrating these two streams of research. This method meets the call of Merchant et al. (2003) for more cross-disciplinary research in these areas.The present study defines the BSC, strategic alignment, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; develops a theoretical model based on the literature to explain the relationships between strategic alignment, motivation and organizational performance; and describes a theory illustration case. Finally, we define some research limitations and some directions for future research.\nDefinitions: Balanced scorecard framework\nTheoretical model: Figure 1 shows our theoretical model.The following sections outline the theoretical propositions within the model.\nThe effect of strategic alignment on organizational performance: We hypothesized that the strategic alignment of manufacturing processes positively affects organizational performance by:* creating an explicit link between BSC performance measures and a corporate business strategy; and* including more non-financial and controllable, operations-based performance measures.The effect of strategically aligned performance measures\nIntrinsic motivation, strategic alignment and organizational performance: This section develops a theoretical proposition for the effects of strategic alignment, intrinsic motivation and organizational performance. First, we examine how strategic alignment processes create intrinsically motivating tasks. Then, we propose a positive relationship between strategic alignment, intrinsic motivation and organizational performance.Strategic alignment and intrinsic motivation\nExtrinsic motivation, strategic alignment and organizational performance: In a BSC setting, superiors induce extrinsic motivation by means of a BSC-based compensation plan. There has been little research on the impact of BSC-based compensation plans. Ittner et al. (2003a) showed that a subjective BSC-based compensation plan (i.e. a compensation plan that does not attach weightings to the BSC performance measures) distorted superiors' performance evaluations. Concretely, superiors' performance evaluations were affected by financial performance measures only, and not by non-financial performance measures. To our knowledge, the effect of an objective BSC-based compensation plan (i.e. a compensation plan that attaches weightings to the BSC performance measures), such as the compensation plan in our case study, has not been investigated. The literature on strategic compensation provides mixed evidence on the effects of pay-for-performance (Barkema and Gomez-Mejia, 1998); however, we expect that a BSC-based compensation plan has a positive effect on organizational performance, because it combines strategically aligned and controllable operations-based performance measures with extrinsic rewards. In the following paragraphs, we draw on agency theory and expectancy theory to describe the theoretical underpinning of the relationships between strategic alignment, extrinsic motivation and organizational performance.Agency theory\nTheory illustration case: Choice of research method\nResults and discussion: Results\nLimitations and directions for future research: We conducted a case study only, and thus it is not possible to generalize the results to the population of manufacturing companies. However, this case study was in a setting that allowed us to illustrate some theoretical predictions. DC's BSC reflects the company's particular strategic priorities, and thus does not contain a financial perspective. In this case, the responsible care perspective replaces the traditional financial perspective because responsible care is the focus of DC's strategy. DC's BSC is valid because its BSC performance measures are aligned to the company's corporate business strategy and value drivers. We did not attempt objective measurement of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; instead, we asked respondents for their perceptions regarding their motivation with respect to the BSC-based compensation plan.Keating (1995) recommended that the next step in research involving theory illustration cases is to test the illustrated theory. To formally test the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and organizational performance in BSC companies, a survey questionnaire is the most appropriate research methodology. It will be a challenge to define \"BSC companies\", because a BSC is not a generic construct; instead, companies tend to design a unique BSC that is tailored to its unique strategy. Further case-study research can refine our theoretical model. Case studies in various BSC settings can reveal more variables that intervene in or moderate the relationship between strategic alignment and organizational performance. Finally, it would be valuable to investigate how to link rewards effectively to both business unit performance (at the functional level) and corporate performance (Langfield-Smith, 1997).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper sets out to develop and illustrate a model of the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and organizational performance in a balanced scorecard (BSC) context - a comprehensive system of strategically aligned performance measures.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study develops theoretical arguments to show how the strategic alignment process of a BSC can help companies improve their organizational performance. The study develops a theory of the motivational mechanisms that intervene in the relationship between strategic alignment and organizational performance. The literature on operations management and management control are used to underpin the theoretical propositions. A theory illustration case study is described to provide evidence for the theoretical model.\nFindings: - Effective strategic alignment calls for the active involvement of manufacturing executives in the BSC design and implementation process. Effective strategic alignment empowers and motivates manufacturing executives. A combination of effective strategic alignment and a BSC-based compensation plan has a positive effect on the extrinsic motivation of manufacturing executives.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The case study offers an interesting setting to illustrate the theoretical predictions. However, it is not possible to generalize the results to the population of manufacturing companies. Future research could formally test the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and organizational performance by using a survey questionnaire in companies that use BSCs.\nOriginality/value: - This paper studies the cascading process, a systematic approach to the creation of strategic alignment using the BSC.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Monitoring multinomial logistic profiles in Phase I using log-linear models
|
[
"Logistic regression",
"Signal probability",
"Statistical process control",
"Likelihood ratio test",
"Log-linear model",
"Profile monitoring"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Profile monitoring is a relatively new subarea in statistical process control. A profile is defined as a relationship between a response variable and one or more explanatory variables to characterize quality of a process or product. In statistical profile monitoring, it is important to distinguish between Phase I or retrospective phase and Phase II or prospective phase. In Phase I analysis, a set of historical observations is used to investigate process stability over time and to estimate unknown process parameters. In Phase II, however, the main concern is to detect out-of-control conditions as quickly as possible (Mahmoud and Woodall, 2004).\n2. The basic model and parameter estimation: Consider a multinomial response variable with c-categorical levels and p-dimensional vector of covariate variables denoted by x. For multinomial logistic regression modeling, it is very common to consider the cth level as the basic level and then calculate the other levels using this base level. According to Agresti (2007), multinomial logistic regression model can be defined as:(1)\n3. Monitoring methods: In this section, control charts based on T2 statistics and likelihood ratio test (LRT) statistic are presented to monitor the multinomial logistic profile. The main assumptions are as follows:\n4. Simulation study: In order to show the performance of the above mentioned methods in terms of signal probability (as a measure of performance), a numerical example is used where p=2 and c=3. This example is the extended version of the example proposed in Yeh et al. (2009). The underlying in-control multinomial logistic profile model is as follows:(19)\n5. Conclusion: In this paper, a new type of profile with categorical response variables with more than two levels was presented. The multinomial logistic regression was considered as a base model and the PGLM with log link was used to estimate the model's coefficients. The PGLM with log link could simplify the estimation procedure and could be more effective in cases with large number of covariates. In addition, four approaches were used for monitoring multinomial logistic profiles in Phase I. A numerical study was also presented to evaluate the performance of the schemes in terms of signal probabilities based on outlier samples, step shifts, and drifts in the parameters. Simulation results indicated that the LRT-based scheme in most cases and the\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to apply Poisson generalized linear model (PGLM) with log link instead of multinomial logistic regression to monitor multinomial logistic profiles in Phase I. Hence, estimating the coefficients becomes easier and more accurate.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Simulation technique is used to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm using four different control charts for monitoring.\nFindings: The proposed algorithm is faster and more accurate than the previous algorithms. Simulation results also indicate that the likelihood ratio test method is able to detect out-of-control parameters more efficiently.\nOriginality/value: The PGLM with log link has not been used to monitor multinomial profiles in Phase I.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Quality attributes of a high specification product: Evidences from the speciality coffee business
|
[
"Supply-chain management",
"Buyer-seller relationship",
"Coffee",
"Product quality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Supply chain (SC) driven by high-quality standards is generally found in the fashion and luxury industries. For both, the driver that leads to the configuration of the SC is hardly aiming mass consumption. The objective of this study is to identify the main attributes of the coffee industry SC that deals with high-specification products. Coffee may be included in this category of consumption goods that has increasing importance at consumption level worldwide. Coffee is one of the main segments of the food and beverage industry. Its global volume of trade, at the retail side, is estimated by the International Coffee Organization to be over US$173.4 billion in 2012 (ICO, 2014). Due to the fact that this grain is mainly produced at tropical regions of the planet and consumed at the temperate regions, coffee is recognized as very important for the world international commerce. The trade of this product is also regarded as very important to facilitate development, predominantly because it is a merchandise that helps to bring economic resources from the developed world to the developing parts of the world (ICO, 2014).\n2. Literature review: Concepts of quality\n3. Research methods: This study was based on multiple case studies. Three distinct research techniques were used in the investigation: secondary data analysis, direct observations and interviews. Each of them is presented and discussed in the following sections.\n4. Data analysis and results: The responsibilities of producers and sellers of specialty coffees\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: High-specification food products that reach prices or expert reviews above average, results from buyer-supplier engagement in quality management. The purpose of this paper is to identify the main attributes of the coffee industry supply chain that deals with high-specification products. Coffee may be included in this category of consumption goods that has increasing importance at consumption level around the world. Several groups of high-quality food products such as wine, coffee, spirits and cheese seem to have a very similar supply chain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was based on multiple case studies. Three research techniques were used in the investigation: secondary data analysis, direct observations and interviews with coffee company's managers and experts. The within-case and the cross-case analyses made it possible to find the main attributes of a high-specification product supply chain.\nFindings: The cases studies pointed out differences between the two groups of coffee shops in relation to their supply chain strategies. The first group can be called Independent Coffee Shops, since they are focussed on the coffee preparation business. The second group can be called Integrated Coffee Shops, due to the fact that these organizations are responsible to manufacturing activities in addition to the coffee preparation activities. Despite this supply chain configuration difference, both groups have a similar perception about their role for the final consumer, to provide a premium experience with coffee.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main limitation of this research comes from the fact it was possible to interview only one person in each organization. Only the commercialization of the supply chain was analyzed, if the agricultural production was also analyzed, this paper could have broader implications.\nOriginality/value: The results of this research show the configuration of a supply chain that handles a high-specification product. They are set to transform the trade of a product that has a component of volatility in its quality attributes into a trade of a product that embodies all the desirable attributes preferred by a specific group of costumers. The logic of a supply chain that deals with commodities is different, since in most of the cases it will try to accommodate the variations on quality that comes from nature. This paper describes the market based strategy of 12 organizations and their supply chain configuration in order to offer a premium product.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Citation systems in the biosciences: A history, classification and descriptive terminology
|
[
"Citation systems",
"Classification",
"Harvard system",
"Information transfer",
"Numeric system",
"Terminology",
"Physical sciences",
"Bibliographic systems",
"Research work"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One of the most distinctive features (if not the distinguishing characteristic) of any scholarly work, be it a lengthy book or a shorter contribution to a learned journal, is the inclusion of a list of works cited in the body of the text as supporting evidence for hypotheses or contrasting views of observations. These cited works are the bedrock of scholarship upon which further knowledge is built. The conventional form of a citation within the text combined with the presentation of the bibliographical details of the work cited is known as a citation system, of which several types have been adopted by various scholarly disciplines.Encouraged by Van der Veer Martens' (2001) view that investigation of citations as concept symbols is warranted, and challenged by her opinion that a \"unified theory of citation\" is unlikely to result, the objectives of the present work were to examine the history, development and characteristics of citation systems in scholarly writing; and to construct a universal classification reflecting the underlying purpose and philosophy of each system. This classification with a new descriptive terminology is intended to facilitate unambiguous discussion of citation systems used both in the sciences and in the humanities.\nThe emergence of citation practices: Information flow between scholars\nA new terminology for describing citation systems: Discussion of the history and classification of citation systems necessitates an appropriate terminology. Here, some new terms are coined and some special uses of potentially ambiguous terms are prescribed.Citation system\nA history of indirect citation systems: Early development\nA history of direct citation systems: Direct citation systems may be explicit or implicit (see Figure 1), unlike indirect systems, which can only be explicit. The history of direct systems is as long as, though more fragmented than, indirect systems. The first was the direct explicit system, in which the referens and the referendum are effectively combined in the body of the text where full bibliographical details are given. An early example is provided by Goedaert's (1662) Metamorphosis Insectorum. This system was in use contemporarily with the indirect alphabetic and symbolic systems (see Figure 1), and was almost superseded by them during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, during the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a resurgence in its use, as in Couch's (1847) Illustrations of Instinct and Bowditch's (1860) On Coal-gas. Nevertheless, it is restricted nowadays to short papers or notes and letters to journal editors.Whilst the use of direct and indirect explicit citation systems continued with no major innovations for over 200 years, there arose in the mid-eighteenth century a direct implicit system, specially to serve the burgeoning field of botanical and zoological taxonomy. It is termed herein the Linnaean system (Figure 1). The definitive work is taken to be Carl Linnaeus's (1753) Species Plantarum which now provides the source references and starting date for modern botanical nomenclature (Jeffrey, 1989). Linnaeus broke with the tradition of using separate referentia and referenda and initiated the consistent use of bibliographical references in the text to direct the reader to previously published plant descriptions. Hence arose the distinctive format which Linnaeus (1758) also used in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae from, which source and date modern zoological nomenclature begins (Jeffrey, 1989). Stearn (1957, pp. 81-96) gave a detailed description of Linnaeus's method.Not only did Linnaeus introduce this direct implicit citation system, but he also provided a consistent abbreviated format for the references. His undated designations for the works of previous authorities commonly consist of two elements: the abbreviated name of the author, and a keyword taken from the title of the work (Heller, 1959). Other broadly similar lists of abbreviations appeared in the nineteenth century (e.g. Pritzel, 1851) but their use has now died out. Nevertheless, throughout the second half of the eighteenth century we see numerous taxonomic works describing plant and animal species in which the Linnaean direct implicit system is used (Figure 1). In many, the authors also continue to use traditional indirect systems (often still with mixed alphabetic sequences and symbolic reference marks) alongside the Linnaean system (used for the strictly taxonomic parts of the work). This situation continued into the early nineteenth century, citation practices remaining as inconsistent as they were previously. However, with the advent of the Harvard system in 1881 and its rapid acceptance by taxonomists, the Linnaean system was finally superseded.\nA survey of citation systems in periodicals: Of 101 biosciences periodicals examined, 73 percent use the Harvard system; 20 percent use the numeric sequential system; and 8 percent use the numeric alphabetic system (Table I). Most of the examined journals were veterinary (30 percent) or medical (29 percent). There were also 23 percent zoological and 19 percent other general biological journals (Table I).Whilst 80 percent of the veterinary journals use the Harvard system, only 28 percent of the medical journals use it; the difference is statistically significantly different (p < 0.001) by Fisher's exact test. Furthermore, 72 percent of the medical journals use a numeric system (alphabetic or sequential). All the biological journals use the Harvard system, as do 96 percent of the zoological journals but for these disciplines the separate sample sizes were possibly marginal for reliability of estimates. When these two classes were combined, however, the 98 percent of journals using the Harvard system was significantly different from the 28 percent of medical journals (p < 0.0001).These results support the notion that medical journals usually use some form of numeric system. A similar, but more restricted, survey of 74 nursing journals by Pique et al. (2009) revealed that 61 percent of them use a numeric system, not statistically significantly different from the 72 percent (p > 0.05) for medical journals reported herein (Table I). However, that as many as 28 percent of medical journals use the Harvard system is somewhat surprising. Although 98 percent of the biological and zoological journals and as many as 80 percent of the veterinary journals use the Harvard system, the difference is statistically significant (p < 0.05).\nA classification of citation systems: The foregoing historical survey of the development of citation systems has revealed a basic logic in their form, enabling a universal classification to be constructed (Figure 1). In order to make this classification comprehensible and comprehensive it has been necessary to introduce a number of new words or terms and to prescribe specialized meanings for some pre-existing words (see previous definitions and Figure 1). Figure 2 shows the detailed relationships between referentia and referenda in the various indirect citation systems.A referens may occur in one of four basic forms. It may be alphabetic and the letter may be on the line, a superscript, or a subscript; and with or without parentheses or square brackets. It may be symbolic, i.e. it is a printer's reference mark, with or without parentheses or square brackets. It may be numeric and the numeral may be on the line, a superscript, or a subscript; and with or without parentheses or square brackets. Or it may be alphanumeric, i.e. in the Harvard style, for instance, \"(Smith, 1979); Jones (1824); Brown (1894a); Green (68), etc.\" (see Morgan, 1979).A referendum may be a marginal note, a footnote or an end reference (Figure 2). Marginal and footnote referenda are found on the same pages as their respective referentia, but end references occur in a list at the end of the body of the text. Early in the development of the Harvard system, the references were sometimes placed near the beginning of the text. These references were, more often than not, in primary chronological order, which is not in accord with Mark's original system. (In accordance with the present classification, this may conveniently be termed the Harvard chronologic system, but it is now obsolete.) Modern Harvard end references are in primary alphabetical and secondary chronological order (the Harvard alphabetic system). Numeric end references are in numerical or alphabetical order (Anon, 1977), which may be termed the numeric sequential system or numeric alphabetic system, respectively.Indirect citation systems may be broadly classified according to the types of their referentia, i.e. alphabetic, symbolic, numeric or alphanumeric (Harvard) (Figure 1). They may be more closely defined by combining the descriptive terms of the appropriate referens and referendum, e.g. numeric end reference system, numeric footnote system or alphabetic marginal note system (Figure 2). Furthermore, end reference systems may be specifically defined by including their form of listing, e.g. Harvard chronologic system or numeric alphabetic system (Figure 2). Abbott (1974) described a new citation system, the so-called dual-access, but in reality it is a hybrid that might logically be classified as the Harvard numeric system (see Figure 2). It is in fact the Harvard system with superscript numbers placed between names and dates in the text, e.g. \"(Jones 7 1980)\" or \"Jones 13 (1980)\". The numbers run consecutively through the text as in the numeric sequential system but each citation is assigned a new number, however many times the same reference is cited. The appropriate numbers are placed within parentheses after each entry in the end references, as in this fictitious example, \"Jones, M. 1980. A hybrid citation system. J. Cit. Syst., 6: 21-24. (7, 13, 18).\" The system has been said to be useful when the reader wishes to be able to refer back from the end references to the text but I have never encountered an example in the biosciences literature.Figure 1 shows the periods during which the various systems have been used. Indirect systems have been in use for several centuries but direct systems have relatively recent beginnings. Indirect systems have developed to concentrate the referenda in one place where they are most easily found, e.g. end references. In short papers, referenda may be inserted directly into the text exactly where they are cited (the direct system). The direct system interrupted the long established trend of indirect systems, but has had no lasting effect except in short notes and letters to journal editors.\nInformation transfer by modern citation systems: Conceptual content of referentia\nConcluding remarks: An examination of the history and purpose of scholarly citation, mainly in the biosciences, and the development of citation systems has facilitated an analysis of their multifarious designs. That analysis in turn has discovered various structures of citation systems with different purposes, allowing the construction of a logical classification and associated terminology providing a means of unambiguous discussion of the principles and design of citation systems applicable to any intellectual discipline.A survey of citation systems in 101 bioscience journals has revealed that most zoological, general biological and veterinary journals use the Harvard citation system, whilst most biomedical journals use some form of numeric end-reference system. The Harvard system is considered to be the most effective for information transfer. It is recommended that a similar survey of journals in the humanities be carried out, when it seems likely that significant differences from those in the biosciences would be revealed; it is predicted that most humanities journals would use various numeric end-reference or footnote systems.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Several bibliographical citation systems are in regular use in scholarly literature, associated with various intellectual disciplines. The aim of this paper is to document an analysis of their designs in the biosciences in order to construct a classification and to assess their comparative effectiveness for information transfer.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A historical survey of communications between scholars, including the reasons why authors cite others' works, was completed. The development of citation systems, specifically the Harvard system and various numeric systems, was traced, following which a universal classification with a new descriptive terminology was constructed.\nFindings: - Citation systems are defined herein as direct (with citation and reference together in the text) or indirect (with citation within the text, and reference outside the text). Direct systems may be described as implicit (the Linnaean style with abbreviated, undated, conceptual reference) or explicit (with full, dated, bibliographical reference). All indirect systems are explicit: the text citation (the referens) may be alphabetic, symbolic, numeric or alphanumeric and the reference (the referendum) may be a marginal note, footnote or end reference. A survey of citation systems in 101 bioscience journals is presented. Within indirect systems, most biomedical journals use a numeric system, but most veterinary, zoological and general biological journals use the Harvard system, which is considered herein to be the most effective for information transfer.\nOriginality/value: - No philosophical analysis of citation systems appears to have been carried out before. Based upon historical, conceptual and logical aspects, a robust universal classification with a new descriptive terminology is presented to facilitate the unambiguous discussion of the principles and designs of citation systems. The classification and terminology are applicable to citation systems in any discipline.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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The top ten reasons that key managers leave: ... and how to prevent it from happening
|
[
"Organizational culture",
"Organizational performance",
"Senior managers",
"Retention"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Business leaders, the linchpins of strategy execution, are vital to maintaining competitive advantage. They are also among the most expensive group of workers to replace, taking account of separation costs, replacement costs, training costs and the potential performance differences between leavers and their replacements.\nNote: Clinton O. Longenecker, Stranahan professor of leadership and organizational excellence, and Laurence S. Fink, professor of management, are both of the College of Business and Innovation, University of Toledo, 2801 West Bancroft Street, Toledo, Ohio 43606, USA. Clinton Longenecker can be contacted at: clinton.longenecker@utoledo.edu or laurence.fink@utoledo.edu\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: Presents the top ten reasons that senior managers identified for business leaders voluntarily leaving their current employers. Offers recommendations to prevent organizations from unnecessarily losing their managerial talent.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Presents the top ten reasons that senior managers identified for business leaders voluntarily leaving their current employers. Offers recommendations to prevent organizations from unnecessarily losing their managerial talent.\nFindings: Reveals that: bad bosses drive out good leaders; toxic and dysfunctional work cultures drive up management turnover; unethical or illegal business dealings tell managers it is time to go; when managers are consistently disrespected and disempowered it leads to them having a sense of being disenfranchised; professional stagnation creates a powerful incentive to leave; when business leaders find themselves consistently working in an environment where they are asked to pursue overly aggressive goals and performance outcomes without the requisite tools, staff, information, budget, authority, planning or access, they experience high frustration and frequent failure; less-than-competitive compensation causes managers to look for new employment; being on a sinking ship will cause managers to exit when hope is lost; and when managers are not challenged or feel bored they look for greener pastures.\nPractical implications: Challenges organizations to review the key lessons derived from the study and to use this knowledge to reduce the loss of critical managerial talent.\nSocial implications: Highlights how organizations can gain competitive advantage by holding on to their key personnel.\nOriginality/value: Unlike most previous studies, which concentrate on lower-level employees, looks at the factors that cause managers to resign.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Pricing strategies for resort fees: consumer preferences favor simplicity
|
[
"Conjoint analysis",
"Hotel",
"Amenity",
"Bundle pricing",
"Partition pricing",
"Resort fee"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Mandatory fees are often used to generate additional revenue for hotel companies while circumventing an increase in room rates (Manning, 2003). These lower base room rates may be beneficial to price-sensitive customers. Hanson (2010) suggests that surcharges are attractive to operators because these add-on fees have an estimated incremental profitability of 80-90 per cent. Because these fees are becoming commonplace in travel and hospitality businesses, companies often question whether it is better to combine everything into one charge or \"nickel-and-dime\" consumers (Hamilton et al., 2010). One example of mandatory fees exists in the hotel industry, where resort fees are beginning to appear more frequently.\nLiterature review: Resorts provide a variety of services and amenities to consumers to attract business and enhance their guests' visits. As customer requirements increase and competition escalates, hospitality firms find it necessary to provide additional amenities (Kandampully and Promsivapallop, 2005). A survey of resort executives asked which amenities consumers most expect to see in resort properties and finds \"high expectations\" from guests, including demands for technology access, home-like environments including relaxation centers and well-being activities such as fitness centers or spas (Brey, 2011). These amenities usually have an associated expense to the resort for installation and upkeep, leading operators to determine the best way to pass those costs along to customers. The purpose of this study is to understand if hotel consumers prefer to be charged for mandatory amenities as part of a bundled room rate inclusive of fees or if they prefer a partitioned pricing strategy where room rates and mandatory resort fees are charged separately.\nMethodology: The first two RQs are addressed using descriptive analysis. Conjoint analysis is employed to address the RQ3 because this study is intended to understand consumer preference for fee structures and more specifically, preferences for individual parts of a product offering with multiple components. According to Green and Wind (1975), conjoint analysis improves upon methods of analyzing consumer preference by creating utility rankings and importance scores at the individual product attribute level. Therefore, the researcher can determine consumer preference as it relates to a particular attribute. Conjoint analysis allows for the trade-offs that exist when consumers are forced to choose one product over another (Orme, 2006).\nResults: Of those participating in the survey, 50 per cent were male and 50 per cent were female. All of the participants resided in the USA, with all but six states (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, North Dakota, Puerto Rico, and Vermont) being represented. The age of the participants was evenly spread with 86 per cent of the respondents falling within the 25-65 age range. The respondents represented a variety of education levels and 84 per cent had some education beyond high school with 32 per cent having a four-year degree, 25 per cent had completed some college and another 15 per cent had achieved a two-year degree. Approximately one-third (35 per cent) of the respondents were single, 39 per cent were married with children and 16 per cent reported being married with no children. Table I shows further detail on the respondents' demographics.\nDiscussion and conclusions: When determining which pricing strategy hotel consumers prefer if they are required to pay for a bundle of amenities with their room rate, participants prefer bundled pricing over partitioned pricing 2 to 1. These results support some hotels operator's decisions to bundle resort fees into the room rates and not to partition them out and are consistent with the findings of Johnson et al. (1999). Similar to the findings of Johnson et al. (1999), the pricing of resort fees did not include discounts, so bundling the costs together increases the customer evaluation of the total cost. Many hotels operators are not following this pricing strategy though. An evaluation of the four star hotels in Orlando included in the sample used to determine the average room rate, shows that they all are charging for amenities based on usage or are charging a resort fee and partitioning the charge from the room rate. None of the four star properties is giving any of the amenities for no cost, demonstrating that they are not bundling a resort fee into the room rate.\nConclusions: Rates and fees remain the variables that are most important and, as such, have more influence on respondents' choices. Furthermore, the amount of the fee has slightly more influence than the room rate. These findings suggest that resort operators may want to eliminate incremental fees and follow the similar approach of airlines like Southwest Airlines and JetBlue. If resort management wants to generate more revenue but feels it is unacceptable to increase the room rate alone without offering additional services or amenities, they should bundle the room rate and resort fee together. That will increase revenue and give the customer more amenities, whether he or she uses them. Some respondents in this study prefer having an option of some amenities at a smaller fee rather than all amenities included. Hotels may consider offering a middle pricing structure similar to what was presented in this study. In addition to the practical application of these results, this study also fills the gap in the literature of consumer reaction to pricing mandatory fees since this is the only known research on the topic.\nLimitations and future research: While this study provides interesting contributions, there are limitations to the work. The survey attempts to replicate actual consumer purchasing situations, but it is possible that participants can have different behaviors than those indicated in the responses. Other factors that may impact the purchasing decision, regardless of resort fee presence, include brand loyalty and property location. While this study attempts to compare similar pricing scenarios, that is not possible with the a la carte scenario. Each hotel has different pricing for each amenity based on usage, so including these costs in the study is not possible. In addition, participants' perceptions of fairness with regard to resort fees may be a limitation. Noone and Mattila (2009) find that customers who are more familiar with \"best available rate\" pricing moderate the effect of rate sequence because customers understand how the pricing works.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is twofold: to determine hotel customers' preference among hotel amenities pricing strategies, specifically a bundled, all-inclusive charge in the form of a resort fee, a limited choice resort fee at a lower price or a la carte pricing, and to determine whether hotel customer prefer bundled or partitioned pricing when faced with a mandatory resort fee.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online survey of participants aged 18 years and older who had taken an overnight leisure trip in the past six months is conducted. A fixed-choice set conjoint analysis is performed to analyze the 353 usable surveys.\nFindings: Results of this conjoint analysis show that 67 per cent of respondents prefer bundled pricing over partitioned pricing. Respondents also show higher utility for no resort fee and paying for amenities based on usage instead of being forced to pay a mandatory resort fee.\nPractical implications: Guest preferences for pricing strategies can provide hotel operators with valuable information on how to establish pricing structures. Results suggest that hotel operators could benefit from presenting a bundled price inclusive of room rates and mandatory fees.\nOriginality/value: This is the only known study that examines mandatory fees in which customers receive additional amenities or services in exchange for an additional surcharge. This study also adds to the literature on pricing research in the hospitality industry.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Catalyzing capacity: absorptive, adaptive, and generative leadership
|
[
"Change",
"Leadership",
"Complexity",
"Adaptive",
"Absorptive",
"Generative"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: More than 2,000 years ago, Plato's (1941) Allegory of the Cave suggested that people could be imprisoned by false reality if they became constrained by limited observations and perceptions. Escape from this prison becomes possible as they begin to question their interpretations, get feedback from others, and open themselves up to other possibilities. In the spirit of that ancient tale, this paper considers leadership as a portal for individuals and organizations to transcend their current situations and realize new potential opportunities. Plato's message about the value of reflective understanding still rings true, and is perhaps more important than ever in today's global environments characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA).\nThe problem: The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic(Peter Drucker).Complexity and uncertainty have emerged as important themes in leadership literature (Hunt, 2004). Over the last 30 years, people and organizations have become more connected; the speed of communication has increased; more information is accessible immediately; and more diversity exists among people and institutions. To deal with this ever more complex operating environment, leadership requires a systems perspective that considers the dynamic, nonlinear nature of interactions, especially at upper levels of organizations (McCauley, 2004).\nNew ways of leading: Using conceptual analysis (Machado and Silva, 2007), this paper discusses how leaders can help their organizations overcome the limitations of technical-rational and positivist thinking when operating in VUCA conditions by developing three cognitive competencies - absorptive, adaptive and generative capacity. As will be shown, these three capacities enable organizations to more effectively interact with their operating environment, receive and process information, and create value through resource transformation and innovation. They support complexity because they promote self-organization, emergence and adaptability. They overcome positivistic limitations by embracing uncertainty as a resource rather than trying to control, predict or eliminate it. This section presents the three competencies in more detail, explains why they are crucial in VUCA environments, and briefly suggests ways to develop these competencies.\nDiscussion: In natural systems, fitness is an organism's ability to survive and reproduce (Kauffman, 1993). Organisms and species that survive over time are those that fit with their environment. These dynamics also apply to organizations (McKelvey, 1999). What can leaders do to develop organizational fitness, particularly in times of VUCA? The conceptual analysis above suggests the need for an adaptive approach to leadership and capacity development. For contexts that feature abundant information, routine tasks, homogeneity and agreement about goals and values, traditional management strategies (e.g. prediction, control, efficiency, cost/benefit analysis) are effective. When operating in VUCA environments characterized by uncertainty, heterogeneity, instability and interdependencies, it is essential to develop a new mindset to develop absorptive, adaptive and generative capacity because these three capacities promote information intake, flow and processing. They also maintain fitness by fostering flexibility (nimbleness) and continuous coupling with the operating environment through co-evolution.\nConcluding thoughts: The model outlined here offers guideposts to help leaders and organizations navigate more effectively through VUCA environments. By developing three fundamental capacities (absorptive, adaptive and generative), leaders can cultivate organizations capable of continuous synchronization with their fitness landscapes. The model extends prior scholarship by addressing gaps in the literature, particularly the essential role that diversity, slack, learning, humility, reflection in action and abductive logic play in developing capacity. By providing the underlying rationale for the proposed interventions (e.g. Ashby's law of requisite variety), the paper reorients busy leaders' mental models from traditional positivistic approaches (e.g. prediction, control and certainty) to show why capacity-building time investments are worth implementing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Organizations increasingly operate under volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions. Traditional command-and-control leadership can be ineffective in such chaotic environments. The purpose of this paper is to outline an alternative model to help leaders and organizations navigate effectively through VUCA environments. By developing three fundamental capacities (absorptive, adaptive and generative), leaders can cultivate organizations capable of continuous synchronization with their fitness landscapes. Central tenets of the framework include diversity, slack, learning, humility, reflection in action and abductive logic.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This framework is designed based on literature insights, conceptual analysis and experts' judgment. The paper integrates knowledge from a variety of disciplines and interprets them through the lens of complex adaptive systems.\nFindings: This paper argues for a process centered, contemplative approach to organizational leadership and development. By providing the underlying rationale for the proposed interventions (e.g. Ashby's law of requisite variety), the paper also reorients busy leaders' mental models to show why these time investments are worth implementing.\nPractical implications: This actionable framework can help leaders and organizations be more effective operating in a VUCA context.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides a historic context as to why prediction and certainty are favored leadership strategies, why these approaches are no longer suitable and specific steps leaders can take to develop absorptive, adaptive and generative capacities to transform their organizations. Its scholarly contribution is the synthesis of disparate bodies of literature, weaving those multiple academic perspectives into a practical roadmap to enhance organizational leadership.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Mandated curricula as figured world: A case-study of identity, power, and writing in elementary English language arts
|
[
"Elementary education",
"Literacy and identity",
"English language arts",
"Writing",
"Positionings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In our current era of standardization, few literacy policies and educational reforms are grounded in contemporary studies that explore elementary children's writing with a sociocultural lens (Woodard and Kline, 2016). Instead, such policies often assume universality in children's lived experiences, relying on standardized, mandated curricula that fail to take into consideration how children's writing is informed by participation in various figured worlds (Holland et al., 2001) - conceptual spaces wherein beliefs, norms, practices and identities are socially, culturally and historically constructed. Yet, literacy scholarship has illustrated the powerful ways that children's writing practices are informed by the identities they perform through participation in socially, culturally and historically constructed practices and worlds - sometimes leading to transformative and agentic writing and at other times reproducing systems of power (Kamler, 1994; Lensmire, 1994; Lewis et al., 2007). Scholarship has yet to fully explore, however, the figured world of mandated curricula itself, and how that world might inform children's identity positionings and intersect with their participation in other figured worlds as they engage in writing.\nConceptualizing writing and literacies in the English language arts classroom: Despite long-standing calls from writing scholarship to attend to children's social identities (Kamler, 1994; Lensmire, 1994; Dyson, 1997), many US literacy policies and school reforms rely on scholarship that remains focused on the cognitive \"stages\" of writing development (Cabell et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2015). Grounded in more positivistic bodies of research (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010) were written to emphasize children's progression through such \"stages\" (Graham et al., 2015). Positioned as a \"set of shared goals and expectations for the knowledge and skills students need in English language arts [ELA]...so they can be prepared to succeed in college, career, and life\", the CCSS (2010) and related curriculum often center children's written (and easily assessed) end products (Hayes and Olinghouse, 2015). Yet, as literacy practices continue to become more standardized, they also become \"detached from life\" (Bomer and Maloch, 2012, p. 46). Little attention is often paid to how context and/or diverse identities impact literacies teaching and learning in the CCSS or the mass-produced curricular materials aligned with them (Dyson and Smitherman, 2009).\nFigured worlds, identities and positionings: an overview of scholarship: Adapting the work of Holland et al. (2001), I used their concept of figured worlds. Figured worlds are multiple and layered. Although they occur across specific times and spaces, they may also be improvised upon from moment to moment. Specific artifacts, symbols and languages hold significant meaning for figured world participants and often exemplify distinct rules, values or beliefs. Within the confines of a school, for example, the teachers' lounge would be a figured world. The sign over the door may exclude others (e.g. no children or parents are permitted) or sitting in a particular chair may mark an individual's positioning among the staff (e.g. only the most veteran teacher sits there). The aforementioned objects are ascribed specific meaning as artifacts of the figured world. While they may hold significance within the figured world, they likely only hold meaning during this specific context (e.g. children may enter to get ice for an injury or the chair may be used for overflow seating in the cafeteria).\nMethods and modes of inquiry: In the larger qualitative study, I used a descriptive, case study design (Dyson and Genishi, 2005) with ethnographic methods (Emerson et al., 2011) to investigate how children used texts as a tool to participate in figured worlds. In what follows, I explore how figured worlds may be used as a framework for understanding one child's figured worlds as exemplified in an example of her mystery writing sample.\nAssertions/findings: In the time I came to know Ariana, I saw her attempt powerful social work within the constraints of the mandated curriculum. This was perhaps best evidenced in her written response to a prompt from the Reading Street (Pearson, 2011) curriculum wherein children were, as Ariana told me during an interview, \"supposed to write about a mystery\" (see prompt in Table II). Outlined in Figures 1 and 2, in Ariana's story, her peer Sydney served as the primary character. Including Sydney was one way Ariana appeared to inscribe social relationships within the mandated curriculum. Yet, her final written product demonstrated her ability to not only conform to \"the basics\" of writing (e.g. mechanics, conventions) that were a part of the mandated curriculum but also reproduce systems of power and privilege representative of her figured worlds.\nDiscussion: With an emphasis on rote, technical skills for literacy, many current educational reforms promote an autonomous conception of literacy (Botzakis et al., 2014). Children like Ariana are pushed to set aside their own notions of what constitutes \"good\" writing and instead adhere to systemic reforms (Dutro, 2010). Teachers tend to stick to the script and pacing of the mandated curriculum instead of the valuable identity and social work present in children's writing (Dutro et al., 2013; Yoon, 2013).\nConclusion: Figured worlds became a framework and tool for me to view Ariana's writing in new ways. While many researchers have learned about power and privilege using such a lens, my exploration of Ariana's writing provides insights into how teachers can use this theory as well. In doing so, teachers can learn to critically attend to systems of power and privilege and, in turn, take action to actively disrupt them (Lensmire, 1994).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This qualitative study aims to use the conceptual lens of figured worlds to explore how a 10-year-old child positions her identity and participates in systems of power through her engagement in writing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data was generated across an 18-week ethnographic case study in one fourth-grade classroom located in the Midwestern USA.\nFindings: Findings highlight how children's writing reflected both an adherence to and a rejection of the mandated curriculum as well as other aspects of the figured world of schooling. In turn, this study offers suggestions about how, by reading children's writing with a figured world lens, their identities and positionings may become more apparent.\nOriginality/value: This study challenges teachers and researchers to read beyond \"the basics\" emphasized in the mandated curriculum to better attend to the ways children navigate standardized curricula, negotiate identities and positioning and use writing to (re)inscribe identities and positionings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Ambidextrous leadership and innovation performance: a longitudinal study
|
[
"Ambidextrous leadership",
"Innovation",
"Transformational leadership",
"Transactional leadership",
"LMX",
"Instrumental leadership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Innovation is of great importance to organizations in their attempt to maintain competitive advantage (Porter, 1990; Rosenbusch et al., 2011; Rubera and Kirca, 2012). The innovation process requires employees to be creative and to implement new ideas to achieve high innovation performance (West and Farr, 1990; Rosing and Zacher, 2017; Good and Michel, 2013). These two requirements fluctuate along the innovation process and demand very different employee activities, which can be challenging for the actors of the innovation process (Miron-Spektor and Erez, 2017; Bledow et al., 2009; Rosing et al., 2018). Leadership has been suggested as one of the prime influences that can help employees attain high innovation performance (Junni et al., 2013; Hammond et al., 2011; Hughes et al., 2018). Because of the characteristics of the innovation process and existing empirical research, scholars have argued that a specific approach to leadership in innovation is necessary (Rosing et al., 2011; Hunter et al., 2011; Mumford, 2000). This study aims to investigate such a model for leadership in innovation processes: the ambidextrous leadership model (Rosing et al., 2011).\nTheoretical background: Leadership in innovation is different from leadership in other organizational contexts because the innovation process shows some unique characteristics (Mumford, 2000; Rosing et al., 2011; Hunter et al., 2011). Innovation is defined as the \"intentional introduction and application within a role, group or organization of ideas, processes, products or procedures, new to the relevant unit of adoption\" (West and Farr, 1990, p. 9). Accordingly, we adopt a definition of innovation performance as the observable successful implementation of a creative idea (West and Farr, 1990). This definition speaks to the complexity of the innovation process because it includes both creativity and implementation requirements (West and Farr, 1990; Bledow et al., 2009). On the one hand, creativity requires employees to indulge in divergent thinking, breaking rules and assumptions and acquiring new knowledge (Miron-Spektor and Erez, 2017; Amabile and Pratt, 2016; Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009). Implementation, on the other hand, requires a focus on usefulness and completing a product in a timely and efficient manner (Miron-Spektor and Erez, 2017; Miron-Spektor et al., 2011).Employees are more successful in terms of innovation performance when acting on both requirements (Bledow et al., 2009; Rosing and Zacher, 2017; Jasmand et al., 2012). Dealing with creativity and implementation requirements is challenging for employees, especially considering the dynamics of the innovation process (Rosing et al., 2018; Schroeder et al., 1989; Bledow et al., 2009). The two requirements do not follow a linear path but fluctuate unpredictably within the innovation process (Schroeder et al., 1989; Cheng and van de Ven, 1996). Therefore, employees need to adapt and balance their behavior according to these fluctuating requirements to achieve high innovation performance (Rosing and Zacher, 2017; He and Wong, 2004; Jasmand et al., 2012). Consequently, to study the innovation process and its specifics, analyzing within-person dynamics to reach conclusions concerning the fluctuating requirements and the associated challenges is essential (Rosing et al., 2018; Madrid et al., 2014).The case for ambidextrous leadership\nMethod: Sample\nResults: Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and intercorrelations of the study variables that were determined based on a sample of N = 49 or N = 54 employees, depending on missing data. The results show that all leadership constructs are significantly interrelated, which has previously been found (Bormann and Rowold, 2018; Yukl, 2012). This underlines the importance of simultaneously analyzing the effects of these leadership approaches with respect to innovation performance (Hughes et al., 2018).To examine the role of leadership styles and behaviors in innovation performance, multilevel regression analysis with a random intercept model was conducted (Table 2). Due to missing data, this analysis was only conducted with N = 49 employees who provided N = 219 weekly reports. At the between-person level, transformational, transactional and instrumental leadership as well as leader-member exchange, opening and closing leader behaviors were entered as control variables. At the within-person level, opening and closing leader behaviors as well as their interaction were added to the regression.The results for the traditional leadership styles only indicate the relationship of instrumental leadership with innovation performance. Instrumental leadership showed a significant positive association with innovation performance (B = 0.30, SE = 0.14, p = 0.042), whereas transformational (B = 0.53, SE = 0.37, p = 0.158) and transactional (B = -0.13, SE = 0.26, p = 0.598) leadership did not show a significant relationship. Leader-member exchange also did not show a significant association (B = -0.10, SE = 0.22, p = 0.649).Hypotheses 1 and 2 stated that opening and closing leader behaviors have positive relationships with innovation performance. Both opening leader behavior (B = 0.60, SE = 0.11, p < 0.001) and closing leader behavior (B = 0.24, SE = 0.12, p = 0.048) at the within-person level were positively associated with innovation performance. Thus, Hypotheses 1 and 2 were supported. Moreover, the interaction of the two ambidextrous leader behaviors was expected to be positively associated with innovation performance (H3). However, no significant relationship was found in this regard (B = -0.31, SE = 0.28, p = 0.266); thus, Hypothesis 3 was rejected.\nDiscussion: In this study, we support the proposition that weekly opening and closing leader behaviors have positive relationships with innovation performance. This indicates the importance of specific types of leader behaviors - opening and closing - in the innovation process and underlines the relevance of ambidextrous leader behaviors for research in this area (Rosing et al., 2011; Zacher et al., 2016; Zacher and Rosing, 2015). Moreover, the results underline that within-person fluctuations are relevant in this regard because we do not find these effects at the between-person level. This indicates that opening and closing leader behaviors in each week are more relevant to the weekly performance than general opening and closing leader behaviors. We did not find the postulated relationship of the interplay of opening and closing leader behaviors with innovative performance based on weekly fluctuations. This is surprising because both theoretical arguments (Rosing et al., 2011) and empirical data have supported this association (Zacher and Wilden, 2014; Zacher and Rosing, 2015). Drawing conclusions from these results, one could assume that showing both opening and closing leader behaviors within a week is not related to innovation performance. It seems that changing the leader behaviors within a week does not provide an advantage for innovation performance. A possible interpretation lies in the (mis)alignment of leader behaviors with situational requirements. The ambidextrous leadership model suggests that the interplay of opening and closing leader behaviors will have a positive relationship only if they are applied according to the situational requirements of creativity and implementation (Rosing et al., 2011). This is especially important when considering within-person fluctuations because one leader showing different leader behaviors within a week could send mixed signals if the behaviors are not aligned with the requirements.Another interesting result is the positive relationship of instrumental leadership with innovation performance at the between-person level even after controlling for other traditional leadership styles. To date, studies have not found the consistent effects of instrumental leadership with respect to creativity or innovation performance (Lin and McDonough, 2011; Tung and Yu, 2016). However, this study supports that instrumental leadership shows a positive relationship with innovation performance. An interpretation for the positive effect in this study could be provided by a strategic perspective on the innovation process (Bledow et al., 2009; Janssen, 2000; Mumford, 2000). It has been suggested that leaders are required to act strategically by considering idea promotion throughout the innovation process (Mumford, 2000; Mumford et al., 2002; Janssen, 2000). Idea promotion includes the selling of ideas within the organization (Janssen, 2000; Howell and Boies, 2004). Leaders need to gain support to secure resources and financial aids for promising ideas (Janssen, 2000; Mumford, 2000). For this purpose, leaders need to form strategic alliances and networks within the organization (Mumford, 2000; Mumford et al., 2002). This goes hand in hand with instrumental leadership, which is described by four dimensions (Antonakis and House, 2014; Rowold, 2014). First, instrumental leaders scan the environment to identify opportunities and provide satisfactory working conditions for their employees (Rowold, 2014; Antonakis and House, 2014). Second, they formulate and implement strategies that support the mission of the organization (Rowold, 2014; Antonakis and House, 2014). Third, they assist employees in reaching goals by removing obstacles and providing resources (Rowold, 2014; Antonakis and House, 2014). Finally, they monitor the outcomes of tasks and provide constructive feedback during the process (Rowold, 2014; Antonakis and House, 2014). In particular, identifying opportunities and securing resources are relevant for leaders with respect to the innovation process (Rowold, 2014; Janssen, 2000; Antonakis and House, 2014). Consequently, instrumental leadership might represent the strategic component for leaders in the innovation process (Antonakis and House, 2014; Mumford, 2000; Mumford et al., 2002).Taken together, instrumental leadership as well as opening and closing leader behaviors are relevant to innovation processes (Mumford et al., 2002; Rosing et al., 2011; Antonakis and House, 2014). Instrumental leaders provide a strategic basis and acquire the prerequisites for innovation to occur (Mumford, 2000; Janssen, 2000). They scan the environment, provide resources and promote the ideas (Antonakis and House, 2014; Rowold, 2014). In addition, opening and closing leader behaviors provide advice for the concrete tasks that have to be addressed within the process; in this case, within a week (Rosing et al., 2011). Thereby, they enable employees to address creativity and implementation requirements while taking into account the (weekly) fluctuations within the innovation process (Rosing et al., 2011). All three approaches are defined as task-related and focus on the required actions for the specific process (Rosing et al., 2011; Antonakis and House, 2014; Rowold, 2014). They do not concentrate on the employees or their personal concerns like other leadership approaches (Bass, 1985; Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995; Yukl et al., 2016). The focus on task-related leader behaviors is especially relevant in the innovation process because the tasks associated with this process are distinct and diverse and need to be recognized by leaders (Rosing et al., 2011; Hunter et al., 2011; Mumford et al., 2002). This need cannot be met by other leadership styles (Bass, 1985, 1999; Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995; Gerstner and Day, 1997) or the recent developments toward their integration (Yukl et al., 2016; Yukl, 2012; Borgmann et al., 2016). Other broader leadership approaches do not consider the creativity and implementation requirements or the strategic prerequisites of the innovation process (Bledow et al., 2009; Rosing et al., 2011). Consequently, ambidextrous and instrumental leadership approaches support the specifics of the innovation process.Theoretical contribution\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The ambidextrous leadership model specifically describes opening and closing leader behaviors in the innovation process. This paper aims to emphasize the relevance of the ambidextrous leadership model with respect to leadership in innovation processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this longitudinal research design, 54 employees rated the ambidextrous leader behaviors and innovation performance concerning an innovation project over a period of six weeks. Traditional leadership styles (i.e. transformational, transactional, instrumental leadership, leader-member exchange) were assessed at a between-person level to identify their effects with respect to innovation performance.\nFindings: Multilevel regression analysis results showed that instrumental leadership as well as opening and closing leader behaviors were positively related to innovation performance. By contrast, transformational and transactional leadership as well as leader-member exchange (LMX) did not show significant associations with innovation performance.\nOriginality/value: The findings support the relevance of specific leader behaviors to the innovation process and therefore underline the importance of the ambidextrous leadership model.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A comparative study and evaluation of ERP reference models in the context of ERP IT-driven implementation: SAP ERP as a case study
|
[
"Decision-making",
"ERP",
"Business engineering by model matching",
"ERP reference models",
"IT-driven ERP implementation approach"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Currently, many enterprises aim to support their processes using process-aware information systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) (Pajk, 2012). ERP systems are off-the-shelf comprehensive software packages that support most of the key functions of an enterprise. Moreover, ERP systems are increasingly being used to automate and enhance business processes (Pajk et al., 2011). Thus, facilitating business process orientation is considered one of the most important factors when implementing such systems (Dreiling et al., 2005). Many enterprises perform several activities such as procurement, finance, sales, production planning, human resources, and material management, and these can be embedded in an ERP package (Markandeya and Roy, 2014). However, ERP packages have a very complex design that makes them difficult to understand, implement, and modify (Dodds and Spencer, 2007). ERP offers many direct benefits to an enterprise in terms of inventory reduction, order management improvements, IT cost reduction, and also present intangible benefits such as information visibility, cost reductions, integration, standardization, flexibility, and globalization (Gargeya and Brady, 2005). Admittedly, to reap the full benefits of ERP systems, extreme structural changes within the enterprise may be required, including business process reevaluation and reengineering (Fryling, 2015). In a broad sense, ERP packages are distinguished by comprehensive functions that apply in certain domains, and present different languages, accounting standards, currencies, and so on (Manoj, 2013). Although ERP packages provide different reference models and configuration tables, ERP projects are risky and have a high failure rate (Chand et al., 2005; Ehie and Madsen, 2005; Ngai et al., 2008; Larsen, 2009). Consequently, ERP implementation requires overall knowledge at all levels of the business process, functions, structure, and objects through the available resource (i.e. reference models) (Kurbel, 2013).\n2. Preliminaries: 2.1 RMs: theoretical background\n3. Business engineering using software RMs (theoretical background): Business engineering is a re-thinking of the process orientation to improve the quality, speed, and output of products or services (Rao Siriginidi, 2000). It can also be understood as the method and model-based design theory for businesses in the information age (Osterle and Winter, 2003). Furthermore, the business engineering field aims to enhance existing business strategies and operational information systems for process design (Cornes, 1990; Kruse et al., 1993; Osterle, 1996; Scheer, 2012). There are many synonyms that describe business engineering, such as restructuring, transformation, renewal, reorientation, and reengineering (Tetrevova, 2007). Drawing upon business engineering using IT, enterprise adoption refers to an enterprise adopting the structure and capabilities of a software package (i.e. ERP). In this case, the business engineering is the actions undertaken by the enterprise to change its structure and processes (Van Der Aalst, 2006). Consequently, changes in the organizational elements, operations, and procedures are represented by the scope and type of changes in business engineering (Lodhi et al., 2011).\n4. Evaluation criteria for comparing RMs: To evaluate the different ERP RMs, the criteria for comparison must be defined. According to Rosemann and Van Der Aalst (2007), the main criteria for distinguishing RMs are their scope, granularity, views, integration degree, purpose, use, availability, explanation, alternatives, guidelines, and benchmarking. (Fettke and Loos, 2003) classified RMs based on the criteria of completeness, precision, consistency, extensibility, user-friendliness, and economic efficiency. Other researchers have defined criteria that support the selection of RMs (Van Belle, 2006): syntactic criteria (size, correctness and consistency, modularity, structure (hierarchy), complexity, architecture), semantic criteria (general applicability, coverage of domain, completeness, efficiency of use, expressiveness, similarity with other models, possible overlaps, comprehensibility, documentation), and pragmatic criteria (popularity, flexibility of use, maturity, relevance, availability, cost, tool support). Fettke et al. (2006) defined three criteria and their respective sub-criteria for describing process RMs: general characteristics (origin, responsibility for modeling, access, and tool support), constructions (domain, modeling language, modeling framework, size, construction method, and evaluation), and application (application method, reuse and customization, use case). Mendling, Moser, Neumann, Verbeek, Van Dongen and Van Der Aalst (2006) conducted a systematic analysis of the SAP RMs using the criteria of model size, model complexity, and typical error patterns. For instance, to measure the complexity, they used the mean number of model components (events, functions, connectors, and arcs). Sadowska (2015) proposed a model for quality assessment of process models. It consists of three levels: quality characteristics, quality sub-characteristics, and quality metrics. Moreover, numerous studies have attempted to explain the quality of the models (e.g. quality of process models (Makni et al., 2010; Overhage et al., 2012), literature review (LR) of models quality (Mohagheghi et al., 2009; Sanchez-Gonzalez et al., 2010)). The evaluation criteria that have been used to compare RMs are presented in Table I.\n5. Related work: Several areas of research have studied RMs from different perspectives. Some of these studies focus on reuse, classification, errors, surveys, and evaluation of the RMs. However, most research has addressed the models in terms of adequacy, expressiveness, structure, compatibility, and related factors (Reinhartz-Berger et al., 2005). Although model evaluation is very important because it has many purposes (Becker et al., 2000), most previous research has focused on the model itself, rather than analyzing the components of specific RMs (i.e. ERP models) and determining how they can be used in different approaches (i.e. IT-driven, process-driven, or hybrid). The level of reuse in the SAP RMs was measured by Daneva (1999), who examined different case studies and found that full reuse was not achieved. The use of reference process models within ERP packages was discussed by Rosemann (2000). Further, the author provided an overview of ERP lifecycle models and their use. Fettke and Loos (2003) presented a systematical methodology for creating classification schemes of existing RMs. Classification was based on criteria such as completeness, consistency, precision, extensibility, user-friendliness, and economic efficiency. There have also been comprehensive surveys on RMs for business processes (Fettke and Loos, 2003; Van Belle, 2003). Other studies have evaluated and classified RMs using a framework and certain criteria (Fettke and Loos, 2003, 2005; Vojislav and Leon, 2000; Schuette and Rotthowe, 1998).\n6. SAP ERP RMs: a case study: The SAP Company (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) is a vendor of ERP systems offering solutions designed for specific processes (combinations of predefined applications) (Baloglu, 2003). SAP are considered to be the third-largest software company, with an installed base that crossed 100,000 in 2010 (Markandeya and Roy, 2014). After their first R/3 package, the SAP products evolved to become MySAP Business Suite (with integration through the internet), ECC 5.0 (ECC - ERP Core Component), ECC. 6.0, and ECC 6.0 EHP6 (Enhancement package 6) (Markandeya and Roy, 2014). The SAP ERP RMs are a collection of information models used in the configuration process (Mendling, Van Der Aalst, Van Dongen and Verbeek, 2006). These models provide a clear view of SAP functionality at different abstraction levels. Further, the models included in the SAP package are also included in the Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) tools developed by Scheer. There are four views of the SAP RMs that describe the system: business process view (flow of the business processes), function view (hierarchy of the system functions), data view (or object model; data/objects and their relationships), and organizational view (organizational structures, relationships between organizational units) (Daneva, 2000; Kurbel, 2013). As a result of the current process orientation, the most popular type is the process model (Rosemann, 2000). In the SAP RM repository, there are almost 10,000 individual models, with around 1,000 of them describing business process models in all functional areas (Gerhard and Teufel, 1998; Gulla and Brasethvik, 2002; Mendling, Van Der Aalst, Van Dongen and Verbeek, 2006). The SAP RMs use the event process chain (EPC), which became the core modeling language in ARIS (Scheer, 2012). The advantage of the EPC format is that it matches the structure and logic of SAP's ERP package design (Monk and Wagner, 2012).\n7. Research methodology: This investigation was conducted to determine appropriate ERP RMs for specifying the enterprise areas of change in the context of business engineering (IT-driven ERP implementation) and model matching. The selection of the suitable RMs requires a decision-making technique. Therefore, the methodology consists of seven steps: the LR concentrated on study types of ERP RMs and IT-driven ERP implementation approach. Therefore, the LR was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, data were gathered from multiple sources, like popular scientific journals and databases, such as the Web of Knowledge, Scopus, IEEE, ACM, Springer, Elsevier, Springer, and Emerald, and business process, software engineering, and information systems journals to identify the relevant papers. Furthermore, we searched the Web of Sciences (Reuters, 2017) by using \"comparison the software reference models\" as key word within the range (2000-2017) and collected 744 records. We refined these records by refining such related fields as computer science, software engineering, information systems, information technology, management, and automation control systems, and the number of records decreased following refinement to 149. Following this, we analyzed these records by using LR tools (Knutas et al., 2015). In the second stage of the LR, we filtered papers based on title, abstract, and conclusion to select the ones most relevant to our research, and obtained 48 scientific papers. In addition, we thus focused on the most cited publications and popular keywords to search for in other scientific journals. Further, we navigated the ERP vendor websites to gain a general understanding of ERP principals, ERP-specific RMs, and business engineering based on enterprise system implementations. We searched the scientific database using various keywords such as \"ERP reference models,\" \"ERP implementation approach,\" \"ERP-specific reference models,\" \"evaluation of the reference models\", reuse the reference models,\" and \"business engineering using software reference models;\" understanding the ERP package levels, RMs, and business engineering principles; investigating the business engineering, i.e., specifying the enterprise areas of change using RMs with model matching; reviewing the academic literature on RM comparison criteria; studying and analyzing the different types of ERP RMs (alternatives); apply decision-making technique (analytical hierarchy process (AHP)) to select an appropriate ERP RM; and providing the analysis results, i.e., selecting a suitable RM according to the goal. In this research, there are goals, criteria, and alternatives to assess the different types of ERP RMs. The best way to test this research (i.e. specify the best alternative) is by using the AHP, which offers excellent decision-making capabilities (Davis and Williams, 1994; Velasquez and Hester, 2013; Tsagdis, 2008). The research framework is illustrated in Figure 1.\n8. Applying AHP technique to select an appropriate ERP RM: 8.1 Goal of the selection\n9. Results and discussion: This section describes the results given by studying different types of ERP RMs according to some predefined criteria using AHP. A comparative analysis of the main criteria was performed, and the results show that the most important criteria are model simplicity (C6) and ease of use for model matching (C8), with weights of 0.299 and 0.204, respectively. The least important criterion is model availability (C7) with a weight of 0.036. This is because all model types are available in terms of resources (paper, tool-based, web-based, diagrams) and are popularly used. The rating of the alternatives based on the calculated weight of the main criteria for each alternative and the evaluation of the ERP RMs is presented in Table VI and Figure 3. The results show the alternatives arranged in ascending order as follows: business process, system organizational, function, and data/object RMs. This does not mean that the arrangement is suitable for all cases, but only in ERP IT-driven implementations using model matching.\n10. Conclusion and future work: Conceptual models such as RMs play an important role in all phases of the enterprise system lifecycle, and provide key benefits to process design in terms of cost, risk, time, and modeling quality. Furthermore, these RMs offer positive effects on enterprises systems and business engineering. RMs present content in domains such as ERP, which has business process, function, system organizational, and data\\object RMs. In practice, the use of RMs is rare, and selecting an appropriate RM type according to ERP implementation approach requires further study. Most previous studies have evaluated RMs from multiple perspectives in terms of adequacy, expressiveness, errors, and structure, and have paid more attention to the model itself rather than the different types of RMs applicable in specific situations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider the question of what is an appropriate enterprise resource planning (ERP) reference model for specifying areas of change in the context of IT-driven ERP implementation and through the model matching. There are other implicit goals to increasing the awareness of the reference models, as this highlights the principles embedded in ERP systems and explains the classification of reference models, which is useful in terms of the reuse of knowledge.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this paper, a comparison between ERP reference models is conducted using a suitable decision-making technique and the final results are discussed. The comparison depends on nine criteria related to conceptual ERP reference models: scope, abstraction, granularity, views, purpose, simplicity, availability, ease of use for model matching, and target audience.\nFindings: This study concludes that the business process reference model is best for specifying areas of change in the context of IT-driven ERP implementations. The final ranking of the alternatives based on all criteria places the system organizational model second, followed by the function and data/object reference models, in that order.\nOriginality/value: This paper is one of very few studies on the selection of appropriate ERP reference models according to the ERP implementation approach and model matching factors. This research also provides an in-depth analysis of various ERP reference model types.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Legal systems, internationalization and corporate sustainability. An empirical analysis of the influence of national and international authorities
|
[
"Internationalization",
"Corporate sustainability",
"Sustainability management",
"Code law",
"Common law",
"Legal system"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The world faces the critical problem of needing to move toward sustainability (UNWCED, 1987). Large corporations are seen as important economic actors with a crucial part to play in this movement (Whiteman et al., 2013). In any country, there are ways in which corporate behavior toward implementation of sustainability practices can be influenced by national regulatory authorities. Governments can also harness non-government entities such as international standard setters to help enforcement and improve behavior of corporations (Gunningham, 2015). Regulation, self-regulation, economic incentives, information strategies and various mixes of these can all be used (Gunningham, 2015; Van Gossum et al., 2012). However, to date, the influence of different legal systems on the implementation of corporate sustainability management practices has received little attention. This paper examines the views of sustainability managers to quantitatively address the following research questions:\n2. Literature review and theoretical background: A country's legal system forms a fundamental part of the institutional logic in which companies operate and provides a foundation for the implementation of sustainability practices (Glynn, 2013). According to La Porta et al.'s (1998) seminal work, legal systems in different countries are founded either on common or code-based law[1]. It has been argued that code law countries are orientated toward broader stakeholder interests, whereas common law countries have a narrower focus on the protection of investors, especially minority interests with the former having a stronger focus on sustainability (La Porta et al., 1998; Duran and Bajo, 2014; Kim et al., 2017; Kock and Min, 2016).\n3. Development of hypotheses: Two decades ago, Shrivastava and Hart (1995, p. 156) argued that \"increasingly stringent national laws and new international treaties will create a political imperative\" for companies to act for sustainable development. \"For example, there have been more international environmental protocols in the past 10 years than in the previous 40. Corporations will have to respond to new regulations and to public demands for environmental preservation or risk oblivion because of astronomical compliance and liability costs\" (Shrivastava and Hart, 1995, p. 156). The pace of new laws and protocols has not slackened. Hence, national and international authorities are two primary institutions potentially directly and indirectly influencing the implementation of sustainability practices, through laws, treaties, non-statutory standards and guidelines (Bendell et al., 2011).\n4. Methodology: The hypotheses were tested based on data on the corporate sustainability practices of the largest companies (by revenue) of selected countries gathered within the scope of the International Corporate Sustainability Barometer project (Schaltegger et al., 2014). For the purpose of this paper, data from five developed countries are used: Germany, France, Spain, Australia and the USA. Following La Porta et al. (1998), Australia and the USA were chosen to represent countries with common law legal systems. France and Spain represent French code law, whereas Germany was selected as the example of a German code law system. In these countries, 277 companies participated in the survey (response rate: 30.0 per cent). However, some companies needed to be excluded for this analysis, because of missing values, resulting in a final sample size of 215 for the analysis of H1a-H1d and 207 for H2a-H2d. The descriptive statistics of the sample are displayed in Table II. The questions were pre-tested with backward translation being used to check understanding in different languages. Sustainability managers were chosen as the preferred respondents, as they are expected to have a good overview 'of corporate sustainability practices implemented as well as of the influence of external stakeholders on sustainability management practices. The survey was conducted between February and August 2012.\n5. Results and analysis: Three OLS regression models were used to test whether the different legal systems have an effect on the impact of national authorities (H1a-H1c). For each model, one legal system was used as the reference category, to compare the impact of national authorities in the other two legal systems with the legal system chosen as the reference category. As indicated in Table III, the variance inflation factor (VIF) values do not exceed the critical value of 5 for regression analyses without interaction terms, indicating that the analysis is not affected by problems of multicollinearity (Hair et al., 1998). As Table III displays, no significant effect of the German code law system can be observed in Models 1 and 2 when compared with the common law legal system. Hence, H1a is rejected. In contrast, Models 2 and 3 confirm H1b, as the impact of national authorities on the implementation of corporate sustainability practices is found to be greater in French code law countries than in German code law countries. Similarly, Models 1 and 3 display that the impact of national authorities on the implementation of corporate sustainability practices is greater in French code law countries than in common law countries and thus confirm H1c.\n6. Discussion and conclusion: As expected, legal systems significantly influence the impact of national and international authorities on the implementation of corporate sustainability practices. Against expectation, however, French code law was the legal system where both national and international authorities had the highest impact on implementation of sustainability practices. Greater impact of national authorities in the French code law system is not at the expense of a lower impact of international authorities. One possible explanation is that in French code law countries, the legal system provides a framework in which national and international authorities can work together in a complementary way to promote corporate practices.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to compare the influence of different legal systems on corporate sustainability management practices. Against the background of growing internationalization of business activities, it additionally considers whether internationalization allows companies to circumvent the influence of national authorities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Three legal systems are compared using regression analyses of more than 200 large corporations in five countries: common law (USA and Australia), German code law (Germany) and French code law (France and Spain).\nFindings: The impact of national and international authorities is found to be strongest in French code law countries. In addition, the influence of international authorities is stronger for corporations with higher shares of international sales. For both national and international authorities, the degree of internationalization is found to moderate the influence of the legal system on corporate sustainability practices.\nPractical implications: The legal system in place influences the relative effectiveness of national and international authorities over company sustainability practices and needs to be taken into account in policymaking. To be effective, international authorities need to work with or substitute for national authorities in promoting corporate sustainability practices in countries depending on their legal systems.\nOriginality/value: This research applies and quantitatively tests La Porta's (1998) framework on legal systems in the new context of corporate sustainability.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Resistance to change in the case of mergers and acquisitions: part 3
|
[
"Change management",
"Transformational leadership",
"Resistance to change",
"Mergers and acquisitions",
"Organization culture"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nSummary: mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and resistance to change: Dating back to the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of M&As is not unique to management decision making. Alluring in their promise of increased efficiency since their very beginning (Economy Watch, 2010), they nonetheless rarely deliver the promised returns. Indeed, \"U.S. sources place merger failure rates as high as 80%, with evidence indicating that around half of mergers fail to meet financial expectations\" (Cartright, 1996).\nAdherence to the organization and engagement: Resistance to change is affected by the simple notion of increasing employee \"belongingness\" and engagement, and engagement can increase their adherence to the newly merged organization.\nConclusion: Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the different causes of resistance to change, their implications on certain behaviors and the risks the behaviors pose to the success of a change, namely an event like an M&A. The literature shows significant links between good management of the resistance factors and success of the change. There is no doubt that in an M&A situation, where financial implications often take front seat, ignoring the \"people factor\" comes with an at-your-own-risk post-scriptum.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are inherent to firms evolving in today's business world, whether they be corporate giants, SMEs or start-ups. While the ultimate objective of an M&A is to improve the newly constructed firm's performance, financial and technical impacts are but some of the considerations the organization will need to face. Indeed, employee resistance appears to be a major factor in the overall success of this strategic move. Throughout this three-part paper, the purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough overview of the forces at play in employee resistance to change, its influence on the M&A's success, and the ways to address such resistance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on existing empirical studies, industry expert findings and academic reviews, this paper sought to link together the concepts of communication at a time of change, leadership, employee involvement, feeling of adherence to the firm (the four key pillars), and their respective influences in how they may handicap or aid the firm in achieving its M&A objectives.\nFindings: Although it may seem like a straightforward concept, resistance to change in the turbulent time that is an M&A situation is anything but simple. Classic assumptions of resistance being a negative force or participation being a requisite part of overcoming resistance are challenged. At the same time, leadership and employee feeling of adherence to their previous organization play a supporting role when compared to the significant influence of communication pre, during and after the merger. The ensuing portrait is, thus, multifaceted and underscores the complexity of handling an M&A at the human resources level.\nResearch limitations/implications: Whilst the paper allowed to identify and link the different factors at play, a thorough empirical study in order to compare and contrast those factors at an M&A's different stages (pre-during-post), and thus evaluate their respective importance, would be commendable.\nPractical implications: In providing an overview of several aspects at play in employee resistance to change, this paper allows management practitioners to consolidate their knowledge on the process' four key pillars.\nSocial implications: By illustrating not only its - expected - negative outcomes, but by also providing a glimpse at some potential benefits in terms of increased merger performance, this paper gives managers incentives to not always challenge but also embrace their employee's resistance to change as a healthy part of the firm's transformation process.\nOriginality/value: This literature review provides an overview of resistance to change and draws parallels between the concepts explored herein and the M&A situation, which would be useful to the general practitioner undergoing an M&A.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The effect of soft skills on French post-secondary graduates' earnings
|
[
"France",
"Quantile regression",
"Wages",
"Post-secondary graduates",
"Soft-skills"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Although young graduates in France, and particularly master's graduates, enjoy an advantage in the labour market, they do not seem to be spared by rising unemployment (Menard, 2014). Some young graduates find themselves relegated to low-paying, deskilled jobs. In France, as in many developed countries, graduates may suffer from a deficit in certain skills in comparison with job requirements upon joining the labour market (Garcia-Aracil and Van der Velden, 2008; Allen and Van der Velden, 2011). It is therefore important to examine employers' expectations in terms of skills.\n2. The effects of soft skills in the labour market: Although some researchers prefer to see these skills in terms of personality traits (Semeijn et al., 2005), other more recent studies favour the term \"soft skills\", meaning, a set of skills that relate more to \"people skills\" and less to theoretical knowledge. These skills purportedly depend on the ability of individuals to interact with others and unlike \"hard skills\"; they are less specific to jobs or fields of study. The conceptualisation and operationalization of such soft take multiple forms amongst the various existing studies. For this reason, Cobb-Clark (2015) attempted to synthesise the research by focusing on one non-cognitive skill: locus of control. He pointed out that this skill is related to other concepts such as self-efficacy, motivation and self-control. Locus of control is particularly important for understanding economic decisions. Heckman and Kautz (2013), for their part, selected measures similar to personality traits used by psychologists to show their importance in the labour market. However, unlike personality traits, for these authors, \"soft skills\" are skills in the sense that they require learning and can evolve over the course of individuals' school and working lives as well as within their social and family relations. A recent OECD (2015) report prefers the terms \"social\" and \"emotional\" skills, which are defined as individual abilities that can be developed in various formal and informal learning contexts and which have socio-economic effects on individuals' lives. They are purportedly transversal, meaning that they are skills common to various areas of activity in the labour market. They remain likely, however, to determine the acquisition of other more specific skills required by certain jobs.\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1 Data\n4. The effects of soft skills on earnings: a quantile analysis: 4.1 Methodology\n5. Discussion and conclusion: All of the results obtained in this study indicate, first and foremost, that soft skills, as measured in the Generation 2010 survey, contribute to explaining pay differentials amongst young post-secondary graduates in France. Although level of diploma and field of study still have an influence on young people's wages, perseverance, self-esteem, risk taking and communication do affect wages, even when controlling for social variables and human capital. Second, the quantile analysis indicates that the effect is generally larger for the top end of the wage distribution, which suggests the importance of these skills for attaining the highest skilled jobs. It is important to note that it is the opposite for other variables that may indicate individuals' levels of human capital. Obtaining a master's degree or having more professional experience has a greater effect on the lower end of the wage distribution. However, at the top end of the distribution, the effect of these skills is consistent with the effect of other academic (e.g. high grades for the high-school leaving diploma) or social (e.g. father's occupation) selection variables. In fact, it appears as if there are two labour markets for post-secondary graduates: the first gives access to the most highly skilled and best paid jobs, but requires, in addition to a diploma, different academic and non-academic skills as well as networks for getting a job; whereas the second offers less well-paid jobs, but for which the objective components of human capital, diploma and experience seem to be far more protective.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to construct soft-skill indicators and measure their effects on graduates' earnings using survey data from a sample of master's degree graduates in France.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use a quantile analysis to measure the effects of soft skills on income.\nFindings: Certain soft skills explain a proportion of the earnings of recent master's graduates. In particular, they influence the highest salaries and are important for the most highly skilled jobs.\nResearch limitations/implications: Most of these soft skills are measured using declarative responses and may result from the feeling of having skills rather than actually possessing the skill. Moreover, this paper only looks at graduates who are employed, and a deficit in soft skills may be more penalising for job seekers.\nSocial implications: While some young people take advantage of soft skills early and benefit from them in the labour market, it is likely that it is even more important for those less endowed with these skills to further develop them before entering the labour market.\nOriginality/value: This research illustrates the heterogeneous nature of the skills that young post-secondary graduates acquire. French diplomas do not seem to homogenise all of the skills that young people develop through their academic and professional experiences.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A new paradigm of leadership development
|
[
"Leadership development",
"Financial services",
"Economic disequilibrium",
"Leaders",
"Risk analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Over the past few years we have experienced an unraveling of the kind only witnessed by our grandparents - an unprecedented economic disaster which has destroyed many businesses which were thought to be \"built to last\", and put millions of people out of work. Much that has been written about the causes of the crisis has focused on an analysis of the banking system, in particular, the innovations in financial engineering that were taken to extremes of complexity, the loans made to all manner of poor risks, and the lack of regulatory oversight (Tett, 2009). By comparison, what little examination there has been of the motives and behavior underlying the crisis has been superficial. A large number of journalists as well as Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury blame the whole thing on human greed (Gledhill, 2008). Others talk about stupidity and outsize egos, while Alan Greenspan says the whole thing is human nature, and it will all happen again so we should just get used to it (BBC, 2009a).\nOur research: Our research into personal and career sustainability started more than eight years ago, and provided the original thought that went into Tim and David's book (Casserley and Megginson, 2008). We asked 100 high flyers, from 29 different countries, to tell us about their experience of severe stress at work, as well as their perception of how their organizations responded, during a three hour, audio taped interview. Subsequent analysis of these \"stress stories\" was combined with survey data and follow up interviews with participants a year later. Our findings showed that burnout is the extreme consequence of an unsustainable approach to work and career. Or to put it another way, burnout is at the far, negative end on a spectrum of individual sustainability. For instance, while around 20 percent of our research population manifested all the classic symptoms of burnout, a far larger proportion demonstrated some of these symptoms. These people were not at risk of burning out - they were less close to the extreme end of the spectrum referred to above, but they were in a permanent state of sleep debt, and followed highly addictive work styles, a state we called, \"joyless depletion\". They were also prone, among other things, to reckless decision making.As the research progressed it became clear that our findings were:* Defining how successful leaders sustained themselves and their careers over the long term - what they practiced day-in, day-out that ensured they kept their sense of perspective, balance and resourcefulness, and avoided derailment and burnout.* Identifying a clear pattern of behavior associated with pursuing work and career unsustainably and irresponsibly - a pattern not dissimilar from that of the young, hotshot investment bankers whose action precipitated the credit crunch.* Forming the basis for a paradigm shift in the way we think about how leaders are developed - an approach that centers on leaders' exercising a duty of care for their own sustainability as well as that of the wider business and the society of which they are a part. It is as concerned with leaders learning the lessons of sustainability - paying attention to their own \"healthily selfish\" needs as a pre-requisite of effectiveness - as increasing their performance.\nBehavior patterns associated with pursuing work and career irresponsibly: Whereas organizations create the conditions which foster the development of irresponsible approaches to work and career, individual leaders make choices that lead them down this road. These choices are driven by a susceptibility to unthinking confluence with their organisations' objectives, and a lack of reflexive ability.Based on our research we developed a model that described nine dominant behaviors associated with high achievers pursuing work and career irresponsibly. These include:* Addiction to action. Leaders are highly adrenalized, orientated towards action and the pursuit of short term goals and suffer from a chronic lack of strategic thinking. Decision making appears impulsive and lacking a rational basis, and decisions take into account only their immediate, short term consequences.* Career success orientation. Leaders are in a co-dependent relationship with their job and career - there is no sense of separation. Often leaders will regard their outlook and interests as identical to those of the organization.* Masters of the universe. Leaders have an exaggerated self belief and sense of their own importance which leads them to lack an understanding of their limitations. They have a sense of omnipotence in what they personally can achieve and believe they do not need to comply with the rules that govern others.\nHow leaders sustained themselves over the long term: Those who pursued more sustainable approaches to work and career had a sense of purpose that was grounded in something deeper and more enduring than just the achievement of work and career goals, and went beyond the leader's narrow self interests. Such a purpose appeared to make them \"burnout proof\". They were their own person rather than what others wanted them to be. They were conscious of their lives having some kind of story that enabled them to make meaning of their experience. They also possessed very well developed reflexive abilities that enabled them to step back, look critically at themselves and creatively adapt to changes in their environment. By the same token those in \"joyless depletion\" tended to have a sense of purpose that was rooted in a need for recognition, fame and success in career.A new approach to the development of leaders - the paradigm of sustainable leadership\nReflection on action: This orientation is gaining ground over traditional teacher-centric development activity. The idea that managers learn mainly through reflecting on their experience was pioneered in the 1950s and 1960s by Professor Reg Revans in the form of \"action learning\". While it had an initial flowering, it was not universally taken up in the field of management development because it is not so easy to plan and control as programmatic training; however it is has re-emerged in various forms, such as action research, action inquiry and of course coaching, as traditional forms of \"training\" are increasingly called into question. The challenge here is \"reflection\". It is one thing to act, and management is largely associated with \"doing\". It is quite another to reflect seriously on action and hence to learn. What we are talking about here is leaders finding the time and the space to re-gain a sense of perspective, and chew over their reflections of what they hear from others. This inevitably means giving up old leadership assumptions about being \"in control\" and instead taking the time to reconnect with those around them who have unique insight into what is really happening in the business.This is still somewhat counter cultural in the frenetically high performance cultures of most organizations, and it is the inculcation of this practice of reflection in, and on action that is, in our view, one of the hallmarks of sustainable leadership.\nPsychological intelligence: This more recent focus is currently largely addressed through the use of psychometric instruments which purport to provide \"profiles\" of personality, preference, aptitude and so on. What they do not substantively address are two core psycho/sociological questions:1. Personal purpose. If we ask a leader \"what is your purpose?\", the initial response will probably be incomprehension. If you press them to think about what kind of society they want to create for future generations, what kind of organization they want to create for their employees, what effect they want their organization to have on the environment and so forth, they may wonder what all of this has to do with their job as a leader. We suggest that it has everything to do with their job as a sustainable leader, and particularly that responsible leaders need to think about their personal purpose as opposed to unthinkingly conflating their personal purpose with the commercial aims of the organization or their own narrow commercial interests. This capacity to think about personal purpose is another of the hallmarks of sustainable leadership.2. Motivation. In our experience, all motivations have a shadow side, or neurotic potential. For example the desire to succeed is clearly a valuable source of energy, and it can tip over into a desire to succeed for its own sake, to the exclusion of all other considerations, and at the expense of others. The desire to manage others is similarly a valuable motivation until it becomes an end in itself, and so forth. Such \"neurotic\" motivations usually have their roots in early experiences and are never sustainable in the long run. They frequently lead to individual burn out, and/or create toxic work environments. Helping leaders develop depth insights into their motivations, is another hallmark of sustainable leadership.\nPhysiological well-being: This focus is rarely addressed and is barely discussable in some cultures. However there is overwhelming research evidence that neurotic motivation (invariably unconscious) often combined with over-identification with the organization (lack of sense of personal identity) gives rise to physiological stress levels which are unsustainable in the long run. Long term consequences are sleep problems, alcohol dependency, burn-out, and of course increased likelihood of cardio-vascular disease, type 2 diabetes and so on. Paying systematic attention to physiological well-being is another hallmark of sustainable leadership.\nEngagement of the core processes with the culture of the organization: Our research amplifies the importance of organizational context in the development of leaders. The culture and work conditions of the organization are the most significant of these contextual influences. By culture we mean the norms and habitual ways in which \"things are done around here\". Work conditions refer to the demands made of individuals, the time pressures set upon them, the nature of organizational control systems and procedures, and the habitual tenor of work relationships.It is the inter-relationship between these contextual factors and the core individual processes that determine the effectiveness of leadership development. In fact, we would go further and say that effective leadership development is concerned with the negotiated engagement between the core processes outlined above, and the culture and conditions of the organization.When derailment happens it is either caused by the fixed neurotic patterns of the individual leader (described above), or a negation of the personal in favor of the demands of the organization, based on what we believe is the unsustainable assumption that leaders are, ipso facto, obedient servants of the corporation, and therefore must bend to whatever the culture of the organization dictates. This belief is reinforced by some of the literature on derailment - particularly that which takes an exclusively individual psychological perspective (see for instance, Psychological Consultancy Ltd, 2009). In our experience, such an approach risks stigmatizing the individual and exonerating the organization.But we are equally clear that the individual leader must play an active role in determining how he or she engages with the organization. In essence this means they need to define for themselves to which aspects of the culture and conditions do they feel committed? To what do they sign up? With which aspects are they willing to live? And what do they seek to change?This portrayal of the leader as powerful agent in communion with the organization is the final hallmark of sustainable leadership. It challenges the idea that leaders can be developed effectively in isolation from their social context, and rejects deterministic notions that leaders are purely at the mercy of powerful forces in their environment (Zimbardo, 2007). It makes the relationship between the organization and the individual leader central to the effectiveness of leadership development.\nSummary: Table I summarizes the key characteristics of the new paradigm of leadership development we are calling sustainable leadership, and shows how these are different from conventional approaches.Applying this in the current business environment\nKey principles: Our development experiences are informed by three key ideas:1. We put the leader's story and experience at the heart of our work with them. We are storied creatures - our identity comes from the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and why we are here in this world. We focus on exploring this story, including the leader's sense of personal purpose, and its significance for their practice of leadership. We help them explore how this serves them at this point in their lives, and how this story might be holding them back. We are interested in helping them construct alternative affirming and sustainable stories which may serve them better.2. We are particularly interested in leaders' stories of tough times - their experience of when things did not go to plan, when reality did not conform to expectations. Our research supports previous findings from the Centre for Creative Leadership and others, that hardship experiences hold the development potential to bring about profound learning - in effect a shift in consciousness that catalyses maturity and wisdom. \"Becoming a leader\", says Warren Bennis, \"is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.\"3. We ensure that every aspect of the development activity is congruent with the sustainability message. This includes the sustainability and developmental stage of the coaches and facilitators involved, the types of venue chosen for workshops, the food served, the care taken to minimize the carbon footprint, etc. One mistake here can invalidate the whole developmental effort.\nA practical example: What does this look like in practice? We tailor each development experience to meet the specific needs of the client, and tend to eschew generic, one-size-fits-all programs. But in order to illustrate how we work, we have outlined below a typical such experience.Individual inquiry into core individual processes\nUncharted territory: It seems to us that the time is right to examine some of our cherished beliefs and assumptions about developing leadership. So much of the old paradigm of leadership has been discredited by the events of the last two years. We can only go on pretending that it is business as usual for so long. Sooner or later the old paradigm will lead us into the next crisis. There has never been a better time for our notions of leadership to move towards a larger, more encompassing perspective on the world in which we live, and to adopt a sustainable approach to the development of those who lead our organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to present a paradigm shift in the way leaders are developed, more suited to the new order that is emerging as the recession recedes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The prevailing notion that leadership is synonymous with being in control of an organization is challenged, together with the belief that leadership development is primarily concerned with modifying behavior in line with a set of success criteria. The paper explores how these twin assumptions contributed to the financial crisis, and presents an alternative approach based on research with high achievers experiencing severe stress.\nFindings: - Practices that leaders use to retain a sense of balance and resourcefulness are defined, along with those associated with pursuing work irresponsibly. These form the basis of an alternative approach to the development of leaders - \"sustainable leadership\" - predicated on the integration of three core individual processes and their engagement with the culture of the organization. Practical examples of applying this approach in the current business environment are described.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Future research might consider the effect of developing sustainable leadership on the long-term performance of the organization and its responsibilities in the broader environment.\nPractical implications: - in order to foster leadership that acts in service to the long-term health and performance of the organization and its broader environment, it is necessary to adopt an approach to leadership development that recognizes that the leader's physical and psychological health determines effective performance, and that business and markets do not operate in isolation from society but are inextricably linked.\nOriginality/value: - The paper addresses how to sustain the leader's psychological and physiological health and their performance, and the link between this and creating sustainable organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Energy management of chiller systems by data envelopment analysis
|
[
"Air‐conditioning",
"Performance appraisal",
"Benchmarking",
"Buildings",
"Data analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: It is essential to develop a systematic tool, which helps assess the energy management of building systems in order to enhance building energy performance for sustainable development. Among various building systems, the operation of a chiller system for buildings with central air-conditioning in subtropical regions could account for considerable electricity consumption (Yu and Chan, 2010) and therefore evaluating its energy management opportunities should be prioritised. The energy performance of chiller systems is usually described by the coefficient of performance (COP), defined by the total cooling energy output in kW over the total electric power input in kW of the chillers and auxiliary devices like pumps and cooling towers. A higher COP means better energy performance. The actual COP of a chiller system depends on the system design, operation mode and energy efficiency of the equipment. Due to the changing outside air conditions and varying occupancy patterns within a building, a chiller system operates with various COPs under different operating conditions. Depending on the complexity of a chiller system, there are different operating modes and controls of operating variables to handle a certain operating condition. This underlines the need to ascertain which operating mode and control can give the highest achievable COP with a balance trade-off between components. It is common to see that chiller systems operate with an inferior COP in many operating conditions, causing an increase in the electricity consumption and hence the running cost.Simulation and statistical analysis are common methods to optimize the energy performance of chiller systems (Estrada-Flores et al., 2006). The simulation method involves developing a mathematical model with validation by experimental or operating data. The validated models are used to identify the theoretical energy performance under perfect control and then the results are compared with the actual performance to see if any fault or inefficient operation causes a decline in COP. Fong et al. (2003) demonstrated how the evolutionary algorithm and simulation models facilitate the appraisal of energy management opportunities for effective design and facilities management of air conditioning systems. It can be difficult for building operators to understand complex chiller control sequences that use simulation models. Furthermore, it may not be possible to draw only on system simulation skills to explain the change of system COP under various combinations of load conditions and controls with changing outside air temperatures, with regard to chiller systems having various designs and configurations. Considering a medium- to large-sized chiller system with many sets of chillers, pumps and cooling towers, it is quite difficult to develop a system model used to analyse the trade-off between the power of system components, due to various operating modes. Yu and Chan (2012) recommends that pure statistical analysis be carried based on operating data for appraising chiller system performance. Chung (2011) reviewed different kinds of statistical methods in developing benchmarking systems for building energy-use performance. The methods involve simple normalisation, ordinary least square, stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis (DEA). Charnes et al. (1978) developed the way of measuring efficiency of decision making units (DMUs) involving a collection of inputs and outputs for economic and engineering problems. They introduced the concept of relative efficiency to examine the maximum ratio of weighted outputs to weighted inputs subject to the condition that similar ratios for every DMU be less than or equal to one. Based on relative efficiency, it is possible to ascertain which set of inputs gives the maximum outputs with relative efficiency of one. This formed the foundation of DEA. Doyle and Green (1994) further developed the concept of efficiency and cross-efficiency in DEA and formulated the maximisation problems with the linear programming method in computer programs. Advanced programming techniques to perform DEA have been developed and many studies drew on DEA to assess energy performance of building systems and production systems. For instance, Lee (2008) demonstrated the use of DEA to evaluate the effectiveness of energy management of government office buildings in Taiwan. The lowest energy use intensity was identified for a given building with adjustments on its operating characteristics (i.e. the inputs). Mousavi-Avval et al. (2011) carried out a DEA to analyse the technical and scale efficiencies of canola producers and investigated the effect of optimisation of energy on energy ratio and energy productivity. The DEA results suggested that if all farmers operated efficiently, a potential 9.5 per cent reduction in total energy input could be achieved. Chauhan et al. (2006) used a DEA approach to segregate efficient farmers for inefficient ones, identify wasteful uses of energy from different sources by inefficient farmers and to suggest reasonable savings from different sources.It is an under researched area to use the DEA approach to analyse chiller system performance. This paper considers using DEA to identify energy management opportunities for a chiller system. Scale, technical and overall efficiencies were used to explain the impacts of climatic and controllable variables on managing system performance. A medium-sized chiller system with five sets of water-cooled chillers, pumps and cooling towers will be first described. Algorithms will be presented to illustrate how to perform DEA on a huge collection of operating data comprising inputs and output. Results from DEA will be used to explain how climatic and operating variables influence the change of system COP and how to specify a benchmark for assessment of operating performance. The significance of this study is to demonstrate a systematic approach to effectively manage the energy performance of chiller systems and to estimate COP improvements if energy management opportunities are identified.\nMethods of study: Description of chiller system\nResults and discussion: Figures 3-5 show the results of the efficiencies against the actual system COP. As the trend line in Figure 3 illustrates, the overall efficiency varies from 0.68 to 1 for COPs of 2.3 and 5.2, respectively. The change of the overall efficiency results from the combined effect of the scale efficiency associated with the varying outside air temperatures and the technical efficiency related to the control strategy for energy management.Figure 4 shows that the scale efficiency increases generally with the system COP. The average scale efficiency is 0.96 and this implies that the lower outside air temperatures facilitate the efficient operation of the system. At a COP of 3.2, the scale efficiency ranges from 0.72 to 1. This suggests that the system could draw on lower outside air temperatures to enhance heat rejection effectiveness and hence to reduce the compressor power. Yet the potential of increasing the system COP depends on the load of the operating chillers and precision in controlling the temperatures of chilled water and condenser water.Excluding the effect of outside air temperatures, technical efficiency can be used to explain whether the system operates with the highest possible efficiency or not. The existing control strategy for the system gives an average technical efficiency of 0.85. As Figure 5 illustrates, the technical efficiency varies widely when the system COP is low and the variation becomes narrower when the system COP increases. A hypothetical cut-off line was formed showing the minimum level of technical efficiency for a given system COP. It is possible to specify the minimum allowable COP based on the cut-off technical efficiency. The existing control and management measures give a cut-off technical efficiency of 0.6 at a COP of 3. If the cut-off technical efficiency is raised to 0.8 at a COP of 3, then for at least 16.0 per cent of the total time, the system would operate at a COP of 4.2 or above.Energy management opportunities from analysis\nConclusions: This study demonstrates how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can facilitate energy management of chiller systems. Scale, technical and overall efficiencies in DEA were evaluated for 4,880 sets of operating conditions for a system containing five sets of chillers, pumps and cooling towers. An average scale efficiency of 0.96 indicates that the outside air temperatures generally facilitate the efficient operation of the system. The average technical efficiency was found to be 0.85, implying that the energy performance of the system was quite good. Under perfect control with technical efficiency of one for all operating conditions, the system COP could increase from 3.87 to 4.56, resulting in the saving of 263,197 kWh or 14.8 per cent reduced electricity consumption over the period of June to November in 2007. The COP improvement involves tightening the controls over the temperature of supply-chilled water (Tchws) and the temperature of cooling water entering the condenser (Tcdwe). Energy management opportunities resulting from analysis are:* fine-tuning the existing dead band range of -1degC to 1degC for Tchws and Tcdwe to improve precision of the set point control* resetting the set point of Tcdwe in response to the load factor when the outside air temperatures are above 28degC.The significance of this study was to demonstrate a systematic method to assess the energy effectiveness of a chiller system and to identify the energy management opportunities involving no or insignificant capital investment on existing systems. The technical efficiency determined from DEA would help building owners to formulate a benchmark for year-to-year comparison of electricity savings when a retrofit or improvement work is implemented to a given chiller system. It remains to be verified if an actual chiller system can achieve the estimated electricity savings based on the energy management opportunities identified from the findings of DEA and examined the accuracy of the estimated savings against other optimization software.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The operation of chiller systems could account for considerable electricity consumption in air-conditioned buildings in subtropical regions. The purpose of this paper is to consider using data envelopment analysis (DEA) to facilitate management of their energy performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A system serving an institutional building was studied, which contains five sets of chillers, pumps and cooling towers. The building has a total floor area of about 25,000m2 and comprises classrooms, lecture theatres, offices and laboratories. The scale, technical and overall efficiencies defined in DEA were calculated based on the correlation between the output variable - system coefficient of performance (COP) - and the input variables - load factor and temperatures of chilled water and condenser water. The efficiencies were further examined to explain how outside air temperatures and controllable variables affect the system performance.\nFindings: - The paper reveals that existing energy management gives a technical efficiency of 0.85 and fine-tuning the temperature-related variables could achieve an electricity saving of 14.8 per cent.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The improved COP predicted by DEA is related only to fine-tuning of the input variables concerned. An increase of COP by other advanced controls or system upgrades should be assessed based on robust system modelling techniques. Yet the extent of COP improvements helps investigate energy management opportunities requiring no or insignificant capital investment on existing systems.\nPractical implications: - A systematic approach to performing energy management of a chiller system is proposed. The DEA helps examine which operating variable should be fine-tuned to achieve the highest possible performance.\nOriginality/value: - It is an under researched area to consider using scale and technical efficiencies in DEA to explain energy management of chiller systems and to estimate the highest achievable performance.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Can education reduce Middle Eastern fatalistic attitude regarding earthquake disasters?
|
[
"Middle East",
"Disasters",
"Educational institutions",
"Fatalism"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Disaster risk reduction in the Middle Eastern countries cannot be implemented solely on the basis of these nations' vulnerability in isolation from the current social, religious and political contexts. In that region of the world, religion has a profound influence on almost all aspects of individuals' lives and on all facets of the community. Religion contributes heavily to the formation of people's political views and social attitudes. The power of both education and the scientific discoveries that have transformed nations and advanced communities around the world during the last few centuries have fallen short with regard to transforming the Middle Eastern countries and transforming them into economically more nations. The existing educational institutions have implemented programmes that have failed to induce the progressive and critical thinking that is necessary for creating intellectual citizens with logical and positive attitudes towards the well-being and safety of their communities. As critical thinking has proven to improve the way people utilise, evaluate, judge and interpret information, academic programmes tend to engage their students in this process and help them build upon their prior knowledge and experience to recognise, and critique assumptions (Bailin et al., 1999; Facione et al., 1995; Rapps et al., 2001).\n2. The impact of fatalistic attitudes on disaster risk and mitigation: Historical and recent earthquake events have revealed that the majority of Middle Eastern countries - Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran - are vulnerable to earthquakes. Although the magnitude of such earthquakes cannot be predicted, their destructive power should not be underestimated. In fact, the Middle Eastern region has one of the best records of historical seismicity in the world, dating back more than 2,000 years for some areas (Degg and Homan, 2005). Catastrophic historic earthquakes that led to massive destruction and heavy casualties have been well documented, particularly along the Eastern Mediterranean (Sbeinati et al., 2005). In his writings, ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus recounted a massive earthquake in 33 BC that killed 50,000 people. Three additional large earthquakes devastated the region in 363, 749 and 1,033 AD (Peim, 2011).\n3. The role of Middle Eastern educational institutions in earthquake risk mitigation: 3.1 Reforming fatalistic attitudes\n4. Conclusion and recommendations: Throughout the years, Islamic teachings have shaped people's beliefs and influenced the cultural views of Middle Eastern communities. The misinterpretations of some of those beliefs have negatively impacted the well-being of such communities and hindered their progress. Although religious fatalistic attitudes in the Middle East region regarding earthquakes and other disasters is commonly observed and popular among individuals, more future research is required to empirically and quantitatively examine the implication of such phenomenon on the lives and behaviours of Middle Eastern people. Without clear understanding of how such fatalism propagates in communities and throughout generations and why people adhere strongly to it, Middle Eastern societies will remain passive towards risk reduction and vulnerable to existing hazards.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the unique and necessary role that Middle Eastern educational institutions must play to reduce the negative influence of fatalism regarding risk perception and disasters.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper is based on conceptual analysis and real situational cases to confirm the existing fatalistic attitudes in the Middle Eastern communities and shows how education can be used to reduce and limit the negative effects of such fatalism on earthquake risk mitigation.\nFindings: The paper calls for the integration of critical thinking along with disaster risk education throughout the schools' system to reduce the dominating culture of fatalism and to facilitate the implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies in the Middle Eastern communities. In addition, the assistance of the religion instructors and clergy, in reducing fatalistic attitudes has positive implications.\nOriginality/value: The paper represents an effort to accelerate the implementation of earthquake disaster risk reduction strategies in the Middle Eastern vulnerable communities. It uncovers the mask on one of the most critical social issues that has for long time hindered social progress in the Middle East region.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Perception of young children of the ideal shopping experience
|
[
"Shopping",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Hungary and France",
"Ideal shopping",
"Technological advances in shopping",
"Very young children"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Most of the scientific researches which analyse the role of children in the shopping process include children older than seven or eight years of age into their samples. The reason for this lies in the presumption that very young children do not understand the logics of shopping, do not have the capabilities to cognitively go through the phases of the shopping process and do not have their own pocket money to spend. These very young children are thus treated by the retailers as members of the family who come along with the parents when they shop but who are not very important from a marketing, a retailing or a strategic point of view. Real life evidence, however shows that today's very young children have a good command of knowledge about the shopping process and they can therefore have an important influence on how their parents shop as well as on the way they take part in the shopping process. In the present paper the aim is to discover how very young children describe their \"actual\" shopping process and how they characterise an \"ideal\" shopping as well as to see whether new technological devices have a role in such an ideal shopping.\nYoung children in the shopping process: Definition of children as consumers\nChildren's knowledge and opinion on shopping: an exploratory study: In the present paper the intention is to discover what very young children think and understand about shopping, what information they have about the role of money, what they know about the technological advances in the shopping process and how they would describe their actual and ideal shopping processes[2]. An actual shopping process was interpreted as a process of purchasing a product in which children already participated, and an ideal shopping was described for the children as a shopping process which would be very interesting for them and what they would enjoy a lot.\nThe actively participating children: results of the exploratory study: The results of the research project will be demonstrated along the pre-defined research questions:\nConcluding remarks and managerial implications: The findings of the research show that regardless of their country of origin, very young children wish to and do actively participate in the shopping process. These results support the findings of Marshall (2014) who, based on his empirical research conducted in the field of food shopping in Scotland, came to the conclusion that young children claim to actively participate in shopping in stores. Even if the orientation and focus of very young children's participation differs in the two analysed countries, their desire to be actively involved in shopping is very strong. While in France kids are able to express their desires for certain goods and seem to have a relatively important influencing role in the shopping process, in Hungary children, even if they have desires, they do not talk about them. They do not ask for gifts, they do not try to push their parents to buy toys: their only objective is to be with their parents for which shopping gives a good framework. The reason for the difference might lie in the economic and financial background of the families in the two countries as well as in the individualistic or collectivistic approach of the parents when bringing their children up. As far as the orientation of the kids is concerned, French children are very much product and brand oriented during shopping, and focus on the purchased items, while Hungarian children are process oriented and are interested in how they can participate in the process of shopping by performing tasks and helping their parents.\nFuture research directions: The analysis of the demonstrated empirical research's results shed light to many similarities but also several differences in the behaviour and attitude of very young children as participants of the shopping process in France and in Hungary whose cultural, social and economic roots and reasons will be evaluated and explained in the next stage of the research project. Also, the inclusion of more countries into the research would be interesting and important in order to be able to have a more detailed and more global understanding of the behaviour and attitude of very young children as consumers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to discover how very young (three- to six-year-old) children describe their \"actual\" shopping process and how they characterise an \"ideal\" shopping. The perceived role of new technological devices in such an ideal shopping process is also analysed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A review of literature is followed by the description and findings of an exploratory study done in two European countries. Data collection was performed in three distinct phases. First, focus group discussions were conducted with 176 children. Second, interviews were organised with 30 children and one of their parents individually. Third, children were asked to prepare drawings about their actual and their ideal shopping.\nFindings: The results show that very young children would like to actively participate in the shopping process no matter where they live. When describing their shopping experiences French kids focus on the products they buy, while Hungarian children talk about how they take part in the purchase process. The findings demonstrate that children have a great knowledge about technical devices and while French kids would be happy to replace offline shopping by online shopping, Hungarian kids find it as a bad idea. Interestingly, both French and Hungarian kids explain their opinion with their desire to spend more time with their parents.\nOriginality/value: The value of the paper lies in the focus of the research (opinion and feelings of very young children about the shopping process) as well as in the methodology used.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Health researchers and policy makers involvement in knowledge translation activities in Malawi
|
[
"Decision making",
"Interaction",
"Research impact",
"Involvement",
"Knowledge translation",
"Policy making"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research evidence matters for health policy making and is essential in achieving important health policy goals (Parkhurst, 2017). The requirement for policy decisions to be based on solid evidence has received global acknowledgement (Schryer-Roy, 2005). However, the gap between researchers and policy makers continues to widen and significant gaps exits (Uzochukwu et al., 2016; Ellen et al., 2018). Bridging the gap between researchers and policy makers is a challenge that has received a lot of attention in literature (Ellen et al., 2018). Arguments and counter arguments point to the fact that policy makers and researchers lack skills, tools and mechanisms to find and use health evidence to inform policy and decision making (Lavis et al., 2013). Battle lines are clear, there exists a gap between the use of health research evidence in policy and decision making and the gap continues to widen. Failure to use research evidence to inform health policy or decision-making processes is apparent across all key decision-making groups such as informal carers, health managers, healthcare providers, primary and specialty care and health policy managers (Straus et al., 2009a). Bartunek et al. (2003) argued that the gap between researchers and policy makers has been widening partly because research has traditionally been the domain of the academics, many of whom lack knowledge on how to engage policy makers in their activities.\nBackground information: Malawi is southeastern Africa country formerly colonised by the British. It is wedged between three countries: Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast and Mozambique to the south, southwest and southeast. Malawi has an area of 118,480 square kilometres of which 24,400 square kilometres consists of Lake Malawi and as of 2018, the population was estimated at 17.5m people (Malawi National Statistical Office, 2018). In 2018, Malawi's estimated gross domestic product was around $6.26bn (Statistical Portal Online, 2018). Malawi's economy is largely agricultural, with about 90 per cent of the population living in rural areas and is ranked by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as one of the least developed countries in the world (International Monetary Fund Online, 2017).\nAim and objectives of the study: The broad objective of the study was to ascertain the health researchers' involvement of health policy or decision makers in knowledge translation and exchange activities. To address the above objectives, the study was guided by the following research questions:\nTheoretical framework: This paper is premised on the conceptual framework developed by Boswell and Smith (2017) which theorises the relationship between research (researchers) and policy (policy makers). The first construct suggests that knowledge (generated by researchers) shapes policy (policy makers). The second construct assumes that politics (policy makers and political leaders) shape knowledge (generated by researchers). The third construct suggests that knowledge (from researchers) and policy (policy makers) co-produce knowledge. The fourth construct suggests that knowledge (from researchers) and policy (policy makers) are autonomous. Figure 1 shows the relationships.\nResearch methodology: The study adopted a case study approach in which the population for this study were researchers and academic members of staff at the College of Medicine and Kamuzu College of Nursing of the University of Malawi. Of the possible 246 respondents the study yielded 166 respondents representing 67.5 per cent of the population. Respondents were academic members of staff, researchers and directors of health-related organisations (i.e. assistant lecturer to professor, director or deputy director or chief research officers). The demographic features of interests were: their departments, their faculties, and their affiliations to teaching hospitals, health boards, government boards and research centres. Table I shows the distribution of academic members of staff in various faculties of the College of Medicine and the Kamuzu College of Nursing, University of Malawi.\nStudy findings: Interaction between researchers and policy makers\nDiscussion of the findings: Barriers to use of health research evidence by policy makers\nConclusion: In conclusion it does seem that the relationship between researchers and policy or decision makers is fragile with each of the two worlds handling their activities without taking the other side into account. It also seems that the interaction between researchers and policy makers is weak as policy or decision makers and researchers rarely involve each other on the use of health research evidence. The policy or decision makers and researchers rarely involve each other in activities that may enhance the use of health research evidence. The two worlds rarely participate in dialogues that may lead to the exchange of health research evidence.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore health researchers' involvement of policy or decision makers in knowledge translation activities in Malawi.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case study collected quantitative through questionnaire from health researchers from the University of Malawi. The study used inferential statistics for the analysis of the quantitative data. Pearson kh2 test was used to establish the relationship between categorical data and determine whether any observed difference between the data sets arose by chance. The Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to determine if there were statistically significant differences between independent variable and dependent variables. Data has been presented in a form of tables showing means, standard deviation and p-values.\nFindings: Health researchers sometimes involve policy or decision makers in government-sponsored meetings (M=2.5, SD=1.17). They rarely involve policy or decision makers in expert committee or group meetings (M=2.4, SD=1.20). Researchers rarely involve policy or decision makers in conferences and workshops (M=2.4, SD=1.31). Rarely do researchers involve policy or decision makers in formal private or public networks (M=2.4, SD=1.17). In events organised by the colleges researchers rarely involve policy or decision makers (M=2.3, SD=1.11); and rarely share weblinks with policy or decision makers (M=2.0, SD=1,17). On average, health researchers occasionally conduct deliberate dialogues with key health policy makers and other stakeholders (M=2.5, SD=1.12). The researchers rarely established and maintained long-term partnerships policy or decision makers (M=2.2, SD=1.20). They rarely involve policy or decision makers in the overall direction of the health research conducted by themselves or the Colleges (M=2.1, SD=1.24).\nResearch limitations/implications: The study recommends that there should be deliberate efforts by health researchers and policy makers to formally engage each other. Individuals need technical skills, knowledge of the processes and structures for engaging with health research evidence to inform policy and decision making. At the institutional level, the use of research evidence should be embedded within support research engagement structures and linked persons.\nPractical implications: Formal interactions in a form of expert meetings and technical working groups between researchers and policy makers can facilitate the use of health research evidence in policy formulation.\nSocial implications: In terms of framework there is need to put in place formal interaction frameworks between health researchers and policy makers within the knowledge translation and exchange.\nOriginality/value: There is dearth of literature on the levels of involvement and interaction between health researchers and health policy or decision makers in health policy, systems and services research in Malawi. This study seeks to bridge the gap with empirical evidence.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Exploring entrepreneurial intention's mediating role in the relationship between self-efficacy and nascent behaviour: Evidence from Zambia, Africa
|
[
"Africa",
"Entrepreneurial intention",
"Zambia",
"Mediation",
"Entrepreneurial self-efficacy",
"Nascent behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Entrepreneurship is a process of identifying, evaluating and exploiting opportunities through organised efforts that have not previously existed (Carree and Thurik, 2010; Shane, 2003). For any economy, this contributes to employment generation, promotes innovation and competition through increased consumer choices (Hessels and van Stel, 2011; de Wit and de Kok, 2014). Therefore, there is a need for every country to continuously consider how to promote entrepreneurship. In Zambia, micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) represent 97 per cent of all firms and offer 82 per cent of the jobs in the country (CSO, 2013; Peters, 2014). Like many other governments, the Zambian Government has taken many actions over the last two decades to promote and support entrepreneurship. Yet, despite some improvements in ease of starting and doing business, a number of challenges still exist.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: 2.1 ESE\n3. Methods: The research sought to examine the relationships amongst ESE, EI and nascent behaviour, thus a quantitative design was employed (Creswell, 2012). A self-completion questionnaire was administered to 350 final year undergraduate business and natural sciences students in a public university in Zambia. This led to 294 usable questionnaires (84 per cent response rate). It is typical for EI research to utilise final year student respondents because the imminent completion of their studies compels them to actively consider the next steps in their careers (Linan et al., 2011). For some, starting a business may be realistic.\n4. Results: 4.1 Sample profile\n5. Discussion: The findings in this study have supported the proposed conceptual model hypothesising that each of the ESE dimensions significantly influences EI which in turn leads to nascent behaviour. These findings entail that individuals with high confidence to perform the tasks reflected in each of the dimensions of ESE (marshalling, searching, planning, as well as people and finance aspects of implementation) will also report higher EI (Table III). Thus, H1 suggesting that each of the ESE dimensions is positively associated with EI is fully supported. This conclusion is in line with the conceptual model (Figure 1) suggested in this study. This conclusion also resonates with findings in prior studies linking ESE and EI in Colombia (Campo, 2011) and the USA (Kickul et al., 2009). While Kickul et al. (2009) found that all five dimensions were positively and significantly related to EI, Campo (2011) reports that only marshalling (positive) and implementing people (negative) were statistically significant. Although Chen et al. (1998) in the USA had found a similar result based on a different set of dimensions of ESE (i.e. marketing, innovation, management, risk-taking and financial control), the current study is among the few studies to test McGee et al.'s(2009) refined dimensions of ESE on intentionality. It is also the first study to explore these dimensions in the Zambian context.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of entrepreneurial intention (EI) in relation to the influence of the five dimensions of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) on nascent behaviour.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study relies on a quantitative approach where primary data were collected from 294 final year undergraduate students at a public university in Zambia. The data were examined by using correlation, logistic regression and mediation analyses.\nFindings: The findings indicate that each of the five dimensions of ESE is positively and significantly related with EI. Additionally, each of the ESE dimensions, except the financial aspect, is positively correlated with nascent behaviour. Finally, the results show that the influence of ESE dimensions on nascent behaviour is significantly mediated by intention.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study took place in a public university in Zambia; more universities could be involved to improve the generalisability of the study conclusions.\nPractical implications: The study shows that the five ESE dimensions positively influence not only business start-up intention but also nascent behaviour. To motivate graduates' involvement in business start-up, there is a need to tailor training and practical pedagogical approaches on entrepreneurship that are focussed on developing the five ESE dimensions.\nOriginality/value: This paper extends an emerging body of knowledge which has not been fully investigated in terms of the mediating role of intention on the relationships between dimensions of ESE and nascent behaviour. The study also makes a valuable contribution to the under-researched context of Zambia and African entrepreneurship.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Characterization of path loss model for wireless communication channel modelling
|
[
"Wireless channel model",
"RMS delay spread",
"Tangential path loss model",
"Propagation channel"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The wireless sensor network (WSN) is considered an active area of research because of the unfixed node communication infrastructure present in it (Hong et al., 2007). The accurate location information which is reflected vital in environmental, health, military and commercial applications is precisely provided by the WSN (Romer and Mattern, 2004). Localization accuracy is an important concern to the quality of the range (sensor) estimated. Indecorous range leads to the incorrect localization of the object. WSNs (shende, 2018; Shende and Nikhil, 2018) are applied in various fields such as surveillance, monitoring purpose (Zhang et al., 2012) for obtaining correct information (Romer and Mattern, 2004). The difficulty in the sensor networks arises with the scenario of the environment into which it is realized. In most cases, the problem accompanies the outdoor environment. Practically, in this type of short-range outdoor sensor networks, the nodes have a fixed position in the ground level, and so, the temporal variations will only happen if the object moves in the vicinity of the sensor (Rasool and Kemp, 2013; Wyne et al., 2010). In outdoor wireless broadband systems (Molisch, 2009) and WSNs deployment in outdoor environments (Cotton et al., 2014), the transceivers are placed near to the ground for better propagation.The characterization of the wireless communication channel is done in such a way to limit the performance in terms of the capacity, reliability, energy consumption and latency. The nodes transferring information between each other require the cooperation for the attainment of the certain outage probability. The outage probabilities associated with the pair of nodes are determined by the fading statistics (Molisch et al., 2007).The communication channel of the sensor depends on the environment in which they are merged. When a particular node moves, variation in the channel is due to the spatial fading, and if the node is fixed, the problem is due to the motion of scatterers in the vicinity of the nodes (Wyne et al., 2010). The propagation channel in the wireless communication depends on the physic of the propagation named, reflection, diffraction and scattering. The reflection is because of the obstruction between the transmitter and the receiver with a dimension greater than that of the wavelength of the radio wave. The obstruction due to an impenetrable body in between the transmitter and the receiver leads to the diffraction. The propagation of the radio waves in the urban and the rural environment without line of sight (LOS) path is exploited using the diffraction, which is named as the shadowing phenomenon. The obstruction of the radio wave by the objects with a wavelength of the same order or less than that of the radio wave leads to the scattering (Andersen et al., 2002).The modeling of the propagation channel in the wireless communication channel as in the sensor networks is tedious. The propagation models are broadly categorized into three types. They are empirical, deterministic and stochastic models. Empirical models which are based on the observation are used to predict the path loss in addition to the path loss rain fade, and multi-path have also been proposed using the empirical model (Crane, 1980). The empirical model is classified into two types. They are time dispersive and non-time dispersive (Athanasiadou et al., 2000) Deterministic model is also known as a ray-tracing model (Anderson, 2003) which models based on the complete 3-D map of the propagation environment. Modeling with the assumption of the propagation environment as the random variable is done using the stochastic models. The performance of wireless communication depends on the types of channel model used in it. The characterizations of the parameter associated with the models are also crucial. The parameters vary largely due to the variation in the distance of the antenna, i.e. the transmitter and the receiver antenna and the antenna height to the ground proximity (Jamsa et al., 2005).In the WINNER based wireless communication channel model, the characterization of the path loss is done using the logarithmic path loss function. In this paper, the characterization of the path loss model is done based on the tangential function. The validation of the tangential path loss model is completed over the WINNER based wireless communication channel model. 1.1 Contribution of the paper\n2. Literature review: The research works related to the characterization of channel modeling in wireless communication is deliberated in this section. Accordingly, 14 research papers related to the channel propagation parameters, characterization of the channel parameters and the generation of the channel coefficients are reviewed and discussed. The literature review is listed in Table 1.In the literature, research papers (Zhang et al., 2012; Abhayawardhana et al., 2005; Abhayawardhana et al., 2005, 2005; Erceg et al., 1999) are related to the path loss model characterization. In the path loss model characterization related research works, they have tested the propagation characteristics of the wireless channel with a different transmission range and different antenna heights. The change due to the path loss characterization in the delay spread, angle of the departure and the angle of the arrival with the amount of the radio wave faded are also analyzed. In certain cases, the problem is associated with the over prediction of the path loss. Research papers (Samman et al., 2014; Khan et al., 2012; Miao, 2006; Savazzi and Spagnolin, 2009) relied on the ultra-band wireless channel model for the communication with consideration top the bandwidth being made in the research papers (Win et al., 1997; Win and Scholtz, 2002). The efficacy of the channel modeled was tested over the varying environments. The ultra-band model was done in such a way so that there is no correlation between the delay spread and the transmitter-receiver distance.Iskander and Yun (2002) have presented a propagation prediction model. The proposed prediction model was compared to that of the ray-tracing technique. The prediction was improved, leading to the development of the urban propagation indoor and the outdoor environment. The problem accompanied with the range estimation in the indoor and the clustered environments were taken care of by the statistical model proposed by the Rasool and Kemp (2013). Sangodoyin et al. (2016) have worked on the channel model with the proximity to the ground propagation. The near-ground propagation model suffers in the measurement point desires. Wyne et al. proposed a unique time-invariant wireless channel model (Wyne et al., 2010). The fading statistics related to the link behaviors of the nodes in the WSNs were interpreted using the time-invariant model. The robustness of the communication channel to the varying environment condition was provided by the models proposed in the (Rasool and Kemp, 2013; Sangodoyin et al., 2016; Win et al., 1997). The majority of the proposed models face the limitations in the measurement norms. The small and LSP are not measured completely in the models reviewed in the literature. Maghdid et al. (2016) have compared the indoor localization techniques in terms of accuracy, utilized wireless technology, overhead and localization technique. Miguel Garcia et al. (2009) had proposed two approaches, where wireless sensors find their position using WLAN technology and the sceneries considered are the indoor environment with walls, humidity, temperature variations, interferences, multipath effect, etc. Yaodong and Huang et al. (2016) has designed a device collaboration scheme using RSSI and soft AP technology, called DCIL to achieve high localization accuracy and low energy consumption in an indoor environment. Table 1 relates various research works considered for the literature with the advantages and the disadvantages.\n3. Measurement environments: The accuracy of the measurement depends on the type of the environment used. The best choice is the time invariant one with the little man made interference as possible (Sangodoyin et al., 2016). All the measurement campaigns considered are LOS and non-line of sight (NLOS) outdoor environments (Samman et al., 2014). The description of the measurement scenario and the measurement plan is shown below. 3.1 Test scenario\n4. WINNER based wireless communication channel model: The modeling step in the wireless communication channel model is discussed in this section. The WINNER based wireless communication channel model (IST-WINNER II Deliverable 1.1.2 v.1.2, 2007) is shown in Figure 2.In radio transmission, the propagation conditions in the transmission environment are realized using the channel model. The channel models are necessary for the evaluation of the IMT- advanced radio interference technologies. The channel model selected for the measured environment must cover all the parameters indulged with it. The system performance of the communication channel cannot be realized in a single simulation since the performance of the one link (node) depends on one another interference associated with it. In order to overcome the performance crisis, the channel model based approach has been realized. The modeling steps in the channel based approach starts up with the user-defined parameters. The user-defined parameters are the scenario selection, network layout and the antenna configuration determination. The scenario selection deals with the selection of the test environment for the measurement channel. In the second stage, propagation parameters are generated. The propagation parameter involves the small scale parameter and the large-scale parameter. By the application of the tangential path loss in the WINNER approach, the change in the propagation parameters for the channel models are analyzed with the changeover than the current WINNER approach model (Jamsa et al., 2005; ITU Publication, 2008; Kyosti et al., 2007; Heino et al., 2010; IST-WINNER II Deliverable 1.1.2 v.1.2, 2007; Nurmela et al., 2013). 4.1 Propagation parameters\n5. Results and discussion: The results and discussion for the characterization of the tangential path loss model in the WINNER based channel model (Jamsa et al., 2005) are deliberated in this section. The measurements are taken in environments, such as Uma, Umi, Uma O2I, Umi O2I and Sma. The characterization of the tangential path loss model has significant effects over the propagation parameters. 5.1 Path loss vs distance\n6. Conclusion: In this paper, tangential path loss model is characterized in the WINNER based wireless communication channel model. The measurements taken in the WINNER channel model are compared with the tangential path loss characterized WINNER channel model. The WINNER model results in larger path loss prediction error, i.e. over prediction of the path loss. In the proposed tangential model, the path loss over the distance is reduced compared to the winner measurements. The tangential path loss characterized over the channel model has resulted in a significant change in the propagation parameters, i.e. SSP's as well as LSP's. The model operates well over the varying antenna orientations, measurement condition and the propagation condition. The proposed tangential path loss model is performing well over the various outdoor scenarios. It is highly recommended for the urban macro and micro outdoor to indoor environment scenario. The model made a distinction among different environment scenarios. The received power for the Sma, Uma and Umi is greater than 200 dBm for the tangential model whereas, it is less for log model and in addition, the path loss of the proposed tangential model exceeds 80dB that is greater than the log model. The proposed method will be further enhanced for performing various tasks, such as channel estimation, cognitive radio communication and interference mitigation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Wireless communication channel provides a wide area of applications in the field of communication, distributed sensor network and so on. The prominence of the wireless communication channel is because of its robust nature and the sustainability for the precise ranging and the localization. The precision and accuracy of the wireless communication channel largely depend on the localization. The development of the wireless communication channel with improved benefits needs the accurate channel model.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper characterizes the tangential path loss model in the WINNER based wireless communication channel model. The measurements taken in the WINNER channel model are compared with the tangential path loss characterized WINNER Channel model.\nFindings: The model operates well over the varying antenna orientations, measurement condition and the propagation condition. The proposed tangential path loss model is performing well over the various outdoor scenarios.\nOriginality/value: The proposed characterization shows change in the small-scale parameters (SSP), such as power, delay, angle of arrival and angle of departure as well as the large-scale parameters (LSP), such as RMS delay spread, shadowing, path loss and Ricean factor associated with the model.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
On the statics of curved masonry structures via numerical models
|
[
"Lumped stress method",
"Masonry structures",
"Structural strengthening",
"Tensegrity approach",
"Vaults"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The study of structural vulnerability of masonry historical constructions is an international priority to evaluate their safe and to preserve them over time by designing rehabilitation interventions.Several mechanical models available in literature are based on either local failure mechanisms (Fraternali, 2007; Berardi., 2016) or the Heyman limit analysis approach (Heyman, 1995). With reference to arches, the safe theorem of Heyman states that the structure is safe if a line of thrust (funicular curve) in equilibrium with the external loads and entirely contained within the volume of the structure can be found.This theorem has been extended to double-curved structures via either continuous (Baratta and Corbi, 2011; Baratta and Corbi, 2013) or discontinuous (Fraternali et al., 2002; Fraternali, 2010, 2011; Carpentieri et al., 2016) approaches. The theoretical approach and the computational burden of such models makes their implementation in finite element method (FEM) code inappropriate.This paper reviews an advanced numerical model capable to search a \"safe\" thrust surface of masonry vaults, via an iterative procedure based on a constrained lumped stress method (LSM) (Fraternali et al., 2002; Fraternali, 2010, 2011) and a tensegrity approach capable to optimize the design of strengthening systems on masonry vaults (Fraternali et al., 2015; Fraternali, 2007).The first model considers that such structures exhibit a no-tension membrane state of stress across the thrust surface. The membrane equilibrium is used to research an optimal shape of the surface of the masonry model, under specific no-tension and position constraints. The Pucher's formulation is applied to identify the potential of the membrane stress, by a nonconforming variational approach, with defined polyhedral approximations. It leads to a representation of such a stress field by a discrete network of compressive forces and allows to predict the regions exposed to crack pattern and to evaluate a lower bound of the collapse load of examined existing vault. This model allows to evaluate the statics of existing masonry structures and their vulnerability under external loads.The tensegrity approach allows to design optimal strengthening interventions with fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) or fabric reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM) to upgrade and retrofit existing structures. This approach starts by modeling a structure as tensegrity networks of masonry struts and tensile elements corresponding to the strengthened regions of masonry. These reinforcements are generally represented by unidirectional composites, applied to masonry structures along fixed directions (Mazzotti et al., 2015; Carozzi and Poggi, 2015; Baratta and Corbi, 2015; Angelillo et al., 2014; Fabbrocino et al., 2015; De Piano et al., 2017). The proposed optimization strategy searches the minimal mass tensegrity structure connecting a given node set, by assuming different yielding constraints on compressive (masonry) and tensile (FRP/FRCM) elements.An initial connection pattern is defined by potential connections of each node to all the neighbor nodes lying in a spheroidal domain of fixed radius through compressive and tensile elements. The minimal mass optimization procedure allows to obtain a minimal mass resisting mechanism of the reinforced structure via the relocation of nodes and the upgrade of connections, accounting different strengths for the masonry struts and the FRP/FRCM reinforcements, which can be regarded as an alternative LS/thrust network model of the examined structure. The stress field given by the procedure is statically admissible, by assuming the assumption of stable plastic response of masonry in compression and reinforcements in tension, and safe theorem of the limit analysis of elastic-plastic bodies (Koiter, 1960) ensures that the reinforced structure is safe under the examined loading conditions.We continue by reviewing some case studies for the research of the thrust surface of masonry vaults and the optimal design of strengthening interventions.\n2. Lumped stress method: 2.1 Mechanical model\n3. Tensegrity model: 3.1 Mechanical model\n4. Case studies: 4.1 Numerical results of lumped stress method\n5. Conclusions: We have reviewed recent literature studies on the equilibrium problem and the strengthening design of masonry vaults. More specifically, the LSM allows to model the membrane state of stress carried by masonry structures through an adaptive, predictor-corrector technique. The approach provides statically admissible force network according with no-tension constraints and allows to evaluate if a vault is safe or not under fixed load conditions.The tensegrity approach allows to analyze masonry structures of general shape and dimensions, including structural complexes formed by an arbitrary combination of walls, vaults and domes. The adopted optimization approach gives noninvasive reinforcement patterns, which can be able to preserve a sufficient crack-adaption capacity of the structure, under the respect of the equilibrium equations and material yield limits.The numerical results have highlighted the efficacy of the two numerical approaches that could represent fast and useful tools to assess the vulnerability of existing structures and design optimal strengthening interventions with composite materials of these structures. Future developments of the present work will be focused on exploring alternative reinforcement systems (Barretta et al., 2017).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review recent literature results on the equilibrium problem and the strengthening design of masonry vaults.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A Lumped Stress Method (LSM) is considered within the Heyman's safe theorem, based on the definition of thrust surface of a masonry curved structure. In particular, the static problem of the vault is formulated by introducing a membrane continuous of the studied masonry structure to associate with a spatial truss through a nonconforming variational approximation of the thrust surface and membrane stress potential. A tensegrity approach based on a minimal mass design strategy, different strengths in tension and compression of the material is discussed within the strengthening strategy of masonry vaults.\nFindings: The numerical results have highlighted the efficacy of the two numerical approaches to assess the vulnerability of existing structures and design optimal strengthening interventions of these structures.\nOriginality/value: The presented models can represent fast and useful tools to assess the vulnerability of existing structures and design optimal strengthening interventions with composite materials of these structures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Benchmarking between vegetable suppliers in Greece
|
[
"Benchmarking",
"Supplier",
"Audit",
"Vegetable",
"Food safety",
"Fruit"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Quality and safety are two significant parameters to food industry. Quality can be succeeded by the implementation of management and quality assurance mechanisms. There are also standards that provide specifications for all functions of food production. Safety is a continuously increasing requirement for its importance and the impact on public health and for its effect on international trade. The implementation of quality systems is inextricably linked with scientific research, market requirements, the environmentally friendly practices and needs of consumers, leads them to trust and accept products that have quality certificates.\nDesign/Methodology: Sample\nResults: As shown in Table IV, 70 percent of the suppliers who participated in this study were from Central Macedonia, Attica and Peloponnese. The rest 30 percent of the suppliers was from Thessaly, Central Greece, Crete, South Aegean and Epirus. Moreover, 41.7 percent of the suppliers stated annual turnover from EUR100,000 to EUR999,000, 36.1 percent of the suppliers stated annual turnover from EUR1,000,000 to EUR81,000,000 and 11.1 percent of the suppliers stated annual turnover from EUR15,000 to EUR99,999. Also, 33.3 percent of the companies extent to an area from 100 cm2 to 1,999 cm2, 19.4 percent from 2,000 cm2 and 4.2 percent from 15 cm2 to 99 cm2. Furthermore, 43.1 percent of the companies are employing from 10 to 49 persons, 45.8 percent from one to nine persons, 5.6 percent from 50 to 100 persons and 2.8 percent from 101 to 400 persons.\nConclusion: Though food safety management systems and rule of good hygiene practices are mandatory for all food producers there is not much of scientific literature on comparing the food companies. The usual approach is that their comply with the legislative or normative clauses or not. Of course, since the health of the consumer is at stake this is the right approach for making food business. On the other hand, when there is a group of food suppliers one should know where most of the causes of non-conformity are, to benchmark the performance of his business partners. Therefore, the proposed methodology is a sound scientific approach for the benchmarking of the suppliers of agricultural products with measurable objectives.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop and implement benchmarking methods on food safety and hygiene between suppliers of fruits and vegetables, regardless the food safety management systems they implement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A tailor made questionnaire was prepared of 64 questions, divided into ten sectors regarding hygiene and food safety. The suppliers were selected from the inventory of a large chain of retail stores. The audits were performed by a food safety expert on the site of the company. Totally, 72 audits were conducted in several geographic regions of Greece. The data collected was statistically analyzed for benchmarking with technical, geographical or financial criteria.\nFindings: The large size companies have a level from satisfactory to very satisfactory in the transport and need improvement on their packaging materials. Improvement in procedures of cleaning and disinfection is required by companies which are in the region of Attica and the Peloponnese.\nOriginality/value: The proposed methodology and analysis can be used to benchmark groups of food companies with common commercial profile in order to prioritize both the frequency of audits and the importance of interventions and preventive measures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
From K-Pop to K-Preparedness: Korea confronts disaster reduction
|
[
"Public-private partnership",
"Disaster risk reduction",
"Technology transfer",
"Republic of Korea",
"Sendai framework"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One only needs to reflect on the stunning progress of South Korea's economic development and cultural influence on the global community to realize that when this nation of 50 million puts its collective mind to something, it achieves amazing things (Rhie, 2002). The government's sponsorship of large-scale modernization projects over the past several decades has yielded enormous social benefits to the country. Yet as Korea has enjoyed tremendous success in several ventures, it also has experienced remarkable setbacks that exposed weaknesses in its development agenda (Toussaint, 2006). Civil issues, political scandals, financial turmoil and fatal catastrophes remind Korea that the progress is not without a price. With its graduation into the OECD ranks, Korea has assumed greater responsibility for concerns outside of economic development, such as climate change, sustainability and improved social welfare. To this end, Korea has taken on enhanced roles in the global effort for climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR), such as hosting the headquarters of the Green Coalition Fund and supporting the UN International Strategy on Disaster Risk Reduction Global Education and Training Institute (www.unisdr.org/incheon). The future of Korea is closely connected to its disaster management and CCA capacities that must keep apace, if not lead, the continued progress worldwide.\nThe context of Korean DRR: While the types and frequencies of disasters in Korea are not nearly as varied as that of its nearest neighbors Japan and China, the nation is still wary of the hazards that do exist (Kim and Lee, 1998). With several tragic human-made disasters in its recent history, such as the capsizing of the ferry MV Sewol in 2014 and the Daegu subway fire in 2003, Korea is vigorously pursuing policies and practices to keep its citizens safe (Park, 2015). In what is apparently becoming a model for promoting a national agenda, wherein the Korean government stimulates an industry for domestic uses and then commoditizes it into an export product, DRR technologies are the next \"K-thing\" to come out of the Northeast Asian peninsula. This is being materialized in a project backed by the Ministry of Public Safety and Security (MPSS) with input from academic and private sector collaborators.\nPPPs and Korea: PPPs are \"working arrangements based on a mutual commitment (over and above that implied in any contract) between a public sector organization with any organization outside of the public sector\" (Bovaird, 2004, p. 200). PPP is a flexible concept that accommodates a range of mixes between the public and the private in terms of the responsibility, benefits and ownership for an endeavor. The growth of PPPs around the world has been largely driven by economic interests, as the New Public Management paradigm set in the late 1980s utilized PPPs to reduce costs to government and share responsibilities (Osborne, 2002). A second-level motivation for governments to use PPPs is to leverage the capital and expertise of private companies in technology-intensive endeavors where the dynamic risks are beyond the management capacity of the bureaucracy (Bovaird, 2004). Special types of PPPs are employed to spark various enterprises, particularly when governments cannot feasibly serve a need that the private market has not adequately addressed (Wettenhall, 2003).\nKoreanization of DRR: What exactly does this \"Koreanization\" mean? A brief history lesson can describe the term and its effects. For the decade after the Korean War, the Republic of Korea was pitifully poor and undeveloped by most measures. Following an aggressive - and perhaps oppressive - push by the central government to modernize its industry (Toussaint, 2006), Korea made phenomenal strides up to its global coming out part for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Much of the economic success can be attributed to a model wherein the central government directs and supports a private conglomerate to achieve some objective, such as building a new city from swampland or establishing a shipbuilding enterprise. Participation and sacrifice by the Korean people is complicit; the Confucian traditions of collective social behavior run strong. Thus Koreanization is a national phenomenon of concentrated productivity that has targeted a wide range of sectors: manufacturing (automobiles and ships), technology (microprocessors and consumer electronics), culture (television dramas and K-pop music), research (pharmaceuticals and universities) and now disaster management.\nThe global DRR technology project: Where would an emergency management official go to find specialized products for DRR? There are some repositories of sources scattered about the web, such as the now dormant Disaster Reduction Hyperbase (http://drh.bosai.go.jp/) and the beta-version of the UNISDR-Prevention Web Resilient Cities Connect marketplace (www.preventionweb.net/rcc/en/services), but they are often obscured by other priorities or abstract leads. Yet if there were an analog to the web-based retailers Amazon or Alibaba for DRR technology products, then government agencies could procure systems, equipment and instruments from multiple vendors with ease. In essence, Korea has addressed this shortfall of the market using models of technology transfer and positioning it in the framework of an international aid effort (Kim et al., 2016).\nConclusions and extensions: This paper has presented a case study of a PPP for DRR technology sharing that is currently being conducted in Korea. The guiding theory is that the development of DRR technologies is inherently a governmental responsibility, as disasters affect entire populations and are a bigger problem than any single private firm can reasonably undertake to mitigate for itself. Yet governments are hard-pressed to commit budgets to the dynamic conditions of technology innovation and are ill-equipped to compete in markets. Thus, a PPP is a logical step and the commercialization of the technologies is a further benefit of the collective effort that a public agency can sponsor to justify the project at the national level. In other words, Korea has made a clever pivot by not only addressing its own needs of DRR and CCA, but it has simultaneously promoted a growth industry for export to countries that have become accustomed to its cultural and technological influence. Following on the past practice of a chaebol driven economy, Korea's MPSS has translated the concept into the Global DRR Technology project that is currently underway.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe a recent effort by the South Korean Government to stimulate a domestic disaster risk reduction (DRR) technology industry for the export market. The project is a novel form of public-private partnership (PPP) that simultaneously fulfills the mandates of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction while promoting Korea's economic development agenda.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is primarily a review study of the Global DRR Technology project as it is situated in the literature of PPP research from both the public administration and disaster management disciplines.\nFindings: Korea's approach to address DRR through a PPP targeting the needs of East Asian countries is unique. The overall effectiveness of the effort will take time to assess, but the model is an interesting and potentially fruitful mean of advancing DRR technology dissemination.\nPractical implications: Korea may position itself as a global leader of DRR technology through this effort in terms of both market share and support of the Sendai Framework's objectives. If successful, the PPP approach may be adopted as a viable means of improving DRR for other countries.\nSocial implications: Using PPPs for various aspects of DRR can be win-win situation for economic development and disaster management outcomes.\nOriginality/value: This paper presents a distinct application of the PPP model for DRR that other countries may appreciate and/or adopt for their own DRR needs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Exploring the workplace impact of intentional/unintentional age discrimination
|
[
"Employee engagement",
"Age discrimination",
"Stereotypes",
"Employee training and development"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Age discrimination lawsuits have risen sharply in the USA during the recession (US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2010). According to an AARP survey of older workers, many of these legal actions have to do with the perception that older employees were \"passed up for a promotion or chance to get ahead because of age\" (Groeneman, 2008, p. 83). Such perceptions may be particularly problematic for retirement-eligible employees in today's context of extended health and longevity (and diminishing pension funds), who intend to continue work (Munnell and Sunden, 2004; Shultz and Wang, 2011). They may be seen as unproblematic, however, for those who have the widely held idea that older workers \"should\" be exiting the workplace to create opportunities for their younger co-workers (Agatstein, 1973; Hedge et al., 2006; Rowe and Kahn, 1998). While the literature is replete with research on perceptions of older workers, and even the perception that older workers are overlooked for promotion, the impact of such perceptions on employee engagement is rarely the focus of inquiry. Rarer still is the question of the extent to which age distinctions are perceived as fair or unfair, and their relation to employee engagement.\nMethod: Data and sample\nResults: The results of models are presented in Tables II and III. In the first model, the control variables account for 2.6 percent of the variance in employee engagement at level 1. In the second model, the main effects for the three predictor variables, unlikelihood for promotion, unfitness for promotion, and age account for an additional 13.4 percent of the variance in employee engagement at level 1. The negative relationship between the perception that older workers are less likely to be promoted than younger workers and employee engagement (g=-0.19, t-ratio=-14.31, p<0.001) supports H1. Additionally, the results show that there is a positive relationship between age and employee engagement (g=0.01, t-ratio=7.66, p<0.001) and a negative relationship between perceptions of older workers' unfitness for promotion and employee engagement (g=-0.19, t-ratio=-10.04, p<0.001).\nDiscussion: On the basis of social exchange theory, we predicted that the perception of discrimination against older employees would be negatively related to the willingness on the part of all employees to reward the organization with discretionary effort. Thus, we asked: is the perception that older workers are discriminated against related to the employee engagement levels of both older and younger workers? Our study of over 4,500 employees in a retail setting suggests that it is.\nAcknowledgements: This work was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College (Sloan grant #5000719), by the Ford Foundation (#1050-0632), and by the organization the authors studied (CitiSales, a pseudonym). The authors are grateful to the leadership of CitiSales for its willingness to support research within its organization, and to the many employees (hourly and exempt workers, district managers, and area vice presidents) who graciously shared their time and experiences with them. The authors are also grateful for the very helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between employee perceptions of unfair treatment of older workers and employee engagement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In a sample of over 4,500 workers, ages 18-94, from a retail workforce across three regions of the USA, the authors examine the relationship between perceptions that older workers are less likely to be promoted and employee engagement, using multilevel mixed effects linear regression models. The authors also examine whether the relationship is different if older workers were seen as fit for promotion, and whether discrimination is: intentional (fit, but less likely to be promoted) or unintentional (unfit, and less likely to be promoted).\nFindings: Results indicate that perceived discrimination is related to lower levels of employee engagement among workers of all ages. Findings also suggest that for older workers, there is a more negative relationship between unintentional discrimination and employee engagement, while for younger workers the relationship is more negative for intentional discrimination.\nResearch limitations/implications: Age discrimination is a critical issue for managerial psychology. While the authors' study is limited to one organization, the idea of unintentional discrimination may make it easier for managers to recognize and challenge discriminatory attitudes and behaviors in less threatening ways.\nOriginality/value: As older workers of today may not exit the workforce in predictable ways, there is a need to understand potential barriers to continued work. Traditional measures of stereotypes and perceptions of older workers are used here for the first time to construe intentional and unintentional discrimination, which may be one such barrier.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Transformational leadership: a quasi-experimental study
|
[
"Transformational leadership",
"Military",
"Group cohesion",
"Intervention",
"Quasi-experiment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Transformational leadership is one of the most widely used leadership theories in the organizational psychology literature. Despite the considerable volume of research examining transformational leadership only a small amount of this research has employed field-based experimental designs to examine transformational leadership interventions (e.g. Barling et al., 1996; Dvir et al., 2002; Hardy et al., 2010; Kelloway et al., 2000). This has led to many authors calling for researchers to utilize experimental designs more in their transformational leadership research (e.g. Bass and Avolio, 1993; Jung and Avolio, 2000; Lim and Ployhart, 2004; Rafferty and Griffin, 2004). Indeed, in a recent meta-analysis Dumdum et al. (2002) stated that \"Any researcher going through the coding exercise cannot help but be struck by the fact that there are still too few experimental studies [...]\" (p. 62). Using field-based experimental designs when testing transformational leadership theory is important because experimental designs have the potential to test for causality in real-world situations, can determine whether transformational leadership is teachable, and can also quantify potential benefits to organizations. The present research used a yearlong field-based quasi-experimental design to examine the efficacy of an intervention underpinned by transformational leadership theory on a group of poor performers in an infantry training establishment.\nLow-level performers: One of the key predictions of transformational leadership theory is that transformational leaders stimulate followers to perform beyond expectations (cf. Bass, 1985). The common parlance in the transformational leadership literature appears to exclusively focus on high levels of performance, with little explicit reference given to how transformational leaders may impact low-level performers. In formulations of transformational leadership there appears to be little mention of the potential for transformational leadership to remediate poor performance. Consequently, there is only limited understanding of, if and how, transformational leadership impacts upon low-level performers. This is especially true in the experimental literature where control and experimental groups have been randomly assigned (e.g. Barling et al., 1996; Dvir et al., 2002; Hardy et al., 2010; Kelloway et al., 2000; Mullen and Kelloway, 2009) thereby ensuring parity between groups at pre-test.\nTurnover in organizations: A second issue that the present study addressed was long-term vs short-term effects. Barling et al. (1996) assigned different bank branches to either experimental or control groups and followed these units for approximately five months. The Dvir et al. and Hardy et al., 2010 studies assigned different training teams to either control or experimental conditions and examined them for the duration of one training cycle. While, these studies have provided evidence that interventions can create a positive change in in-tact sub-units within organizations, there is no evidence to suggest that such interventions create organizational change that is sustainable under normal operating conditions that can include considerable turnover of staff. Most organizations will experience personnel turnover at all levels. It is therefore important to know whether transformational leadership intervention effects can be maintained in the face of such organizational turnover. By their very nature, the repeated measures designs used in previous studies can never answer this question. In other words, while these experimental studies had robust internal validities their external validity is not strong.\nGroup dynamics: Despite transformational leadership being theorized to have its most important effects on group dynamic type variables (e.g. Bass et al., 2003; Dvir et al., 2002; Judge et al., 2002), surprisingly little research attention has examined these types of outcomes (cf. Conger, 1999; Lim and Ployhart, 2004; Yukl, 1999). However, some recent correlational evidence has supported the link between transformational leadership and group process outcomes (e.g. Bass et al., 2003; Callow et al., 2009; Lim and Ployhart, 2004; Schaubroeck et al., 2007). Furthermore, while Dvir et al. (2002) found that performance was enhanced by a transformational leadership intervention no corresponding increases were observed in the individual-level psychological outcomes measured in their study. Consequently, the current research will examine a group process variable that has been theorized to be impacted by transformational leadership.\nMethod: Study design\nSample: The current study was conducted in an infantry recruit training establishment in the UK. The infantry recruit training process involves transforming recruits' beliefs, attitudes, values, and standards as well as developing their physical fitness and skills. The training is designed to take civilian recruits and develop them into mentally and physically robust soldiers that are able to operate to a very high standard in extremely hostile environments. There are a substantial number of compulsory assessments that need to be passed in order to progress to the next stage of training. At the time of the study, training lasted for either 24 or 26 weeks. However, these are minimum time to pass out and it was not uncommon for recruits to take longer to pass the course.\nResults: Leadership behaviors\nDiscussion: The current study extends the transformational leadership literature by employing a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of a transformational leadership intervention in remediating poor performance and the robustness of the intervention to organizational turnover. Furthermore, circumstances that evolved during the course of the study enabled us to consider an additional factor, namely, whether the transformational leadership intervention could prevent a decline during more challenging environmental circumstances. That is, the country was engaged in a war which was largely unpopular and the media tended to cover military behavior unsympathetically. This may have negatively impacted recruitment and the training climate. It is common knowledge in infantry training establishments that recruitment becomes increasingly difficult in times of war, especially unpopular wars. Furthermore, the Ministry Of Defense Annual Reports and Accounts (2005-2006) reported that army recruiting was below target for 2005-2006; this report suggested that \"high employment, a prosperous and strong economy and attractive alternatives in further education\" (p. 139) contributed to the difficult recruiting climate. Interestingly, the previous year's recruitment and enlistment hit target and the following year the Ministry of Defense Annual Reports and Accounts (2006-2007) reported the infantry had increased recruitment by 25 percent. This increase was attributed to specific recruitment targeting activities. The apparent decline in organizational climate was offset by the transformational leadership intervention (evidenced by the significant increases or no significant decline in the experimental group). This finding is consistent with Dvir et al.'s (2002) recommendation that \"theoretical formulations should incorporate the prevention of developmental regression as a positive outcome of transformational leadership\" (p. 742).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report a field-based quasi-experimental study designed to examine the effectiveness of a transformational leadership intervention in remediating poor performance. The intervention was conducted on elements of the organization that senior management perceived as being low performing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A quasi-experimental pre-test post-design was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the transformational leadership intervention. Pre-test data were collected four months prior to the intervention starting and the post-test data were collected eight months after the intervention had started. Follower perceptions of their leader's behavior and group cohesion, together with training outcome data were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention.\nFindings: Results revealed that from pre-test to post-test changes in perceptions of leadership, group cohesion, and training outcome indicated that the intervention had beneficial effects. These beneficial effects were evidenced in one of two ways: desirable behaviors increased in the experimental group from pre-test to post-test while they remained the same or were decreased in the control group; or desirable behaviors remained the same in the experimental group while they decreased in the control group.\nOriginality/value: The current study is the first to utilize a quasi-experimental organization wide design to examine the efficacy of a transformational leadership intervention. Furthermore, the current study provides evidence that transformational leadership can buffer negative environmental effects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Gender differences in active labour market policy: The Swedish self-employment programme
|
[
"Sweden",
"Business formation",
"Subsidies",
"Government policy",
"Labour market",
"Gender"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The European Union Employment Strategy states that efforts to increase employability should aim at producing equal opportunity for males and females. As a consequence of this objective the European Union has worked out a manual for mainstreaming gender aspects of employment policies (European Commission, 2007). If males and females have equal opportunity, we would expect no gender differences as regards outcomes of participating in labour market programmes. However, a large strand of literature, which we have no intention to completely review, points to the fact that there are differences in labour market outcomes with respect to gender. As regards explanations of these differences, the literature can roughly be divided into two groups: differences in outcome due to self-selection and differences in outcome due to discrimination. An example of the former is differences in preferences with respect to risk (see, e.g. surveys in Migheli, 2010; Croson and Gneezy, 2009). The conclusion is that in general females are more risk averse than males. Differences in risk preferences can, e.g. result in differences in search behaviour in such a way that females to a large extent search other jobs than males, which can explain why we observe differences in labour market outcomes between males and females (see, e.g. Eriksson and Lagerstrom, 2008; Coate and Loury, 1993). This result is however questioned by Booth and Nolen (2009) who claim that the observed difference might instead be a contextual factor, e.g. depending on the experimental set-up or social norms (see also Akerlof and Kranton, 2000). Also Nekby et al. (2008) point to the fact that contextual factors influence the preferences. Females in male dominated competitive environments have the same preferences as males.The other explanation to observed differences in labour market outcomes relates to presence of discrimination. Examples are discrimination based on taste (Becker, 1971) or on prejudice (Arrow, 1971; Phelps, 1972). One survey of empirical findings is presented in Altonji and Blank (1999). Williams (2009) investigates gender discrimination and self-employment in Europe and finds that the results are mixed in the sense that discrimination does not significantly influence the decision to start up a business of one's own but rather the exit rate from self-employment.There are a few recent studies that deal with gender differences as one of several possible explanations of heterogeneity as regards the outcome of labour market programmes. Kluve et al. (1999, 2002) perform an evaluation of two Polish labour market programmes and for one of them they find and overall negative effect, however, a zero impact for females and a large negative impact for males. Friedlander et al. (1997) and Heckman et al. (1999) investigate the outcome of labour market schemes in the US and find both gender differences and differences between age groups. Gender differences are also observed in the studies by Lechner et al. (2004), 2007) who find that males are performing worse compared to females in programmes with long training periods. Finally, Lechner and Wiehler (2011) identify a shortcoming in previous studies and find that including information about pregnancies in the selection model reduces the differences between males and females.The subject of gender differences in results of participating in labour market programmes has been surveyed by Bergemann and van den Berg (2007) who conclude that \"In general, active labour market policies have a positive effect on employment outcomes for women. Moreover, the effects are larger than for men.\" (Bergemann and van den Berg, 2007, pp. 14-15). The authors also point out that the success of active labour market programmes seems to be negatively related to the female work force participation rate in the country. In 2007 the participation rate for women in Sweden was around 70 per cent, which means that, according to the said observation by Bergemann and van den Berg, we might expect female participants of labour market programmes to be less successful compared to males.The aim of this paper is to investigate if there are difference in the impacts of labour market programmes between males and females. In this paper one of the most successful active labour market programmes in Sweden, a business start-up subsidy for unemployed persons, is used as a case study. More than 70 per cent of the participants of the programme leave unemployment at the end of the programme period (Behrenz et al., 2008). The research question at hand is thus; are there differences between males and females regarding the possibilities to get a job after receiving start-up grants, when the grant issued is a part of active labour market policy? The research question at hand is thus: are there differences between males and females regarding the possibilities to get a job after receiving start-up grants, when the grant issued is a part of active labour market policy? The advantage of using the start-up programme for an analysis of differential returns for men and women as regards leaving unemployment for a job is that the aim of this programme is very clear-cut: participating in the programme is to result in a job. This argument could perhaps be viewed as redundant since getting a job should be the objective of all labour market programmes, however, programmes might have intermediate aims as well, e.g. an education programme that prepares for labour market training that in turn aims at participants obtaining employment. The problem in such a case is that the object of programme participation is not exclusively that the person should get a job but also other outcomes might be viewed as successful. As a result the impact estimates are blurred, in the sense that the outcome regarded as successful by administrators of the programme do not match the definition of successful outcome used by the evaluators leading to non-relevant impact estimators. In the case of start-up grants, however, it is clear that this is not an intermediate programme, and therefore the impact estimates are not biased due to deviating interpretations of programme objectives. Another reason for using the start-up scheme for a case study of gender differences in labour market outcomes is that other studies report positive effects of business start-up subsidies; see for example, Caliendo (2009) and Michaelides and Benus (2010) who have evaluated such programmes in Germany and the USA, respectively. The start-up grant, with its positive overall employment effects, provides good preconditions for investigating differential effects between women and men.Since our focus is on gender issues, we have constructed an empirical set-up that allows making multiple comparisons. We compare unemployed females who have received start-up grants with:* unemployed (both male and female) who have not received such grants but who have participated in other labour market policy programmes;* unemployed females who have been transferred to other programmes than the business start-up programme;* unemployed males who have participated in other programmes than the business start-up programme; and finally; and* unemployed male participants in the start-up programme.The results are clear: The start-up grant is successful for both females and males as regards employment outcome, however, the result for male participants is significantly better than for females.The outline of the study is as follows: Section 2 gives a brief presentation of the programme and provides a summary of the findings of previous impact evaluations of start-up grants. Since only few studies have focused on differences between women and men as regards results of participating in such programmes, the gender issue is discussed where reference to female participation is explicitly mentioned. In section 3 the method, data and empirical strategy are presented and in section 4 we present the results. Section 5 summarises and concludes.\n2 Institutional setting and previous studies: 2.1 Institutional setting\n3 Method, data and design: 3.1 Method\nResults: In this section we present the results of the analyses described above. All results are based on matching estimators obtained after propensity score matching, except the comparison between treated males and treated females, which are based on \"statistical twins\". The result of the matching process has been checked using a balancing test, i.e. besides not being significantly different in the propensity to be selected we have also balanced on a number of stable covariates, such as age, education, immigrant background, self-employment history, parents self-employment history, medium- and long-term unemployment history. Further, the matching estimator used the ten nearest neighbours. Before reporting the impact estimates, we summarise in Table II the groups of treated and untreated that are used for estimating effects.The group of interest is D, treated females. This group will in all analyses be the reference group. In the first analysis D is compared with A+C, i.e. both untreated males and females. The selection model used for this analysis is presented in column 2 in Appendix 2. In the second analysis D is compared with C, untreated females. The relevant selection model is presented in column (6) in Appendix 2. In the third analysis D is compared with A, i.e. untreated males. Since the treatment in this case is a combination of gender and participating in the start-up programme, a probit model, excluding gender from the regression, is used. The selection model used for this analysis is presented in column (4) in Appendix 2. Finally, in the forth analysis D is compared with B, i.e. treated males. In this case both groups are treated, what differs is gender and we use matching on covariates to define the comparison group of male participants.Analysis 1: Treated females v. untreated male and female job seekers\nSummary and concluding remarks: The aim of this study has been to investigate the impact on the likelihood of getting a job for unemployed women who have participated in the Swedish start-up programme. This has been done by utilising several comparison groups of job seekers registered at Swedish public employment offices. At the beginning of this study we cited Bergemann and van den Berg (2007) who conclude that, in general, the effects on employment outcomes of participating in active labour market policy programmes are larger for women compared to men. Their study is based on comparisons of treated females with untreated females and of treated males with untreated males. In our analysis the reference group of females who have received the start-up grant (referred to as \"treated\") is compared with four other groups of job seekers. The conclusions are that start-up grant works well for treated females. In comparison with females who entered other labour market programmes, the likelihood of getting a job during the observation period is 16 percentage units higher and compared to males in other programmes it is 9 percentage units higher for female participants in the start-up programme. If we compare our reference group of treated women with the gross group of participants in other programmes, i.e. allowing both males and females in the comparison group, the probability of getting employment during the observation period is 11 percentage units higher for females who entered the start-up scheme. However, compared to a matched sample of male job seekers assigned to the start-up programme, the female participants are inferior in labour market outcome. To some extent this result highlights a general feature of labour market policy as a means to promote equality of opportunities - because of gender heterogeneity some active labour market policy programmes work better for males than for females and vice versa. The policy conclusion from our analysis is that it is worth to take into consideration that labour market programmes can have different effects for subgroups within the programmes' target groups; in our study illustrated with the effects of the Swedish start-up programme being dependent on gender. Knowledge about the magnitude and the causes of such variation in effects is essential to fine-tuning the use of labour market programmes and to directing them more precisely towards target groups. Therefore, when evaluating such programmes it would be beneficial to lay more stress on heterogeneity of impact between different target groups - relevant are not least differences in programmes' effectiveness between female and male participants. The computation performed in this study on the selection effect indicates that quite a large proportion of the difference in impacts between male and female participants in the start-up programme is due to selection or unobserved heterogeneity with respect to gender. Unfortunately, we do not have access to information about what type of business the programme participants started up as a result of having entered the programme. Controlling for line of business might very well throw light on the cause of gender differences in labour market outcomes of the Swedish business start-up programme. This is a question for further research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - One of the most successful labour market programmes in Sweden is a start-up subsidy programme for job seekers registered at the public employment service. The purpose of this paper is to examine if there are gender differences in outcomes of this programme.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The analysis compares the outcome for female participants of the start-up programme with that of four other matched groups: male and female non-participants, male non-participants, female non-participants, and male participants.\nFindings: - The authors' results indicate that females entering the programme have a higher success rate than both female and male non-participants; however, the impact is less in comparison with male than with female non-participants. Compared to a matched sample of males in the start-up scheme, female participants are less successful.\nOriginality/value: - The paper concludes is that it is essential to find evidence regarding which programmes work for which target groups and to find out why effects differ by categories. Such knowledge could be used for fine-tuning labour market policy programmes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Innovative doctors in Germany: changes through communities of practice
|
[
"Organizational structures",
"Outpatients",
"General practitioners",
"Health services",
"Germany"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Efforts to improve healthcare whilst controlling costs often entail doctors adopting new service delivery models. This paper investigates the ability of doctors to play an active role in shaping innovative organisational structure, showing how doctors innovation also involve structural change.Following a review of the relevant literature and method, the paper presents two cases of entrepreneurial doctors in Nuremberg and Munich actively engaged in shaping healthcare reforms as part of the post-1993 reform of German healthcare. In particular, the paper draws attention to the ability of medical professionals as actors and providers of the healthcare system to support management of change processes.Two original case studies, presented in Section 5, highlight the trend toward integrating health services in Germany. The case studies are analysed using Wenger's (1998) communities of practice framework, presented in Section 2, along with the relevant literature on accountability and its influence within the medical environment. In Section 6, the discussion based on the case studies and in light of Wenger's criteria will be followed by the conclusions.\n2 The changing accountability and communities of practice in healthcare: The escalating healthcare costs have induced policy makers to require cost containment upon healthcare sector. Researchers and practitioners have focused their studies on the impact that new accountability requirements as managerial techniques and organisational structures, had on the medical profession. This section reviews relevant existing literature on this subject.2.1 Healthcare system changes: professionals and reform\n3 Research method: The research uses a qualitative case study method (Yin, 1994) and the conventions of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The use of case studies is founded in experience-based learning approaches, more recently termed multi-disciplinary problem-solving knowledge. Case studies are plausible stories with a point, and the point in good practice case studies is often explaining why and how change occurred, i.e. tracking causal relationships from grounded experience.Grounded theory establishes meaning and significance from rich data and rigorous analysis rather than the frequency of an occurrence. Its justification as research method rests in part upon a wise choice of cases: since unless cases are timely and relevant, lessons deriving from them have limited generalisability.During the data collection it became evident that there was access to data of two interesting GP-based healthcare developments. The two cases were chosen as typical of innovative practice and differing patterns between the two themselves: one being the first to develop a network of practices in Bavaria and the first one to sign a contract with the AOK (major German insurance company), and the second one establishing organisation of doctors providing care to patient during out of practice hours. During 2000, the author conducted 17 semi-structured interviews in Nuremberg and Munich featuring project leaders, hospital doctors, GPs and representatives of regional social insurance companies and the Kassenarztliche Vereinigung (KV). All interviews we recorded and transcribed from German by the author. Further details and update information have been gathered via internet and two interviews conducted in 2007.Case-based learning is situated learning - grounded in particular time and space (physical and social). Hence, a pre-understanding of the context in which the learning occurs is essential if causal relations are to be effectively tracked. In addition, if the knowledge generated is to be transferred and adapted into a new context (e.g. the lessons of the case applied elsewhere), a pre-understanding of what constitutes causal relations in the target context is also essential. The paper therefore gives a brief overview of the German healthcare system to contextualise the case studies.\n4 The German healthcare system: Germany has the oldest insurance-based healthcare system originating in 1883. Currently, 88 percent of Germans are enrolled with a social health insurance (SHI) company, while 10 percent have private insurance (Busse and Riesberg, 2004). There are two levels of service provision: Stationar or residential hospital care and Ambulant or day-care or home-care. Ambulant care includes a GP (Hausarzt) and specialists (Facharzt). Ambulant doctors typically, work in single handed (Busse and Riesberg, 2004). Since the 1993 healthcare reforms, German GPs saw their positions penalised, as citizen were no longer required to register on a four month basis with a GP by their insurance company. Patients present their insurance chip-card as they request medical assistance from GPs or specialists of their choice, though access to hospital requires referral from an Ambulant doctor, except for emergencies.SHI patients have access to \"public\" doctors (Niedergelassenarzte), these are independent contractors that have to be members of a regional association of \"public\" Ambulant doctors, the Kassenarztliche Vereinigung; the KV in turn relates to a national association of doctors the Kassenarztliche Bundesvereinigung. KVs are intermediaries between insurance companies and patients for payment purposes. Insurers pay the KV for the Ambulant medical services of GPs and specialists, and hospitals for the services of hospital doctors.The German healthcare system has been under financial pressure and since the 1980s has been the object of attention by politicians in a series of reforming measures aimed at contain expenses while improving quality of care (Barnighausen and Sauerborn, 2002; Busse and Riesberg, 2004). The 1993 Act introduced a budget-based system at the Ambulant level, aiming to tighten control and contain expenditure, obliging SHIs to assign defined budgets to KVs (Barnighausen and Sauerborn, 2002). The same Act introduced various measures aimed at improving care quality. A later Act, taking effect in 2000, increased the power of GPs.A further reform in 2003 introduced additional co-payments and cost-sharing; higher recognition of patients' rights, as individuals and as collective groups; use of family practitioner models (integrated service led by GPs) by sickness funds; relaxation of the regulation for contracts for integrated care. In April 2005, a newer version of the payment criteria for Ambulant doctors has introduced a distinction between GPs and specialists reimbursement basis (Busse and Riesberg, 2005).\n5 Toward a new healthcare system service yeconceptual: Germany is moving from disintegrated care provision, with a considerable gap within Ambulant care provider and between Ambulant and Stationar care, to an integrated care model. This new direction is now supported by the 2003 Healthcare Act, which promotes further flexibility of integrated care between insurance fund and healthcare providers. This Act also strengthens the gatekeeper function of GPs by emphasising the family practitioner model. Interestingly, this followed the 1993 reform, which introduced freedom of choice of healthcare provider by patient, with no need to be enrolled with a GP.The following section presents two successful processes introducing integrated care, led by entrepreneurial GPs in Bayern, each influenced by the 1999 and 2003 Healthcare Acts. The case studies are presented in light of the three dimensions outlined by Wenger (1998), engaging, imagination and alignment, as explained above.5.1 The Nuremberg case: engaging in practice\n6 Discussion: From an organisational point of view, the PNN and the Bereitschaftspraxis represent two successful experiences as they managed to introduce changes and survive them, introducing also new care models that have been nationally adopted. Although originating from the same context, Bavaria, they developed along different paths. Both experiences seem to have anticipated the later 2003 and 2005 Health Acts. The 2003 Act stressed central position of GPs within Ambulant care, while the 2005 Act introduced a reconfiguration of the reimbursement criteria for GPs and specialists.The discussion section follows the same structure adopted in the presentation of the two case studies, using Wenger's (1998) three dimensions: engagement, imagination and alignment. This community of practice perspectives provides interesting insights for understanding the development of doctors' changing practice.6.1 Engaging in practice\n7 Concluding remarks: Pursuit of greater efficiency in the German healthcare system has catalysed the creation of new processes, structures and practices. The right for patient to access their preferred healthcare provider, GP or specialist, had unexpected consequences. This situation, in addition to the request for qualitative care provision, inspired German doctors to critically re-examine their service provision, opening space for imaginative doctors, especially GPs, to develop new models. For some doctors, this was an opportunity to reshape the national healthcare service from the provider's perspective.The paper shows that research on healthcare modernisation and the response of professionals may neglect key evidence in change processes. In particular, it appears where GPs learn to use modernising tools and techniques to shape new care and business models and to lead change processes.The research further illustrates how learning in professional communities of practice can result in radical service change, despite the autonomous and distributed nature of the professionals. In doing so, communities of practice may choose to embed into future practice a wider range of competences and to revise and update their value systems to include a managerialist perspective capable of delivering improved quality, better service access (Fuchs, 2006; Wambach and Lindenthal, 2007) and, lower overall costs, supported from the commitment of some of the insurance companies having the new or renewed projects.This research demonstrates that far from being resistant to change, some doctors (perhaps specifically GPs) are able to embrace change and redefine themselves and their practice in terms of patient-led, inter-professional new care models. Unlike earlier attempts at imposed structural change, these changes are shown to be successful arguably because doctors' communities of practice became the agencies of change.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The healthcare sector faces new financial and managerial accountability demands, along with their clinical accountability. Various studies show strong opposition by clinicians to new accountability tools, new structures and new ways of working. Less attention is paid to the innovative roles doctors can play in leading changes that use new managerial tools and techniques. The purpose of this paper is to analyse two original case studies illustrating how general practitioners (GPs) in Germany have led radical change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws upon original research in Germany to present two case studies using a qualitative method, which are analysed using Glaser and Strauss' conventions of grounded theory, structured by Wenger's communities of practice framework, supporting a comprehensive literature review.\nFindings: - GPs are found to be able to lead radical change in healthcare delivery models and organisation using entrepreneurial talents developed in their practice businesses and to embrace modernising tools and techniques and in the process redefine their identities to include management process in addition to medical competences.\nOriginality/value: - The paper presents two original case studies of radical change leading to an integration of healthcare services in Germany. The approach adopted by the German GPs reveals important general lessons for practitioners, as does the analytical framework employed in the paper.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Thematic description of audio-visual information on television
|
[
"Archives management",
"Television",
"Document management",
"Content management",
"Information retrieval"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nDocumentation and television: Communications media have evolved along with technological transformations and progress. Man's inborn need to communicate led to the first medium for the global transmission of information - the printing press, followed by the rotary printing press. But the need for information has always been in continuous growth, so that inventions such as the telegraph had to be adapted for information transmission by waves. Indeed, the radio was one of society's great technological and democratising advances. But there is no doubt that television has succeeded in making McLuhan's idea of the existence of a television tribe a reality (McLuhan, 1998). Large companies, which control access to information by methods that are close to being a monopoly, wage fierce battles in order to control mass media, especially television (Edmondson, 2004).The \"fourth power\" collects, disseminates and preserves a great quantity of information. This information is thematically diverse and exists in a wide variety of formats and media. In order to control such an important business asset, almost all television broadcasters have set up a documentation service that is responsible for satisfying journalists' information needs and for the maintenance of the firm's intellectual and cultural heritage (Caldera-Serrano, 2007).This paper aims to show the thematic fields that can shape an audio-visual information database for television. First, there are certain differences regarding other documentary types that can be observed; then a wide range of thematic options for retrieval is offered, which will have to be analysed by information managers to decide on the best use respecting journalists' characteristics, needs and behaviour (Hidalgo Goyanes, 1999).\nTelevision archive databases: Documentation centres are just the visible aspect of a great documentation web involving different classes of documents, varied media, and the diverse requirements of end users. The computerisation of documentation structures is a reality that is sustained by a constant exchange of information between documentalists and communication scientists, aimed at enabling the preservation of information and access to this information by means of a standard set of parameters agreed on by both (Caldera-Serrano and Zapico-Alonso, 2006; Lopez-de-Quintana, 2007).Out of this agreement, in which communication and understanding are indispensable, conceptual structures of databases have arisen that keep the information. The basic information types contained in current databases seem destined to persist in the foreseeable future. The following is a list of the principal aspects of television databases arranged by area:* Control data. This includes data referring to the material itself - recording, entry date, level of analysis, etc., and controls aspects of the documentalist's output.* Data related to physical aspects. The physical description has been one of the aspects that has evolved most clearly with digitalisation. Nonetheless, there will have to be data categories designated relating to audio and video (sound track, image track), and to the media, formats, and length.* Headings that identify the information. Examples are programme titles, news headlines, names of series, special reports, and all the other formats used on television.* Sound and image description of the material. Another aspect that will have to be thoroughly modified due to the digitalisation process is the image description.* Thematic descriptors. These descriptors must describe viewed and referred content in the audio-visual documents with precision. Thematic identification has a special importance since it is the usual method for accessing information. For these fields, different television companies use different proprietary ad hoc tools, with thesauri being the formula employed to control vocabulary. There have also been experiments aimed at developing effective tools based on faceted classifications.* Personal names. Fields identifying entities and people both viewed and referenced. This element - as well as thematic indexing fields - is the most important field in order to retrieve documents.* Geographical descriptors. These identify places related to audio-visual documents, and other geographical features shown in the material such as towns, streets, or buildings.* Chronological descriptors. These fields identify a series of aspects relating to the described information.* Production data. This important area indicates the information source, possibilities of reuse, and commercial exploitation according to legal questions.* Broadcast data. Broadcast date and time, coverage area, potential re-broadcasts, different versions and languages, etc. These should be regarded as important questions, rather than merely as an access formula, as they are used as a means of controlling the information generated by the television company.* Physical location. Data related to the position of the digital medium and alternative access points. This is an important issue, because once the material has been analysed, it has to be accessible to users readily and rapidly.* Technical staff. This is a group of fields that identifies who was responsible for creating the audio-visual item or programme. There is an evident relationship with the \"Personal names\" field.\nThematic indexing: Indexing terms\nConclusions: This paper intends to be a useful starting point for television companies willing to adapt and improve thematic retrieval mechanisms. There are some factors that we would like to highlight and that we consider vital, such as making the identification of visualized topics compulsory, which is at least as important as the identification of people.The rest of the fields that we have described are not always present in the information systems of television channels. Nevertheless, they have been tested in university television workbenches and have been considered of importance to solve journalists' information needs. Information systems should adapt to users' needs, and obviously not the other way around. The described information fields are a clear example of information management at the service of journalists.The final conclusion relates to the possibility of retrieving audio-visual information using both full-text and controlled vocabularies, the former being much more effective. For the journalist not familiar with indexing methods and textual description, natural language facilitates access to information. Moreover, the description of audiovisual information with documentary language is unviable with thesaurus or classification systems.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper endeavours to show the possibilities for thematic description of audio-visual documents for television with the aim of promoting and facilitating information retrieval.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To achieve these goals different database fields are shown, as well as the way in which they are organised for indexing and thematic element description, analysed and used as an example. Some of the database fields are extracted from an analytical study of the documentary system of television in Spain. Others are being tested in university television on which indexing experiments are carried out.\nFindings: - Not all thematic descriptions are used on television information systems; nevertheless, some television channels do use thematic descriptions of both image and sound, applying thesauri. Moreover, it is possible to access sequences using full text retrieval as well.\nOriginality/value: - The development of the documentary task, applying the described techniques, promotes thematic indexing and hence thematic retrieval. Given the fact that this is without doubt one of the aspects most demanded by television journalists (along with people's names). This conceptualisation translates into the adaptation of databases to new indexing methods.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Factors affecting service innovations in FM service sector
|
[
"Service innovations",
"Allocation",
"Requirements and barriers",
"Facility management services",
"Customer service management",
"Management services",
"Finland"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Innovations are necessary for preserving the continuity of organizations. Innovations promote economic growth, competitiveness, regeneration, and prosperity (Antola and Pohjola, 2006). Numerous studies have been conducted in the field of innovations but they have mainly focused on product innovations. However, the growth of the service sector and rise of the service sector to its formidable position in economy has increased interest for service innovations (Toivonen and Tuominen, 2009).The theories of product innovations cannot be adapted to services as such (Cardellino and Finch, 2006). The main difference between service and product innovations is that the role of the customer is emphasized at every stage of the service innovation process. In addition, the special characteristics of the services, i.e. intangibility, simultaneity and heterogeneity, are to blame for the insignificant interest towards service innovations (Voss et al., 1992). Consequently, services development has been seen as quite unimportant compared to product development (Cardellino and Finch, 2006).Product and service organizations have the same frame for the innovation process but the tasks between the different stages vary (Tidd and Hull, 2003). In addition, the durations and stresses of different stages of the innovation process vary in service and product innovations. Therefore, these models must be significantly modified (Drejer, 2004). The service innovation process emphasizes the starting phase and initialization and requires interaction between the service provider and the customer (Gronroos et al., 2007).Innovation in the FM sector is often recognized but the innovativeness of FM organizations requires further research (Mudrak et al., 2005). However, it is seen as important to include new developments and continuous innovation process to Facility Management (FM) organizations because these help them to stay in business, exceed customer expectations, and add value to the core business of the customer.Due to the nature of FM, the FM sector deals mostly with business support services such as the management of workplace and workspace (Tay and Ooi, 2001; Alexander, 1999). FM provides a diverse range of services; however, these services are linked through matching organizational needs. Chotipanich (2004) outlined contextual factors that influence FM; organizational characteristics, facility features, business sector, culture and context, and aligning/linking FM to the organization. These factors indicate the complexity of the context in which innovation is introduced to FM.In the FM sector, the changes or transformations are incremental day-to-day changes rather than radical improvements (Mudrak et al., 2005). Unique service entities tailored to the needs of the customer are becoming common in FM services and they are in a remarkable position in competitions and when choosing a service provider. Success can be increased by developing the innovation activity of FM service providers, and it is also the way to differ from the competitors (Cardellino and Finch, 2006).The objective of this study is to establish a classification of FM service innovations and identify the factors that affect the service innovation in FM services. The introduction is followed by an overview of service innovation and the general requirements for service innovations. Then the empirical part with methodology and results is presented. The paper concludes the findings in the discussion chapter.\nOverview of service innovations: Definition\nMethodology: The objective of this study is to discover the factors that create requirements and barriers for service innovation in FM services. In addition, this study examines how service innovations can be classified in FM services. The study focuses on examining the innovation process and its development.The nature of this study is qualitative. Its data gathering was divided into two phases:1. specialist workshops; and2. theme interviews.The aim of the workshops was to define the aspects of the classification of the service innovations in the FM service sector. Two specialist workshops were organized: the first for the researchers of the facility service research group and the second for the employees of the institutions that offers benchmarking, research and analysis services for the Finnish real estate sector. These focus groups were chosen to get comprehensive and real time information about the examined theme.The first workshop emphasized open conversation. The basic data were not revealed to the participants. This was intended to ensure that the introduction does not influence the conversation and that the participants would discuss the themes of the workshops: i.e. the views on service innovations in FM services and the requirements and barriers related to them. The results of the first workshop were further developed in the second workshop. Using the results of the workshops and applying theory, viewpoints on innovations for further work can be found in FM services.Theme interviews were based on the results of the workshops. These interviews were conducted with five customer relationships. Five service providers and five customers were interviewed to obtain the viewpoints from both the supply and the demand perspective. To get a wide perspective of the researched theme, the service providers were chosen from different companies with different service packages. The interviews were conducted separately with the service provider and the customer but pertained to that particular relationship between them. The service providers came from the largest FM service provider companies in Finland.The purpose of the theme interviews was to solidify and deepen the results of the workshop. In addition, the theme interviews clarified the factors that create requirements and barriers to service innovations in the FM service sector. The interviews were divided into three themes:1. the development of the life cycle of customership;2. engagement of customership; and3. development of the procurement in its entirety.These themes are based on the main points of the workshop: sale, customership, and production - through these, innovations can increase the profitability of an organization.All the interviews were taped and documented. The analysis of the interviews consists of three steps: identification of board themes, their further development and finding similarities between different interviews. The same two interviewers conducted each interview to increase the reliability of analysis.\nResults: Classification of service innovations\nDiscussion: This study demonstrates the four different innovation levels in FM services the:1. industry level;2. organizational level;3. customer relationship level; and4. production level.Based on this study, the basic elements for service innovation in FM services are customer orientation, the functionality of the basic services, and the packing of the services. Customer orientation involves identifying customer needs as well as building openness, confidence, and interaction between the service provider and the customer. The functionality of the basic services includes normalizing the action, engaging the personnel and fulfilling the promises. The packing of the services allows for benefits of synergy between several different service providers and service innovations between different services. In addition, it adds resources to the development.These basic elements are the basis for service innovations in FM services. Still, these elements alone are not enough for creating new service innovations in FM services. They require a wide range of other factors: networking, resources, skilled personnel, systematic innovation action, organizations capable of developing, dissemination of innovation, common development with service providers and customers, and long contracts.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose is to clarify the concept of service innovation in the context of FM service and to map the factors that are critical for service innovations in the FM service sector. The research questions are: how can service innovations be classified in the FM service sector and what are the factors that create requirements and barriers to the service innovations in the FM service sector?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The nature of this study is qualitative. The data were gathered from two specialist workshops and from semi-structured interviews. The people interviewed worked for the largest service provider companies in Finland and their customers.\nFindings: - Results yielded by this study comprise the classification of service innovations and the factors that create requirements and barriers for the service innovations in the FM service sector.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study focuses on examining the innovation process and its development and on developing innovation activity in large-scale service provider companies in Finland.\nPractical implications: - This study promotes innovation activity in the FM service sector. It helps a service provider to minimize the barriers of service innovation and maximize the related requirements.\nOriginality/value: - This study promotes innovation activity in the FM service sector. It helps a service provider to minimize the barriers of service innovation and maximize the related requirements.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Quantifying collaboration using Himmelman
'
s strategies for working together: Findings from the Tennessee coordinated school health program
|
[
"Partnerships",
"Schools",
"Health promotion",
"Health promoting schools",
"Collaboration",
"Qualitative",
"Comprehensive"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nPurpose and background: In recent decades, health promoting schools (HPSs) have emerged from the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Global School Health Initiative to strengthen educational activities and health promotion at local, regional, national, and global levels (World Health Organization (WHO), 1997). The US' approach to HPSs is the concept of coordinated school health programs (CSHPs) which have emerged as an integrated approach to developing comprehensive school-based prevention and youth development programs (Van Acker et al., 2011). As with other HPS approaches to be found in many parts of the world, the model in the USA typically incorporates eight components (comprehensive health education, physical education/activity, nutrition services, health services, mental health services, student, family, and community involvement, healthy school environment, and health promotion of staff) that target the social, health, and academic needs of school-aged youth. Similar to HPS programs throughout the world, the comprehensive health education component is a planned, chronological curriculum that targets the physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects of health. Physical activity/education aims to provide developmentally appropriate learning experiences that are focussed on physical activity. The nutrition services component introduces healthy eating patterns and reinforces nutrition education in school curriculum. Assessment, planning, and coordination of health services and direct care for all children in the school system are included in the health services component of the CSHP. Mental health services include counseling, mental health, and social services that are provided to try to ensure the mental, emotional, and social health of every student. The student, family, and community involvement component focusses on the involvement of students, parents, community representatives, volunteers, and health care workers in schools to integrate health and well-being education both at school and in the community at large. The quality of the surroundings, psychosocial climate, safety, school culture, and safety and emergency plans are all included in the healthy school environment component. Finally, the health promotion of staff component targets opportunities to improve the health and well-being of school staff through health assessments, health education, and health-related fitness activities.\nMethodology, design, and approach: Participants\nFindings: Comparison of data from the two years of evaluation indicated that healthy school environment was the only component to score below 2 on the collaboration index (Table II). For all other components, LEAs programming activities were within the coordinating range (2) on the CIS, with physical education/activity having the highest overall score of 2.42 (Table II). When comparing the individual LEA's level of collaboration (Table III), the majority of CSHP partnering activities fell within the second stage of partnership interaction (coordination). In the remaining three components (comprehensive health education, health services, and healthy school environment), individual LEAs were more likely to engage in networking than any other aspect of collaboration (Table III).\nDiscussion: To our knowledge, this is the first study examining collaboration of CSHPs or any other HPS program. Our analysis indicated that LEAs across the state were more likely to engage in CSHP activities that require limited stakeholder involvement or little long-term investment, a finding similar to those reported by Michael et al., (2007). Previous research indicates that school-based programming is most effective when stakeholders are invested in arriving at a solution, when programming is sustained over time, and when that programming is comprehensive in nature (Gonzalez-Suarez et al., 2009). The WHO's Global School Health Initiative further describes the need for schools to develop alliances with stakeholders to improve health outcomes (WHO, 1997). Partnerships that are collaborative in nature will better ensure that CSHPs can build the capacity to address adolescent health issues (Gajda, 2004). Further, movement toward collaboration may provide more effective strategies in addressing complex health issues, such as childhood obesity (Goldman and Schmalz, 2008; Leatherdale et al., 2010; Timperio et al., 2004; Van Acker et al., 2011; Videto and Hodges, 2009).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Coordinated school health programs (CSHPs), a type of health promoting school (HPS) program adopted by Canada and the USA, were developed to provide a comprehensive approach to school health in the USA. Community partnerships are central to CSHP and HPS efforts, yet the quality of collaboration efforts is rarely assessed. The purpose of this paper is to use Himmelman's strategies for working together to assess the types of partnerships that are being formed by CSHPs and to explore the methodological usefulness of this framework. The Himmelman methodology describes four degrees of partnering interaction: networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating, with each degree of interaction signifying a different level of partnership between organizations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected as part of the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 CSHP annual Requests for Proposal from all 131 public school systems in Tennessee. Thematic analysis methods were used to assess partnerships in school systems. Descriptive analyses were completed to calculate individual collaboration scores for each of the eight CSHP components (comprehensive health education, physical education/activity, nutrition services, health services, mental health services, student, family, and community involvement, healthy school environment, and health promotion of staff) during the two data collection periods. The level of collaboration was assessed based on Himmelman's methodology, with higher scores indicating a greater degree of collaboration. Scores were averaged to obtain a mean score and individual component scores were then averaged to obtain statewide collaboration index scores (CISs) for each CSHP component.\nFindings: The majority of CSHPs partnering activities can be described as coordination, level two in partnering interaction. The physical activity component had the highest CISs and scored in between coordinating and cooperating (2.42), while healthy school environment had the lowest score, scoring between networking and coordinating (1.93), CISs increased from Year 1 to Year 2 for all of the CSHP components. Applying the theoretical framework of Himmelman's methodology provided a novel way to quantify levels of collaboration among school partners. This approach offered an opportunity to use qualitative and quantitative methods to explore levels of collaboration, determine current levels of collaboration, and assess changes in levels of collaboration over the study period.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study provides a framework for using the Himmelman methodology to quantify partnerships in a HPS program in the USA. However, the case study nature of the enquiry means that changes may have been influenced by a range of contextual factors, and quantitative analyses are solely descriptive and therefore do not provide an opportunity for statistical comparisons.\nPractical implications: Quantifying collaboration efforts is useful for HPS programs. Community activities that link back to the classroom are important to the success of any HPS program. Himmelman's methodology may be useful when applied to HPSs to assess the quality of existing partnerships and guide program implementation efforts.\nOriginality/value: This research is the first of its kind and uses a theoretical framework to quantify partnership levels in school health programs. In the future, using this methodology could provide an opportunity to develop more effective partnerships in school health programs, health education, and public health.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Labor mobility across the formal/informal divide in Turkey: Evidence from individual-level data
|
[
"Multinomial logit",
"Informality",
"Mobility",
"Turkey, Europe and Central Asia",
"Labour market dynamics",
"Markov transition analysis",
"J21",
"J24",
"J40",
"J63",
"O17"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Informality is a salient phenomenon in developing country labor markets, thus has been addressed in several theoretical and empirical studies since the 1950s. In the early literature, most analyses hinged on static and aggregate approaches. Recently, the introduction of advanced panel data sets and techniques empowered more profound and thorough dynamic research. In particular, mobility analysis led to a paradigm shift in the labor market literature by providing the means for investigating the implications of and motivations for workers' transitions into and out of informal employment and the extent to which and how specific individual and job characteristics influence worker flows. In this study, we aim to expand the literature by implementing the mobility analysis to the Turkish labor market with a specific emphasis on informality.\n2. Data: The data used in this analysis is drawn from the Income and Living Conditions Survey (SILC), which has been conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) since 2006[1]. The novel, nationally representative, rich, panel survey provides detailed information on the employment status, social security coverage, working hours, labor and other income, demographic characteristics, living conditions, job characteristics and socioeconomic conditions of the subjects. The panel survey gathered data during each of the four years from 2006 to 2009 and, each panel member was interviewed every 12 months. Data compilation are performed in two stages. In the first stage, interviews are accomplished with the households who continue to live in the same address as in previous application and with the households who are fresh additions to the sample. In the second stage, interviews are accomplished with the households who changed location and with the households who leave their old households in order to form a new household.\n3. Markov transition analysis of worker flows in the Turkish labor market: As Bosch and Maloney (2007) claim: \"labor status mobility can be assumed as a process in which changes in the states occur randomly through time and probabilities of moves between particular states are governed by Markov transition matrices.\"\n4. MNL regresssion analysis: Identifying the variables related to the probability of worker flows is of paramount practical and policy-making interest. In order to characterize mobility patterns in more detail, we rely on MNL specification to model the labor market transitions. Indeed, MNL model offers a statistically rigorous way to predict the probability of each possible transition as a function of individual characteristics. Formally, a simple MNL model specifies that:(5)\n5. Concluding remarks: In this paper, we examine the mobility in the Turkish labor market with a specific emphasis on informality using the SILC panel data for the period between 2006 and 2009. In particular, we explore to what extent the Turkish evidence confirms the conventional labor market segmentation theory and characterize the labor mobility patterns and their underlying dynamics.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper, the first one to use individual-level Turkish panel data, examines the labor market transitions in Turkey along the formal/informal employment divide. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the limited body of empirical evidence available on mobility and informality in the Turkish labor market.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Toward this end, the authors use Turkish income and Living Conditions Survey panel data for 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 to compute the Markov transition probabilities of individuals moving across six different labor market states: formal-salaried (FS), informal-salaried, formal self-employed, informal self-employed, unemployed and inactive. In order to examine the nature of mobility patterns in more detail, the authors then estimate six multinomial logit models individually for each transition adopting a number of individual and employment characteristics as explanatory variables.\nFindings: The authors find evidence that mobility patterns are fairly similar across different time spans, the probability of remaining in initial state is higher than the probability of transition into another state for all the labor market states, except for unemployment, there is only very limited mobility into the FS state. Gender, education and sector of economic activity are observed to display significant effects on mobility patterns. The results reveal several relationships between the covariates and likelihood of variant transitions.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study provides a comprehensive and detailed diagnosis of the Turkish labor market. The market is observed to display a rather static structure throughout the period considered. The results indicate that a well recognition of underlying dynamics may help policy makers to produce various effective tools for addressing informality.\nOriginality/value: First study to analyze labor market mobility across formal/informal sectors using newly available panel data.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Market-facing strategic alliances in the fashion sector
|
[
"Corporate strategy",
"Strategic management",
"Strategic alliances",
"Fashion industry"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The fashion industry is characterised by intense and dynamic competition, as a result of which participants are obliged to develop innovative structures and processes supporting market growth, maintaining competitive advantage and exploiting new product sectors and consumers (Lewis and Hawksley, 1990; Birtwistle and Freathy, 1998; Moore and Fairhurst, 2003; Kay, 2006). Research has explored the corporate characteristics and competences contributing to the success of a fashion business, for example: corporate structure and financial management (Moore and Fernie, 1998; Djelic and Ainamo, 1999; Moore and Birtwistle, 2005; Hayes and Jones, 2006); product design and quality control policies (Robinson, 1958; Bloch, 1995; Cholachatpinyo et al., 2002; Dickerson and Hawley, 2005); supplier management and logistics (Bruce et al., 2004; Christopher et al., 2004; Doyle et al., 2006); distribution channel management control and presentation (Quinn and Doherty, 2000; Moore et al., 2005; Brun and Castelli, 2008; Cheng et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2010); and marketing capabilities in respect of pricing, positioning, and branding (King and Ring, 1980; Davies and Brooke, 1989; Moore and Fairhurst, 2003; Newman and Patel, 2004; Fratto et al., 2006). It is clear that success in this market demands the development of both \"back-of-house\" and \"market-facing\" competences contributing to the management of relationships extending up the supply chain to designer, supplier and manufacturer and down to distributor, retailer, and consumer. The diversity and nature of these competences and relationships mean that by necessity they may be beyond the scope of one organisation and hence fashion companies may wish to collaborate with other market participants in order to better realise emerging opportunities.Alliances and other forms of collaboration between companies are recognised as facilitating the success of firms operating in particularly competitive sectors (Draulans et al., 2003; Brucellaria, 1997; Drucker, 1996; Harbison and Pekar, 1994; Ernst and Bamford, 2005). Hence, it is no surprise to find that inter-firm co-operation of every kind is prevalent within the fashion industry (Ahn et al., 2010). Some examples include: Giorgio Armani and Emaar Properties creating \"Armani Hotels\" (IHT, 2005); LG and Prada marketing a line of cellphones (Williams, 2007); Benetton and Tata developing a retail network in India (Just Style, 2007); Diesel and Fiat launching a limited-edition car (Italiaspeed, 2008); and Swatch and Tiffany & Co., creating a range of watches. Speaking of the latter collaboration, Nicolas Hayek Jr (Chairman of Swatch Group) emphasised its commercial significance: \"it allows, without any financial capital transaction, the maximum utilization of resources of both partners, collaborating on design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and service\" (Deeny, 2007). Notwithstanding these examples and their evident utility as a tool for the development of new products and consumer segments within the market, research into the role of alliance within the fashion industry has been focussed primarily on functional \"back-of-house\" activities such as manufacturing, supply chain management and distribution (Bruce et al., 2004; Hines and McGowan, 2002, 2005; Adewole, 2005). This exploratory study investigates \"market-facing\" strategic alliances in the fashion industry by studying a specific case in context of the existing literature. It has three key objectives: to explore the motives causing alliance formation in the fashion industry, to understand the processes involved in the creation and management of such an alliance, and to identify factors defining the success of the alliance.\nLiterature: Historically companies have allied under formal structures with the aim of benefiting from synergetic co-operation (Draulans et al., 2003). Literature related to \"alliance\" dates to at least the 1960s in the work of Evan (1966) and Warren (1967). In tandem with the emergent commercial significance of strategic alliances, so the topic has attracted continued academic research attention.Definitions\nMethodology: Research position\nFindings: Findings are structured to reflect the objectives of the research: to explore the motives causing strategic alliance formation in the fashion industry, to understand the processes involved in the creation and management of such an alliance, and to identify factors defining its success. Direct quotes from interviewees are attributed to either FF or LH.Motives for alliance\nConclusions: The case study illustrates that motives for alliance in the fashion sector, in general terms, are similar to those within the wider business environment identified by Whipple and Gentry (2000). Specifically, strategic motives included each company's desire to expand by diversification: LH with an existing product within a new market and FF with a new product within an existing market. Both companies were motivated to grow specifically within the Chinese market, thereby deriving profits from that market but also generating competitive advantage over their rivals within it. Financial motives were evident in LH and FF's mutual desire to minimise financial risk in establishing the new operation, and their desire to save on market entry and product development costs, respectively. Technical motives, as defined in the literature were evident also, most obviously in FF's desire to benefit from LH's specialist competency in childrenswear design and manufacturing. Finally, managerial motives may be discerned in both companies' desire to minimise supplier base, build economies of scale, and reduce supply chain costs and product lead times.At a wide level, the case broadly fits the motives outlined by Whipple and Gentry (2000), however, they acknowledge that motives specific to particular industries may be considered separate from generic motives. This research suggests that the distinctive demands of the fashion industry merit the addition of a category of motives specific to them. The requirements of the fashion sector were identified in the introduction as including corporate structure and financial management, product design and quality control, supplier management and logistics, channel management control and presentation, and marketing capabilities such as positioning and branding. Clearly while some of these (e.g. management structure, financial management and logistics) may be classified as financial or technical motives identified by Whipple and Gentry (2000), there remain motives identified in this research which are difficult to classify: the desire to benefit from a partner's expertise in retailing; experience in building a compelling brand, ability to communicate effectively with consumers, and ability to respond quickly to dynamic consumer demand with attractive products. None of these skills, evident in this case and of particular significance within the fashion industry are adequately explored within Whipple and Gentry's (2000) technical or managerial motives. It may be concluded that \"fashion industry-specific\" motives for alliance may exist outside the generic motives identified by Whipple and Gentry (2000). The findings of this research suggest that these are evident in both \"up-stream\", back-of-house competences (such as design, product development, and manufacturing) and \"down-stream\", market-facing competences (such as in branding, marketing communication, and sale-channel presentation). Figure 3 encapsulates these fashion industry-specific motives alongside the generic motives for strategic alliance as identified by Whipple and Gentry (2000). While there exists some cross-over between these (especially, the \"back-of-house\" competences) and the existing \"technical motives\", the case shows them as being sufficiently distinctive and specific to the fashion industry to merit their classification as a separate group of motives.The case showed that the implementation of an alliance within the fashion sector broadly followed practice evident within the wider literature. In terms of partner selection, each company selected the other primarily on basis of their complimentary expertise, resources and experience combined with their similar strategic goals. This selection was informed by their prior experience of collaboration and the informal relationships between senior managers, which in turn engendered trust between the two parties. Additionally, in relation to the marketing motives for alliance outlined above, partner selection was also informed by each party's interest in the skills of the other in relation to retailing, marketing and market responsiveness. This last point may be especially significant within the fashion sector; while the need for communication between allies is acknowledged within the literature, the particular characteristics of the fashion industry demand the need for efficient distribution and effective and constant feedback from the market; hence communication between the partners of a fashion industry alliance may assume special importance.In assessing the factors contingent to the success of an alliance within the fashion industry, again similarities with the generic literature are identified. First, complementarity of resources and goals were deemed important within the case; FF contributed its commercial skills and experience in China while LH contributed design and manufacturing skills; but both shared a similar strategic vision of realising growth in China. As indicated above, their prior association was important in engendering good relations, enhancing communication, and establishing trust between parties.In general terms, this case suggests that strategic alliances within the fashion sector follow the existing literature grounded in wider business enterprises. However, the distinctive characteristics of the fashion industry cause some distinguishing features to be identified. Most importantly, the significance of branding, marketing and retailing skills in the exchange of resources between fashion companies is emphasised. Communication and effective information flow between the partners during the implementation and management of the joint venture is perceived as critical for the success of the collaboration. Also, an effective feedback from fashion consumers to the partners is critically important. Exploring the motives for alliance, it is apparent that some of the skills characterised as important within the fashion sector are not specifically defined in Whipple and Gentry's (2001) model. As a result a new motive category, fashion industry-specific motives, is suggested to emphasise the importance of marketing and retailing skills in the establishment of a joint venture between fashion companies. Summarising the above, a three-stage model for the application of strategic alliances in the fashion industry is provided (Figure 4). This encapsulates the motives for alliance (including fashion-specific motives), the requirement for partners to share complimentary resources and skills bonded by trust, and finally the necessity for ongoing communication between partners and with the marketplace. The proposed model presents the characteristic elements of the fashion sector to constitute a model of alliance within the industry.Limitations, implications, and further research\n",
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to investigate market-facing fashion industry strategic alliances in the fashion industry by studying a specific case in context of the existing literature. It has three key objectives: to explore the motives causing strategic alliance formation in the fashion industry; to understand the processes involved in the creation and management of such an alliance, and to identify factors defining the success of the alliance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Case study methodology was employed studying an instance of market-facing strategic alliance in the fashion sector.\nFindings: - It was found that while issues generic within the literature may be discerned in instances of strategic alliance in the fashion industry, industry-specific factors, especially competence in marketing, branding and retailing, impact on the motives for alliance, partner selection and alliance implementation and alliance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The usual limitations of any case study apply.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides an account of the motives for processes affecting and outcomes of strategic alliance in the fashion industry and promoting student, academic and practitioner understanding of the topic. The paper also provides a model for the management of such an alliance.\nOriginality/value: - The paper offers insights into a contemporary phenomenon of interest to both practitioners and academics and provides detail on the motives and processes contingent to the successful management of strategic alliances within the fashion sector.\n",
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] |
Facebook practices for business communication among fashion retailers
|
[
"Word-of-mouth",
"Social networks",
"Marketing",
"Communities",
"Fashion retailing",
"E-commerce"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Nowadays, the total global online population is 42.4 percent of the world's population[1]. Given the pace at which technologies keep evolving and the emergence of new media in the last decade, it seems interesting to observe how companies are integrating the new communication tools in their communication strategies. There is tremendous global competency, and it becomes necessary that information and communications technologies act as differentiating elements for companies (Cosquer and Ohayon-Dekel, 2009). The competitive advantage is, therefore, the correct exploitation of the communication tools. Organizations must develop reliable and speedy electronic information systems to establish relational norms and routines for online communication (Chewar et al., 2005). These questions are so prevalent that companies, realizing the importance of speed in the dissemination of information allowed by this social media phenomenon, are taking action, and adapting their communication models and marketing strategies to the new changes in technology and society.\n2. Word-of-mouth (WOM): creating and enhancing brand community: Marketing strategies and theories change to accommodate markets change. WOMM has been broadly studied in recent years. Known as social media marketing or viral marketing, WOMM is defined as the intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications by professional techniques (Kozinets et al., 2010).\n3. Facebook for business communication among fashion retailers: Technology developments and online social media sites allow richer ways to present ourselves and interact with others through pictures, videos and avatars, whether at home, work or on the move, resulting in a communication in an unprecedented scale. Its mediums are numerous and varied including blogs, company-sponsored discussion boards and chat rooms, consumer product or service rating websites, forums, internet discussion boards and the most relevant on in this paper: social networking sites (SNSs). These ways of communication are a key element influencing consumer behavior, awareness, information acquisition, opinions, attitudes, purchase behavior and post-purchase communication and evaluation (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). Such great influence can be explained as due to the ability transferred by social media to companies to connect with their customers through this means, allowing them and other current or potential stakeholders to get back to the companies and to talk to one another, raising the current hot issue of conversation taking over corporate dialogue. This is the main reason why social media are essential tools for companies to include in their communication strategies. While companies cannot control the content of the messages between customers, they can influence the conversations that consumers have with one another. They should not ignore the power of social media, since it has become the way consumers obtain and disseminate information about products and services, becoming the most trustworthy source of information in a model of stakeholder-sponsored communications.\n4. Methodology and explanatory factors: 4.1 Measurements\n5. Results and discussion: 5.1 Descriptive statistics\n6. Conclusions and implications: The primary objectives of this study were: to quantify the use and range of Facebook as a WOMM tool; to forecast areas of growth and opportunity for fashion retailers; to identify challenges for the industry; and to establish a benchmark for future measurement. This research provided an assessment on corporate Facebook use by international leading fashion retailers. The main aspect taken into account was the ability to create brand community through this WOM enhancer: communication activity and audience engagement thanks to this social media platform. Regarding the first aspect, communication activity, the objective was to identify whether international fashion retailers used Facebook as a communication channel and, if so, to assess their activity and audience levels, possible relations with retailers' size, kind of content they normally post and most frequently used media types. The second aspect, audience engagement, included the analysis of audiences' reactions measured by the number of likes, comments and shares to the posts published by the company on its corporate Facebook page. This research also aimed to determine which media and content types generate more user engagement and which other factors, such as activity level, size of the audience or the size of the company, influence engagement of activity on Facebook.\n7. Limitations and future study: Interpretation of our results must conform to the nature of the sample used. Our sample analyzed the top 46 fashion retailers according to Modaes.es, and our results provide a general overview of the marketing strategies of the industry leaders. It would be interesting to fragment our results by product categories, type of potential customer or brands' price segment in order to enlighten more accurate strategies depending on the type of company. Additionally, further research should be made in different time frames in order to be able to generalize and build year-long strategies, including sales seasons. Longitudinal studies could be carried out to follow up on these strategies, given the dynamism social media tools provide in this sector.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The present study examines relationship building of major players in fashion retailing through social media. Using the theories of word-of-mouth marketing and brand community as theoretical frameworks, this paper analyses the impact of social media marketing in creating brand community. To that end, the use of the popular networking site Facebook was studied. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent and main purposes of the usage of this communication channel and to examine companies' activity on their Facebook pages as well as to observe their audiences and the effect in their audiences' engagement. Additionally, this paper analyses the main type of content and the most commonly used type of media.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Research was based on a content analysis performed on 2,326 Facebook posts; a sample of 46 international leading companies in the fashion industry was analyzed in the time period between March 1 and May 31, 2015.\nFindings: Facebook audience is positively related to retailer's size. However, audiences in this sector are not related to the level of activity of the retailers' Facebook pages. Audience engagement and participation in fashion retailer's Facebook sites is higher in small retailers. The main content of the Facebook pages of top fashion retailers is marketing, photo albums and videos being the most popular drivers of this means.\nOriginality/value: No previous research analyzed fashion retailers use of Facebook sites. This study examines the variables size and engagement of fashion retailers' audience on Facebook according to retailers' size and activity on their corporate profiles.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Longitudinal benchmarking studies in operations management: lessons learned
|
[
"Finland",
"Benchmarking",
"Operations management",
"Research work",
"Lessons learned",
"Best practices",
"Longitudinal study"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1.Introduction: A wide variety of research methodologies is used in operations management (OM). These research methodologies depend on the phenomena in hand and the research strategy used (Groom, 2009, p. 67), while even the continent may sometimes be a factor (Drejer et al., 1998) - for example, case research is less common in the USA.Research methodologies can be classified as quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative research has normally been considered as a positivistic approach, and in some cases may use a deductive approach, whereas qualitative research is related to constructivism, interpretation and perception. Thus, qualitative research may be either positivist or phenomenological (Groom, 2009, pp. 66-7).The qualitative methods used in OM focus on understanding the research objective or phenomena by defining, collecting, and analyzing non-quantitative data. The most commonly used qualitative methods are surveys, action research and case studies. This paper will focus on case studies.Case studies can be divided into cross-sectional, multiple or single case studies. Cases studies - whether single or multiple - are usually conducted only once and thus the data is based only on one point in time. Similarly, in the OM area, quantitative studies base their data on one measurement point, with correlations and conclusions being drawn on this basis. In quantitative studies, the target is to exclude the surrounding factors and to study only a few phenomena at a time.Eisenhardt (1989) pointed out that in multiple cases the ability to replicate and extend among individual cases is a very powerful tool to create theory. Voss et al. (2002) stated that case research \"has consistently been one of the most powerful research methodologies in operations management, particularly in building new theory\". Regarding data collection, Eisenhardt (1989) stated that \"case studies typically combine data collection methods such as archives, interviews, questionnaires and observations\". Voss et al. (2002) pointed out the challenges in conducting case research: \"Case research is time consuming, it needs skilled interviewers and care is needed in drawing conclusions from a limited set of cases\".Case studies can be used for different purposes: exploring the territory, theory building, theory testing and theory extension (Voss et al., 2002; Handfield and Melnyk, 1998). Case studies are good in the theory building stage in all questions concerning what, how and why (Meredith, 1998). Longitudinal case studies are important in exploring new territory, where the research questions concern what is happening and what are the key issues (Handfield and Melnyk, 1998; Stuart et al., 2002; Voss et al., 2002).Voss et al. (2002) divided case selection into four categories: single cases, multiple cases, retrospective cases and longitudinal cases.1.1Purpose of this study and research questions\n2 Benchmarking and longitudinal studies: Slack et al. (2010, pp. 4 and 6) define OM as follows: \"Operations management is about how organizations produce goods and services [...]objective: to make profit from producing products and services\". Researchers have created several tools to evaluate the performance of operations. Benchmarking has become one of the most commonly used tools to compare two or more companies in terms of their performance, and to set achievable and realistic, but challenging, goals for operations (Slack et al., 2010; Tucker et al., 1987).2.1 Benchmarking\n3 Research methodology and data: Behind this research is one of the largest benchmarking studies comparing manufacturing sites - MiE, conducted by the London Business School in close co-operation with IBM UK (Hanson et al., 1994; Hanson and Voss, 1995; Voss et al., 1995) and later several business schools across Europe (Table II). The MiE study sample comprised over 750 manufacturing sites across different industries and countries in Europe (Hanson and Voss, 1995; Collins et al., 1996). The research teams and number of manufacturing sites are shown in Table II.The study done in Finland in 1993 as part of the MiE study was repeated in 2004 and 2010 under the name Made in Finland (MiF). Finland is the only country where the study was repeated with the same sample to form a longitudinal study.3.1 The data and the sample\n4 The study and the results: Several important side-findings came out of the longitudinal benchmarking MiF study, which are well worth taking into account in conducting longitudinal research. These findings are shown under the categories listed in Table I in the literature section, supplemented by additional observations (further MiF remarks), which could not be placed in any of the categories mentioned in Table I:* What makes a longitudinal study?* Why longitudinal studies? - role/meaning/opportunities.* Challenges of longitudinal studies.* Data quality - sampling and interviewing.* Documentation.* Further MiF remarks.4.1 What makes a longitudinal study?\n5. Conclusions: This paper has reviewed the literature on methodological theories in OM and benchmarking. Longitudinal studies are rare in OM, even though in other research fields they form an elementary part of research and have proved to be valuable.The purpose of this paper is to report the findings, from a methodological and practical point of view, of one longitudinal study conducted in the years 1993, 2004 and 2010. This study confirms some of the previous findings in benchmarking studies, but an interesting point is that companies can also be too pessimistic regarding their results or how advanced they are in implementing some practices.It was found that it is necessary to pay special attention to disappeared units in order to avoid biased or even totally wrong results. It is also important to carefully prepare for interviews and to bear in mind that the answers might depend on various factors such as, for example, the time of year.It is also important to mention - because longitudinal studies are so rare in OM - that documentation and the physical ways to store all research material in a retrievable way is most critical, and will decisively affect the reliability and validity of studies.Depending on the time gap between studies, some questions may become obsolete or other important issues may arise, which is quite normal in OM. These can be asked retrospectively, especially if they are structural or strategy-based questions. However, it is very time-consuming or impossible to obtain reliable numeric data from the past.With snap-shot cross-sectional studies it is possible to find general correlations between the implementation of certain practices and operational performance. With longitudinal studies these correlations can be either proved or brought into question. On the other hand longitudinal case studies sometimes reveal unexpected positive results that may be partly contrary to mainstream theories or contemporary practices and they may also suggest that there is a limit to how much a best practice can boost performance - a conclusion that is not found in normal snap-shot studies.Finally, it might always be a good idea to plan for the repetition of studies. It does not involve more effort, but might bring a lot more value in the future.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities and pitfalls of longitudinal studies in the field of operations management (OM).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A longitudinal study conducted in Finland was analyzed from the methodological point of view. In the theoretical part, a framework for analyses was created by studying the literature of longitudinal studies within and without the OM field.\nFindings: - Longitudinal studies are important in revealing root-cause effects. They are particularly important in generating new ideas and theories and in questioning old ones. However, longitudinal studies are somewhat difficult to conduct and some unexpected challenges may arise, such as the effect of technology development on data retrieval.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The analyses in this study are based on the data obtained in a longitudinal study conducted in the years 1993, 2004 and 2010. The sample in the longitudinal study is quite small for real quantitative statistical analysis, and therefore the conclusions made here are only indicative. However, the purpose of this study is to give some hints and guidance, and thus the lessons learned are valuable.\nOriginality/value: - There are only a few studies describing methodological issues in longitudinal studies in the field of OM, and most of these studies are purely theoretical and do not refer to real experiences. This appears to be one of the first studies describing real experiences from a longitudinal study.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Service personalization and loyalty
|
[
"Customer loyalty",
"Customers",
"Customer satisfaction"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: Consumers have relationships with service providers, and these relationships can be simple and straightforward, or complex and emotional (e.g. Peppers and Rogers, 2004). This paper explores the effect of personalizing service on the relationship. In particular, we ask, \"What is the effect of service personalization on loyalty?\"For our purposes here, we will define \"service personalization\" as any creation or adjustment of a service to fit the individual requirements of a customer. This can be as simple as a fast-food restaurant allowing a customer to \"hold the mayonnaise,\" to a textbook publisher allowing a university professor to create a custom textbook from disparate sources, to a bank constructing a large custom loan package for an important customer. It includes the notion of entirely individualized services, as well as \"mass-customized\" (Gilmore and Pine, 2000) services.We argue that service personalization improves loyalty through several routes. First, properly-done personalization of a service should obviously improve customer satisfaction, which is a primary antecedent of loyalty. Services that fit the customer's needs better should naturally be more satisfactory than one-size-fits-all. In addition, we will argue, personalized services may encourage the customer to believe that the firm is benevolent towards him or her, increasing trust, which is an antecedent of loyalty. After all, one explanation for the extra effort involved in personalization is the attribution of benevolent motives to the firm. Finally, we will argue for a direct effect of personalization on loyalty, arising from sources such as the tendency of consumers to view personalized services as difficult to replace with another provider. Hence, service personalization should normally improve loyalty.Loyalty and its causes\nIntroducing personalization into models of loyalty: Effects of personalized service\nApplication to the banking industry: Data\nResults: Table II shows model explanatory power (through determination coefficient, R2) of the equations explaining customer satisfaction, loyalty and trust, both in the base and the revised model. For the latter model the R2 for personalization is also shown. From the results presented in Table II it can be seen that the revised model shows a higher explanatory power for customer satisfaction, loyalty and trust, when compared with the base model. The average determination coefficient for satisfaction is 73.4 per cent in the revised model, which represents an increase of 1.9 percentage points when compared to the base model. When considering the individual brands, the R2 for satisfaction, in the revised model, increases between -0.1 and 5.9 percentage points. The minimum of R2 for satisfaction in the base model is 67.2 per cent and for the revised model is 71.1 per cent; the maximum value is 75.3 per cent and 77.8 per cent for both models, respectively.For loyalty, R2 is increased by -0.2 to 3.3 percentage points. The minimum R2 is 50.4 per cent in the base model and 50.8 per cent in the revised model. The maximum R2 are 71.4 per cent and 72.7 per cent for each model, respectively. For the revised model, the average R2 for loyalty is 64.8 per cent, representing an increase of 1.3 percentage points when compared to the base model.In the revised model trust presents a determination coefficient of 71.0 per cent (more 2.2. points than for the base model). The results obtained for the ten banks show that the R2 for trust increases between -0.3 and 5.3 percentage points when compared to the base model. The minimum of R2 for trust in the base model is 59.3 per cent and for the revised model is 64.6 per cent; the maximum value is 73.8 per cent and 75.4 per cent for both models, respectively.The R2 values for personalization are generally lower than the ones observed for satisfaction and loyalty (54.4 per cent on average), which is easily understandable since in our model personalization is exclusively explained by communication. Nevertheless, results clearly confirm that communication is a non-negligible contributing construct for creating the perception of personalization.Globally, results show that, for the banking sector, in addition to the antecedents already considered in the base model, personalization still adds some explanatory power to customer satisfaction, loyalty and trust[3] These increases tend to be more significant for satisfaction and trust than for loyalty. Note also that banks obtaining the lowest R2 for satisfaction, loyalty and trust in the base model tend to show more significant increases in the explanatory capability. One interesting result is that the revised model tends to have a lower variability in the explanatory capability among different banks.The explanatory power of personalization is also confirmed by the effect sizes[4] for evaluating the predictive importance of each determinant of customer satisfaction, loyalty and trust (see Table III). It can be easily observed that personalization always shows significant effect sizes for prediction of those three constructs. In fact, it is consistently the second highest effect size, with only image being larger when explaining satisfaction, only satisfaction being larger when explaining loyalty, and only communication being larger when explaining trust.Table IV shows Cronbach Alphas, communalities (H2) and redundancy coefficients (F2) for the new variable personalization included in the revised model, by bank[5]. These measures can be used as indicators of the validity and predictive relevance of the model (Nunnally, 1978; Lohmoler, 1989). In all cases latent variable communalities are significantly higher than 0.70, indicating that the variance captured by each latent variable is significantly larger than variance due to measurement error, and thus demonstrating a high convergent validity of the construct. The alpha coefficients confirm this conclusion showing values always higher than 0.79. The redundancy coefficients also tend to confirm the quality of the model. The average alpha coefficient for personalization is 0.819, the average communality is 0.736 and the average redundancy coefficient is 0.400.Discriminant validity is accessed determining whether:* each latent variable shares more variance with its own measurement variables than with other constructs; and* each measurement variable is more correlated with its own latent variable than with other constructs (Chin, 1998).For that, we have compared measurement variables' communalities with the squared correlations between their own construct and other constructs in the model. A low percentage of latent variable squared correlations exceeding measurement variables communalities tend to confirm discriminant validity. Also we have compared the correlations of measurements variables with their own latent variables and with all the other constructs in the model. If discriminant validity exists we should expect to find a low percentage of correlations with other constructs exceeding the correlation with the directly connected latent variable (Table V). In fact, regarding the first criterion there are no violations for personalization, thus confirming a strong validity of the construct. Also for the second criteria only one violation was found. It regards the observed variable \"My bank offers me products and services that satisfy my specific needs\", that for one of the ten banks was more correlated with the communication construct than with personalization. So, results regarding this criterion still confirm the validity of the personalization construct.Figures 2 and 4 present the estimates and t values for path coefficients for the base and revised models. Dashed lines represent non-significant impacts at a 5 per cent significance level.Regarding the estimation of path coefficients involving the new construct personalization, it can be concluded that:* In our model personalization is only explained by communication. The effect of communication on personalization is significant and high (4.2), thus confirming H2. In fact, this is the most significant effect originating with communication. The effect of communication on trust is also impressive (2.4), but smaller. The effects of communication on loyalty and on satisfaction are lower, but of the same magnitude (1.1 on satisfaction and 0.8 on loyalty).* Personalization has three direct effects, all significant, on satisfaction, loyalty and trust. The most significant effect of personalization is on trust (1.2 for the banking sector). The effects of personalization on loyalty and on satisfaction are also significant and of the same magnitude (1.0). Thus, hypotheses H1a, H1b, and H1c are confirmed.In the base model loyalty is directly explained by image, communication, satisfaction and complaints. The revised model adds personalization. This causes a decrease in the estimated effects from communication, satisfaction and trust on loyalty. The impacts of image (non-significant) and complaints remain almost unchanged and satisfaction continues to be the construct with the highest direct effect on loyalty in the revised model. Communication, personalization and trust appear to have similar effects on customer loyalty (0.8, 1.0 and 0.8 respectively) that were higher than the effects of image or complaints.Satisfaction is directly explained by image, expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, communication and personalization. With the exception of expectations all the predicted constructs showed significant effects on satisfaction. The introduction of personalization causes a decrease in the estimated effects of communication, image and perceived value on satisfaction. Among these, the most significant decrease was observed from communication. The impacts from expectations and perceived quality remained almost unchanged. Communication, image, perceived quality and the new construct personalization seem to have similar effects on customer loyalty (1.1, 1.3, 1.3 and 1.0 respectively) that are significantly higher than the ones originating in expectations or perceived value.Trust is directly explained by image, communication and personalization. All the determinants showed significant impacts on trust. The introduction of personalization causes important decreases in the estimated effects of image and communication. Communication continues to be the construct with the highest direct effect on trust in the revised model (2.4). Personalization presents a significantly smaller effect (1.2), but higher than the one originated by image (0.8).Tables VI and VII show the total model effects (direct plus indirect effects) for each model (origins of the effects in rows and destinations in columns).While in the base model satisfaction showed the most important total effect on customer loyalty, in the revised model results show that satisfaction is no longer the most important variable for explaining loyalty. The total effect of satisfaction on loyalty is (for revised model), 2.6; lower than the effect of communication (3.2). The new variable personalization also shows an important effect on loyalty (1.7). All the other variables already included in the base model show significantly lower effects. Among these, perceived quality and trust are the ones that present the most important total effect on customer loyalty in the revised model (0.8). With the exception of communication, all the constructs included in the base model seem to lose importance in explaining customer loyalty. Image and customer satisfaction are the ones whose total effects showed a more pronounced reduction. On the other hand, expectations and complaints are the ones that almost were not affected by the introduction of personalization. These results seem to show that in the base model the lack of consideration of personalization tended to overestimate the importance of other dimensions as image, satisfaction, perceived quality and trust in the explanation of loyalty. In particular, due to the significant decrease of the image effect, one might conclude that part of the effect of personalization on loyalty could be mistakenly attributed to corporate image. Also, the effect of communication seemed to be underestimated as a result of not accounting for its indirect effects operating through personalization.Image has the highest total impact on customer satisfaction (2.0) in the base model, followed by perceived quality and communication. In the revised model, the variables showing the most important effects on satisfaction are communication (1.9), perceived quality (1.6) and personalization (1.0). While the total effects of expectations and perceived quality are not affected by the introduction of personalization, this is not the case for perceived value and image, which seem to lose importance. This is particularly notable for image, whose effect on customer satisfaction show a very important decrease between the base model and revised model. Image, in the base model, seemed to be the most important determinant of satisfaction, while in the new model it appears as the determinant with the least significant effect. Once again, these results seem to show that in the base model the lack of consideration of personalization tended to overestimate the importance of image, and in some degree of perceived value in the explanation of satisfaction. As noted for explaining customer loyalty, the effect of communication on satisfaction seemed to be underestimated as a result of not accounting for its indirect effects operating through personalization.Finally, when approaching the explanation of trust, it can be seen that communication shows the highest total effect in both models. In the base model the second most important variable seemed to be image, but in the revised model this is surpassed by the effect of personalization. In fact, only the effects from image and communication show significant differences between the two models. Once again, this change has opposite signals. The base model seems to overestimate the effect of image and underestimate the effect of communication on trust.\nDiscussion: Theoretical effects of personalization\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To investigate the effect of service personalization on loyalty, and to measure some of the psychological dynamics of the process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Structural equation modeling.\nFindings: - It is shown that the effect of service personalization on loyalty exists, but that the effect is not all direct. Personalization works through improving service satisfaction and trust. Personalization and improved communication act together in such a way that they account for the variance in loyalty that would be otherwise explained by corporate image.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Data, though comprising a very large probability sample, are from one economic sector in one European country.\nPractical implications: - Service personalization is a powerful way to retain customers in its own right. In addition, the other results show that personalized service can partially replace the effects of communication and corporate image on loyalty. This argues that personalized service can be a powerful addition to mass communications.\nOriginality/value: - Growing conventional wisdom in marketing argues that customer loyalty is responsible for large fractions of the profits of many service businesses. Constructs such as satisfaction, trust, customer collaboration, customer interaction, firm image, personalization, learning relationships, and so forth, have all been proposed as intermediate objectives, or as tools to build loyalty. Yet, to date, only some of these constructs have been measured and shown to be related to loyalty. This paper fills a portion of the empirical gap by showing that service personalization, indeed, affects loyalty, above and beyond the other explanatory variables.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Labor market consequences of accounting fraud
|
[
"Boards of Directors",
"Accounting",
"Fraud",
"Corporate governance",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Anglo-Saxon corporate governance model relies on a single-tier board where executive and non-executive directors collaborate to provide oversight of major corporate decisions1. Effective governance requires that a board is well-designed and that directors' individual and collective responsibilities are clearly established. It is equally important, however, that directors have incentives to perform their fiduciary duties. While much research has focused on improving board structure and defining director responsibilities, we know relatively little about director incentives. One approach to understanding director incentives is to examine the relation between \"on-the-job\" performance and labor market opportunities. Coles and Hoi (2003) summarizes this argument succinctly: \"If the labor market, either internal to the firm or externally, provides opportunities that managers and directors care about, and the availability of those opportunities is sensitive to 'on-the-job' performance, then the incentives of managers and directors will be aligned, at least somewhat, with shareholder interests. On the other hand, if performance has little connection to future opportunities, then the incentive effects of the labor market are minimal and shareholders must rely on other mechanisms to align the incentives of managers and directors with shareholder interests.\"In this study, we use accounting fraud to examine the vitality and operation of the labor market for directors. Accounting fraud is a rare case of governance failure where \"on-the-job\" performance is relatively well-defined - all board members share at least some responsibility. If the revelation of accounting fraud tarnishes the reputation of incumbent directors then a loss of subsequent opportunities in the labor market may result. Loss of board seats subsequent to accounting fraud may therefore provide a glimpse into the operation of the labor market for directors. We contribute by providing fresh insights on the following research questions:* Do executive and non-executive directors face similar labor market penalties?* Are executive directors treated by markets as a homogenous group?Or, do executive directors who are top managers face stiffer penalties than other executive directors?Our sample contains 171 incumbent directors in 17 firms in the US accused of high-profile accounting fraud during 2000-2001. We compare each director's board service in the year prior to the revelation of fraud and three years thereafter. Compared to non-executive directors, executive directors are more than twice as likely to lose own firm (i.e. accused firm) board seat and at least five times as likely to lose at least one external directorship. Furthermore, these are no differences in penalties between top executives such as Chief Executive Officers and other lower-level executives such as Senior Vice Presidents.To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to report evidence of asymmetric penalties in labor market consequences between executive and non-executive directors in cases of accounting fraud. The asymmetry in labor market penalties is consistent with the notion that executive directors are quite influential in corporate financial audits and reporting - so much so that even those executive directors who are not directly responsible for the firm's financial reporting are held equally accountable. This implies that the incentives of executive directors, compared to those of non-executive directors, are more closely aligned with shareholder interests. Our evidence concerning ex-post settling up (Fama and Jensen, 1983) in labor markets builds on similar evidence in bankruptcy (Gilson, 1989, 1990), dividend cuts (Kaplan and Reishsus, 1990), stock and accounting performance (Brickley et al., 1999), state anti-takeover law opt-out decision (Coles and Hoi, 2003) and earnings restatement (Desai et al., 2006; Srinivasan, 2005).\nMotivation and background: Overview and rationale for the US sample\nHypotheses: Executive directors and non-executive directors have different but equally important roles in financial reporting. By being closer to the locus of control, executive directors may be in a position to influence accounting outcomes. In contrast, non-executive directors have a heightened monitoring role. Both parties are at fault in case of corporate governance failures such as accounting fraud. However, it is debatable whether they should be penalized in the same manner.Let us first examine incentives to commit accounting fraud to determine the category of director likely held more responsible. Since the early 1990s, US corporations began to pay executives with significant equity-based incentives. Erickson et al. (2008) note a negative effect of this practice: it gives executives a perverse incentive to commit accounting fraud. Accounting fraud is a means to manipulate stock prices. Gerety et al. (2001) note that non-executive directors have also received equity-based compensation in recent years; however, the magnitude of such compensation dwarfs in comparison to executive compensation. Executive directors therefore have a greater incentive to manipulate financial statements and commit fraud.As gatekeepers, non-executive directors have the responsibilities to mitigate executive influence in financial reporting. The fact that they often come from other firms, if not from other industries, might contribute to a lack of firm-specific knowledge and make it difficult for non-executive directors to perform their fiduciary duties. For this reason, prior to Sarbanes-Oxley, it was uncommon for non-executive directors to challenge management assumptions regarding accounting statements. This created an environment where executive directors had both the incentive and the ability to commit accounting fraud. Accordingly, we expect markets to assign greater culpability to executive directors compared to non-executive directors.H1. Following revelation of accounting fraud, executive directors when compared to non-executive directors face a higher probability of losing own-firm directorship as well as external directorships.Next, we consider an executive director's position in the firm. Executive directors typically include current members of the top executive team and hold titles such as CEO, President or Chairman of the Board. However, it is not uncommon to find one or more other executive directors on boards. These other executive directors typically include retired top executives of the firm and current managers who hold titles such as Chief Finance Officer, Senior Vice President, Vice President, and so on. We refer to the former group as top-executive directors and the latter as other-executive directors.What is the role of the second category of executive directors, the other-executive directors? These directors may be pawns, serving as rubber stamp and providing additional supporting voice to top-executive directors. On the other hand, they may serve to bridge the information gap non-executive directors face, enhancing the oversight function of boards. Given these conflicting possibilities, it is important to understand the incentives they face. A natural but unaddressed question is: what penalties do other-executive directors face if they fail to provide proper oversight? Do they face penalties similar to those faced by top-executive directors?H2. Relatively higher penalties are incurred by top-executive directors compared to other executive directors.\nSample and variables: Our sample is derived from the 2002 Forbes Corporate Scandal Sheet and the Accounting Scandal page on Wikipedia. Both sources list firms involved in high-profile corporate malfeasance during 2001-2002. From this list we excluded firms for which we could not obtain proxy statements (five firms), firms that filed for bankruptcy (four firms) within three years of the accusation, and firms involved in non-accounting scandals (four firms). Our final sample contains 17 firms.We use corporate filings and litigation releases from the SEC as well as news articles from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones News Retrieval services to obtain in-depth knowledge about the nature of the alleged fraudulent accounting activities. We find that almost all firms (16 of 17 firms) were subject to SEC accounting and auditing enforcement action, many (10 of 17 firms) were also under investigation for alleged criminal activities by the Department of Justice, regional US Attorney offices and/or district attorneys. A majority of the firms charged by the SEC (11 of 16 firms) subsequently settled the SEC enforcement action by agreeing to pay penalties and to perform remedial undertakings. In one case (Bristol-Myers Squibb), the settlement amounted to $150 million. Furthermore, we are able to verify that eight executives in five firms pleaded guilty to or were convicted on fraud, conspiracy and/or violations of security laws; in all these cases the executive faced multiple-year prison sentences. Content analysis of the SEC actions and lawsuits indicates that outside board members are seldom targeted in lawsuits or SEC investigations.Our investigation focuses on executives and non-executives serving as 'incumbent' directors of these 17 firms at the time of the scandal. This year -1 proxy statement identifies 196 such directors and their various directorships in listed firms. Following Srinivasan (2005) and others, we exclude 25 directors who are confirmed as dead or retired within three years to leave a final sample of 171 directors. Of the sample of 171 directors, 17 are current or retired CEO, president, chairman of the board at year -1. In addition, 22 directors held positions as other officers (e.g. CFO, COO, vice president and etc.). Thus, the final sample contains 39 (17+22) executive directors and 132 non-executive directors. The year +3 date proxy is used to determine director turnover as well as changes in external directorships.Table I reports sample statistics using year -1 data from COMPUSTAT PCPlus and stock return data from CRSP. On average, the firms recorded net sales of $32 billion indicating that the sample contained mostly large firms. On average, there were about 12 board members per firm of which 75 percent are non-executives. We verify that all firms in the sample had a standing audit committee, which, on average, consisted of five non-executive directors. No executive director served in the audit committee. Finally, sample firms lost more than half their market value in the year of the scandal.\nAccounting fraud and director labor market consequences: Incidence of own-firm director turnover\nConclusion and discussion: We track 171 incumbent directors in 17 firms accused of accounting fraud during 2000-2001. We assess labor market penalties for these directors. We obtain data on board membership before and after the revelation of fraud to determine whether they lose own-firm board seats and whether they lose external directorships. Overall, we find that all categories of directors lose own firm board seats as well as external directorships. Compared to non-executive directors, executive directors are more than twice as likely to lose own-firm board seats and at least five times as likely to lose at least one external directorship. Further, we find that both top-executive directors and other-executive directors face the same, stiff penalty in accounting fraud.We find that almost 77 percent of incumbent executive directors have lost (own-firm) employment within three years of the fraud revelation. The high turnover rate almost certainly coincides with a low probability of subsequent executive level employment in other firms; we confirm this by searching for these managers in the \"management roster\" of Standard and Poor's 1,500 firms. In addition to losing corporate employment, it is quite conceivable that prospects for other forms of employment are also significantly affected. At current rates of top executive compensation, with median pay in large firms exceeding $6.5 million (Lublin, 2007), our findings suggest that executives face penalties adding to tens of millions of dollars in present value terms.These findings indicate that the labor market for directors could be a vital component of the US-style corporate governance environment. Specifically, well-functioning labor markets might provide board members, particularly executive directors, with significant incentives to perform their fiduciary duties. Given the widespread evidence of earnings management in many countries, these results are relevant to the global theory of corporate governance. For instance, future research can add to our understanding by examining the link between earnings management and labor market penalties in various jurisdictions.Prior studies on adverse consequences of accounting improprieties (fraud or restatements) focused on top executives. We are the first to compare labor market consequences on various categories of executives including those who hold titles such as Chief Finance Officer, Senior Vice President, Vice President and so on. We find equal and negative consequences in this latter category of executives. These labor market consequences could potentially offset the perverse incentives stemming from large equity-based awards. Perhaps this is why, despite rhetoric to the contrary, corporate scandals did not get out of control in the US.Corporate governance may be viewed as a set of mechanisms to safeguard and promote the interests of stockholders. Our evidence suggests that director labor markets serve as a vital cog in the US corporate governance framework. A natural extension is to analyze managerial and director labor markets in other countries. For instance, one might question whether the functioning of these labor markets is dependent on a country's legal environment and investor protection. There is preliminary evidence that these labor markets may be ineffective in economies with extremely low levels of investor protection. Using a sample of China-listed firms accused of fraud during 1990-2002, Sun and Zhang (2006) find that many top executives leaving the accused firms easily find executive positions in other firms. Future research can add to our understanding of this important topic by examining countries with different degrees of investor protection.Lastly, our results have implications for corporate governance reforms. The US took the lead in the battle against corporate malfeasance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This Act had global reverberations and ultimately entities such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union followed suit with similar proclamations concerning governance. However, well-intentioned legislation may result in unintended consequences. For example, consider the CEO certification provisions (Sections 904 and 906) of Sarbanes-Oxley, which calls for severe criminal penalties in case of failure of corporate officers to certify financial reports. These provisions clearly assume that there are insufficient penalties to deter top executives from committing accounting fraud. But our findings are the contrary. If labor market penalties already constrain opportunistic executive behavior in financial reporting, Sarbanes-Oxley penalties would only add to the already high-expected cost of perpetrating the offense. Certainly, it will further reduce the likelihood of accounting fraud, but at what cost? Hoi et al. (2007) argue that such regulation can increase managerial risk aversion to the point where managers make sub-optimal decisions. In other words, goals of risk mitigation and wealth generation may not be compatible. Also, in such a risk-laden setting, executive compensation contracts may not always be shareholder friendly. We may have already seen this effect.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the research questions: Do executive and non-executive directors face similar labor market penalties upon revelation of accounting fraud? Are all executive directors treated by markets as a homogenous group? Or, do executive directors who are top managers face stiffer penalties than other executive directors?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Board membership of incumbent directors in US firms accused of accounting fraud are tracked for three years after the revelation. Two labor market consequences/penalties are considered. Probability of losing internal, own firm board seat is the likelihood that incumbent directors leave the accused firm's board upon accounting fraud revelation. The likelihood of losing at least one external board seat (outside directorship) is also examined. Both univariate tests and multivariate LOGIT regressions are used to conduct the analysis.\nFindings: - Compared to non-executive directors, executive directors are more than twice as likely to lose own firm board seat and at least five times as likely to lose at least one outside directorship. Moreover, all executives, top or otherwise, appear to face similar tough penalties.\nResearch limitation/implications: - Accounting fraud is a rare event; this may limit the generality of the findings. Results obtained from a US sample may be applicable to countries with well-developed capital and labor markets. Results imply that the labor market for directors serves a vital function in the US-style corporate governance environment; labor market discipline provides at least some incentives for board members, including non-employee directors and other executive directors, to perform their fiduciary duties.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study that utilizes a single corporate event to analyze the operation of the labor market across different categories of directors. Also, while studies have examined penalties on top executives there is no evidence that other executives who also serve on the board of the accused firms suffer labor market penalties.\n",
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] |
IoT-based tracking and tracing platform for prepackaged food supply chain
|
[
"Internet of Things",
"Food supply chain",
"Prepackaged food",
"Tracking and tracing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Prepackaged food refers to the food that is packaged before being offered for sale. It is recognized with two important features. On one hand, its content cannot be altered without opening or changing the packaging. On the other hand, it can be directly consumed by ultimate customers. Prepackaged food plays a more and more important role in modern lives as it could bring many benefits, for example, it boasts more varieties, with longer shelf-lives, and is much more convenient for usage and storage. According to the report of \"Research and Markets\" (Hartman, 2015), the market of prepackaged food will bring $3.03 trillion revenue by 2020. However, with the booming of prepackaged food industry, the food safety incidents increase accordingly, which greatly decrease the confidence of consumers and even bring about severe public health impact. Therefore, to prevent these food incidents and ensure a benign food consumption environment, a lot of efforts have been made by governments and industries. For example, the Food and Environmental Hyglene Department of Hong Kong has erected regulation on the labeling of prepackaged food to provide precise and sufficient information for customers. Wuliangye Yibin Co. Ltd, one of the most famous Chinese alcoholic beverage companies, has adopted radio-frequency identification (RFID) to the packaging of its products for anti-counterfeiting.\n2. Literature review: Food supply chain refers to the processes from food production, processing, distribution, to consumption and disposal. A lot of research has also been made through using various emerging technologies to guarantee the food safety and maximize the economic benefits in a specific food supply chain process. For instance, to clarify the upstream and downstream of food supply chain management activities, Thakur and Hurburgh (2009) proposed a system for bulk grain supply chain traceability. They used a relational database management system to record information (internal traceability) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) for exchange of the information (supply chain traceability) between different parties. Similarly, in order to solve a specific food quality and safety issues, Kong et al. (2013) presented the quality traceability system for bee products. To facilitate interchange of information, the TraceFood Framework was proposed based on TraceCore XML and sector-specific ontologies by Storoy et al. (2013). The TraceFood Framework consists of recommendations for \"Good Traceability Practice\", common principles for unique identification of food items, a generic standard for electronic information exchange (TraceCore XML), and sector-specific ontologies. Bechini and Cimino (2008) developed a prototype of traceability web information system for the food supply chain to track and trace product units and batches.\n3. Overview of IoT-based tracking and tracing platform: Following service-oriented architecture and IoT applications in many other fields (Qiu et al., 2015; Xu, Huang and Fang, 2015; Xu, Huang, Fang and Chen, 2015; Zhong et al., 2013), the technical architecture of IoT-based tracking and tracing platform for prepackaged food is proposed, as shown in Figure 1. Basically, it consists of five layers: perception layer, data layer, service layer, application layer, and users layer.\n4. Key services: 4.1 Smart prepackaged food lifecycle management service\n5. Case study: In this section, a case study is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed platform, and demonstrate its working processes.\n6. Conclusion: Real-time tracking and tracing are of great importance to ensure the safety and quality of the prepackaged food. Based on IoT technologies, this paper proposed an integrated tracking and tracing platform for the prepackaged food. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, the technical architecture of an IoT-based tracking and tracing platform is developed. It could not only realize item-level tracking and tracing for the prepackaged food, but also cover the whole process of its supply chain. Besides, the platform is flexible enough to be extended into many other areas. Second, an economical solution of integrating the QR code and RFID is proposed which could greatly reduce the implementation cost of the platform. The corresponding management service, smart prepackaged food lifecycle management service, is also proposed to support the execution of the integrated solution. Third, through adopting XML, this platform enables the information sharing among all the involved stakeholders, which will further facilitate their cooperation on guaranteeing the quality and safety of the prepackaged food. Finally, the casual factors could be identified in time when safety incidents happen, which facilitates the timely responses to avoid the impact of consumer health.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an effective and economical management platform to realize real-time tracking and tracing for prepackaged food supply chain based on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and finally ensure a benign and safe food consumption environment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Following service-oriented architecture, a flexible layered architecture of tracking and tracing platform for prepackaged food is developed. Besides, to reduce the implementation cost while realizing fine-grained tracking and tracing, an integrated solution of using both the QR code and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag is proposed. Furthermore, Extensible Markup Language (XML) is adopted to facilitate the information sharing among applications and stakeholders.\nFindings: The validity of the platform has been evaluated through a case study. First, the proposed platform is proved highly effective on realizing prepackaged food tracking and tracing throughout its supply chain, and can benefit all the stakeholders involved. Second, the integration of the QR code and RFID technologies is proved to be economical and could well ensure the real-time data collection. Third, the XML-based method is efficient to realize information sharing during the whole process.\nOriginality/value: The contributions of this paper lie in three aspects. First, the technical architecture of IoT-based tracking and tracing platform is developed. It could realize fine-grained tracking and tracing and could be flexible to adapt in many other areas. Second, the solution of integrating the QR code and RFID technologies is proposed, which could greatly decrease the cost of adopting the platform. Third, this platform enables the information sharing among all the involved stakeholders, which will further facilitate their cooperation on guaranteeing the quality and safety of prepackaged food.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A model framework of output specifications for hospital PPP/PFI projects
|
[
"Australia",
"United Kingdom",
"Public sector",
"Hospitals",
"Project finance",
"Facilities management",
"Framework",
"Output specifications",
"PPP/PFI hospitals"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the late 1990s, the UK government announced an ambitious and radical plan of healthcare system reform (Department of Health, 2000). The Private Finance Initiative (PFI), one of the several forms of PPP, is used as the main funding mechanism for hospital development in the UK (Boyle and Harrison, 2000). Since 1992, PFI has been the dominant form of large-scale NHS Trust hospital development and by 2009, 159 PFI hospital schemes with a capital value of PS13.16 billion had been signed in the UK (Department of Health, 2009a). This was followed closely in Australia, where the term PPP is more often used and between 1991 and 2000, seven new hospitals were built using the PPP model, with several major additions in the recent few years, including the states of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia (Cheung et al., 2012).\nResearch methods: A comprehensive desk-top study was conducted on the standard output specifications published by UK\nA best practice framework: Based on standard and exemplars of project output specifications and samples as well as structured interviews with key stakeholders (all having substantial PPP/PFI experience) from the public and private healthcare sectors in Australia and the UK, a best practice framework has been drawn up (Tables IV-VI) for depicting the essential and optional elements for preparing non-clinical output specifications for hospitals by using a typical project comprising new construction and catering service as an example of facilities management. Clinical output specifications do not feature in this framework since those remain the specialist realms of the medical profession and are highly variable depending on the nature of the hospitals (e.g. whether emergency, different specialties, teaching, or rehabilitation services are provided). The proposed framework comprises two themes and two levels. Theme I includes design and construction requirements, which can be sub-divided into sections such as:\nBenefits and caveats of use: The proposed framework highlights the essential elements and structure (not exact contents) of an output specification for a typical PPP/PFI hospital project, allowing modifications and adaptations to suit particular situations. Linkages of performance standards and monitoring methods to the payment mechanism are shown clearly in a matrix or table format, although in practice, they usually appear in the form of specification clauses which are cross-referenced to each other. Brevity of language is important but wordings must be clear enough to communicate all requirements in output terms. Careful editing must be done to eliminate conflicts and ensure up-datedness and completeness of standards information being given. Where prescriptive specifications are included for valid reasons, they can be stated as minimum standards or guidelines and the private sector should be invited to come forward with innovative solutions to surpass the stipulated performance with demonstrable cases of application. When suitable exemplars of completed facilities exist, it would be beneficial to indicate them as references, but care must be taken to differentiate specific areas of requirements for the particular project in hand, since hospitals are complex facilities and the stakeholders\nConclusion: Output specification is an important element of PPP/PFI procurement; with major implications on the projects\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Social infrastructure projects such as hospitals are increasingly being procured through public private partnerships (PPP). Due to their complex nature and very high operational requirements, these healthcare projects need special attention in developing robust output specifications at the early procurement stage. The purpose of this paper is to present a model framework of output specifications for adoption by public sector clients in jurisdictions planning to develop hospital PPP/PFI (Private Finance Initiative) projects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is based on an in-depth analysis of best practices from standard and sample project output specification documents used in Australia and the UK for completed hospital projects, reinforced by interviews with key stakeholders in the two countries.\nFindings: Drafting output specifications for hospital PPP projects is perceived to be a difficult and challenging task due to the complexity and changing needs brought about by evolving health policy, technology and medical advancement. The overarching target of preparing good output specification is to achieve value for money, innovation, risk transfer (including catering for changes), whole life asset performance and establishing performance criteria to link up with the payment mechanism.\nPractical/implications: The proposed framework is built up from public sector requirements on the physical asset, operational services provided by the private sector, with links to payment mechanism and performance evaluation. It also addresses change mechanism as well as conditions upon hand-over back to the public sector.\nOriginality/value: Unlike traditional projects which are procured using prescriptive specifications, PPP/PFI projects are procured using performance based output specifications. This paper provides the foundation and a model framework for preparing comprehensive output specifications based on best practices in Australia and the UK, using hospital as the contextual background.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Packing and unpacking knowledge: Patents and intellectual capital
|
[
"Patents",
"Intellectual capital",
"Networking",
"Managers",
"Decision making",
"Innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: There is little doubt that firms interested in intellectual capital will consider patenting. Information on patents is largely positively related to firms' capital market value, and firms that publish information on intangibles often include information on their patent portfolio. Patents are part of the firm's intellectual capital in the form of organisational capital (Roos et al., 1997; Stewart, 1997) in addition to other sources of intellectual capital like human capital and relationship capital and indeed other kinds of organisational capital such as databases and organisational processes. Even if merely an element of the firm's intellectual capital, it is often seen as a particularly interesting one because it shows how a piece of knowledge can be made a tradable asset. The patent is not simply an organisational competence, but it is more a legal asset that can be treated as any other formal asset because of its ownership properties.\nThe patent as a resource: Often, the literature looks at the patent as a resource that is somehow relates to value creation as a black box. The linkages are pointed out but rarely characterised explicitly. Often the literature concerns the steps of the patenting process (Grubb, 1999), general strategies of patenting (Cook, 2002; Sullivan, 2000; Miele, 2000); philosophy and history of patenting (Granstrand, 1999), patenting issues in specific (knowledge intensive) industries such as biotech, software, chemicals (Grubb, 1999; Raggett, 1996; Grabowski and Vernon, 2000); patent legislation and practices in different countries (Granstrand, 1988, 1999; Mansfield, 2000); legal and ethical aspects of patenting related to developing countries (Lanjouw, 1998; Maskus and Yang, 2000) and life forms (Raggett, 1996) and the effect of legislative factors on innovation incentives (Lanjouw, 1998).Patents can be related to aspects of the innovation process[1]. More specifically, Glass (2000) focuses on the trade off between the microeconomic advantages (for the inventor) from strong IPR protection and macroeconomic welfare advantages when IPR protection is weak and R&D costs decrease. She argues that weak IPR protection can foster technology development, because R&D activity becomes less costly. The imperfect measurement of innovative output based on patent count is point of departure for Lanjouw et al. (1996). They develop a model based on a weighting scheme, which can estimate the value of patent protection under different legal systems as well as the international flows of returns from the patent system. Also Lanjouw (1996) implants an infringement model into a renewal model considering the fact that for the system to be in tact, patentees must be willing to enforce their rights. These authors reflect on relationships between macro-economic conditions and the economic relevance of patents, but the specific management agenda is marginalized.In an interesting study, Levin (1988) attempts to come closer to management's concerns about patents because he asks the question how important it is for strategy making and product innovation. He suggest that decision making around the patent is a complex one where the alternatives to patenting are considered, and on average for the managers responding to their questionnaire, patenting was ranked sixth or seventh after other concerns related to the interactions between the firm's different kinds of skills and resources found in areas such as product complexity, possibilities for secrecy, lead time in knowledge development, complementary sales and service facilities, and complementary manufacturing processes. Patenting is not a first choice because concerns in relation to product development are with entangling the resources of the firm, rather than with disentangling them, as is the proposition of patenting. This suggests that patents are complex resources because they have to be made part of all these other things identified by Cohen et al.Hall and Ham (1999) studies the paradoxical behaviour of firms regarding patenting: on the one hand there is evidence that firms do not rely heavily on patents, and on the other hand, the propensity of companies to patent has risen dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s though a pro-patent shift in the American (and European) legal environment. This indicates a change in the form of protection of their intellectual property rights. The study also indicates that the effectiveness of patents varies greatly across industries and technological areas, and companies maintain large portfolios of patents to avoid being excluded from a given field of use or to improve their position in cross-licensing negotiations. In industries where products have short life cycles patents have little protection value because competitiveness is driven by lead time, design complexity and superior manufacturing capabilities. In addition it appears (Lerner, 1995) that small firms are more likely to rely on trade secrets as a form of protection than patenting.Grindley and Teece (1997) examine the licensing and cross-licensing practices in semiconductor and electronics industry stating that the companies have different interests in the licensing market, because of their position and industry specificity. Companies use cross-licensing strategy to get access to new technology and revenues, because products become increasingly dependent on multiple inventions. Intellectual property is an important power instrument in the bargaining game. Here, patents are seen in the multiple relationships they produce within the firm in terms of R&D investments, production and marketing and in the outside world in terms of markets, competitors, consumers and the regulating state.At the same time there are substantial costs related to maintaining this patent portfolio. There is a trade off between costs of patenting and its expected value, which encompasses direct economic effects from the protection of own business as well as preventive \"blocking\" of competitors. The patent has at least two sources of value: the degree to which the patent can exclude others (a measure of its strength and effectiveness) and its importance in product-specific commercialisation. Some patents are central to a business opportunity and represent a sufficient basis for creating a business (Sullivan, 1998).This literature sees the patent as a potential resource and it generates some insight into general conditions that makes it a relevant and profitable endeavour. It shows legal and technical contingencies for the successful patent, but it does little to identify how such contingencies are mobilised and put to use in decision making about patents. They identify macro-concerns but show little about their relationship to decision-making activities in the firm. Therefore, the patent is rarely or only to a limited degree presented as a management object.\nThe patent as management object: To see the patent as a management object means to pay attention to its fate in organisational decision-making processes. Here, there is attention to how patents are managed directly, and looking more closely here, the patent is made an object in an organisational control procedure. For example, Parr and sullivan (1996) and Sullivan (1998, 2000) suggest that to make the patent manageable, it has to be made part of organisational control systems. The patent is here related to budgeting and planning procedures, and companies are encouraged to develop various kinds of control principles to develop an integrated approach to managing patents. It is suggested that in order to get patent management into the light, it is necessary to couple it to budgeting activities and cost control, perhaps the patenting department should be made a profit centre responsible to market the patents internally or externally, and most likely, it is argued, patents have to be made part of the general management corporate strategy as an item on the strategy agenda. It is suggested that the patent can only be made a management object if it were attached to the general management control processes established in the firm thus giving the patent a light comparable to that of other resources and departments.Sullivan (1998) argues that patents can be used in the broad context of intellectual capital management as instruments for management of innovation and knowledge, and he relates this clearly to the aspiration for profit extraction and value creation and claims that there are \"only two fundamental sources of value: the innovations themselves and the complementary business assets of the firm that are applied to the commercialisation of its innovations\" (Sullivan, 1998, p. 25). Patenting is a managerial practice, which can be subjected to measurement, classification, and capitalization. It is a financial instrument for appropriation of rents and is organised in the context of financial control activities such as budgeting and forecasting. Such perspective is very much a one-way street: it is not sensible for the multiplicity of the patent activity and its multidimensional implications.Sullivan and colleagues argue that to understand the fate of patents we have to look at how they are made an item on the management agenda. The patent in this way is coupled to other things and has to survive among other processes. It has to generate its own justification because it has to speak to the other items on the management agenda and its value has to be developed and defended. How this is done, however, is not developed in any detail in this work. To get closer to how disentanglement occurs and how the patent aligns itself with other resources and processes in the firm, perhaps a few small examples will help illustrate some of the complexities involved.Palm Computing Inc.\nPatents as networked objects: The small analyses of Palm Computing and Polaroid allow some more general propositions. Patents are instruments for the exercise of intellectual property rights, and they help transform the question of economical value into a legislative question and vice versa, mobilizing a mixture of actors (Latour, 1999, p. 98ff) such as inventors, institutions, legislative regulations, markets, competitors, public, etc.On hold and in action\nPatents and intellectual capital: As argued above, patents are networks, and if they can command long sets of relations, they are strong. They are options that have to be appreciated to make value sense. This is why the patent is a poor referent even if it correlates positively with market value. It can be so many things that it is not clear what it refers to. In particular, the patent shares with intellectual capital at large that its measurement is not \"consistent\". Many kinds of knowledge are protected by other means (Levin, 1988), including fast development of technology and secrecy, and patents are more often about products than about processes. Patents are related to the things that can be seen from outside. This makes the patent a curious resource because it is not clear that it will only be a productive force in the development of the firm. This leads to the proposition that the networks around patents in some cases can be about things \"unimportant\" for the development of the firm. Often this is where the patent has short relations, because it blocks - and blocking means not going in interaction with anything.This makes the patent a particular kind of intellectual capital. Typically, intellectual capital is presented as something, which works to develop the value of the firm, and the elements are presented as functionally related to each other (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997; Stewart, 1997). But this needs not be the case. Patents may be independent of the constellation of intellectual resources at large. They may be outside the working networks of intellectual resources being primarily a mechanism to block competition. This is not the storyline normally heard about intellectual capital.Or more precisely, the case of the patent shows us that intellectual capital is hardly a straightforward resource. As intellectual resources are normally considered a historical product, they require a \"path dependency\" to be effective. In managing intellectual resources at large, the possibility exists that they are said to be creative and flexible and innovative, but that this is mere talk. It may be that in analysing intellectual capital more generally, we should be alert to the possibility that intellectual capital is also managed with a view to containment of relations. This would make the intellectual capital agenda a much more open one than it is presently.\nConclusion: The management of patents travels along two paths. One is about disentanglement and another about entanglement. To disentangle is to make the patent a separable entity, and as such it exists outside the practices of the firm - it is on hold. To entangle is to discard the separate identity of the entity and make it part of a flow of mutually dependent and interactive nodes. Here, the patent is always related to something else: the customer, production processes, other patents, competition etc. and its separateness vanishes - it is in action. Here the patent has multiple relationships and the longer these relationships are the stronger is the patent, even if it also loses more and more of its separate identity.When in action, the patent is thus not a resource in the sense of having a linear relationship to outcomes. It is more an object for management intervention, where its relations are being forged and established, but also bounded and contained. Otherwise, the process of exploration could go on, and exploitation would be impossible. It is cheap to use patents defensively and expensive to use them offensively, because only in the latter case does the patent require a long list of relations. Therefore, there is even an important management control agenda in the areas of patents. However, it is rarely related merely to the issue of cost containment; it is more related also to surveying that all network relations are being built and rebuilt. The paradox is that it takes a lot more resources to keep the networks going that develop new patents. At least the analysis developed above would produce such a hypothesis.And there is some evidence to this hypothesis. The cases Palm Computing and Polaroid were used to show that patents, if interesting, command long relations not only inside the firm but also outside the firm. The also illustrate that they \"strike back\" and make the inventors of the patent its \"appendices\" because they have to make it visible to defend it. This is a costly affair. Yet, this is how the patent comes back. It never stands still but has to be in action if at all interesting to the firm's business.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to analyse how a patent is an intangible asset and how it creates value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Through analysis of a set of cases, the paper analyses how a patent becomes related to a series of other elements. This approach investigates the details of how a patent becomes useful. Theoretically, the paper suggests that a patent only creates value from being entangled in a web of resources in action, contrasting this with patents on hold where they are described as entities but not as resources.\nFindings: - The paper shows that patens a valuable not by themselves (on hold) but by being linked to a series of other resources and purposes (in actions). To understand the value of the patent is to understand its relationships to other mechanism in production, marketing and finance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper sets out an approach to study the value of patents which looks at the network around the patent. This is a limitation inasmuch as it is difficult to generalise the particular findings, but as a prospective research strategy, its strength is that is allows insight into the complexities of making patents valuable. This can also add to statistical work on the contingencies for patents' value.\nPractical implications: - The paper suggests that a strategy for patenting must pay attention to the different kinds of resources that make it useful. Often it is necessary to look far beyond the patent office to gain this knowledge. The management agenda is clear: the patent has to be entangled, but this also raises questions, because since the patent is an option, some of its value derives from exploring its possibilities. This however, blocks for its exploitation and thus causes opportunity costs. From a management point of view, it is not always clear that a patent should be used for its maximum potentiality, because this would disrupt the network is it part of and make it a very expensive resource to mobilise towards innovation\nOriginality/value: - Typically, research on patents has taken the route via statistical and economic analysis. Our paper adds by showing the dynamics of managerial uses of patents and it shows that the structural conditioning of use of patents can fruitfully be supplemented by process and network approaches to their use.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Development of sectoral brands with emphasis on structure and processes
|
[
"VSM",
"BPM",
"Brand management process",
"Brand management structure",
"Sectoral brand"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Organizations operating in today's complex environment often have to implement change in terms of their structures, processes or organizational aspects (Kogetsidis, 2011). The system thinking can contribute to organizational management by enabling more effective performance by taking into account inter-relations in the business environment (Segatto et al., 2013). Besides the existence of many definitions of \"systems\" in the literature, there are three central ideas in common: systems have a set of parts (Segatto et al., 2013; Kogetsidis, 2011); there is an inter-relationship between these parts or elements (Segatto et al., 2013; Arregui and Diaz, 2016) and they have a common purpose that ensures that the interacting parts form the whole (Segatto et al., 2013; Flood, 2010).\n2. System thinking: the Viable System Model application: Considering that organizations are a complex and inter-related phenomenon, holistic approaches could bring more benefits for them (Kogetsidis, 2011). Thus, the systemic approach emerges as an alternative for those organizations that are willing to deal with the growing complexity and respond to the environmental demands (Segatto et al., 2013). Mingers and White (2010) indicate that system approach views the organizational situations in a holistically way, recognizing that relationships among elements are more important than the elements themselves for determining the behavior of the system as a whole.\n3. Business process management: Business activities should be seen not in terms of functions, departments or products, but in terms of key processes (Davenport, 1994). According to Maddern et al. (2014) BPM places the focus of business management on its end-to-end organizational processes, rather than on divided management in functional areas. Markus and Jacobson (2010) also report the importance of an end-to-end management of business process and indicate that the implementation of business process governance can ensure a better performance of the end-to-end process and contributes to its continuous improvement. According to the authors, the business process governance occurs when the organization assigns to a committee the responsibility of coordinate across organizational areas, ensuring that the handoff between the areas will be softened. In addition, the study by Jurisch et al. (2016) indicates that the lower the governance volatility, which is related to the smaller exchange of managers, the higher will be the performance in a certain process.\n4. Sectoral brand management: using VSM and BPM: As indicated in Section 2, the concept of identity could be applied to systems. So, the system's identity can be defined as the systems' interests, purpose, bounds and the definition of its environment relationship (Rizolli, 2013). However, the identity concept is also used in the brand management literature. In addition, it is possible to relate brand identity with the systems identity. This relation can be explained as follows: the brand identity is compounded by brand stakeholders interactions (Lourencao and Giraldi, 2017). The present study addresses the management of brands specifically for places, which, according to Dinnie (2017) may include brands for countries, cities or regions. In this context, recent studies indicate that the development of place brand identities should be thought as a complex process of identity construction rather than a specific outcome of such a process (Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013). This means that the identity of place brand should be developed regarding the social constructionist approach which conceptualizes places as fluid and changing rather than fixed and stable (Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013; Dinnie, 2017).\n5. Methodology: 5.1 Research characterization\n6. Results: The results are divided into three parts: analysis and modeling of the current structure and processes of management of the sectoral brand; presentation of possible problems of current structure and processes; analysis and modeling of future structure and processes of sectoral brand management.\n7. Summary of results discussion: In this section, the discussion of the results is summarized. Table VI was created to facilitate the understanding and to better exhibit the relation between the problems found in the case and the concepts retrieved from the BPM literature. Therefore, Table VI contributes to the BPM researchers and process managers, evidencing how some concepts of VSM and BPM theory could be suitable and applied for the Brazil Fashion System sectoral brand case.\n8. Final considerations: The present study was able to achieve its objective in developing a new sectoral brand structure and process to reduce existing barriers. It is expected that the analysis and modeling of future structure and processes of sectoral brand management proposed in the present study will bring practical contributions, since sectoral brands have faced difficulties in their management (Capellaro and Giraldi, 2015). For the results presentation were used tools as VSM (structure) and BPMN (processes) and three sections were carried out: analysis and modeling of the current structure and processes of sectoral brand management; presentation of the current structure and processes problems; analysis and modeling of future structure and processes of sectoral brand management. Thus, the steps contributed to understanding the current structure and process, identifying critical points for improvement, and proposing a new structure and process, where the critical points were mitigated or eliminated.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Sectoral brand management processes have presented planning, development and implementation challenges. With the aim of reducing these managerial problems, the purpose of this paper is to revise the structure and the processes of the sectoral brands management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative exploratory study, with its unit of analysis being the process of managing the brand of the Brazilian fashion sector. Primary data collection was obtained through in-depth interviews with the seven industry associations and with the company responsible for the brand consulting. The secondary data used were reports about the branding process of the brand provided by respondents. Data analysis was provided by using the VSM to modeling sector structure and BPMN to processes modeling.\nFindings: The results present a new sectoral brand structure and process to reduce existing barriers. Three sections were carried out: analysis and modeling of the current structure and processes of sectoral brand management; presentation of the current structure and processes problems; analysis and modeling of future structure and processes of sectoral brand management.\nResearch limitations/implications: A theoretical contribution is provided in the literature of systems, processes and sectoral brands, since there are no previous studies that elaborated a system structure and process for sectoral brands. In addition, other theoretical contribution is the presentation of a future process model that relates brand management process with its system structure, that is, it relates BPM analysis with VSM.\nPractical implications: It is also possible to indicate that VSM and BPM can contribute to the management of sectoral brands, through the structural and process problems identification and also by making possible to suggest future management improvements to reduce the barriers that were identified.\nOriginality/value: The present study originality is the approach of the first analysis of sector brand management with emphasis on its structure and processes that were experienced by the Brazilian fashion sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Perceived organizational support and well-being: a weekly study
|
[
"Perceived organizational support",
"Work engagement",
"Diary study",
"Within-person fluctuations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Perceived organizational support (POS) is defined as employees' general beliefs \"concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being\" (Eisenberger et al., 1986, p. 501). Since its emergence in the organizational psychology literature, a huge body of research has been devoted to its study as a core construct to capture employee-employer relationships. These studies (e.g. Kurtessis et al., 2015) have accumulated evidence showing that POS is of importance for both organization performance outcomes and individual well-being.\nWeekly POS and its influence on weekly well-being: Research has consistently showed the advantages for organizations of having a workforce that feels supported. Specifically, POS was found to be positively related to a wide range of favorable employees' work attitudes and behaviors (e.g. job performance) and negatively related to deleterious attitudes and behaviors at work (e.g. turnover intentions; Eisenberger and Stinglhamber, 2011). OST states that based on the social exchange theory and due to the norm of reciprocity, POS creates among employees a felt obligation to reciprocate the organization's valuation and caring by developing attitudes and behaviors that are beneficial for the organization. Above and beyond its benefits for organizations, research has showed that a high POS is also positive for employees in terms of subjective well-being both in and outside work. Accordingly, POS has been found to be related to higher levels of job satisfaction (e.g. Caesens and Stinglhamber, 2014), positive affect toward the organization (Panaccio and Vandenberghe, 2009), and to lower levels of employees' psychological strains at work (e.g. Caesens and Stinglhamber, 2014). OST (e.g. Kurtessis et al., 2015) proposes that POS enhances employees' subjective well-being by meeting employees' socio-emotional needs. POS would contribute to a self-enhancement process among employees that leads them to experience a better subjective well-being. Additionally, a high POS would provide indications that help will be received when needed which leads employees to anticipate the future with more confidence and thus generates a higher subjective well-being (Eisenberger and Stinglhamber, 2011).\nThe mediating role of weekly work engagement: Work engagement defined as \"a positive work related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption\" (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74), has received a large interest from scholars because of its important positive outcomes for both organizations and employees (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008). The theoretical framework of the job demands-resources model (JD-R model) (e.g. Bakker and Demerouti, 2008; Demerouti et al., 2001) explains the development of employees' work engagement and its consequences. The motivational process of this JD-R model links job resources (i.e. \"those physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that may do any of the following: (a) be functional in achieving work goals; (b) reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs; (c) stimulate personal growth and development\"; Demerouti et al., 2001, p. 501) to beneficial organizational and individual outcomes through work engagement (e.g. Bakker and Demerouti, 2008). Specifically, according to the motivational process of the JD-R model, job resources and in particular social support from supervisors or colleagues can enhance employees' work engagement thanks to either their intrinsic or extrinsic motivational potential. On the one hand, job resources may foster employees' personal growth, learning and development and fulfill some basic human needs and thus enhance employees' intrinsic motivation toward work. On the other hand, by offering instrumental assistance to employees, job resources might increase the likelihood of attaining work goals and thus increase employees' extrinsic work motivation.\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: Although prior work has empirically examined the dynamic of work relationships between a supervisor and his/her subordinates (e.g. Nahrgang et al., 2009) or at the team-level (e.g. Xanthopoulou et al., 2009), the dynamic nature of the employee-employer relationship has received few empirical attention. Filling this gap, this research takes into account the dynamic perspective of the social exchange theory and proposes that the POS construct may fluctuate within the same employee over short periods of time. Precisely, we examined whether weekly POS has a positive effect on employees' weekly subjective well-being, above and beyond POS and well-being at the between-person level. Besides, our study examined whether weekly work engagement is an underlying mechanism of the relationship between weekly POS and employees' weekly subjective well-being. Our results indicated that 48 percent of the POS variance is due to within-level variations. Our findings also revealed that weekly POS is related to three indicators of employees' weekly subjective well-being (i.e. increasing weekly positive affect toward the organization, decreasing weekly negative affect toward the organization and psychological strains). Lastly, our results provided support for the mediating role of weekly work engagement in the relationship between weekly POS and employees' weekly subjective well-being.\nLimitations and future research: This research is subject to limitations, which suggest interesting improvements for future research. First, a first set of limitations concerns the characteristics of the sample used in the present research. Although we had a reliable representation of the organization in our sample, it is composed of employees coming from a small organization located in Belgium. Therefore, we cannot exclude the possibility that employees composing this sample were more likely to experience fluctuations regarding the support received from their organization due to the small organizational size. Furthermore, a great proportion of women characterizes this final sample, which thus raises the question of the generalization of our findings. Finally, our sample size at the between level was very small (n=20). It thus increases our concerns regarding the possibility to interpret the results found at this between-person level. In addition, some scholars also noted that having less than 30 units at the second-level can lead to biased results (e.g. Scherbaum and Ferreter, 2009). Yet, the main focus and the contributions of this research are related to the processes operating within individuals over time. As Ohly et al. (2010) claimed in their paper, \"for tracking changes over time, a large number of days [or weeks] but few participants are needed\" (p. 87). Our sample size at the between level is also similar to some published studies that were interested in processes at the within-person level (e.g. Grech et al., 2009). Nevertheless, it calls again into question the generalization of our results. In order to overcome these three concerns regarding our sample, we recommend future research to replicate our study findings across a variety of organizational settings, using more socio-demographically diverse and larger samples.\nPractical implications: This research has promising practical implications for organizations. Managers should be aware of the fact that, above and beyond the general level of POS, employees also experience a transient state of POS, which has important consequences for their well-being from week to week. Our findings help managers to understand why, while the general level of POS might be high among employees, some employees might still experience low level of POS during a specific week with negative consequences in terms of well-being. Fostering POS among employees thus requires a constant effort within organizations on the long term but also on paying careful attention to drivers of POS that are likely to fluctuate on a weekly basis. Providing employees with different favorable work experiences during the course of each week should contribute to higher levels of POS. Managers should take care, for instance, to promote justice among decisional policies and in interpersonal treatment, maintain open channels of communication, and provide employees with the needed resources to achieve their work goals every week (e.g. Kurtessis et al., 2015). More importantly, managers should develop HR practices and promote managerial behaviors that can serve as recurrent cues of POS. This might be realized by creating efficient planning of tasks and resources in order to reduce weekly workload. Similarly, family-supportive work practices that are experienced on a daily or on a weekly basis such as allowing flexible work time or telework are other concrete ways to foster this transient state of POS with positive consequences in terms of employees' well-being. Finally, managers should be particularly attentive to (unexpected) events having an important value to an employee and which are therefore likely to decrease POS during specific weeks. If these events or actions are due to external constrains, managers should communicate the involuntary nature of these actions or events in order to lessen their detrimental impact on transient POS and subsequent outcomes (Eisenberger and Stinglhamber, 2011).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Prior research has conceptualized perceived organizational support (POS) as a stable variable over time varying from one individual to another. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that POS fluctuates within the same person over the course of several weeks due to different experiences lived at work. The authors suggested in the present study that weekly POS is predictive of employees' weekly subjective well-being at work (i.e. increased positive affect toward the organization, and decreased negative affect toward the organization and psychological strains at work). In addition, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role played by weekly work engagement in these relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 20 employees completed a first general questionnaire and then completed an online questionnaire during 12 consecutive weeks.\nFindings: Results of hierarchical linear models indicated that weekly POS positively predicts weekly employees' work engagement which, in turn, positively predicts weekly employees' well-being (i.e. increasing positive affect toward the organization and decreasing negative affect toward the organization and psychological strains at work).\nResearch limitations/implications: Overall, these findings contribute to the POS and work engagement literatures. It shows that POS fluctuates within person over the course of several weeks and is a predictor of weekly employees' well-being through its effects on weekly work engagement.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine within-person weekly variations in POS as a predictor of employees' weekly work engagement and its subsequent consequences.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Space management in a DIY store analysing consumer shopping paths with data-tracking devices
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Wireless",
"DIY stores"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A retail store is a dynamic and continuously changing complex. However, there are a few unchanging variables. One is the sales area where the actual retailing process is ongoing. This is also true in a do-it-yourself (DIY) shopping unit. Each store, for a given retailer, typically has a fixed number of square metres to use. If the space of one section, category or segment is to be increased, the space of another has to be reduced. Space management is a significant factor in a successful store (Soars, 2003). A good store from the space planning perspective is one where visibility and accessibility of products is maximised. In other words, an effective store typically places products along the common customer routes and in the visible range in a way that makes the customer consider buying (Underhill, 1999). The question then becomes \"how can the retailer establish where their customers really walk and spend their time?\"The advantages of effective space management for a store are an increase in the ease of store operations, sales volumes, turnover and yield on tied equity. It is important for the convenience of the consumer's shopping process, that he/she encounters or finds the desired products and product categories easily and in a logical order. The advantages of space management for a consumer are, e.g. the ease of finding products, decrease in the amount of out-of-stock products and the improvement in the freshness of products due to fast product circulation (e.g. Needel, 1998; Broniarczyk et al., 1998; Sang Yong and Staelin, 1999).Consumers' buying behaviour has been studied for many years with in-store videos and interviews (Underhill, 1999). However, according to Larson et al. (2005) the results of these studies are limited to general recommendations aimed only at increasing the convenience of the customers. Only a few studies with large datasets have been conducted on the customer's complete shopping paths to date. Until now this has not been possible with traditional data collecting methods (Sorensen, 2003; Larson et al., 2005).The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits and limitations of wireless local area networks (WLAN) as a data collecting method of customer traffic within the space management context. The main focus is on collecting customer traffic data with the help of the WLAN and to analyse it with different models using geographical information systems (GIS). The research questions are therefore:1. Can technology be used in an objective way to analyse large customer traffic datasets from a large DIY unit?2. From the space management point-of-view, what kind of consumer shopping path models can be developed from these datasets?The empirical data of the study has been collected in a large, modern DIY unit located in Scandinavia. The store belongs to a large DIY chain. The study has been limited to a single store over a period of two weeks in August 2006.\nLiterature review: The consumer buying behaviour process inside the store has been studied for several decades. There have been attempts to research such behaviour in many different ways. Five different data collecting methods are briefly discussed: radio frequency identification (RFID), camera tracking, in-store observation, in-store interviewing and wireless local area network (WLAN).Radio frequency identification\nData collection: For this study, WLAN was chosen as the data collecting method. It was chosen because the tracking system's easy installation in a large store, the possibility of collecting large datasets, the objectivity of the collecting method, the possibility to track customer with less than one meter accuracy, and the portability of the tracking system to other stores in the chain,The data of this study was collected in a modern DIY store in Scandinavia. The dataset was collected by locating a tag carried by the shopping customer. The tags were tracked using a system measuring signal strengths. The tags sent continuous signal and the actual location was calculated by a server using triangular network algorithms.The store of this study has more than 20 departments. There are four services points and an information desk in the store. There is also a small cafeteria located in connection with the main entrance. The store has a total of 5,100 square metres of selling space. A detailed plan can be seen in Figure 1.A total of 30 tags were used over a period of two weeks in August 2006. Data was collected from four to six hours per day. The customer routes were located every day with variance between mornings and evenings so that after the collecting period tracked shopping paths could be found from nearly all opening hours from different days of the week. The store was open on weekdays from 7 O'Clock in the morning to 8 O'Clock in the evening. On Saturdays the store was open from 9 am to 3 pm. The data was collected neither during the first opening hour of the morning, nor during the last opening hour of the evening. The sample size of the study was 866. An average of 72 shopping paths was located during one day. The number of the tracked shopping paths per day varies between 60 to 93.A scanning circuit located the tag at intervals of ten seconds. The customer received the tag immediately at the entrance area of the shop. The customer was given instructions to keep the tag with him/her during the whole shopping trip and to give it to the nearest cash desk when leaving the store. If there were several people in the shopper group, the same person was required to carry the tag at all times. When the customer was given the tag, the identification number of the tag, time, gender and age of the customer, and the size of the group were recorded. The customer was not asked directly any information. Instead the background information is an estimation of the research assistant, who collected them. Research assistant's personal beliefs and attitudes could have affected the observations. This is a weakness in this study. In other words, the background data is subjective whilst the shopping path data is objective. The age was approximated and there were four different groups. These groups were 18 to 30 years, 30 to 45 years, 45 to 60 years and over 60 years. A typical customer in this study was 30 to 45 years old, male and shopping alone.Accepting the tag was entirely voluntary. By accepting the tag, the customer gave permission to track his/her shopping paths in the store. The majority of the customers to whom the tag was offered to, chose to take it. On average one fifth of customers refused it. The number of the customer to whom the tag was offered to, the number of customers who refused it, and their relative proportion can be seen in Table II.\nAnalysis: The dataset of this study was analysed with different methods to those used by Larson et al. (2005) in their study. The whole sample of the study was analysed by modelling with the help of spreadsheets, statistical software and GIS software. The GIS software was particularly used in the graphic representation process. The models represented here concentrated on studying the customer traffic as a whole instead of explaining individual shopping paths. In the following figures customer traffic has been analysed with 130 different customer routes, according to the previously presented four different models.In the first model all the locations are marked on the base plan of the store as pixels (Figure 2). In this way detailed data can be obtained about which parts of the store the customers move in. The location accuracy is less than half a metre at best using this method. The weakness of this pixel model is that the map cannot resolve between coincident paths, if there have been more shoppers in one pixel. In particular, the amount of the locations in smaller aisles cannot be easily verified from this kind of figure.In the second model, the large square model (Figure 3), the base plan of the store is divided into 21 squares in the horizontal direction and into 11 squares in the vertical direction. This way 219 different squares locations were formed to the base plan. A total of 182 of these squares included tracked customer locations. The rest 37 squares are located in areas, which were inaccessible to the customers, in the cafeteria or near the entrance doors. The area of one square is about 25 square metres in reality. The disadvantage of this model is the large size of the squares. This is why the location points from the pixel model have been added to the same base plan. Combining the large squares and the exact customer traffic locations, the whole figure gives a better overview of the customer traffic. The clear advantage of this model is that from it is easy to see where the customers spend their time in the store.The third and fourth models are similar to the large square model. In these models, the base plan is also divided into squares but the squares are smaller than in the second model. In the medium square model the base plan of the store is divided into 42 squares in the horizontal direction and 23 squares in the vertical direction (Figure 4). All together 906 squares are formed in the base plan from which 520 squares include tracked locations. The amount of squares without tracked locations is fairly large because, for example large gondolas etc., store furniture takes up the whole square making it inaccessible to the customers. The area of one square of the third model is approximately 6 square metres in reality. In the fourth model, the small square model (Figure 5), the used squares are the smallest. In the model the base plan of the store is divided into 105 squares in the horizontal direction and 56 squares in the vertical direction forming over 5,000 squares on the base plan. One square equals about one square meter in reality. Although the information provided by the picture is more accurate than in the second or third model, the picture seems to be in a way chaotic.\nDiscussion: Space management needs objective information about consumer behaviour. An excellent picture of the customer traffic can be obtained when collecting the data with the wireless local area network and analysing with spreadsheet and geographical information systems. As seen in this study, it is possible to analyse the customer traffic datasets in several different ways.When different consumer data collecting methods are used, the quality of the data can be undermined in two different ways. When collecting the data, the customers may alter their behaviour, when knowing that they are being tracked. This may be a reflection of the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect refers to a phenomenon of observing workers' behaviour or their performance and changing it temporarily (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1939). The second possible weakness is caused by the data collector. When the data collector is a human, the personal beliefs and attitudes can affect the observations. In other words, the observations are subjective. The subjectivity can appear when observations are collected or when they are interpreted. But when the data collecting is done automatically, it becomes objective.Companies engaged in the use of new marketing and research methods in order to monitor customer behaviour should be aware of any potential public concerns and be seen to adhere rigorously to ethical practice (Kirkup and Carrigan, 2000). Different models are best suited in different situations since they have their own advantages and disadvantages. By using only the pixel model, wrong conclusions can be drawn from the customer traffic. On the other hand, the weakness of the large square model is the fact that the used squares have a rather big size. Together the pixel and the large square models give a good overview of the customer traffic. The medium square model and the small square model give more exact information about the customer traffic but for an overview they are somewhat vague. They are more suitable when analysing the different departments or sections of the store.Because the research area analysing the consumer's behaviour with modern technology is a very new field of research, there is only a small amount of existing research done and the relevant amount of source material was very limited. Especially about processing the customer traffic in a store, source material was almost impossible to find. Studies, which have been made in the field of the retail business, have been clearly emphasised to the perishables business. There is only a limited amount of material concerning DIY trade. Therefore this study gives new methodological viewpoints. This is also the main limitation of this study. More empirical data and analysis is definitely needed in order to achieve more reliability and validity.Because in a DIY store a similar study has not been carried out earlier, very many technical problems had to be solved. The sample size of the study is sufficient that robustness is ensured in the study.In this study, attention was paid to the reliability during the whole research process. In the store there were only a few areas in which there were no locations. These areas are the cash desk area and the outer corner on the side of the main entrance in the outer shop store. The absence of location points (i.e. that were not detected or to which the system was blind) can possibly be explained by the fact that the local area network has not covered the area in question. The second alternative to the missing locations is the fact that there have continuously been many active tags simultaneously side by side in the area. This has possibly caused disturbance to the location system. Therefore attention should be paid also to technological issues. Larson et al. (2005) have developed a research frame and performed a study very near this study. The results of their study were generalised. Also in this study external validity comes true. In this study the sample size is big. This marks off the random results. Thanks to the random sampling, the data of the study represents the target population well. The data collecting method can be considered objective and the location exactness of the data collecting method sufficient for reliable information.\n",
"role": "user"
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{
"content": "Purpose: - Space management is an essential part of successful retailing. Good space management requires accurate data about consumer behaviour. Traditionally, these data have been collected through panel interviews, camera tracking and in-store observation. Their nature is subjective to a greater or lesser extent. Modern technology makes it possible also to use more objective methods, such as the wireless local network (WLAN) and the radio frequency identification (RFID). This paper seeks to examine the possibilities WLAN provides for facilities management studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The empirical data were collected from 866 consumer shopping paths in a large do-it-yourself (DIY) store using WLAN technology. The data have been analysed with GIS tools.\nFindings: - The results show that WLAN has great potential for accurate and objective data collection processes and modelling. This method creates more objective results than traditional consumer tracking methods.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Only a small amount of previous research has been done and the relevant amount of source material was very limited. This study gives new methodological viewpoints. This is also the main limitation of this study. More empirical data and analysis are definitely needed in order to achieve more reliability and validity.\nPractical implications: - This paper gives direct advice in the form of pros/cons for retailers in the usage of WLAN in the consumer tracking process.\nOriginality/value: - Similar research methods have been utilised only a few times before and only in the grocery retailing industry. This is the first time a DIY store has been analysed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
CAPM-based capital budgeting and nonadditivity
|
[
"Investments",
"Net present value",
"Economic disequilibrium",
"Capital asset pricing model",
"Project evaluation",
"Decision making"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper deals with project valuation and capital-budgeting decision-making in accept-reject situations. In applied corporate finance, it is usual to use the net-present-value concept in order to appraise investments and make decisions. The net present value (NPV) requires cash flow discounting by making use of the so-called risk-adjusted cost of capital, which serves the purpose of accounting for risk. A widespread model employed for computing the cost of capital is the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Rubinstein (1973) and other scholars in the late 1960s and 1970s have provided the link between CAPM and capital budgeting decisions: in their classical contributions they show that, if the CAPM assumptions are met, then the cost of capital is a function of the systematic risk, which is given by the beta of the project. The latter depends in turn on the cost of the project, which implies that it is a disequilibrium beta. The corresponding NPV is therefore a disequilibrium NPV.In the corporate finance literature this procedure is widespread not only as a decision rule but also as a valuation tool. For example, Bossaerts and Odegaard (2001) endorse the use of cost-based betas and disequilibrium NPVs \"to value a risky cash flow\" (p. 60); Copeland and Weston mostly take for granted that an investor should use the disequilibrium NPV for both decision and valuation; in Weston and Copeland (1988) they give the formula of the disequilibrium NPV referring to it as \"the risk-adjusted method for evaluating projects\" (p. 381). These authors provide several numerical examples to illustrate the implementation of this NPV (e.g. Copeland and Weston, 1983, p. 135; Weston and Copeland, 1988, pp. 372-5, 379-1; Copeland and Weston, 1988, pp. 415-18). Jones and Dudley (1978, p. 378) compute the required rate of return of a mispriced asset by discounting cash flows with a cost-based discount rate, that is by using the disequilibrium NPV (see their Tables 18.2 and 18.3). Lewellen (1977) uses the disequilibrium NPV approach for valuation. While stating his rule in a return-rate-exceeds-cost-of-capital fashion, Rubinstein (1973) himself refers to the disequilibrium NPV upholding it not only for decision purposes but for valuation purposes as well: in the last sentence of the second paragraph at p. 174 of his paper the author writes that the (risk-adjusted) cost of capital is the \"appropriate discount rate for the project\". Some pages earlier he makes the same claim, when he writes of \"risk-adjusted discount rate for the project\" and repeats the expression \"discount rate\" just after the sentence (p. 172). If Rubinstein thinks the (disequilibrium) cost of capital is the appropriate discount rate for the project, then he thinks that the disequilibrium NPV is actually the correct NPV not only for making decisions but for valuing projects as well. Also, in footnote 14 at p. 174, he writes, referring to mutually exclusive investments: \"This result follows immediately from equation (c) of footnote 10 and is equivalent to accepting the project with the highest net present value\". He is then claiming that the disequilibrium NPV is a correct tool not only for accept-reject decisions, but for ranking projects as well. Also, in footnote 8 he uses the expression \"present value risk-adjusted discount rate ... form\". That is, he refers to the (disequilibrium) NPV and uses the term \"value\" to mean the result of the (cost-based) discounting process.Barring some isolated warnings against the use of this methodology (Grinblatt and Titman, 1998; Ekern, 2006) there is no debate in applied finance about this taken-for-granted methodology. This paper aims at showing that the disequilibrium NPV, firmly entrenched in the literature and in the practice and validly deducted from the CAPM as a decision rule for accept-reject decisions, it is nonetheless unsafe both as a valuation tool and as a decision rule: it does not comply with the additivity principle or, to say it in different terms, it does not comply with the principle of description invariance nor with the no-arbitrage principle.The paper is structured as follows: the first section briefly formalizes Rubinstein's criterion and shows that it logically implies the use of disequilibrium NPV for decision-making. The next section is devoted to showing the NPV's pitfalls, which should induce to avoid its use for valuation and decision-making. In particular:* a numerical example is illustrated, taken from Copeland and Weston (1988);* a logical argument (modus tollens) is provided to highlight inconsistencies;* it is shown that framing effects arise if this NPV is used; and* it is underlined that the evaluator abiding by the disequilibrium NPV method is open to arbitrage losses. Some remarks conclude the paper.\nDisequilibrium (cost-based) beta and disequilibrium NPV: Assume that there exists a security market satisfying the assumptions of the CAPM. In such a case, any asset traded in the security market lies on the security market line (SML) and its rate of return is given by the relation: Equation 1 with l:=r-m-rf/sm2 (see other notational conventions at the end of the paper) or, equivalently, Equation 2 Equations (1a)-(1b) may be restated in net-present-value terms: Equation 3 Solving (1c) for Vj we have the well-known certainty-equivalent form: Equation 4 Let us now suppose a project j is available to a firm and decision must be taken about undertaking it or not. In a classical pellucid paper, Rubinstein (1973), pp. 171-172 and footnote 10) proves that, if the previous relation holds, and if the objective is shareholder maximization, then the project is worth undertaking if: Equation 5 where the right-hand side is often called risk-adjusted cost of capital. Criterion (2a) is mathematically equivalent to: Equation 6 It is worth noting that the covariance term in equations (2a)-(2b) depends on project cost Ij, not on the equilibrium value of the project. Therefore, Rubinstein's covariance term is a disequilibrium (cost-based) covariance, not an equilibrium covariance.Senbet and Thompson (1978) show that the capital budgeting criteria proposed by Hamada (1969), Bierman and Hass (1973), Rubinstein (1973), Stapleton (1971), Bogue and Roll (1974) are equivalent. The same criterion is also found in Litzenberger and Budd (1970), where they explicitly acknowledge the equivalence of Mossin's criterion, Hamada's criterion, and Tuttle and Litzenberger's (1968) criterion.As it is clear from equation (2b), for practical implementation this criterion requires to fulfil the following steps:1. forecast end-of-period payoff from the project in the possible states of nature;2. forecast market rate of return in the possible states of nature;3. compute covariance between project's payoff and market rate of return;4. divide covariance by the project's cost;5. determine the market price of risk l and, therefore the risk-adjusted cost of capital;6. discount expected end-of-period payoff at the risk-adjusted cost of capital; and7. subtract cost.(For multi-period projects generalization is straightforward.) Hence, according to the (disequilibrium) NPV supporters, the sign of equation (2b) tells decision makers whether the project is profitable, and the discounted end-of-period payoff gives the project's value (see Copeland and Weston, 1983, 1988; Weston and Copeland, 1988, for several numerical examples).\nNonadditivity: Additivity in valuation is a major tenet in finance. The net present value is acceptable as a meaningful notion only if it is additive. Formally, additivity means that: Equation 7 In words, picking any pair of projects j and k, the sum of their NPVs must equal the NPV of that project (j+k) obtained by summing the cash flows of the two projects. We now show that condition equation (3) is not fulfilled if the disequilibrium NPV in equation (2b) is used for valuation.Counterexample\nConclusions: This paper deals with the well-established CAPM-derived capital budgeting criterion and the notion of disequilibrium cost of capital, which Rubinstein (1973) fosters in his classical paper and which mathematically implies the use of the disequilibrium NPV for capital budgeting. The use of disequilibrium NPVs is widespread in applied corporate finance, both in the literature and in the practice, both as a valuation tool and a decision rule. There is no debate in the literature about possible flaws of this capital budgeting rule. This paper aims at highlighting that the disequilibrium NPV is nonadditive and may not be used for valuation, given that it is nonadditive. As for decision-making, while it is indeed logically deducted by from the CAPM (equation (2b) is mathematically equivalent to equation (2a), and equation (2a) is deductively implied by the CAPM), its very use for decision-making is unsafe, because it leaves decision makers open to arbitrage losses (in the Appendix the equivalence of Rubinstein's criterion and Mossin's criterion is shown).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - In investment decision making, the net present value (NPV) rule is often used alongside the well-known capital asset pricing model (CAPM). In particular, the use of disequilibrium NPV is endorsed in corporate finance for both valuation and decision. The purpose of this paper is to test the reliability of this approach to capital budgeting valuations and decisions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The use of disequilibrium values for computing a project's NPV is considered, and the consistency with the CAPM is checked. The resulting valuation and decision are contrasted with the no-arbitrage principle, which is universally considered a benchmark for rationality.\nFindings: - The paper finds that the disequilibrium NPV is logically deducted from the CAPM for decision-making purposes. However, this NPV provides nonadditive values, which makes it inconsistent with the no-arbitrage principle.\nPractical implications: - The use of the CAPM+NPV procedure for valuing projects is invalid if disequilibrium values are used. Its use for decision making is logically valid but practically unsafe, because decision makers may frame equivalent courses of action in different ways, resulting in different decisions, which implies that they may incur arbitrage losses.\nOriginality/value: - The literature does not distinguish between equilibrium and disequilibrium NPV nor between valuation and decision. This paper explicitly makes this distinction and the resulting consequences are highlighted.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Branded marketing events: engaging Australian and French wine consumers
|
[
"Experiential marketing",
"Customer experience",
"Customer brand engagement",
"Branded marketing events",
"Wine events"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Marketing managers and event coordinators are increasingly sophisticated with their design of customer event experiences, often initiating events with the explicit purpose of creating interactive, brand-related experiences to facilitate customer engagement with the brand. This paper introduces the term branded marketing events (BMEs) to reflect these types of events, designed for the express purpose of facilitating customer interaction and engagement with the brand. BMEs differ from traditional marketing events or sponsorship arrangements, where marketing has some application but is not the primary purpose of the event (Wood, 2009). In contrast, organizations create BMEs to initiate interaction and active engagement with customers with the primary objective of developing a deeper psychological connection with the brand (Crowther, 2011). BMEs provide a physical space for customers to experience a brand; hence five experiential components of the event are examined; cognitive, emotional, pragmatic sensorial, and relational components (Chang and Chieng, 2006; Gentile et al., 2007). Despite extant literature examining these experiential components in the context of tangible product-related experiences (Brakus et al., 2009), experiential components have received less attention in an event context and little is known about how each component impacts on customer engagement with brands. This paper contributes to the understanding of BMEs through an investigation of the impact of each experiential component on customer brand engagement. It also aids in the understanding of customer brand engagement, as this paper investigates the role of event experiences as a strategic driver of this construct.\nBMEs: The foundation for the concept of BMEs lies within the marketing events literature (Whelan and Wohlfeil, 2006; Drengner et al., 2008) and draws from the broader literature area of customer experience (Gentile et al., 2007; Brakus et al., 2009). There is considerable debate among scholars regarding the conceptualisation and definition of marketing events (Close et al., 2006; Wohlfeil and Whelan, 2006; Drengner et al., 2008; Wood, 2009). A sponsorship agreement entitles the sponsoring brand to associate with an event (Drengner et al., 2008); the sponsorship event is not created for the purpose of communicating brand information or facilitation of customer brand interaction. Due to this lack of emphasis and the focus on the event itself, not the sponsor, customers at sponsorship events may or may not interact with the brand in the event space (Drengner et al., 2008). The sponsoring brand generally lacks control over event operations and distribution of brand-related information (Mau et al., 2006; Drengner et al., 2008). Multiple brands can sponsor the same event, often to the detriment of each sponsor, as the event becomes cluttered with conflicting brand messages (Wood, 2009). This results in a reduced ability for the event to translate to brand-related outcomes for the sponsoring brand.\nBMEs and customer brand engagement: Customer brand engagement is defined as \"the intensity of an individual's participation in and connection with an organization's offerings and/or organizational activities, which either the customer or the organization initiate\" (Vivek et al., 2012, p. 127). This definition of customer brand engagement recognizes that either the customer or the provider (the wine brand) initiates engagement, and it highlights the need for an interaction between the focal object (i.e. the brand) and the customer. In this regard, customer brand engagement occurs from the connection that individuals form with the brand based on their experiences at the BME (Vivek et al., 2012). Although Vivek et al. (2012) recognize that providers may initiate activities or events to engage customers they do not explain how the nature of interaction with the event facilitates customer brand engagement.\nThe Australian and French wine context: The French and Australian wine industries have long been considered two of the dominant global wine centers; the first regarded as the home of \"Old World wine,\" rich in wine history and tradition, and the second a rapidly expanding \"New World wine\" country (Anderson, 2004). As a result, France and Australia are a common choice for cross-cultural wine research (e.g. Lockshin et al., 2001; Jordan et al., 2007; Lereboullet et al., 2013). France has long been the largest producer and consumer of wine worldwide (Office International de la Vigne et du Vin (OIV), 2014), however, wine production and consumption is gradually declining in France, as it is throughout Europe (Karlsson and Karlsson, 2015). In contrast, wine consumption in Australia has increased in recent decades rising from 12 percent of the nation's alcohol consumption to 38 percent in the last 50 years (Germov and McIntyre, 2013), and Australia is now the seventh largest producer and eighth largest consumer of wine worldwide (OIV, 2014).\nConceptual framework and hypotheses development: An \"experience\" is recognized as an \"environment in which the brand is marketed or sold (e.g. events)\" (Brakus et al., 2009, p. 53). While extant literature recognizes that customers engage with the event itself (Vivek et al., 2012), it is the interaction with the brand within the event space that facilitates customer brand engagement. This is also one of the key features behind the definition of a BME as opposed to a sponsored event; BMEs elicit active engagement between the customer and the brand through an experiential approach. Previous research on marketing events has overlooked the active participation of the target group in the communication of the marketing message (Drengner et al., 2008). However, BMEs are an effective platform for a company to interact with customers, engage them, and create value in the experience with them. Therefore, this relationship requires further investigation.\nMethod: Data collection\nResults and discussion: To further explore the influence of BME experiences on customer brand engagement, the interrelationships between the factors were tested by means of a path model. The complete path model was tested using AMOS 21, and achieved fit (kh2=28.4, df=10, GFI=0.98, CFI=0.98, NFI=0.96, SRMR=0.01). A multi-group analysis was conducted to investigate the independent results of the Australian and French respondents.\nConclusion: Theoretical implications\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term branded marketing events (BMEs), and examine the role of its experiential components as a strategic tool for the facilitation of customer brand engagement. This study examines five experiential components of BMEs at events held in Australia and France to determine their respective impact on customer brand engagement.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Surveys were distributed to attendees of ten events by six wine brands in South Australia, and six events in five sub-regions of Bordeaux.\nFindings: Findings suggest that BMEs influence customers' brand engagement and brand purchase intention in both Australia and France. However, the experiential components within the events had differing effects. Australian customers were influenced by cognitive, sensorial, and relational experiences and their increased customer brand engagement strongly influenced brand purchase intention. French customers, however, required pragmatic event experiences to build brand engagement.\nOriginality/value: Recognizing their mutual experiential and interactive foundations, this study integrates the research domains of marketing events, customer experiences and customer brand engagement, and contributes to the strategic understanding of how branded event experiences facilitate customer brand engagement.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Enhancing coaching skills and emotional intelligence through training
|
[
"Coaching",
"Emotional intelligence",
"Management development",
"Workplace training"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Coaching skills have become an indispensable part of the contemporary workplace. Managers are expected to be skilled at coaching their staff to enhance employee engagement, wellbeing and performance, and to facilitate organisational and personal change (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, 2004). Indeed, coaching skills are central to many contemporary models of leadership. For example, transformational leadership (Bass and Avolio, 2000) involves four factors that embody a coaching approach:1. idealized influence (acting as an exemplary role model);2. inspirational motivation (engaging and motivating others);3. intellectual stimulation (facilitating creative thinking and innovation); and4. individual consideration (acting as a coach and mentor to help others attain goals).The notion of the leader as coach is also a key part of the popular situational leadership model (Hersey, 1984) and Goleman's (2000) model of emotionally intelligent leadership. Good coaching skills have been found to be linked to enhanced organisational performance at both managerial (Graham et al., 1994) and supervisor levels (Ellingeic et al., 2003).In light of these issues, organisations are increasingly investing in training to develop the coaching skills of their managers (Wright, 2005), with at least one in five managers having received training in workplace coaching skills (The Work Foundation, 2004). However, the impact of coaching skills training programmes is rarely assessed; fewer than 30 per cent of such programmes are evaluated in any way at all (Lidbetter, 2003). This paper presents original research looking at the impact of long-term (spaced learning) and short-term (block intensive) coaching skills training on participants' goal-focused coaching skills and emotional intelligence.\nGoal-focused coaching and emotional intelligence: Goal-focused workplace coaching can be understood as a collaborative, solution-focused and systematic process that is aimed at enhancing performance, self-directed learning and well-being (Grant, 2003). The five key factors in successful goal-focused workplace coaching are:1. coaching sessions that deliver an outcome which is of tangible value;2. the development of a strong collaborative working alliance between manager/coach and coachee;3. an emphasis on constructing solutions, rather than merely analysing the problem;4. efficient goal setting; and5. managing the coaching process over time and holding the coachee accountable for completing any agreed actions (Grant, 2006).Although many commercial workplace coaching models are promoted as being complex proprietary methodologies, in fact the essence of goal-focused coaching is a straightforward change process in which an individual sets a goal, develops a plan of action, begins action, monitors his or her performance (through observation and self-reflection), evaluates his or her performance (thus gaining insight) and based on this evaluation, changes his or her actions to further enhance performance, and thus reach his or her goal. The role of the manager/coach is facilitate the coachee's progress through this cycle.Coaching skills are inextricably related to emotional intelligence. In order to purposefully move through the goal-focused coaching cycle, individuals have to be able to regulate their thoughts, feelings and behaviours so they can best achieve their goals. Such intelligent use of emotions is important for both the manager/coach and the coachee (David, 2005).Emotional intelligence can be understood as having four key branches:1. the ability to accurately perceive emotions in oneself and others;2. the ability to use emotions to facilitate thought;3. understanding how different emotions arise and change over time; and4. the ability to use the knowledge from the first three branches to manage emotions and translate them into constructive action (Mayer and Salovey, 1997).Emotional intelligence is an important factor in workplace performance (Abraham, 2005) both on an individual level, predicting individuals' leadership behaviours (Byrne, 2004), and on a group level, with leaders' emotional intelligence being associated with higher levels of group effectiveness (Stubbs, 2005).Emotional intelligence can also be understood as being related to personality traits. Traits are underlying and enduring personal characteristics, and are therefore more difficult to change than specific observable behaviours. From this perspective, coaching behaviours are, in part, a manifestation of an individual's emotional intelligence. Therefore developing a individual's coaching skills may well also enhance their emotional intelligence. However, little is known about how coaching skills training impacts on emotional intelligence, and the relationship between personality, emotional intelligence, goal-focused coaching skills is not clearly understood (Bryant, 2005). Figure 1 shows a generic model of the relationship between personality, emotional intelligence, and goal-focused coaching skills.\nA dearth of research on enhancing emotional intelligence and coaching skills: Even though many organisations invest in attempting to enhance the emotional intelligence of employees (Goleman et al., 2002), there is surprisingly little published research showing whether or not emotional intelligence can in fact be enhanced. In one study Chapman (2005) found that emotional intelligence as measured by the Boston Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (BEIQ (Weisinger, 1988)) increased, following a leadership coaching programme specifically designed to enhance leaders' emotional intelligence. Similarly, Kampa-Kokesch (2002) found that executive coaching could improve managers' levels of transformational leadership, which are in turn related to emotional intelligence competencies (Srivastava and Bharamanaikar, 2004).Similarly, although there is past research examining the impact of coaching on factors such as wellbeing (Green et al., 2006), goal attainment (Grant, 2003) and leadership style (Smither et al., 2003; Wasylyshyn, 2003), there are few published papers on the impact of coaching skills training on managers' coaching skills. Using an interview-based methodology Graham et al. (1994) surveyed 87 account representatives who worked for 13 sales managers involved in a coaching skills programme, and found significant increases in follow-up ratings on five behaviours, including clarity in performance expectations, providing feedback, and rewarding performance. To date there has been no research that looks at the impact of coaching-skill training on both emotional intelligence and individuals' coaching skills levels.The aim of the present research was to extend previous research and compare the effect of two coaching skills training programmes, of the type often used in workplace settings, on participants' coaching skills and levels of emotional intelligence. One programme was a 13-week programme, the other was a short intensive two-day training course.\nMethod: Measures\nThe 13-week coaching skills training programme: Participants\nResults of the 13-week programme: Paired t-tests were used to examine the impact of the coaching skills training programme. Participants' scores on the GSCQ significantly increased (t(22)=2.78, p<0.01) following the programme, from a pre-programme mean score of 55.43 (SD 9.52) to a post-programme mean of 62.73 (SD 8.21). Scores on the SEIS also significantly increased (t(22)=2.11, p<0.05) following the coaching programme, from a mean score of 125.61 (SD 10.11) to a post-programme mean score of 129.26 (SD 8.84) (see Figures 2 and 3).\nThe two-day \"Manager as Coach\" training programme: Participants\nResults of the two-day \"Manager as Coach\" training programme: Paired t-tests were used to examine the impact of the \"Manager as Coach\" training programme. Participation in the \"Manager as Coach\" training programme resulted in an increase in scores on the GSCQ, but not on the SEIS. Participants' scores on the GSCQ significantly increased (t(19)=2.06, p<0.05) following the programme, from a pre-training mean score of 54.85 (SD 4.44) to a post-training mean of 57.95 (SD 5.03). Scores on the SEIS did not significantly change, with a pre-training mean of 119.75 (SD 11.58) compared with a post-training mean of 120.50 (SD 10.25) (see Figures 2 and 3).\nComparing the results of the two training programmes: There were no significant differences between the 13-week group and the two-day group on pre-training programme scores for either the GSCQ or the SEIS; both groups were equivalent at the beginning. However, independent sample t-tests showed that post-training scores on the GSCQ in the 13-week programme (mean 62.73; t(41)=2.262, p< 0.05) were significantly larger than for the two-day programme (mean 57.95), and post-training SEIS scores for the 13-week programme (mean 129.26; t(41)=3.009, p< 0.01) were significantly larger than for the two-day programme (mean 120.50). In summary, it appears that the 13-week training programme was more effective and enhanced both participants' coaching skills and their emotional intelligence. The two-day Manager as Coach training programme was effective in enhancing coaching skills, but was less effective than the longer 13-week training programme, and was not effective in significantly increasing emotional intelligence (see Figures 2 and 3).\nEnhancing coaching skills and emotional intelligence: This is the first study to provide preliminary evidence that goal-focused coaching skills and emotional intelligence can be enhanced through training. At the beginning of these coaching skills programmes, there was no significant difference between participants on either measures. It is noteworthy that both goal-focused coaching skills and emotional intelligence significantly increased following the 13-week programme, but only goal-focused coaching skills increased following the two-day programme.These findings are important because emotional intelligence was not specifically targeted (or even mentioned) in the coaching skills training programmes. There has been significant debate about whether emotional intelligence is a learnable skill or an immutable trait (Davies et al., 1998; Petrides and Furnham, 2001). The present study suggests that emotional intelligence as measured by the SEIS is indeed changeable, and can be changed by focusing on specific behaviours related to emotional intelligence such as coaching skills. However, it appears that long-term training is required to make changes in emotional intelligence. This result makes sense in that emotional intelligence can be understood as being closely linked to personality traits (see Figure 1), and traits are more difficult to change than specific behavioural skills such as goal focused coaching skills (Perez et al., 2005).\nPractical implications: The practical implications of these findings are that organisations, consultants and trainers should be aware that, whilst short intensive programmes may well improve participants' goal-focused coaching skills, longer term and repeated interventions may be required to improve emotional intelligence. This conclusion is supported by the literature on spaced learning. It has been found that short, repeated training sessions combined with feedback can be more effective than longer, but less frequent sessions (Janiszewski et al., 2003). As spaced learning can facilitate deeper learning processes, trainers and coaches who wish to enhance trait-like leadership skills and associated emotional intelligence competencies would do well to conduct training and coaching sessions in short blocks with several follow-up sessions, rather than in two day-long sessions with no follow-up sessions.Such a programme could start with a one-day long introduction module in which participants were introduced to the theory and practice of workplace coaching. In order to maximise participant buy-in, it is vital that coach training programmes focus directly on real-life workplace issues that are considered by both the participant and the organisation to be important. Programmes should be theoretically grounded, but must have real-world application. As in the programmes used in the present studies, actual coaching sessions should be observed, and specific feedback given.Although training sessions should be enjoyable, as adults learn best when they are actively engaged (Mancuso, 2001), the retention of information and transfer of learning back to the workplace requires that the learner actually expends effort (Hesketh, 1997); mere \"feel-good\" coaching skills training sessions may not produce real change. Following day one, participants should have weekly or fortnightly follow-up sessions of approximately 1.5 to 2.5 hours, with another full day-long workshop approximately half way through the programme to help consolidate learning, discuss any problems and share ideas. This time frame has been successfully used in workplace stress reduction programmes over an eight-week time frame; eight weeks possibly being a more acceptable time commitment for many organisations than the 13-week programme used in the present study.With regard to limitations, it should be borne in mind that these studies used self-report scales, rather than objective measures, and the actual face-to-face contact training time for the groups differed. Furthermore, the studies used a pre-post design and the lack of a no-training control group means that the effects could have occurred naturalistically. In addition, the present training programmes used post-training measures taken shortly after the programme finished, and it is not known if these increases were maintained over time. Nevertheless, these studies provide useful evidence of the utility of the GSCQ, and suggest that training in coaching skills can positively impact on emotional intelligence. Future research should use follow-up measures in longitude research, and use training programmes of equal face-to-face time.Leadership, emotional intelligence and good coaching skills are inextricably interwoven. Effective training in coaching skills may be a useful way for organisations to improve the leadership styles and emotional intelligence of their managers, thereby enhancing the performance, wellbeing and quality of organisational life.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of a long-term (13-week, spaced learning) with a short-term (two-day, block intensive) coaching skills training programme on participants' coaching skills and emotional intelligence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In the study 23 participants completed a 13-week coaching skills training course which consisted of weekly 2.5-hour workshops and action learning. In comparison, 20 participants completed a two-day \"Manager as Coach\" training programme, with a three-week action learning break between day one and day two. Both training programmes used the same coaching frameworks, with the two-day programme being more condensed.\nFindings: - Participation in the 13-week training course was associated with increases in both goal-focused coaching skills and emotional intelligence, whereas the two-day block intensive training was associated with increased goal-focused coaching skills, but not emotional intelligence. Further, the magnitude of the increase in goal-focused coaching skills was less for the two-day programme than for the 13-week programme.\nResearch limitations/implications: - These studies used a quasi-experimental pre-post design, and the long-term effects were not measured. Future research should use control groups and random assignment to short- or long-term training.\nPractical implications: - The main implications of these findings are that, while short, intensive programmes may improve participants' goal-focused coaching skills, organisations seeking to deepen the impact of \"Manager as Coach\" training programmes and improve the underlying emotional intelligence of participants should use a spaced learning approach over a number of weeks.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study to examine the impact of different approaches to coaching skills training and their impact on emotional intelligence.\n",
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Shift work interventions for reduced work-family conflict
|
[
"Shift work",
"Family",
"Training"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In discussing work-life balance, the focus is often on the amount of time spent at work, and flexibility of work time and place to accommodate family and other requirements. In both research and the popular literature, however, the focus of this balancing act is on a traditional 9-5 view of employment that spills over - in hours and energy - to a fairly traditional view of non-work life. The issue of balance may become more difficult, however, when the \"work\" in work-life balance is a series of rotating or shifts that result in dynamic discontinuities between workers and the rest of their life. For the shift worker, the particular issues of work-life balance, stress and coping, are both more complex and more compelling.\nInterventions to improve coping by shift workers: Stress research proposes that job stress intervention processes can be divided into three categories: those focusing on the individual (by learning to cope with stress), those focusing on the organisation (by changing the work situation, thus tackling the source of the problem) and those focusing on the individual-organisation interface (by increasing the employee's resistance to specific job stressors).Within these three focus points, stress management approaches generally concentrate on primary coping strategies (i.e. reduction of stressors such as work-family conflicts), or secondary coping strategies (i.e. altering employee responses to job stressors such as ways of dealing with work-family conflicts once they arise). (Discussion of tertiary coping strategies such as counselling and therapy is beyond the scope of this paper; for more elaborate reviews see Lazarus and Folkman, 1984.)Based on the accelerating social changes that necessitate shift work, it is safe to assume that the organisation-focused, primary intervention strategy of eliminating shift work is of little practical value. Although it is within the possibility of many organisations to minimise some of the negative aspects of shift work by changing from rotating shifts to permanent shifts (Tepas, 1993), research has shown that many of the negative consequences, especially the family related ones, remain valid for all types of shift work. Therefore, the focus will remain on the individual employees and their families when working with primary and secondary coping strategies.For the successful design and application of any coping strategies aimed at helping shift workers to effectively deal with the challenges of their working life, family support and help are of vital importance (Bohle and Tilley, 1998; Bostic, 1988). This importance of the family is underscored by Frone et al. (1992) who found that the relationship between work - family conflict and job related stress is not a direct one, but that it is mediated by the frequency of family - work conflict. Further, MacEwen and Barling (1998) suggest that employees with a high degree of family support are more protected from the effects of work - family conflicts than employees with low levels of family support. This protection can be established on the practical level as well as on a psychological and emotional level. For example, families can be supportive by reducing the clash between work and non-work activities (and the frequency of FWC) by restructuring meals and social and familial activities to accommodate the shift worker (Bohle and Tilley, 1998). Additionally, having the understanding and support of the family as well as maintaining contact with other shift worker families can not only ease the practical burdens, but also the aspects of perceived social marginalisation and role conflict (Pisarski et al., 2002). Moreover, proper support from family and friends at home has been found to enhance both adaptability and tolerance to shift work (Loudon and Bohle, 1997; Walker, 1985), two aspects feeding into job satisfaction and perceived work-life balance.As it is in the interest of the individual as well as the organisation to achieve adaptability to and tolerance of shift work, workplaces increasingly turn to introducing shift work preparation strategies. These strategies aim at directly benefiting the employee, therefore improving his or her job satisfaction and thus benefiting indirectly the organisation as well (Henderson and Burt, 1998). Shift worker education programmes are one such strategy that attempts to change shift worker behaviour within the framework of primary and secondary stress interventions. These programmes may provide both relevant information to employees (communication of news, knowledge and facts), as well as educate staff on how to cope with the demands of shift work. Education here is defined as developing information, facilitating learning, training and implementation (Tepas, 1993). Ideally, these strategy and life style coping education sessions are conducted on an on-going basis to keep shift workers constantly aware of problems associated with the stresses of shift work as well as with relevant coping strategies (Monk, 2000).Research in the effectiveness of shift worker education programmes has shown mixed results. Some literature reviews report only anecdotal evidence for the effectiveness of shift worker education programmes (Tepas, 1993). Shift workers may reject reparation strategies involving sleeping patterns and/or restrictions on caffeine intake as irrelevant to them (Wedderburn and Scholarios, 1993). In general, it has been argued that the effectiveness of intervention strategies largely depends on two characteristics. One of these is the relevance of the information the individual is given (Tepas, 1993). A clear focus on relevance of shift worker educational programmes to the employee situation has repeatedly been found to have a positive impact on acceptance of its message (Carlson, 1991). In addition, successful shift work education programmes must be relevant, practical as well as socially acceptable to the individual as well as the family members affected (Tepas, 1993). Generally, very few coping strategies have been found to work well without this family or social support (Monk, 2000). Since a large proportion of shift work stressors are related to the difficulties experienced when balancing work and family roles (Pleck et al., 1980), it is reasonable to expect that employee change is more likely to occur if the training programmes are relevant to these aspects as well as to the physical issues of eating and sleeping routines.The second aspect increasing the effectiveness of shift work education initiatives is how skilled the shift worker is in using the given information (Tepas, 1993). In the case of shift work and family demands, this is probably not only an issue of the employee's skill in applying the information, but also the skill levels of family and friends of the employee who are also required to change behaviours. Therefore, it does appear to make sense that shift intervention programmes include family members as active participants (Tepas, 1993). Finally, as argued earlier, work and family demands can influence each other in both directions. Therefore, it is suggested that when evaluating shift-worker intervention strategies one needs to look at the effect these interventions have on both family-work conflict and work-family conflict. Due to the reciprocal, mediating effects these role conflicts have on each other, it can be argued that shift work intervention programmes involving family members and addressing both conflicts will have greater beneficial effects than interventions aiming at reducing only one of the conflicts. However, there is a clear lack of field experimental research into this area.The present study fills this gap by exploring, in a naturally occurring field setting, whether involvement of the family in shift work support training, and enlargement of the scope of training by inclusion of socio-emotional aspects of shift work, improves the work-family outcomes for shift workers.\nMethod: The data was gathered through initial and six-monthly follow-ups at three industrial sites that adopted different interventions to improve job satisfaction and occupational safety and health for shift-workers. The research design is that of a naturally occurring field experiment, with repeated measures at three sites, each of which adopted a different approach to shift-worker training and development. The researchers were not involved in the interventions at these sites, but were there to collect longitudinal data on shift work patterns and impacts as part of a larger national study of shift workers over two decades of workplace reform.Participants\nResults: This research assessed whether work-life balance training improves shift-workers' experience of work and family, and if this is enhanced by family participation in the training. The dependent variables across all three conditions are composite scores on WFC and FWC. A 3x2x3 multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), with repeated measures was performed to test the impact of the training.Impact of training on WFC and FWC\nDiscussion: Shift work has its positive sides as well as its conflict aspects. The present study illustrated, that the traditional positive aspects of shift work - flexibility and pay - were as much part of life for the employees at all three sites investigated as were the negative sides. These negative aspects had been found to fall into two areas of conflict that can have effects in two unique but related directions: from work into the family of the shift worker, and from the family into the work place. The present research aimed at exploring the differences three types of training can make on reported work-family conflict and family-work conflict for shift workers.The importance of family involvement in awareness creation, training or behaviour change for shift workers had been clearly demonstrated by the results relating to the two sites introducing more extensive behaviour modification training. As previous research indicated, the family environment appears to play a central role when trying to alleviate the effects of shift work. The highly significant result for the interaction effect for training by family involvement on work-family conflict is in support of previous studies suggesting that, as the family bears the brunt of a shift worker's conflicts, the family is also the deciding factor in effectiveness of shift worker interventions. Even the best-designed and structured shift worker training does indeed need to involve the family. The family is the support network for the shift worker, which can help managing the work-family conflicts by sharing the same skills and an understanding of the issues involved.The results further indicate that traditional interventions in the form of giving health focused information on how to maintain alertness during shift work as well as introducing a healthy diet and exercise, can reduce the level of WFC and FWC experienced. However, these changes appear to be relatively small and, when considering only the FWC mean scores, the degree of family work conflict may increase. It is possible to suggest that this increase in FWC is due to the shift worker's learning about different eating and sleeping patterns than those currently present in the family. If the shift worker suggests that changes to diet and household routines are implemented, conflict may be heightened by a lack of family awareness of work-related health requirements. It is also possible that the families feel the changes to be not feasible or a priority in their lives. Future studies might clarify this point through interviews and focus group discussions with the effected employees and their families. As this study is limited to male shift workers, we cannot assess the interaction of gender roles on work-family. We are also limited by the scope of the study; as this is a field study, we have no control over other sources of variance at home or in the work place.The reported increase in conflicts regarding disrupted family life in Site B (training without family involvement) may arise from one of two possible causes. First, it is conceivable that in the time after the intervention some of the respondents did face actual events such as overtime required or scheduling conflicts. These may or may not have been out of the ordinary, but after talking about these conflicts in the training they might have come more to the attention of the shift workers than before, and thus be reported more often. On the other hand, it is possible that the shift workers spoke at home with their families about shift work in general, and the training in particular, and thus surfaced the topic, and discovered more family distress than they had previously been aware of. These conversations might have brought the issues of limited or interrupted social lives to the forefront of the shift workers' minds and into the open-ended question responses. Again, future studies could explore these possibilities through in-depth interviews and focus groups with shift workers and their family members.Overall, the most encouraging finding is that a total reduction in fights about work schedules and an increase in family understanding of the shift worker's support requirements is possible if the training focuses on a broad range of behaviours, acknowledges family-work issues, and explicitly involves the family in the learning process. In combination with the clear results in reduction of work-family conflict of this type of intervention, it clearly supports the notion that family, shift worker, and workplace form an interdependent unit. If employers wish to increase performance in one aspect (i.e. at work), they are well advised to explicitly address the other two as well (i.e. work with the employee and the family on managing the complexities involved). From the perspective of the employee, merely understanding shift work's negative effects is not enough; effective support involves family awareness and engagement.The pressures of work and family are accelerating and families, who have traditionally borne the brunt of the conflicts experienced between home and work, can do little more to sustain balance. Therefore, in addition to acknowledging the necessity and sometimes welcoming the new employment patterns of shift work, employees are increasingly asking for a more balanced approach to work and social life. Consequently, the challenge for society as well as for organisations is to find the best possible way to deal with these, sometimes-conflicting demands made on the time and energy of shift workers. The main difficulty in this challenge is to find ways to enable the employee to cope with the stresses resulting from the increased temporal flexibility of social and work organisations (Costa, 2003). While other research has suggested that employees are better able to balance shift work and home life demands following lifestyle training if it addresses issues of concern to the shift worker and includes socialising strategies (Henderson and Burt, 1998; Johnson, 2004), we have added to this knowledge base by documenting reduced work-life stress when lifestyle training involves family members.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - This research aims to investigate the efficacy of family involvement in shift work training targeting both physiological and social coping strategies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study utilized repeated surveys of work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) in a naturally occurring field experiment. Three small process manufacturing sites introduced training for shift workers, with or without family involvement, and with or without training on managing relational aspects of shift-work.\nFindings: - The inclusion of social coping strategies combined with family involvement significantly reduced work-family conflict. Open response categories on the survey suggest that these reductions were due to the facilitation of a joint problem solving approach by family members. In contrast, employee focused training on physiological coping alone appears to increase family conflicts.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As a field study, this paper cannot control for the particularities of family situations. It should also be noted that the participants were all male, and results may have differed for female shift workers given differing family and work expectations.\nPractical implications: - For employers and OSH officers, this research suggests that broader spectrum training may assist shift workers in managing the requirements and impact of unsociable hours of work. For the shift worker, the research reinforces the importance of family support and family involvement in moderating shift work's potentially negative effects.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first study to assess the impact of family involvement in training and development-based interventions. This paper provides a unique perspective on shift work interventions by documenting both content and process effects for shift work support.\n",
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Building blocks of the luxury jewellery industry: conversations with a CEO
|
[
"Luxury",
"Jewellery"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Blood Diamond, the 2006 captivating thriller, shed light on the endeavour of two men during the civil war in the 1990s, to acquire a rare gem in Sierra Leone. This example only scrapes the surface of the deep-rooted jewellery and gem industry in Africa. Contemporarily, other countries like Switzerland, Hong Kong, China, Singapore and even India have emerged as strong contenders of bespoke jewellery manufacturers over the years. The industry is inherently competitive; pushing regional markets to adopt innovative techniques to captivate the interest and loyalty of the global consumer. Existing academic knowledge on the jewellery industry encapsulates the technological aspect (e.g. Yap and Yeong, 2014); supply chain management aspect (e.g. Brun and Moretto, 2012) and globalisation (e.g. De Marchi et al., 2014; Richman, 2008) of the industry. From a marketing perspective, however, there is a noticeable deficit in knowledge pertaining to concrete business models of jewellery brands, which could potentially aide marketers to further understand such an industry and to enhance marketing strategy. As a result, this research paper will focus on Larry Jewelry, a luxury jewellery brand in Hong Kong. Jewellers in Hong Kong are consistently upheld for the manufacturing of quality jewellery and gems, making it a compelling choice for further research (Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 2017).\nThe jewellery industry: From the beginning, Geneva has been one of the most prominent hotspots for jewellery and gem, but over the years, Hong Kong has emerged as a fertile market, with the exponential potential to be a world leader. There is a notable increase in the demand for gems and jewellery by consumers in the Asia Pacific regions, primarily due to growing availability of medium-priced jewellery pieces, which makes them more accessible to the larger population (Pepper, 2018). Interestingly, this also suggests that these consumers are traversing away from the traditional and conventional establishments in the market, which makes for an interesting point of discussion, from a business standpoint. Switzerland has held the reigns of luxury jewellery manufacturing for centuries. However, there is an increasing interest in markets in India, China, Middle East, Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore, under the consideration that these developing markets show promise for growth and innovation (KGK Group, 2018). Existing academic literature has extensively focused on the industry in the Indian and African markets that encapsulate the technological aspect (e.g. Yap and Yeong, 2014), supply chain management aspect (e.g. Brun and Moretto, 2012) and globalisation (e.g. De Marchi et al., 2014) of these markets (for full reviews on the individual industries, please see Kannabiran and Bhaumik, 2005; Da Silva, 1999). Only recently, Hong Kong and Singapore have achieved international acclaim in the industry, since consumers are increasingly recognising the exceptional quality of products from jewellers in Hong Kong and Singapore; pushing regional markets to adopt innovative techniques to captivate the interest and loyalty of the global consumer.\nThe legend of Larry jewelry: In 1967, Larry Jewelry was established on the high street of Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong. Having just celebrated its 50th anniversary, the luxury jeweller boasts of a rich history and heritage over the past five decades. What started as a single boutique, Larry Jewelry now has four boutiques in Hong Kong and Singapore. Almost a decade after its inception, the company expanded into Singapore in 1976 in Orchard Tower, another high street, hosting a plethora of luxury jewellers. Following this, in 1989, Larry Jewelry launched the prestigious Lazare Diamonds Collection in Singapore, which came to be known as \"the world's most beautiful diamond.\" The company was the recipient of the International South Sea Pearl Jewellery Design Award in 1997 and 2003, which further reinforces their dedication to innovation and design. Further, they were also enlisted in the published collection termed, \"Quality Jewellers of Singapore.\" Over the years, it became evident that the need for more boutiques in different locations was of utmost importance, in order to cater to the needs of a variety of customer segments. In line with the industrial review discussed above, Mr Caric Hon, the CEO of Larry Jewelry shared that most of their success came from their loyal customers over the years, who perceive the company to be traditional due to their authentic traditions of craftsmanship in the production of precious jewellery and gems. Along with the strategic expansion of the business in terms of boutiques across Hong Kong and Singapore, over the years, the jewellery brand has introduced a number of product segments, in a strategic move to cater to a larger consumer base. A point of observation from the in-depth interview was that much of their business model was effective enough, resulting in Larry Jewelry being featured on Hong Kong's stock market. Therefore, in order to further understand the jewellery business in this region, an in-depth interview with Larry Jewelry was a compelling necessity.\nProduct segments: The consumer market for jewellery and gem products is perceived to be intrinsically inclined towards elegance and grandeur. However, market research observed a noticeable shift from the classic variants of jewellery to a more customised approach, in order to suit the demand from a diverse variety of market segments. As previously mentioned, it is evident that jewellers in the Asia Pacific region are noted for their flexibility in manufacturing customised jewellery items for each customer and Larry Jewelry is no exception. Initially, the company solely catered to the affluent customer segment with a classic variety of products. Mr Caric Hon explained, \"In the beginning, we were largely perceived as a typically classical jeweller, who primarily targeted the creme-de la-creme of jewellery customers; they were interested in the elegant and classic jewellery collections. We are well-positioned in the classic jewellery market here, because of our long-term relations with customers.\" After taking over operations, Mr Caric Hon learned of the changing trend, wherein a different segment of consumers were becoming increasingly interested in jewellery. But, these new consumer segments had different demands on the type of jewellery they wanted, and Mr Caric Hon felt the dire need to cater to this new market segment. As a result, Larry Jewelry introduced a more diverse range of collections, to encompass a broader customer segment. In line with this, Mr Caric Hon indicated that \"Today, a lot of working-class women are also interested in jewellery; they want something that fits well into their everyday routines, not overly extravagant, but jewellery that fits synchronously with their working lifestyle. To tap into this market, we created the Cosmopolitan collection [...].\"\nThe blueprint: Literature on the luxury fashion brands is plentiful. While it is pertinent that Hong Kong jewellers have captured the interest of consumers across the globe, it is now imperative to underpin the business model that drives such success. In the marketing context, a company's business model is a reflection of the very blueprint of the company's operations and structure. With the lack of literary support on jewellery industry business models, this paper offers some insight into potential business model structures for the profitable functioning of luxury jewellers.\nAuthenticity: A news article recently reported that Hong Kong customs is fighting the battle of enormous trade of counterfeit jewellery at a number of fairs in the country (Hong Kong Customs Combats Sale of Counterfeit Jewellery at Fair, 2018), which makes it a matter of concern for genuine manufacturers of jewellery. Counterfeit products are those that share similar physical characteristics with the authentic or genuine brand (Phau and Teah, 2009). Despite the fact that such products are illegal and of poor quality, their low prices make them an attractive alternative to genuine brands, because they are more accessible (Phau and Teah, 2009; Tsai, 2005; Wilcox et al., 2009; Wu et al., 2017).\nDiscussion and practical implications: The luxury jewellery market in Hong Kong and Singapore shows promise for growth, on a global scale. Limited research has examined the success factor of the jewellery industry in the Asia Pacific region. This research paper sets out to investigate the business model and the blueprints of a successful Asia Pacific Jeweller, Larry Jewelry. From the in-depth interview with Mr Caric Hon, Larry's Jewelry's strong customer base can be identified as four distinctive, major market segments: classic luxury; new, aspirational luxury; bridal and wedding; and gifting. While examining certain themes that emerged from the in-depth interview, we further analysed the possible relevancy of existing academic research in luxury branding in the context of luxury jewellery, in order to put forth jewellery specific business model blueprints. In light of the scope of this paper, it is important to note that much of the findings of this paper are based on themes from an in-depth interview. These themes are then contrasted with existing knowledge on luxury brands and should be analysed further, from a more grounded perspective.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to conduct an in-depth interview with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Larry Jewelry, a luxury jeweller with boutiques in Hong Kong and Singapore. Given the ever-evolving luxury jewellery market in South East Asia, it is paramount to understand the success factors of the luxury jewellery sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An in-depth interview approach is used to understand the antecedents of the success of the luxury jewellery sector. Specifically, this paper presents a complex business model of Larry Jewelry and an in-depth interview with the CEO of Larry Jewelry for current insights in the sector.\nFindings: This paper highlights the history of Larry Jewelry, its product segments and the key elements of its business blueprint. Specifically, the success of Larry Jewelry is attributed to its business model and strong branding on quality, craftsmanship, rarity, human interaction and trust.\nOriginality/value: Despite the substantial growth in the luxury jewellery sector, there is relatively little research on the success factors of this industry, especially in South East Asia. The current research provides practical insights into business blueprint of a successful luxury jeweller in Hong Kong and Singapore.\n",
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How to be a host leader: Approaching leadership in new way using the familiar techniques of hosting
|
[
"Development",
"Leadership development",
"Coaching",
"Action learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nWhat do we do, as hosts?: At a high level, we might look at hosting as being about setting context, giving protection and enabling community. Hosts are usually the ones who step forward with an idea, an offer or a possibility. A host is always a context setter - providing an environment or space into which others will come. The others may be invited to change the space and participate in it, but the host is the first to have the opportunity to set things up. This is a very powerful position when used with skill - for example, governments are always keen to host summit meetings or talks, as they know that there will be opportunities to influence discussions in ways which are simply not open to the other participants.\nBut I am not a host! What can I do?: The wonderful thing about metaphors is that they can inform our behavior in whatever situation we find ourselves rather than constraining us into certain contexts. People often say to us, \"I inherited my team when I took over the job! How can I be a Host Leader?\"\nWhat does it mean to lead?: The art of leading was never easy - and it seems to be getting harder all the time. Communication is faster, connection is greater, markets are global and whatever action we take is part of a great onrushing whirl of conversation and innovation. In this world, what does it mean to lead? People can get all the information they need (apparently from whatever perspective they want) at the touch of a button. They can interact with whomever they want. So, the classical view of a leader as someone who simply issues information and direction is obsolete.\nLeadership as engagement: In the old days of mass production, everyone had something to do, and as long as they did it, all would be fine; the system would fit together and products would emerge. These kinds of workplaces involved taking engagement out of the equation: one person could easily be replaced by another, and so engagement did not really matter.\n",
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},
{
"content": "Purpose: To look at what we do, as hosts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper looks at what we do as hosts, what it means to lead and leadership as engagement.\nFindings: Host leadership offers an alternative. Leadership seems to put the focus on the leader. The authors think this is a mistake. Leading is about a relationship - between the leader and the others.\nOriginality/value: Host leadership is a natural way to take a leading position, in a manner that draws in others. This builds engagement, leading to performance and results.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Where does knowledge-sharing motivation come from? The case of third-party developer in mobile platforms
|
[
"Mobile platform",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Platform openness",
"Theory of reasoned action"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Developers community has served as an excellent source of information for third-party developers (developers) to create new ideas and expand business opportunities through interactions in mobile platforms (Lin and Lee, 2006). A survey by Stackoverflow (2018) shows that 93.3% of mobile developers acquire and learn new knowledge from the developers communities (Stackoverflow, 2018). Facilitating the developers community is an important issue for two rival mobile platforms, Android and iOS, which compete to attract more developers onto their platforms (Bergvall-Kareborn and Howcroft, 2014), as well as for the developers themselves who want to benefit from knowledge sharing in the community. While knowledge sharing may be a key to stimulate subsequent application development in developers communities, knowledge sharing has been underprovisioned (Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002; Wasko et al., 2009) because once knowledge is shared, it becomes a public good with externality. Therefore, vital questions in mobile developers communities concern how to motivate the developers to share the knowledge and sustain their sharing behaviors.\n2. Literature review: The theoretical framework for our study is built on theory of reasoned action (TRA) by extending motivational factors specific to mobile platform as antecedents. On top of this framework, we consider two unique factors of mobile platform context: perceived openness and coopetitive relationship among developers. The knowledge sharing can be a boon to the developers at the same time that it can be a weapon of their competitors. Therefore, depending on how a developer perceives others and their reciprocity or competitive relationships, the perception of the developers may be different. Furthermore, we stipulate that motivations vary across platform policy, and consequently, the developers may show different perceptions and behaviors.\n3. Research model: Based on the TRA, we propose a research model that explains a developer's intention to share his/her knowledge in the mobile platform, as depicted in Figure 1. The theory told that knowledge-sharing intention is a decisive predictor of knowledge-sharing behaviors, and subjective norms and attitude are direct influencer of the intention (Bock et al., 2005).\n4. Methodologies: 4.1 Data\n5. Results: To test the research model, PLS-SEM is employed. PLS method requires relatively minimal sample size as well as generous assumption in sample distribution than alternative SEM methods (Fornell and Cha, 1994). SmartPLS 3.0 is used to analyze the survey data.\n6. Conclusion and discussion: This study extends the limited understanding of developers' knowledge sharing on mobile platforms. The knowledge sharing on a mobile platform has two distinct differences from discussions on knowledge sharing in other contexts in the prior literature. First, a mobile platform can create an atmosphere that induces the development, which may influence the developers' willingness to contribute to the community or the platform. Second, as developers voluntarily participate in the community and share their know-how with other developers, the relationship among the developers can often be coopetitive; developers in the same community can be friends as well as rivals.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: In mobile platforms, an increasing number of third-party developers (developers) create new ideas and enhance their expertise through knowledge sharing on the developers' community. Notwithstanding the importance of the sharing and its uniqueness on the mobile platform contexts, the motivational factors of sharing their knowledge on the community have been underinvestigated. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive framework to enhance the knowledge sharing in the mobile platform context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the theory of reasoned action, this paper incorporated intrinsic and internalized extrinsic motivations with two unique features of platform environments: platform open policies and coopetitive relationships. To test, an online survey was distributed to four developer communities in Korea, two Android and two iOS communities.\nFindings: The results show that a platform pursuing higher openness causes the developers to find higher social pressure for information sharing. The coopetitive relationship with other developers in the same platform takes dissimilar roles; reciprocity significantly increases subjective norm, while rivalry does attitude. Self-efficacy and self-development stimulate knowledge sharing. Furthermore, multilevel analysis to capture the difference between two leading mobile platforms indicates no path difference but, interestingly, shows significant mean difference between the two platforms regarding perceived openness and rivalry.\nOriginality/value: With this paper, the authors fulfill the need to understand the knowledge-sharing intention of developers in the context of mobile platforms where developers can be potential competitors or cooperators and where two platforms offer different policies and developmental environments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Are women business owners authentic servant leaders?
|
[
"Authenticity",
"Servant leadership",
"Motivation to lead",
"Women business owners",
"Compassionate love",
"Women’s leadership"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nAre women business owners authentic servant leaders?: An explosion of women business owners has increased the need for women to define themselves based on their occupation and employment (Goldin, 2014). Part of this definition may include a mix of communal (e.g. actions focused on taking care of others) and agentic (e.g. assertiveness, control and confidence) leadership behaviors (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). The use of both communal and agentic behaviors was found to be associated with servant leadership in prior research (Barbuto and Gifford, 2010). Servant leadership, coined by Greenleaf (1970), and its subsequent competing theories were synthesized into this operationalized definition: a servant leader empowers and develops others, displays humility, is authentic, accepts and direct others and is a steward who \"works for the good of the whole\" (van Dierendonck, 2011, p. 1232). Founding entrepreneurs were more likely to display characteristics of servant leadership than non-founders (Peterson et al., 2012). However, research in servant leadership has minimally addressed women directly or gender differences in meaningful ways. In some cases, gender is not addressed in the analysis (Bobbio et al., 2012; Huang et al., 2016; Liden et al., 2008; Peterson et al., 2012; Walumbwa et al., 2010); in others, gender was found to be salient (Dennis and Bocarnea, 2005) or labeled insignificant to the findings (De Clercq et al., 2014; Joseph and Winston, 2005; Ling et al., 2016). Albeit limited, servant leadership research which specifically addresses gender has highlighted the dominance of communal behaviors (Barbuto and Gifford, 2010; Reynolds, 2011). Moreover, theorists have argued that servant leadership may be a \"gender-integrative approach to leadership\" where both agentic and communal behaviors are valued and used as needed (Reynolds, 2011, p. 155).\nMethods: Participants\nResults: The interviews of twelve business owners were analyzed to determine unique themes along with those associated with the compassionate love servant leadership model (van Dierendonck and Patterson, 2015) and the resulting Authentic Servant Leadership of Women Business Owners Model is illustrated in Figure 2. A summary of the themes, illustrative quotes and participant counts are provided in Table II. Relative to the compassionate love servant leadership, the analyses found that the these participants demonstrated motivation to lead, the virtuous trait of humility, but not gratitude, forgiveness and altruism and the behaviors of authenticity, stewardship and providing direction, but not empowerment. The behavior of authenticity was the most prominent servant leadership behavior with several subthemes. Our analyses did find the women demonstrated virtuous traits and behaviors not included in the compassionate love servant leadership model, namely, the virtuous trait of trust and respect, combined to represent a single characteristic, and the behavior of self-development. To illustrate these findings, we present selected quotes from participants.\nDiscussion: The focus of this study was to determine whether women business founders demonstrated compassionate love servant leadership and manifested authenticity. This research on women business founders resulted in a theoretical model, which includes aspects of the compassionate love servant leadership model (van Dierendonck and Patterson, 2015). Moral agency, an antecedent to SL, was manifested by the women's motivation to lead with agency and calling. The women demonstrated the virtuous traits of humility, consistent with compassionate love servant leadership, and trust and respect, unique herein. Three of the compassionate love servant leadership behaviors were revealed - stewardship, providing direction and authenticity - along with self-development, unique herein. The interpretation of these findings relative to the literature follows.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The study of women business founders provides an opportunity to determine their unique leadership characteristics. Starting a business may be a way for women business owners to be authentic and create more people-centered businesses. Servant leadership's gender integrative attributes where both agentic and communal behaviors are valued may be more congruent and reflective of the leadership behaviors of women entrepreneurs. Recently, the motivation of compassionate love was theorized to be an antecedent to servant leadership and, it is argued, exists in conjunction with authenticity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate compassionate love, authenticity and servant leadership and determine whether they exist in the behaviors of founding female business owners.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This qualitative research study used summative content analysis of telephone interviews conducted with 12 women business owners of professional service firms in four US states to determine whether these women's motivations, traits and behaviors were consistent with the compassionate love servant leadership model and whether authenticity was the cornerstone of servant leadership.\nFindings: The analyses found that these women revealed a strong authenticity orientation as they enacted a compassionate love servant leadership style within their businesses. Themes that emerged from the study were agency, calling, humility, trust and respect, self-development, stewardship, authenticity and providing direction. The study revealed support for some of the characteristics associated with compassionate love servant leadership and two characteristics which were unique to this study.\nResearch limitations/implications: As a qualitative study of 12 individuals, these findings may not be generalizable beyond the four US states of professional service enterprises of women business founders. Future research should test the full servant leadership model of women business owners on a larger group of business founders and the sub-themes where little support exists.\nPractical implications: The more gender integrative style of compassionate love servant leadership may be beneficial for women owners to employ as business leaders.\nOriginality/value: This research revealed support for a variation of compassionate love servant leadership model. The resulting servant leadership model herein was a mixture of agentic and communal leadership motivations, traits and behaviors useful to women business founders. Behaviors of authenticity were found to complement compassionate love. These women were able to extend the boundaries of what it means to be a leader and incorporate behaviors associated with both their gender and leadership roles, thus expanding their ability to successfully empower and equip themselves to navigate barriers unique to women leaders.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Cross-national differences in complaint behavior: cultural or situational?
|
[
"Culture",
"Complaints",
"Retailers",
"EXIT",
"NWOM"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the years, numerous retailers have expanded into international markets. Wal-Mart, for example, now operates in 28 countries around the world and gets 29 per cent of its revenues from foreign operations. Carrefour, based in France, has stores in 33 countries and earns nearly 53 per cent of its revenues from international operations; while the Schwarz Group, of Germany, operates in 26 countries and receives 58 per cent of its revenue from beyond its national borders. On average, the top 250 retailers in the world operate in more than 10 countries, and nearly one-quarter of their revenues come from international locations (National Retail Federation, 2015). Many of these merchants have opened locations in far-away markets such as Azerbaijan, China, Chile, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Philippines, Turkey and United Arab Emirates (Kearny, 2015). Overall, it is clear that many retailers are capitalizing upon an increasingly global marketplace and expanding their operations to reach consumers around the world.\nA two-part study: A two-part study was conducted to determine the extent to which previously reported differences in customer complaint behavior are due to the underlying cultural values of each country, as compared to cross-national situational factors (i.e. consumer-oriented vs more restrictive refund/return/exchange policies and practices). In Study 1, individuals from China, India and Mexico were compared to cohorts who immigrated to the USA. In Study 2, individuals from those same countries were compared to people who are native to the USA.\nStudy 1: In Study 1, individuals in China, India and Mexico were compared to cohorts who were born and raised in those countries, but now live in the USA This quasi-experimental design controls for culture, while capturing situational differences. Assuming that cultural values are deeply embedded and enduring (Hofstede, 2001), each set of cohorts should be culturally similar, thus any differences in their complaint behavior can logically be attributed to other factors. Given that the prevailing return and exchange policies in China, India and Mexico are less consumer-friendly and significantly more limited than in the USA, any differences in each set of cohort's complaint behavior can be attributed, in large part, to this particular situational factor.\nStudy 2: Whereas Study 1 focused on cohorts who are culturally similar, Study 2 focused on individuals who are culturally dissimilar. In this study, 165 subjects from China, India, and Mexico were compared to 133 individuals who are native to the USA. Research shows that the underlying culture of each of these countries is substantially different than that of the USA[2]. Moreover, as previously reported, refund/return/exchange policies in China, India and Mexico are substantially different than in the USA. Study 2 thus allows one to further assess the relative effects of cultural vs situational factors on customer complaint behavior.\nDiscussion: Across both studies, a consistent pattern emerged. Having established that refund, return and exchange policies in China, India and Mexico are much more restrictive than in the USA, the data revealed that this key situational factor has a substantial impact on consumer complaint behavior, and that the effects of culture are relatively minor. Masculinity had a small impact on REDRESS, however, none of the cultural variables had a significant effect on either NWOM or EXIT. Individuals living in China, India and Mexico - as compared to consumers in the USA - are less likely to seek redress when dissatisfied with a product, not because of their cultural orientation, but because they perceive that the retailer will not allow them to return or exchange the item. As a result, they instead are more likely to engage in negative word-of-mouth and/or exit.\nLimitations and future research: With any given study there are limitations. First, this study did not control for all socio-demographic (e.g. social class), personal (e.g. consumer confidence, assertiveness) and situational factors (e.g. product importance, time and effort required to complain, price and product quality) that might affect one's behavior. Nor did it consider factors such as country of origin, or whether the retailer is locally owned vs part of a large chain, that might influence consumers' expectations. Although the findings clearly indicate that situational factors have a substantial impact on the all-important decision to seek (or not seek) redress, as well as negative word-of-mouth and exit, further research is needed to better understand how other variables might interact with culture to influence consumer complaint behavior.\nResearch and managerial implications: This study has implications for both retailers and academicians. With ever-increasing international travel among middle-class consumers from both developed and developing countries (UNWTO, 2017), widespread use of mobile technologies, and sharing of information via social media, a highly informed, global consumer is emerging. And, much like Nordstrom raised the bar in the USA years ago with its liberal return policies and excellent customer service (Spector, 2000), online retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba are changing the retail landscape across the world. With greater choices than ever before, consumer expectations are changing, creating opportunities for some retailers and challenges for others. As international retailers adapt to changing conditions, the opportunities for research are boundless. As retailers begin to implement new policies and practices, researchers can take advantage of natural experiments and make meaningful observations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Previous research indicates that dissatisfied consumers in other countries react differently as compared to those in the USA, due to their cultural orientation. These studies, however, have not recognized that retail policies (regarding returns and exchanges) in the USA are much more liberal and \"consumer friendly\" than in other parts of the world, and thus it is possible that their conclusions are flawed. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine the extent to which cross-national differences in complaint behavior are due to cultural vs situational factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To examine this issue, a two-part study was conducted. Study 1 compared consumers living in China, India and Mexico to cohorts who immigrated to the USA. Study 2 compared individuals from those same countries to subjects who are native to the USA.\nFindings: The findings indicate that situational factors (i.e. consumer-oriented vs restrictive refund/return/exchange policies) have a large impact on consumer complaint behavior (i.e. redress, negative-word-of-mouth and exit), and that the effects of culture are minor.\nResearch limitations/implications: To infer cause-effect, and establish scientific theory, one must rule out alternative hypotheses. Researchers who are investigating cross-cultural complaint behavior must take situational factors into account.\nPractical implications: With the emergence of \"global consumers\" consumer expectations around the world are changing. Astute retailers should institute and promote more liberal return policies, thereby mitigating consumers' perceived risk.\nOriginality/value: This study dispels the notion that culture is responsible for differences in cross-national consumer complaint behavior.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The enforcement of the global sulfur cap in maritime transport
|
[
"Global sulfur cap"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has been very active in formulating regulations in an effort to minimize pollution released from ships either in the marine environment or in the atmosphere. A regulation focusing on the sulfur emissions has been introduced by the IMO and will be put into force on January 1, 2020. The global sulfur cap, as the regulation is called, will limit the sulfur content of the fuel used for vessels' propulsion to 0.5 per cent. The current regulation allows a percentage of 3.5 per cent sulfur in fuel for all vessels sailing in the high seas, outside regulated areas and the residual fuels available in the market usually contain approximately 2.7 per cent sulfur. Therefore, compliance with the regulation in the high seas has not been an issue for the ship owners. This regulation is part of ANNEX VI of the MARPOL convention: Regulations for the Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships (IMO, 1978). As expected, the upcoming global sulfur cap has been for a very long time a much-debated topic in the shipping world that was waiting for IMO's critical decision regarding the implementation date of the cap. The shipping and refining industry have shown a phenomenal interest in the date the cap would be set in force, as their actions are highly dependent on the timing of the regulations.\n2. Sulfur regulations: The most widely used fuel in the shipping industry is the residual fuel oil, the most popular of which are RMG and RMK with a viscosity of 380 and 700 cSt, respectively, or less. Over the years, all marine engines are able to burn this type of fuel as the low price of HFO (Heavy Fuel Oil) has established it as the main marine fuel. Bunker fuel when burnt releases an important amount of pollutants, the most significant of which are sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SOx and NOx), carbon monoxide and dioxide (CO and CO2 respectively), black carbon (BC) and various kinds of particulate matter (PM) (International Transport Forum, 2016), (Molloy, 2016). Carbon and sulfur contained in the bunker fuel oil are oxidized to CO2 and sulfur oxides, mainly sulfur dioxide, SO2. In the engine of the ship, nitrogen (N2) is oxidized to nitrogen oxides (NOx), which, along with the sulfur oxides, when they reach the atmosphere, are converted into fine particles, sulfate and nitrate aerosols (Press Kristensen et al., 2011). The most dangerous of sulfur oxides is the sulfur dioxide (SO2) which is the main cause for acid rain. Ports and areas with heavy industry have higher concentrations of SO2 and the population is more often suffering from respiratory problems [USA Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2016].\n3. Compliance options: There are three main compliance options that will allow the vessels to be compliant in the ECA zones and the high seas. The limits differ so it is necessary to pay attention before deciding which method is more efficient in every case. The categories are:\n4. Enforcement of the regulations: The responsible authority for ensuring compliance of the vessels in the high seas rests with the flag state. The flag state duties and jurisdiction over the vessels are mainly laid down under Article 94 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (1982) and complemented by other articles. Only the flag state has jurisdiction over the registered ship regarding \"administrative, technical and social matters\" (United Nations, 1982), which includes the control of the ship's compliance with the regulations referred to marine pollution and ensuring that it is equipped with the necessary certificates that prove compliance. High seas are not strictly regulated and the lack of enforcement allows irresponsible flag states to avoid imposing heavy penalties to their ships, or in fact not imposing anything at all, to attract more ship owners with substandard ships (IMO, 2011). These flag states are called flags of convenience and attract ship owners that attempt to minimize the costs and sacrifice the quality or safety of their vessels.\n5. Case studies: Using predictions for the fuel prices in 2020, a method to calculate the profit of the non-compliant ships when burning high sulfur HFO instead of sulfur LSFO in the high seas is developed and used in case studies to present the approximate costs that this regulation introduces. In these case studies we assume that because of stricter enforcement the ship will not try to violate the sulfur regulations within an ECA, and that if a violation is registered it will only be outside the ECA. The main objective is to provide a tool that can be used to decide penalties reflecting the gravity of the violation rather than using uniform penalties that do not actually impose any financial loss to the non-compliant ship operators.\n6. Penalties: Low fines and relaxed enforcement of the regulations will create a climate of noncompliance where it may be worth taking the risk of getting caught as the penalties will not reach the investment costs for scrubbers, LNG or even switch-over to LSFO. The highest fine for a non-compliant ship in Denmark, where government control is present and environmental regulations are strongly enforced, was USD60,000, by March, 2018 (VPO Global, 2018). However, this value is much lower than even the lowest savings among the two case studies examined (in the second case study a medium-sized container ship could save a minimum of about USD257,000 per trip). Therefore, it is recommended that the fines be higher, and specifically, exceed the profits of the trip to discourage similar behavior. Non-compliant ships should receive higher punishments and the frequency of inspections projected against the chance of a ship getting caught should be examined before deciding a fine, but because of lack of data, it was not possible to assess in this paper.\n7. Conclusion: The global sulfur cap imposing a new limit of 0.5 per cent sulfur content in the fuel consumed in the high seas has raised concern in the shipping world because of the high fuel costs that it implies but also the level of compliance in an area difficult to regulate and monitor like the high seas. The enforcement methods that can be used in the high seas are still under research as there are not any suggested methods by the IMO. All methods are analyzed, their advantages and limitations, as well as their feasibility and possible improvements. The enforcement schemes that are possible to use can be grouped in five categories:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The International Maritime Organization has decided that as of 1.1.2020, SOx content in a ship's emissions should be no more than 0.5 per cent. The purpose of this paper is to address the various challenges expected to arise from the enforcement of the global cap sulfur regulation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors outline various enforcement options and present a model that calculates the profits from noncompliance in the high seas, so as to help determine the level of fines that could be imposed in case of violation.\nFindings: The main finding is that a harmonized system of fines, which are more than potential savings from cheating, would be a strong deterrent for compliance.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge, no paper in the maritime literature on sulfur regulations has focused on enforcement as of yet.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate governance and the quality of accounting earnings: a Canadian perspective
|
[
"Corporate governance",
"Accounting",
"Earnings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The considerable amount of regulatory attention given to corporate governance issues in recent years suggests that stronger governance mechanisms would reduce opportunistic management behavior, thus improving the quality and reliability of financial reporting. Regulators believe that this in turn will help to maintain and enhance investors' confidence in the integrity of capital markets. In contrast, some critics argue that the enhanced governance and litigation environment may change the balance of business and information risk for many firms, with the predictable and undesirable result that many firms will become more cautious, and forgo promising opportunities. Thus, shareholder wealth may ultimately be reduced. Although in the literature studies have examined the association between the attributes of governance mechanisms and firm performance, as well as the information content of the financial reporting process, much less is known about the impact of the recent changes in corporate governance codes on earnings quality internationally (Beekes et al., 2004)[1].The purpose of this study is to provide insight into the ongoing debate in the regulatory and academic communities on the effectiveness of the new governance regulations in Canada. Since the late 1990s, publicly traded firms in Canada have been subject to stricter corporate governance rules and guidelines. These changes in expectations regarding corporate governance were motivated, to a large extent, by some large corporate scandals in the USA and Canada. Due to the fact that many Canadian companies also rely on the US capital market, the dramatic changes in the US corporate governance regulations and practices (e.g. the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the new SEC regulations) have also had a significant impact in Canada.For several reasons, Canada is a unique and interesting setting in which to assess the sensitivity of the relation between governance and the integrity of the financial reporting process to new governance initiatives. First, although Canadian securities laws are substantially similar to those in the USA, unlike the USA, Canada does not have a centralized securities commission. Securities regulation is enforced at the provincial and territorial level (Rosen, 1995). Therefore, any nationwide governance agreement must obtain strong support from large provinces, such as Ontario and Quebec. Second, Canada uses a flexible method to address matters of corporate governance, which is distinct from the mandatory approach adopted by the US. Moreover, a much higher percentage of Canadian public companies have a controlling shareholder, as compared to US public companies (La Porta et al., 1999). These controlling shareholders have a natural incentive to be represented on the board of directors, which raises issues about the appropriate definition of independence. Finally, many Canadian public corporations are relatively small firms with a limited capacity to attract large numbers of completely independent directors; therefore, for these companies, complying with a strict set of corporate governance rules would be a significant financial and administrative burden. These institutional features raise questions about the effectiveness of governance control practice in improving the financial reporting process in Canada.This paper examines the effect of governance on the quality of the financial reporting process by linking governance attributes to the quality of accounting earnings. The focus on earnings is appropriate since it is a summary performance measure that is frequently quoted, analyzed and discussed in the literature and in the financial community. In this paper, the quality of earnings is measured in two ways:1. an accounting-based measure of earnings management (the magnitude of abnormal accruals); and2. a market-based measure of earnings informativeness (the return-earnings association)[2].Employing both measures can provide collaborating evidence, since enhanced regulations may provide fewer incentives for managers to manage earnings, and thus the magnitude of abnormal accruals may be lower; on the other hand, highly significant legislative changes to financial practice and corporate governance may encourage firms to undertake less optimal yet safer investment opportunities. Therefore, financial information may become a less clear representation of the economic resources and changes in economic resources of the firm. Accordingly, all else being equal, earnings informativeness may be reduced.Using data on corporate governance practice for Canadian firms comprising the S&P/TSX composite index for 2002-2005, the paper finds that overall governance quality is negatively related to the level of abnormal accruals and positively influences the return-earnings association. This suggests that good corporate governance mechanisms provide greater monitoring of the financial accounting process and are associated with reported earnings that are more informative. The study also finds that governance attributes do not affect the quality of earnings equally. Specifically, the magnitude of abnormal accruals is negatively associated with the level of independence of board composition, the extent of alignment of management compensation with interests of shareholders and the strength of shareholder rights. The results from the returns and earnings analysis further support these inferences.Studies in the literature typically focus on particular aspects of governance, such as board composition, shareholder activism, executive compensation, or insider ownership on firms' market value or performance (e.g. Morck et al., 1988; Warfield et al., 1995). For example, using a sample of Canadian companies during the years 1991-1997, Park and Shin (2004) examine the relationship between the proportion of outside board members and the level of accrual management, and find that only outside directors from financial intermediaries or institutional shareholders reduce earnings management. They conjecture, but do not test, that the insignificant results may be due to Canadian directors' lack of ownership interest in the firms they monitor and the presence of dominant shareholders. By examining the relation between corporate governance (including board composition, management shareholding, shareholders' rights and the extent of disclosure of governance practices), and the quality of earnings (measured by both accrual management and earnings informativeness), this study can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the significance of governance. The evidence suggests that enhanced governance initiatives are accompanied by an improved quality of earnings. The paper also differs from Park and Shin (2004) in another important aspect, since the current study investigates the years 2001-2004, a period where significant governance initiatives were imposed after the accounting scandals; thus, the evidence can provide more relevant and useful insights to the current policy debate regarding governance effectiveness.The results from this study support the notion that enhanced governance practices, especially independent boards and committees, effective management compensation, and powerful shareholders are important in constraining management from managing earnings and in ensuring a higher quality of earnings. Given the increasing interest in corporate governance, the evidence provides additional support of continuing regulatory initiatives throughout much of the world on corporate governance concerning the board independence and managerial ownership. It also calls for more actively involved shareholders to play a greater role in firms' accounting reporting processes.The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. The next section describes recent corporate governance initiatives in Canada. Section 3 develops hypotheses, while Section 4 describes the research design and variable measurements. Sample selection and empirical results are presented in Section 5. Section 6 provides additional analyses and conducts sensitivity tests. Section 7 provides concluding remarks.\n2. Corporate governance initiatives in Canada: Canada has placed an emphasis on corporate governance for a number of years. The significant governance initiative may date back to 1995, when the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) adopted 14 voluntary corporate governance best practices, and required Canadian-incorporated listed companies to disclose annually their corporate governance practices, and compare their practices to the 14 best practices (Labelle, 2003; Park and Shin, 2004)[3].In late 2001, the Joint Committee on Corporate Governance, established by the TSX, the Canadian Venture Exchange and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, issued a report, which led to new TSX proposals. In response to the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the USA, Canadian regulators adopted a set of corporate governance rules, which are similar to some provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the SEC and various US stock exchange listing standards. Canadian securities regulators believe that it is essential that Canadian public firms are subject to corporate governance rules that are as strict as those in the USA, but tailored to Canadian markets. These rules can be classified into several categories. The first set of rules relates to CEO/CFO certifications of annual and quarterly reports. Canadian companies also have to adopt disclosure controls and procedures that provide reasonable assurances that material information required to be disclosed by the company is made known to the CEO/CFO and is disclosed within the periods acquired by Canadian securities laws. Like the amended SEC rule, issuers need to design internal controls that provide reasonable assurances that their financial statements are fairly presented in accordance with GAAP.The second set of rules deals with audit committee independence, financial literacy and expertise. Major Canadian public companies must have fully independent and financially literate audit committees; thus, the education and experience of all committee members should be disclosed, so that investors can judge the committee's expertise. The third set of rules relates to the auditing process. To oversee the auditing profession, Canada established the Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB). Under the proposed auditing regulations, independent auditors are prohibited from performing various non-audit services for their audit clients.In addition, Canadian provincial securities regulators have proposed regulating other aspects of governance that are enforced through the stock exchange listing standards in the USA. For example, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), together with the majority of the other provincial and territorial securities commissions, proposed 18 recommended best practices and accompanying disclosure rules. These guidelines address such topics as the composition of a company's board and job descriptions for directors and officers. Although complying with these guidelines is again voluntary, companies that issue securities in Ontario are required to disclose whether or not they have adopted the guidelines, and if not, they need to explain why in the annual reports to be filed with the OSC.The governance initiatives in Canada have underlined the need for more evidence on corporate governance and its impact on quality of reporting issues. The governance data used in this paper is obtained from a survey on governance practices of Canadian firms in the S&P/TSX index, while the survey data are derived from a company's most recent proxy circulars. The survey has been conducted independently by the Report on Business in the Globe and Mail (a leading newspaper in Canada) on an annual basis since 2002 and the results have been published since then. The scores of corporate governance are based on a set of practices identified by regulators and investor groups which is considered to be critical to corporate governance effectiveness, and can be classified broadly into the following categories:* board composition;* shareholding and compensation of directors and management;* shareholder rights; and* disclosures of corporate governance practice.Each category contains several criteria, with corresponding weights for each criterion. This measurement of governance is relevant for assessing the degree of independence, objectivity, and attentiveness the board exercises in overseeing management performance, and the degree to which they hold management accountable to stakeholders for its actions[4]. Details about the criteria used by the survey are provided in the Appendix.\n3. Hypothesis development: The importance of corporate governance has been a question of substantial interest to regulators, financial institutions, investors, and the media. Governance problems arise from divergent incentives and asymmetric information between shareholders and managers. These conflicts of interests, coupled with the impossibility of writing explicit contacts on all future contingencies, lead to unresolved agency problems that affect firm valuation (Hart, 1995). Corporate governance mechanisms are intended to mitigate agency costs by increasing the monitoring of management's actions and limiting managers' opportunistic behavior (Ashbaugh et al., 2004). In this section, several hypotheses are developed that identify and link specific elements of governance to accounting earnings.3.1 Board composition and the quality of earnings\n4. Research design and variable measurement: 4.1 Measuring abnormal accruals\n5. Sample and results: 5.1 Sample selection\n6. Summary and concluding remarks: Recent governance initiatives in Canada have underlined the need for more evidence on the corporate governance and the quality of reporting issues. The purpose of this study is to provide early evidence to assess the merit of calls for stringent governance regulations in Canada by examining the association between the quality of overall and specific governance features and the quality of accounting earnings.We use absolute value of performance-matched abnormal accruals and return-earnings association as the proxies for quality of earnings. Using results from recently published data on corporate governance for a sample of Canadian firms, we find that overall governance quality is inversely related to the level of abnormal accruals and positively associated with the return-earnings association, suggesting that good corporate governance mechanisms provide greater monitoring of the financial accounting process and ensure more informative accounting earnings. We also find that governance attributes do not affect the quality of earnings equally. Specifically, the magnitude of abnormal accruals is negatively associated with the level of independence of board composition, the extent of alignment of management compensation with interests of shareholders and the strength of shareholder rights. The results from the returns and earnings analysis are consistent with these findings.Overall, this study provides early evidence that is consistent with Canadian regulators' initiatives that stronger corporate governance mechanisms may be important factors in improving the integrity of financial reporting for Canadian firms. Since Canadian regulators adopted a set of corporate governance rules which are similar to some provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the SEC and various stock exchange listing standards around the world, the evidence in the paper suggests that future policy initiatives in the USA and other countries should reinforce the need for independent boards, effective management compensation and stronger shareholders' rights, which is likely to result in better earnings quality.This study has several limitations. First, like many empirical studies that rely on disclosed proxy data, proxy disclosures may not represent all aspects of corporate governance practices. It is possible that some companies may have strong practices in some areas, but received lower scores because the details are not disclosed in their proxies. In addition, the sampling process may suffer from survivorship bias[14]. Third, the tests in this study are association tests, and thus do not directly distinguish whether the structural change in the association between the proxies for earnings quality and governance characteristics is due to the enhancement of governance or the associated pressure for increased managerial accountability. Future research may need to adopt qualitative research approaches to provide collaborative evidence on the link between quality of financial reporting and governance effectiveness.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The paper seeks to examine the association between corporate governance mechanisms and the quality of accounting earnings.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Quality of earnings is measured in two ways: the accounting-based measure of earnings management and the market-based measure of earnings informativeness. Using firm-level corporate governance data for a sample of Canadian firms in the years 2001-2004, regression analysis explores the relation between corporate governance (including board composition, management shareholding, shareholders' rights and the extent of disclosure of governance practices), and the quality of earnings.\nFindings: - Empirical tests demonstrate that overall governance quality is negatively related to the level of abnormal accruals and positively influences the return-earnings association. In addition, the magnitude of abnormal accruals is negatively associated with the level of independence of board composition, the extent of alignment of management compensation with interests of shareholders and the strength of shareholder rights. The results from the returns and earnings analysis are consistent with these findings.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The tests in this study are association tests. Future research may use qualitative research approaches to examine the link between quality of financial reporting and governance effectiveness.\nOriginality/value: - This study provides evidence that supports Canadian regulators' initiatives that stronger corporate governance mechanisms provide greater monitoring of the financial accounting process and may be important factors in improving the integrity of financial reporting.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Approaching the female labor supply from the unpaid work and non-work functions: Time-use diary evidence from Britain, 1998-9
|
[
"Non-work",
"Paid work",
"Selection-bias correction methods",
"Time-diaries",
"Time-use",
"Unpaid work"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Human time constitutes a fundamental economic resource. However, for a long time its study had been restricted to paid work, the only component recorded reliably by employers, employees, governments or other organizations.\n2. The data set and the construction of the time-use variables: One of the first things the analyst of British time-budgets notes is that most data sets (obtained via surveys conducted in 1937, 1961, 1975, 1987, 2002) lack continuity and are not easily comparable to each other due to differences in the activity-classifications, the underlying statistical assumptions, the methods of selecting samples and the parts of the week surveyed. In addition one notes that most British and international time-budgets surveys tend to rely on one or two-day diaries. Though more economical to run compared to long-term diary surveys, due to the shortness of the reference period these surveys are likely to also record more zeros for a good number of activities. At a later stage, this trait may necessitate the use of the second generation techniques mentioned in the Introduction or lead to deceptive or uninformative statistics. To avoid such situations, especially if one intends to study a censored time-use function through its complements (complements which ought not to be censored themselves), it is best to turn to a survey that relies on week-long diaries.\n3. Methodological issues and preliminary estimations: To properly explain the time allocation patterns in terms of personal and family characteristics we proceed to isolate the effects associated with age, health, the wage, region, family composition, non-labor income, the unpaid (domestic) work contributions of other household adults, and the sample SBC variable obtained from the paid work participation function. With one exception, these factors (regressors) are common in labor supply functions (regressions), e.g. Pencavel (1986), Killingsworth and Heckman (1986), Merz (1990), Flood and Grasjo (1998), Connelly et al. (2001), Blau and Kahn (2005), Amin and Suran (2009).\n4. The estimates of the time-use regressions: Whether by coincidence or not, all diaries feature positive (i.e. non-zero) unpaid work and non-work values. This suggests that the respondents not only engaged in leisure, rest and relaxation, but also exhibited some or considerable attachment to their traditional homemaking roles, whether they participated in paid work or not. Given that in the voluminous labor supply literature, as well as in the fledging literature on domestic work and non-work[11], time-use functions are often estimated separately (i.e. in isolation from the other components of time allocation) we proceed in the same manner. However, to the extent time-use decisions are simultaneous, in Section 5 we also estimate the three functions jointly within a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) framework.\n5. The SUR estimates of the time-use regressions: The discrete treatment of an activity function, despite its wide use, entails a shortcoming as it prevents the removal of error-correlations from the generalized system of the three time-use expressions. On the other hand, the alternative SUR approach necessitates a reduction in the number of observations considered in the unpaid work and non-work regressions in order to match the number of observations involved in the estimation of the SBC paid work function. The estimation of the Tobit function is unaffected.\n6. Conclusions: We estimate unpaid work, non-work and paid work activity functions of British women using weekly time-budget data collected via the 1998-1999 HoL survey. It turns out that the women considered generally allocated 69 percent of their time toward non-work, 18 percent to unpaid work and 13 percent to paid work. The econometric examination demonstrates that the non-work function is dominated by the autonomous component, and stresses the importance of the number and ages of dependent children as explanatory variables for female time-use. Indeed, some of the most significant results concern the presence of pre-schoolers who stimulate additional contributions of female unpaid work, averaging 19 weekly hours: first, primarily at the expense of non-work in the case of a child aged zero to two years old; and second, at the expense of both female non-work and paid work in the case of a child aged three to five. By contrast, a child aged six to nine or 10-12 stimulates nine and six additional weekly hours of unpaid work, respectively, and six to eight hours of reduced female leisure and relaxation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the allocation of time to paid work, unpaid work and non-work by women in Britain in 1998-1999. To infer the labor supply from the other time-use expressions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses weekly diary data to estimate the unpaid work and non-work functions. It infers the (residual) paid work expression. As the latter is recovered from uncensored regressions, it makes direct use of the complete set of observations. Hence, it contains more information than the conventional labor supply functions that are estimated from the data obtained from paid work participants via the Tobit and Heckit or selection-bias correction (SBC) techniques.\nFindings: The women surveyed generally allocated 69 percent of their time toward non-work, 18 percent to unpaid work, and 13 percent to paid work. The non-work function is dominated by the autonomous component, and all three functions depend on subjects' age, wage, non-labor income, household composition, the unpaid work contributions of adult relatives and region of residence. The unpaid work and non-work functions are more consistent with the SBC rather than the Tobit version of the labor supply. Moreover, the Tobit predicts unrealistic paid work allocations for women engaging in very little non-work.\nResearch limitations/implications: The unpaid work and non-work functions are regressed separately, as often the case in the literature. Their consideration within a seemingly unrelated regression framework necessitates a reduction in the number of observations to match those considered in the Tobit and SBC versions of the labor supply. Nuances may arise when the time reported in the diaries does not add up to 24 daily hours for all respondents. Knowledge of the recovered regional, age, household member and other effects on women time allocation might had come handy to economic development authorities who sought to attract women out of the household into market production, and from part-time to full-time employment in the context of the 2000-2010 Lisbon Strategy. Similar lessons may be valid today.\nOriginality/value: The data set derives from a survey that has not been used before. It relies on week-long diaries in order to avoid the occurrence of many zeros in a good number of activities (which is the norm in short diaries), and to ensure the study of a censored time-use function through its uncensored complements. The findings are compared to those of a weekly diary survey conducted in 1987 that solicited similar information. Hence, the study fills a gap in time-use analysis. Identifying the factors which influence the number of hours that women engage in work (both paid and unpaid) and non-work is useful for economic policy purposes. The study exposes a limitation in the conventional estimation of the labor supply which, in turn, casts doubt on the reliability of empirical results for policy making.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Internationalizing Higher Education (HE) in Vietnam: Insights from Higher Education leaders - an exploratory study
|
[
"Vietnam",
"Transnational education",
"Internationalization",
"Higher Education"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The internationalization of Higher Education (HE) in Vietnam remains under-researched. We share insights into the perspectives and experiences of senior HE leaders in Vietnam who had either been engaged in, or were planning, the internationalization of their universities. Their views and perspectives were considered in light of recent changes in management and policy approaches undertaken to internationalize HE institutions in Vietnam, especially as experienced in a developing nation currently in economic transition. We explored, through qualitative interview, Vietnamese HE leaders' perceptions of the process of internationalizing their universities.\nInternationalization of HE: Internationalization of any university is directed to internationalizing the educational experience for students so they might better perform in an international and multicultural economic environment. It is generally defined by an increase of cross-border educational activities while those national borders persist (Knight, 2008). However, internationalization has also transformed the HE landscape in the last two decades; a more globalized and inter-connected world has encouraged governments to foster academic relations and opportunities with university partners in other countries (Knight, 2008). Internationalization can expand HE aims and functions, with a diversity of people, ideas, and locations being essential to success (Knight, 2008). A key driver of HE internationalization is its ability to generate revenue (Ngo, 2011) and administrators, faculty, and staff in HE are all critical to its success (Choudaha and Contreras, 2014). Nations remain distinct economically, socially, and culturally, but can become connected and inter-related through HE internationalization processes.\nInternationalization of HE in Asia: HE in Asia is facing unprecedented challenges. The race to restructure and reform HE systems is accelerating, especially among developing countries in the region. Most Asian countries have resorted to granting more institutional autonomy to their HE institutions in the hope that increased management flexibility will expedite and facilitate the process of HE development for the good of the sector, and the country. Countries throughout Asia are at different stages of economic and social development: they often have differing reform measures in place due to disparities in local political and social structures, and differences in historical and cultural backgrounds. However, despite many clear distinctions, Asian countries regard the HE sector as a strategic lever to enhance their long-term and sustainable development (ADB, 2012a).\nInternationalization of HE in Vietnam: Vietnam's Doi Moi in 1986 and transition to a market-economy (Hayden and Thiep, 2010) was a strategic plan for the country. As part of this transition, during the 1990s, Vietnamese HE curricula were revised with content increasingly being focussed upon on the changing needs of the country and its shifting economy. Vietnam has undergone rapid growth and development in transnational or cross-border HE since the 1990s. In the transition from a centrally driven to market-driven economy, the internationalization of the university sector and its offerings enables the update, design, and development of curricula with systematic, holistic, and global approaches. An internationalized HE sector also facilitates educational offerings that are integrated, and can articulate, with the region via the transfer of credits regionally, while also enabling the creation of a highly skilled workforce with international vision. Recognition of the need for changes in the Vietnamese workforce is sourced from industry demand for greater socio-economic development within Vietnam, and global integration of its people within an international labor market. In Vietnam, an internationalized HE experience for students is being developed to prepare them for international careers in a complex, competitive, and dynamic global marketplace, while also responding to the skills shortage within the country. Internationalization of HE will also help prepare Vietnamese students to perform in an international and multicultural context, and support their future career roles that require intercultural engagement, and internationally informed competitive edge, and global citizenship (Daquila, 2013).\nResearch methodology: An exploratory qualitative research design, involving semi-structured, face to face interviews was undertaken to explore the views of senior Vietnamese HE sector leaders. A comprehensive literature review of HE internationalization was conducted, including experiences in Asia, to guide interview focus areas. Interviews with HE leaders included discussion of their key concerns, from their perspective, in order to better understand the key drivers, and challenges, surrounding HE internationalization, especially as this was unfolding in the transitioning economy of Vietnam. Specifically, interviews were intended to seek insights into: first, how internationalization was conceptualized by HE institutional leaders from different Vietnamese universities; second, what key factors were critical to the success of internationalization of HE in Vietnam; third, what had been achieved; and fourth, what challenges had been faced.\nThe internationalization process: The internationalization process theme shares senior HE leaders' perspectives and perceptions of HE internationalization in Vietnam, what that process was, how it was conceptualized and operationalized, and what the benefits and challenges might have been. Within that theme, sub-themes emerged: first, doing internationalization; second, outcomes of internationalization; and third, challenges of internationalization.\nDiscussion: The interviews confirmed various issues around the processes, outcomes and challenges of HE internationalization in Vietnam. All participants had similar views with respect to how internationalization might be conceptualized and what the key factors for success might be. These findings share the first empirical evidence of how internationalization is being conceptualized and responded to by senior HE leaders in Vietnam.\nConclusion and recommendations: The findings highlight key implications at both institutional and HE sector levels for Vietnam, Asia, and beyond. Internationalization strategies and policies have been found to be critical to the development of HE in Vietnam, and Vietnam's people and economy. Based on these findings, Universities in Vietnam may consider combining and connecting their mission statements, strategic objectives, and strategic planning processes to support one another during HE internationalization, to strengthen the total development efforts for their homeland. The findings also offered exploratory insights into what was considered important to further enhance and support HE internationalization processes, as well as highlighting the challenges that could arise, especially for countries in economic and social transition, such as Vietnam.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to increase knowledge of the key drivers, and challenges, of the internationalization of Higher Education (HE), especially in the transitioning economy of Vietnam.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An exploratory qualitative research design used semi-structured interviews. Nine senior institutional leaders from five Vietnamese universities were interviewed. Thematic analysis, informed by the literature, was undertaken on English-translated transcripts.\nFindings: The findings shared senior HE leader perspectives on how internationalization of HE in Vietnam was being conceptualized and operationalized, as well as insights as to how these processes might be improved. Further research to monitor the success of internationalization processes in Vietnam, and beyond, is recommended.\nResearch limitations/implications: This was an exploratory qualitative study including nine interviews with senior HE leaders from Vietnamese Universities. Exploratory findings only are shared.\nOriginality/value: No previous studies exploring internationalization of HE in Vietnam have been located. Vietnam is a nation in economic transition from a state-based to market-driven economy, and is different culturally, economically and socially, to its Asian neighbors. Internationalizing HE is considered essential to the global integration and development of Vietnam.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Getting ready for mega disasters: the role of past experience in changing disaster consciousness
|
[
"Japan",
"Great East Japan earthquake",
"Direct experience",
"Disaster consciousness",
"Mega disaster"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Japan is a country that frequently experiences earthquakes. According to a report of Cabinet Office (2015) of the Japanese government, from 2004 to 2013, 302 earthquakes with magnitude of 6.0 or greater had hit Japan, which represented 18.5 percent of the world's number during that period. Japan is also a country famous for its culture of preparedness. As of January 2015, there is a total of 4,377 seismic intensity observation points in Japan (Cabinet Office, 2015). Japan could become a leader in disaster management. Its early warning systems, information and communications systems, measures for support to disaster-affected people, disaster reduction drills, and disaster management bases and facilities are evaluated to be well prepared for disasters below a certain magnitude (Nagamatsu et al., 2012).\nTheoretical perspectives: From the psychological perspective, consciousness is explained to encompass diverse phenomena that people are aware of or experience (Velmans, 2009a). The term is often synonymous with awareness, referring to not only experiences that people commonly associate with themselves, for instance feelings, emotions, and thoughts, but also the experienced phenomenal world that is structured by human understanding (Velmans and Schneider, 2007).\nMethodology: The nationwide public opinion surveys before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake\nResults: Regarding the first research question, analyses of variance were performed to examine whether Japanese people's knowledge level of natural hazards and risk perception of future mega disasters became higher. The resulting F-values in Table II suggested that, the means of every item measuring knowledge and every item measuring risk perception significantly increased from the pre- to the post-earthquake group. In addition, the Brown-Forsythe test and the Welch test were performed for each item to assess the homogeneity of variance. All resulting coefficients were significant at the 0.001 level, which validated that the two samples (i.e. the pre- and the post-earthquake samples) came from the same population. Therefore, H1 and H2 were fully supported by the results.\nDiscussion: Based on the data of two Japanese public opinion surveys, this study endeavors to discover the trends relating to Japanese people's disaster consciousness and opinions on government strategies for dealing with future disasters, particularly concerning the mega disasters with the characteristics of low probability and high consequence. As the most powerful earthquake in Japanese history, the Great East Japan Earthquake is supposed to influence Japanese people's knowledge, risk perception, and policy preference about mega disaster.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Attempting to explore the role of direct experience in influencing disaster consciousness and public opinion, the purpose of this paper is to carry out comparative analyses of Japanese people's knowledge, risk perception, and policy preference about large-scale earthquake disaster before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake. More importantly, aiming to provide implications regarding the application of past experience, the predictive power of direct experience on disaster consciousness is also examined.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study analyzed parts of the data collected from two nationwide public opinion surveys among Japanese conducted by the Japanese Government. Analyses of variance were performed to examine changes in disaster consciousness. A path model was developed to examine the predicted effects of direct experience. kh2 tests were performed to examine changes in strategy preference.\nFindings: This study found significant changes in Japanese people's knowledge of natural hazards and perception of mega disaster risk. Tests of the path model suggested significant positive effect of societal level impact on disaster consciousness and strong predictive power of knowledge on risk perception. Significant changes in strategy preference were also found.\nPractical implications: Results supported the predictive power of direct experience, highlighting the significance of recalling past experience as well as creating indirect experience to raise public consciousness and motivate appropriate actions.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the few studies that investigate changes in public opinion among Japanese before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The hidden value of intangibles: do CEO characteristics matter?
|
[
"Upper echelons theory",
"Firm performance",
"Intangible assets"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The relationships between intangible assets and firm performance have been studied in recent years. One of the intangible assets that have been analyzed deeply is the human capital of the firm. Human capital includes knowledge, skills and abilities of people working in the company (Coff, 2002). In particular, there has been considerable debate regarding the impact of the CEOs on firm performance.\n2. Theoretical framework: Human Capital has been studied as an intangible asset of great value to the company. More specifically, the characteristics of the CEO have been described as an indisputable part of the managerial capabilities of the company and have often been associated with organizational performance (Wang et al., 2011). However, the influence of the CEO's on other type of performance measures has been less studied. A very consistent approach is offered by Hambrick and Quigley (2014).\n3. Methods: Data collection\n4. Results: To carry out the analysis we consider the following issues:\n5. Conclusions, discussion, limitations and future research: Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: A great deal of research has examined the relationship between a single CEO attribute and a single measure of firm performance; no attempts have been made to integrate them to create a more global vision of both. Therefore, trying to answer new calls from Wang et al. (2016) or Liu, Fisher and Chen (2018) about a more global vision of the CEO characteristics, the authors are going to take a step forward to combine different CEO characteristics with different firm performance measure in order to show that a certain managerial profile would have an impact on several variables of firm performance. This paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 1,236 small firms in high- and medium-high-technology sectors and through the Canonical Correlation Analysis, the authors are able to create different CEO's profiles that influence on different combinations of firm performance variables.\nFindings: The authors obtain different CEO's profiles that influence on different combinations of firm performance variables. Each CEO profile will enhance or diminish one kind of performance measure. The authors found that on the one hand, young, well-educated with external experience CEO profile will enhance innovative performance and firm growth, and on the other hand, old and more internal and external experience CEO profile will enhance the exploitation of external knowledge.\nOriginality/value: Through this analysis, the authors will be able to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the predictions about the role of CEOs in small firms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Bridging organizational identity and reputation messages online: a conceptual model
|
[
"Social media",
"Reputation",
"Exploratory research",
"Organization identity",
"Organizational communication",
"Qualitative value model"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The evolution of digital media and platforms of communication has provided an opportunity for organizations to define their identities and measure their reputation messages on a global scale. These platforms present new challenges for communication professionals, for whom understanding the power and value of identity and reputation messages is a critical component of any effective communication strategy. The identity and reputation management literature, however, has not yet determined the factors that organizations should consider when seeking to manage their online identities and reputation messages effectively and proactively. More importantly, the academic scholarship has not adequately addressed the close link between identity and reputation messages. This paper proposes that by bridging organizational identity and reputation messages and measuring these messages online, an organization may more effectively build and maintain both its desired identity and its reputation.\nThe relationship between identity and reputation: An organization's identity and reputation are intangible assets that have an influence on many aspects of the organization, including its financial performance (Deephouse, 2000; Roberts and Dowling, 2002; Voss et al., 2006); its ability to attract employees, investors, customers, and business partners (Bouchikhi and Kimberly, 2008; Fombrun, 1996); and its core competencies (Glynn, 2000).\nIdentity messages: Albert and Whetten (1985) describe organizational identity as the features of an organization that are claimed to be central, enduring, and distinct. By extension, identity messages refer to claims that an organization makes and communicates to its key publics about itself. Identity messages can include messages that describe \"who we are,\" \"what we do,\" \"how we do what we do,\" \"why we do what we do,\" and \"how we are distinct from other similar organizations,\" among others. Identity messages, or identity claims, can also communicate values that are important (central) to an organization. Identity messages can be found in content generated by the organization, such as its website content, its newsletters, published speeches, social media posts, news releases, and so on.\nReputation messages: Reputations are built over time by constructing a solid foundation of values, ethical practices, and a sound mission statement that is carried out by those involved with the organization. In this paper, reputation messages refer to messages that reflect what key publics think about an organization. Reputation messages originate from sources external to an organization, in contrast to identity messages; these sources include, but are not limited to, the media, consumers, investors, competitors, and regulators. Reputation messages can include messages that express attitudes and opinions about an organization, as well as people's impressions of or knowledge about that organization. Reputation messages can be found in the news media, in user-generated media, in trade journals, and in government publications, among others places.\nAn exploratory value model procedure: The process of conceptualizing an exploratory, qualitative value model begins with identifying relevant concepts and measures. For this paper, the authors first conducted a qualitative review of reputation and identity scholarship for recurring themes and concepts (functional analysis). These themes were then organized based on similar characteristics, which were used to formulate the identity and reputation functions. Once the functions were developed, the literature was examined more closely to identify value measures for each of the functions.\nThe proposed model and its potential applications: An understanding of the strategies and applications of social media need to be considered when bridging organizational identity messages with reputation messages in the online world. Table I outlines the literature from which the proposed measures and functions are derived.\nConclusion: The main purpose of this paper was to conceptualize an exploratory model for how organizations may be able to bridge their identity and reputation messages online. Although scholars have examined identity and reputation separately, they are closely interconnected and have a synergistic relationship. Reputation management and identity management have often been separated into two different areas of practice and study; building a bridge connecting these two areas together would not only benefit the profession, but also contribute to a new paradigm within the scholarly community. Such evolutions within the field are to be expected based on advances in technology, shifts in stakeholder expectations, and integration of traditional and new forms of communication to both internal and external audiences. Considering the interrelated nature of identity and reputation messages, it is necessary to formulate a model delineating how the two may be connected to one another. By proposing the conceptual model for how organizations may be able to align their identity messages with reputation messages, it is hoped that this paper will foster a more conscious connection between the identity and reputation scholarship and allow future researchers the opportunity to explore these connections through empirical research studies.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that can be used to bridge organizational identity and reputation messages. The proposed model may help organizations more-effectively build and maintain both their desired identity as well as reputation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The qualitative and exploratory procedure was used to develop a model for simultaneously managing and measuring both identity and reputation messages. The process of conceptualizing an exploratory, qualitative value model begins with identifying relevant concepts and measures. A qualitative review of reputation and identity scholarship was examined for recurring themes and concepts. These themes were then used to formulate the identity and reputation functions and value measures.\nFindings: The proposed conceptual model presents characteristics and attributes that scholars and practitioners may need to consider when managing an organization's identity and reputation messages online. The paper also presents potential applications of the model.\nPractical implications: The proposed qualitative value model, if further tested and quantified, has three potential applications: integrating identity and reputation messages across multiple platforms; telling stories reflective of both identity and reputation messages; and determining the value of attribution across contingencies.\nOriginality/value: Considering the interrelated nature of identity and reputation messages, it is necessary to formulate a model delineating how the two may be bridged with one another. By proposing the conceptual model for how organizations may be able to align their identity messages with reputation messages, this paper hopes to establish a more conscious connection between the identity and reputation scholarship.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Effect of strategic purchasing on supplier development and performance: a structural model
|
[
"Buyer‐supplier relationships",
"Purchasing",
"Supply chain management"
] |
[
{
"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: Industrial markets have undergone fundamental transformations during the last decade making buyer-supplier relationships a matter of strategic analysis for industrial buyers and marketers (e.g. Cannon and Perreault, 1999; Dyer and Hatch, 2004; Jap, 1999, 2001; Wanger and Johnson, 2004). Researchers have suggested that buyer-supplier relationships are undergoing a paradigm shift from transaction-oriented to relation-oriented, thus, making relationship marketing an increasingly important organizational concern for business.Critical to the success of relationship marketing is the exchange of resources between buyer and supplier (Hunt and Morgan, 1994). In this regard, both supplier (Perrien et al., 1995; Perrien and Ricard, 1995) and buyer (Campbell, 1998, p. 199) play a key role in ensuring the overall quality and effectiveness of relationship marketing efforts. As one author has argued:Unsuccessful relationship marketing efforts by suppliers may not necessarily be attributed to an inherent weakness in the supplier, but rather to organizational barriers and constrains within the buying firm that inhibit the successful implementation of relationship marketing practices (Campbell, 1998, p. 199).Thus, successful relationship marketing requires that managers have a clear understanding of how each partner can contribute to this relationship building process. In this context, a buying firm's efforts towards strategic planning in purchasing (strategic purchasing) and the realignment of a supplier's capabilities to match the buyer's needs (supplier development) has the potential to contribute significantly to the success of relationship marketing.Strategic purchasing has been identified as a critical antecedent of supplier involvement in the buyer's new product development process (Carr and Pearson, 2002) and the implementation of effective communication and evaluation practices with suppliers (Carr and Pearson, 1999), thus making it an integral part of building successful buyer-supplier relationships. Similarly, supplier development has also been acknowledged to be a critical element of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships and has been identified to play a critical role in improving a supplier's capabilities and performance (Krause, 1999; Krause et al., 2000). However, to date there has been no direct effort to analyze the relationship between strategic purchasing and supplier development practices. Thus, we use the relational view of the firm (Dyer and Singh, 1998) to gain a better understanding of this issue by empirically examining the implementation of a buyer's strategic purchasing and supplier development activities, and relating them to the buyer's purchasing performance. Next, we describe the research model, methodology and results. Finally, we discuss our research findings and the limitations of the study.\n2. Literature review and research model: In recent years, researchers have adopted a relational approach to explain how buyer-supplier relationships can be a source of competitive advantage. The relational view (Dyer and Singh, 1998) argues that firms who combine resources in unique ways may realize a competitive advantage through four important mechanisms: joint investments, knowledge exchange, combining valuable and scarce resources, and more effective governance. Thus, both supply management and relationship marketing activities are critical elements to a firm's competitive advantage. However, for such efforts to be effective it is necessary that they are aligned with the firm's overall goals and strategies. Thus, for a supplying firm to effectively address the needs of the customers, it would need to strategically target individual customers (buyers) and realign the firm's capabilities to match the customer firm's buying priorities. Similarly, the buying firm's supply management activities need to be strategically oriented towards the accomplishment of the firm's overall goals and strategies. This is known in the literature as strategic purchasing (Carr and Pearson, 1999; Carr and Smeltzer, 1997). Thus, any effort on the part of the buying firm to realign the supplying firm's capabilities with the buyer's needs should be part of the buying firm's planned strategy (strategic purchasing) if they are to contribute to the attainment of the firm's overall goals. This suggests that strategic purchasing should precede the adoption of supply management practices including supplier development.Figure 1 depicts our theoretical model that links strategic purchasing with supplier development and purchasing performance. We model strategic purchasing as a direct antecedent of supplier development and purchasing performance.2.1 Linking strategic purchasing and supplier development\n3. Research methodology: A survey methodology was chosen to test the research hypotheses. Survey methodology was chosen because the phenomena to be studied required obtaining information regarding a firm's relationships with their suppliers and this type of information is not available publicly. Thus, an appropriate method to obtain this information was to survey purchasing manager's perspectives on supplier development and strategic purchasing. In addition, survey methodology ensures greater generalizability of the results when compared to case based research. Finally, the number of articles dealing with strategic purchasing and supplier development using survey methodology is relatively small compared to case research methodology, therefore, it contributes to fill this gap in the literature.3.1 Construct measurement\n4. Validity assessments and tests of the research hypotheses: 4.1 Construct validity\n5. Discussion and implications: The results of this research provide support for the relationship between strategic purchasing and supplier development. This is very important for industrial marketers given the importance and interactive character of relationship marketing efforts. Industrial marketers could benefit from a buyer's efforts towards supplier development by integrating them with their own relationship marketing efforts. This research also showed that strategically oriented-supplier development practices render positive results for the buying firm.Since supplier development is a reflection of many building components of Dyer and Singh's (1998) relational framework, the findings of this study help us to better understand the link existing between strategic purchasing and supplier development and how it creates value for the buying firm. The study's results suggest that strategically-aligned supplier development practices are a source of relational rents (i.e. improvements in performance). Specifically, through supplier development, buyer and supplier can enable the four rent-generating mechanisms identified by Dyer and Singh (1998), that is, combining, exchanging, or investing in relational-specific assets (e.g. through buyer involvement in a supplier's new product development, and supplier involvement in the buyer's product development process); exchanging knowledge (e.g. through suppliers being trained by the buying firm, sharing of cost and quality information with supplier, and buyer's visits to suppliers' facilities); combining complementary resources and capabilities (e.g. through buyer involvement in supplier's new product development, and supplier involvement in the buyer's product development process); and deploying more effective governance mechanisms (e.g. through supplier reward and recognition).This investigation supports the view that firms that focus on strategic supplier development reap greater long-term benefits from their efforts than firms using the non-strategic approach (Krause et al., 1998). Since long-term value creation is one of the key organizational goals of businesses, and strategic purchasing and supplier development leads to improved performance in the buying firm (customer), it is therefore advisable for supplying firms and industrial marketers in particular, to understand strategic purchasing and supplier development, and how they are related. In this regard, this research offers a general guideline for industrial marketers regarding strategic purchasing practices (e.g. participation of purchasing in the strategic planning process, the existence of a formal purchasing plan, and the existence of direct links between purchasing executives and top management) and supplier development activities (e.g. frequent visits to suppliers to assess their processes, establishment of a system to reward and recognize supplier improvements, providing training to suppliers, sharing of quality and production information, collaboration with suppliers in improving existing and new materials, and involving the supplier in the company's new product development process). Thus, in order to support the buying firm's supplier development efforts and ensure their success, the supplying firm's could provide training to its sales and operations personnel on how to collaborate with the customer firm on new product development, establishment of a system to reward and recognize supplier improvements, or developing interorganizational information systems.From the buying firm point-of-view, the results of this research also provide support to Bensaou's (1999) model of buyer-supplier relationships portfolio and suggest that buyer-supplier portfolio management leads to performance improvements for the buying firm. According to Bensaou (1999), the first step in supplier portfolio management is defined by the buying firm setting up plans for its entire supplier base and for individual supplier relationships (Wanger and Johnson, 2004). This step would be equivalent to strategic purchasing in our research model. The second step consists in analyzing the external conditions given by the product, the technology, and the market and selecting the type of supplier relationship to match. Next, the buying firm should match the design of the relationship to the desired management profile. Bensaou (1999) suggests that in case of misalignment between what the supplier is able to provide and what the buying firm requires, the buying firm should take appropriate actions to fill the gap. Our research suggests that a buying firm could implement supplier development practices and that they could lead to better performance.This research also contributes to recent literature on value creation and competitive advantages for customers (e.g. Ulaga, 2003, 2004). Specifically, the findings of this research suggest that strategically oriented supplier development practices could help the supplier in creating value for the buying firm in four dimensions: product quality, delivery, direct product costs, and process costs (Ulaga, 2003). Thus, suppliers should strive to reorient their relationship marketing efforts in order to support their customers' strategic purchasing activities, but more importantly their customers' strategic priorities. In this way, industrial marketers have the challenge to develop and establishing a process in the company with the capability of identifying a supplier's degree of alignment with their customer's strategic priorities in order to align their business processes to satisfy those priorities.\n6. Conclusions and future research: This paper proposed and tested a model of mediating relationships involving three constructs: strategic purchasing, supplier development, and purchasing performance. Overall, we found that these three constructs were related to each other in the sequential order specified by the research model.The collective results of this study are consistent with the view that purchasing strategy drives the implementation of purchasing practices (Ellram, 1994) and that alignment of supplier development practices with the overall business goals can enhance a firm's purchasing performance. Therefore, the results validate the proposed research framework (Figure 1) where the alignment of the purchasing strategy with the overall business goals is an antecedent to the implementation of supplier development practices and that this relationship produces results at the functional level increasing purchasing performance that in turn would add to improved business performance.This study highlights the importance of strategic purchasing and supplier development in improving customer value (purchasing performance), thus meriting management consideration and resources from both suppliers and buyers when developing an integrated supply chain strategy. The findings suggest that a buying firm's supplier development practices that are strategically-oriented through a buyer's implementation of strategic purchasing generate \"relational rents\" that lead to superior performance. More specifically, we identified that the implementation of strategically-oriented supplier development activities allows buyer and supplier to synergistically combine, exchange, or invest in idiosyncratic assets, knowledge, and resources/capabilities that permit the realization of rents increasing performance.This study identified a number of opportunities and areas for future research. It is necessary to deepen our understanding of the alignment between a buyer's strategic purchasing and supplier development practices and more specifically how suppliers could develop a supporting environment to facilitate such strategic alignment. The use of a single key informant from participating businesses could be seen as a potential limitation of the study. This study's findings should be confirmed in the future using information directly obtained from actual suppliers and internal customers (i.e. the company's internal manufacturing, R&D, and marketing personnel). The study incorporated a cross-sectional and descriptive sample of the manufacturing industry at a singular point in time. A more stringent test of the relationships between strategic purchasing, supplier development, and purchasing and business performance requires a longitudinal study, or field experiment, which could gather information about strategic purchasing and supplier development practices and performance over a more extended time span. Regardless of the strength of the relationships between the constructs in the model, we cannot obviate the fact that these relationships may apply to larger firms more than to smaller firms. The data used to test the relationships in the model was obtained from the population of the 1,200 largest manufacturers in Spain. More research is needed to extend these results to the service industry and other national contexts.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This purpose of this paper is to introduce strategic purchasing (SP) and supplier development (SD) as constructs that could have the potential to contribute to the success of relationship marketing efforts. Based on the relational view of the firm, the authors propose that SP is an antecedent of SD practices and can create value for the buying firm in terms of better purchasing performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Hypotheses derived from the key features of SP and SD practices are tested using structural equation modeling through field research on a sample of 306 manufacturing companies in Spain.\nFindings: - Findings from this study indicate that there is significant evidence to support the hypothesized model in which SP exerts a direct influence on SD practices and purchasing performance, as well as an indirect impact on purchasing performance mediated through SD.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Further research is necessary to increase our understanding of a buyer's strategic purchasing and supplier development practices and more specifically how suppliers could develop a supporting environment to facilitate the strategic alignment of these two concepts. The limitations of the survey are also discussed.\nPractical implications: - The findings from this study provide supplying firms with an understanding of how buying firms use SD to deploy their SP initiatives in order to achieve improvements in purchasing performance.\nOriginality/value: - While there is some literature analyzing SP and the implications for buyer-supplier relationships, the relationship between SP and SD practices and their effect on purchasing performance has not been yet analyzed.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Modeling the relationship between transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions and hybrid-online courses at a large urban university
|
[
"Higher education",
"Online classes",
"Transportation",
"Carbon dioxide",
"Commuter campus",
"Hybrid classes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The increased use of online courses in universities has associated risks but can also be beneficial to the students, university and environment. Although students may enjoy the flexibility that online course delivery offers, questions remain about whether online learning environments can provide similar quality education compared to face-to-face courses. Past analyses of the quality of education and student satisfaction with online education systems have been varied (Parkinson et al., 2003; Topper, 2007). However, it is clear that universities see the reduction in overhead costs associated with online courses as a strong benefit (Abdous and Yoshimura, 2010). One of the potential benefits of online learning, and the focus of this paper, is the reduction in student trips to campus and the potential reduction in local air pollution, CO2 emissions and parking congestion (Tolley, 1996; Balsas, 2003).\n2. Background: The state of California has recognized the risks associated with global warming and increases in greenhouse gases. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is designed to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to encourage the development of sustainable technologies (California Global Warming Solutions Act, 2006). On a local level, the City of San Jose, where San Jose State University (SJSU) is located, has implemented the \"San Jose Green Vision\". The main goal of this plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through various means, including reducing energy consumption and encouraging clean technology industries (San Jose Green Vision, 2012).\n3. Methods: A computer model was developed using the interactive data language programming language to simulate the effects of varying combinations of hybrid courses and online meetings on student trips to campus. Here, the authors define a trip to campus to be from the student's home to campus, and then back home (a round trip), driven alone, and in a standard passenger car. In the model, 30,236 students (SJSUOIR, 2011) and 5,012 courses (SJSUOIR, 2012) were used to roughly represent the SJSU system. A simplified system of courses was also assumed, where 80 per cent of the courses in the model met twice a week for 1 hour and 15 minutes, while 20 per cent of the courses met once a week for 2 hours and 40 minutes. Students were randomly placed into these courses, between three and six courses, each to represent the mix between part-time students (about 25 per cent) and full-time students (about 75 per cent) as seen at SJSU (SJSUOIR, 2012). Students who take different numbers of courses are assumed to be the same in the model other than their course differences. The model calculated 3.79 trips to campus per week per student using the parameters above, which is close to the campus survey value of 3.91 (Zonobi, 2011). These trips include only those associated with official class meetings, and are not affected by events or special circumstances.\n4. Results: 4.1 Trips to campus\n5. Conclusions: Overall, the authors' results are similar to those of Takahashi et al. (2006) in that student trips to campus, and therefore CO2 emissions, decreased with increasing online meetings. However, it can be seen from Figure 1 that decreases in trips to campus, and correspondingly decreases in CO2 emissions, became more rapid with higher percentages of hybrid courses and online meetings. For example, it is not until Scenario 3 (i.e. 30 per cent of all meetings online) that at least a 10 per cent change in CO2 emissions is projected to occur. Analysis has determined that relatively large percentages of hybrid courses and online meetings are needed to achieve similarly large decreases in trips to campus and CO2 emissions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the relationship between hybrid classes (where a per cent of the class meetings are online) and transportation-related CO2 emissions at a commuter campus similar to San Jose State University (SJSU).\nDesign/methodology/approach: A computer model was developed to calculate the number of trips to campus for a student body similar to SJSU. Different scenarios considered the theoretical effectiveness of implementing a hybrid course system to reduce CO2 emissions.\nFindings: Increases in hybrid courses resulted in decreased student trips to campus and associated CO2 emissions. The utility of such a relationship is demonstrated through a case study where the required increase in online class meetings needed to eliminate the need for an overflow parking lot is studied. Finally, preferential scheduling of online meetings can further reduce trips to campus.\nResearch limitations/implications: A limitation of the model is that student schedules are random. Future research could use actual student schedules to better model how online course delivery will affect trips to campus.\nPractical implications: As today's universities struggle with financial pressure, online course delivery is being offered as a way to cope. This analysis provides an additional metric to evaluate online courses and includes other potential financial savings.\nSocial implications: Transportation contributes to local air pollution and emissions of heat-trapping gases. As universities move toward more sustainable behaviors, reducing automobile trips to campus can be seen as a priority.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to model the relationship between hybrid courses and CO2 emissions at an urban university. This information will be valuable to the SJSU community, as well as many other institutions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
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